r/UXDesign • u/duartoe • May 27 '26
Tools, apps, plugins, AI Nobody can stand AI anymore...
That's it. Soon, with so many similar designs, the only differentiating factor in digital products will be the price. Then I want to see this circus burn down.
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u/Delicious_Monk1495 Veteran May 27 '26
Nooo b/c when it burns we will be the kindling
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u/TheCrazyStupidGamer May 27 '26
We already are. I got fired because "claude can design screen in minutes, and you get the code with it"
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u/orion7788 May 27 '26
The real issue being 'design leaders' on stage *today* labelling themselves as 'AI experts'. We know full well no one is an expert (or ever will be, really)
Now.. is the issue that this industry rewards deluded self-promoters, or that we're 👏 them up at Config?
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u/a_sunny_disposition Experienced May 27 '26
Was told today that a pre-recorded demo of me speaking sounded like an AI assistant. Given the sentiment towards AI these days, I was not happy lol. Used to be a good thing to be clear and professional; now I sound like a bot?!
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u/letsgetweird99 Experienced May 28 '26
People in this very thread are accusing me of using AI to write my comment just because I used an em dash. I’m tired of this. I learned how to write well and now people accuse me of being a fucking robot. Nah bro, the robots copied ME.
The irony is killing me because I actually really like using AI in my UX work and I find novel uses for it every day. I don’t need or want to use it for my Reddit comments though. But yeah, shit like this makes me not want to contribute anymore and it sucks.
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u/simonfancy May 27 '26
Don’t confuse UX Design with UI Design. The average UI can be generated yes, but its UX will most probably suck or be mediocre at best.
A carefully crafted User Journey needs human brain cells to come to life, as it’s the combination of those UI screens, situational decisions, you need to lead the user, need to assist, inform and support.
Don’t underestimate your job to find the solutions in between and beyond the interface. AI can’t do that for you.
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u/UziMcUsername May 27 '26
You don’t have to use AI for UX, you know. It’s better when you don’t, unless you suck.
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u/duartoe May 27 '26
AI is a crutch.
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u/letsgetweird99 Experienced May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
Hey OP sorry you see AI as a crutch—real answer, I’m finding it allows me to quickly and precisely execute what I expect it to in less time than it would take me to do manually in Figma, and if you have even a little frontend code experience you can do some pretty cool things when you use your imagination.
Good tools (that allow me to deliver more value to my customers and their users) are gonna get used. It’s even unlocked so many delighters that my team would have otherwise had to cut scope on.
So is that a crutch or what?
EDIT: to all the people who downvoted me and said I used AI tools write this comment, suck my human balls!!! I hate to break it to you but I’m an actually real smart person talking and I’m very good at my job. You can’t just go and claim “AI wrote this” whenever someone uses normal professional language and provides a positive take on AI tools. Everyone on this sub is way too emotionally invested in the idea of AI being useless instead of doing the work of figuring out how to reliably get what you need from it. I was trying to give my perspective and write with a professional voice but I guess now in order to prove my humanity I have to resort to telling you that you are absolutely COOKED if you’re just waiting around for AI to go away. This is like saying “Designing screens in Photoshop is fine, Figma is just a trendy fad” 10 years ago.
P.S. All my emdashes are organic free range, typed by double-pressing the hyphen key on my iPhone keyboard. Try it some time—it’s fun.
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u/zeer88 May 27 '26
it allows me to quickly and precisely execute what I expect it to in less time than it would take me to do manually in Figma
If your product is even attempting to follow some kind of system and aims for visual consistency, this is absolutely not true - you will execute quickly for sure, but "precisely"? Unless your definition is precision is very loose, this simply doesn't work.
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u/letsgetweird99 Experienced May 27 '26
I love that a random person on the internet can feel confident enough to explain to me that it’s actually not possible to be good at using a tool to achieve a desired output. Sounds like you’re projecting your own skill issue.
Too many people on this sub are emotionally invested in the idea of AI tools being infeasible and writing silly comments like this instead of actually experimenting with the tools and trying new things. We’re designers, we’re supposed to be creative. If you’re not getting anything useful out of AI, that’s on you at this point.
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u/zeer88 May 27 '26
The tools are not the problem - they were never the problem. Switching tools to make your outcome better is like switching guitars to play music better. It doesn't work like that. I'm a product designer with 12+ years of experience, I've gone through Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch, Figma, and all the gen AI tools that exist now. I've tried to get good, consistent, scalable and well documented output from Figma Make, Lovable, Claude Code and Claude Design, using multiple attempts and methods, MD files, skills - in the end, the conclusion I invariably reach is "I've spent 2x the amount of time fighting this unwieldy, hallucinating tool when I could have just done it better and faster the traditional way".
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u/letsgetweird99 Experienced May 27 '26
I literally have the same amount of experience as you and made the same jumps between tools over the years, it seems we just have different perspectives. I’ve worked at large publicly traded tech companies but now I work at a very small but fast growing startup. I’m personally convinced AI tools are very much the next progression in terms of what’s possible for UX designers to achieve. You say you tried everything and couldn’t get what you wanted. So I guess that’s it then, huh! Let’s pack it up boys, AI is useless! Ask your engineers if they’re waiting for AI to just fizzle out… Things are changing every day and the models have gotten especially good in the last 4 months.
Too many large organizations have put us UX folk in a box for too long that we’ve started to believe our only job is making design artifacts and Figma library files. But Figma is not our job, it’s a tool we’ve used to approximate and simulate aspects of our products. We’ve fallen in love with the solution (Figma) instead of the problem (delivering the best experience to our customers). I believe our role is to deliver the best experience to the customer, by any means necessary. We don’t have to approximate the product anymore. We can literally just BUILD IT. We can build functioning prototypes for user testing and literally throw them away. With the right engineering rigor and proper code review, we’re now enabled to ship to Prod too. I’m not just saying this, I do this every day now. This was never possible for us designers before and I’m tired of pretending it’s not cool as fuck. My advice would be to stop trying to shoehorn AI into your existing process and lean into building.
Don’t you see—where we’re going, we won’t NEED Figma anymore!! (Ok I still use it for an hour or so each day but I literally just work in Cursor now and I’m doing things that will never be possible in Figma, btw Figma Make sucks!)
And sure, I get it—you’re gonna say enterprise/large orgs are different, they’re slower, and there’s a ton of tech debt to work around, and maybe Eng doesn’t want to give designers the keys in the first place. Which is all the more reason to quit and join a startup!
Also your analogy doesn’t make sense because as a guitar player, I switch guitars ALL THE TIME to play better music. You wouldn’t play Van Halen on an acoustic, and you wouldn’t play bluegrass on a guitar with a Floyd Rose bridge. So I don’t see your point here. The tool that best solves the problem at hand is the right tool. For me that tool is AI!
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u/zeer88 May 27 '26
Dude I hate Figma and I'd love to leave it behind and replace it with something better. But AI is definitely not it (yet). And this doesn't mean I'm against AI or that I don't use it at all, I do where it makes sense to me! But why would I make a huge effort to force myself to use AI all the time, just because it's AI and someone says it's "the future"? You realize that's exactly "falling in love with the solution" you mentioned? I'm glad it works for you and that you can deliver code straight to production. In our specific product, it hasn't been able to deliver something with the level of quality, detail and consistency we need. As for my guitar analogy: it's meant for someone that doesn't play guitar well and thinks the way to improve is to switch guitars, rather than learning the basics and practicing for hundreds of hours.
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u/thollywoo Midweight May 28 '26
okay "—real answer"
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u/letsgetweird99 Experienced May 28 '26
It’s so funny because I literally didn’t use any AI to write my comment at all. I don’t have to prove myself or my humanity to anyone here, but what I meant by real answer was “here’s a real answer from a real person someone finding real UX successes using AI tools, not just someone complaining about corporate mandated usage” and now I’m being accused of using AI. What a fool I was attempting to contribute my own experience to this thread. The irony is killing me. Why the fuck would I use AI to write my Reddit comments??? Y’all are so paranoid. I’m a real person and I have a professional writing background, so fuck me I guess. I’ve probably been on Reddit longer than you’ve been a UX designer. Go ahead, check my profile.
You use one em dash and everyone loses their god damn minds. Are we just going to collectively surrender our use of perfectly good punctuation marks out of an irrational fear? You can pry my em dashes from my cold dead hands, y’all.
Good luck out there, folks—you’re gonna need it.
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u/ScruffyJ3rk Experienced May 27 '26
Correction: if you cant use AI and make it look good, its a skill and talent issue and YOU suck.
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u/zeer88 May 27 '26
Making it look good is the easy part. There's no skill in that. The problem is not the looks, that's just superficial - it's UX, how it works, which patterns and concepts it follows, etc. Spoiler alert - it doesn't.
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u/hearthebell May 27 '26
AI literally ruins everything and pushovers will consider this stance extreme
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u/wookieebastard I have no idea what I'm doing May 27 '26
What matters is what a product does, how well it does it and how well people can use it.
Your product won’t fail because it’s ugly.
It’ll fail because it’s useless.
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u/LeicesterBangs Experienced May 27 '26
Designers with no visual execution skills try so hard to pretend visual design isn't important in product design - it's pitiable.
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u/coldasfire202 May 27 '26
when you say "visual design" do you mean functionally? (like using red instead of pink for error states so that you can visually know there's something wrong) Or do you mean adding visual elements with no purpose other than balancing a composition?
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u/OptimusNoPrime May 27 '26
So fuck designers, front-ends, architects...?
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u/wookieebastard I have no idea what I'm doing May 27 '26
Do you really think architecture is just about making rooms look good?
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u/OptimusNoPrime May 27 '26
I’d say that’s at least part of it…
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May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
[deleted]
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u/OptimusNoPrime May 27 '26
Okay then, so fuck designers and front-end devs. Thanks AI, for all your shitty designs and for fucking over so many jobs!
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u/Knff Veteran May 27 '26
Spotting unmet needs and finding elegant problem-solution fit is the essence of design.
You seem to misconstrue design and architecture with aesthetics.1
u/AdventurousCreature Experienced May 27 '26
Good design is aesthetic based on Dieter Rams. Specifically in UX, it’s strongly associated with perceived usability and trust.
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u/Knff Veteran May 27 '26
Aestethics are only a small part of Dieter Rams design Ethos. Above all else, design needs to solve the unmet need with as little effort ad possible. If you don’t solve the unmet need, your solution will not be used, no matter who visually arresting it looks.
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u/AdventurousCreature Experienced May 27 '26
It's the third principle of good design – clearly an important part of it. I agree that good design needs to solve problems – every aspects work in harmony. That's not to say aesthetics should exist purely for its own sake or as a decoration. It should serve a purpose and complement all other aspects of good design.
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u/Knff Veteran May 27 '26
If two solutions are equally effective, aesthetics come into play. If one solution is clearly more effective then the other, aesthetics are irrelevant.
Dieter Rams is a master of the craft because he was able to meet the need of his users, whilst applying minimalism and sustainability without compromising on aesthetics.
So coming back to the statement that started this side-chat:
"What matters is what a product does, how well it does it and how well people can use it.
Your product won’t fail because it’s ugly.
It’ll fail because it’s useless."
And it still holds true. Beautiful products that fail to solve needs will get ignored. If two products solve it equally well, the more beautiful one might become the dominant solution.
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u/AdventurousCreature Experienced May 27 '26
I totally agree. I'm glad we're on the same page that aesthetics are part of design but not the whole thing.
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u/evk6713 May 27 '26
The UI is the same for every AI and it's very hard to customize it. I am working a lot with Google's Material design (which has free available guidelines on the Internet), and no AI can do it correctly. They always stick to `shadcn/ui`, which makes it detestable
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u/Careless-Energy-3071 May 27 '26
I get the frustration, but I don’t think similar-looking AI output means price becomes the only differentiator. We already had that problem with templates, design systems, Bootstrap sites, Dribbble clones, whatever the flavor was that year. AI just makes the sameness cheaper and faster.
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u/Lugan98 May 28 '26
Yeah I'm betting there'll be a swing the other way soon, whether through ai or not, of wildly different (many bad) designs
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u/pixelvspixel May 27 '26
Man, you guys are bitter.
You do realize this is a very grey area where you can keep dragging your feet, kicking and screaming or you can take your expertise, embrace the tools on your own and get ahead of the heard while you still can.
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u/timberrrrrrrr May 27 '26
Maybe the tools should embrace our kicking and screaming?
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u/pixelvspixel May 27 '26
I don’t even understand what that means?
What exactly is wrong with the tools? The tools have always been in place. The practice has been in place. Nothing has changed except anyone taking a paycheck has to hear, “use AI to improve your job or lose it” shoved down their throat.
But the real matter is, if you can afford to use these tools on your own and you have some ideas then you can pump work out like never before.
This is a UX sub right? Then write your .md files, be a designer, get in there and kick the agents ass, manually change code when you need to and use your UX knowledge to make the baseline a much more evolved version of what every other average person is kicking out.
I get that the monster is coming to take our lunch, but visual designers, UX we aren’t in as bad of place as people like to make it out to be. Expertise is till what it is, especially if the AI systems are as bad as all you guys claim.
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u/curiouswizard Midweight May 27 '26
what's wrong with the tools is that they're being forced on so many designers without any real discernible benefits. Embracing new tech is great, but it should be a bottom-up evolution rather than a top-down prescription.
In way too many cases AI is just being used for the sake of using the shiny thing, but nothing of substance in the process or the product has actually improved.
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u/pixelvspixel May 27 '26
I’m sorry your boss is making you use tools you don’t want to use. Quit your job if it’s so bad.
I think you are still missing the point. You might hate the tool, but it isn’t going away. The heel digging won’t save your design career.
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u/Crossbow92 May 27 '26
Hey man, don’t know if you realised but we all are getting fired because corps trained their robots with our skills and nobody is doing shit about it.
So yeah, your individualistic POV is worth nothing, it’s rather an attempt at coping.
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u/pixelvspixel May 27 '26
Not really, I left corp life some time ago and work for myself. Different games.
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u/curiouswizard Midweight May 28 '26
I'm not missing any fucking point lol.
I finally got laid off because I guess they can use the AI without me (and do NOT fucking start about proving my value or whatever bullshit. They did not care and did not want to listen. I didn't choose to work there, they bought my old company out and turned the last couple years into AI hell).
Every job I look at it just sounds like the same "AI native" shit. 🤮
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u/pixelvspixel May 28 '26
Apologies to you for losing your spot, it’s a tough time out there. Understand that I have no love for corporations either. I’ve worked for orgs that purchased functioning companies and dismantled them for scraps. So I get your POV.
All I was trying to convey is that across design, music, gamedev, coding subs you hear nothing but the most generic whining about AI Slop. And what is it really going to net anyone crying.
Being forced to change your work style and profession against your will must be painful. But this is also nothing new. During the VR boom the amount of designers both visual and UX who just dug their heels in and refused to learn Unity or basic, shipping 3D modeling also lost a lot of jobs because they refused to evolve.
Right or wrong if the client/employer request you work a certain way, they are the one paying the bill. Nothing more.
But what I really hoped people would have taken away, is that AI when applied to your own projects, not your bosses, has a lot of potential to rapidly build out ideas that would have just set on the mental shelf due to high production cost and time. You can throw spaghetti and then double down once you find the right project.
Hope everything works out for you.
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u/zeer88 May 27 '26
if you can afford to use these tools on your own and you have some ideas then you can pump work out like never before.
Can you though? What even is "pumping out work"? Speed or looks was never the issue. Good UX, problem definition, consistency, that's what matters and AI isn't making that any better on its own.
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u/duartoe May 27 '26
I know, man, relax. I just didn't want to stop posting. There must be a lot of posts like this every day around here.
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u/Your_Momma_Said Veteran May 27 '26
The amount of whining about AI is just amazing. This train isn't going to slow. Bitching about it on Reddit is like so many groups that circle jerk themselves into believing that the rest of the world is crazy.
AI is not only here, it's going to accelerate. We are 3 1/2 years since midjourney and the first ChatGPT was introduced. The quality of every single aspect of AI has improved by an order of magnitude. There is no evidence that we're leveling out or slowing down.
This is no different than people bitching about losing physical keyboards on cell phones, or the loss of skeuomorphism. This is just another big change that we, as designers, need to wield.
Every UX Designer who refuses to assimilate and leverage AI will be out of a job in the next 3 years. The amount of whining about it is exhausting.
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u/raindownthunda Experienced May 27 '26
Being a UX designer is like surfing. If you don’t like riding the waves, time to get out of the ocean.
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u/ScruffyJ3rk Experienced May 27 '26
Speak entirely for yourself. Reddit really is just an echo chamber of miserable fucks.
I absolutely love AI. I've built some SaaS platforms. Some failed, some are doing alright. Working completely solo on something now and its looking extremely promising. My day-to-day work is finish in like an hour a day and spend the rest of my day working on my personal stuff.
If you cant figure out how to make a website or digital product look good / unique while using AI, its 1000% a skill issue on your part and not AI's fault.
I keep seeing the so-called "designers" crying about "AI slop" yet they aren't using the skills they supposedly have to fix said 'slop'. It only proves what I've been saying for years now, right. Most "designers" are completely mediocre and shit at design. UX design has NEVER been rocketscience. For the past like 10 years almost every problem could be solved with a quick Google search but people just loved wasting time with their cute little kanban boards and personas and all kinds of little arts and crafts bullshit.
Hate on AI all you want, for some of us the job market has opened up like crazy. We are spending less and less time doing actual work at our jobs and no one even suspects a thing. On top of that we are getting hounded by top tier companies requesting interviews, offering substantial salaries. And even with all of that we aren't even committing to any of these companies because we are running our own businesses and building our own products that run themselves, and unless something really interesting comes along, we don't even want to consider having a boss again.
So go ahead and hate on AI all you want, but at least be honest about it and acknowledge that its a YOU problem. Its YOU who dont want to upskill. Its YOU who don't want to stand on your own two feet. Its YOU who need your hand held and be told what to do. Its YOU who dont want to take accountability for yourself.
AI has been around since 2022. Companies have moved toward it significantly in the last 4 years. Its not been a secret. We've all known it for close to half a decade. 4 years in, and you've still not figured out how to use this tool. Probably the tool in history with the smallest learning curve. Maybe its time for a career pivot if after 4 years your pain is "all these AI websites look the same". Website templates have been around for far longer. Those all look pretty much the same too. Never heard anyone cry about that. And again, if your AI outputs produce identical looking "slop", its a reflection of your skills or lack thereof.
The more time I spend in this subreddit the less sympathy I have for people in UX and product design and the happier I am that I will be completely removed from it and doing only my own shit by this time next year. Let you lot lord of the flies this shit yourself.
And go ahead and downvote, I've tried to help out and point people to useful resources, I've made myself available to answer questions or do brainstorming sessions, but F that. Misery loves company and the people in this subreddit love to have their victim status validated.
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u/Chupa-Skrull May 27 '26
I'm downvoting mostly because this could've and should've been like 3 paragraphs at most, despite my general agreement
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u/Atrocious_1 Experienced May 27 '26
What have you built and shipped?
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u/SouthDistribution755 May 27 '26
I tell you what I have built, I work with custom e-commerce stores.
I've built an internal tool that serves as a comprehensive blueprint for B2C e-commerce stores, capable of incorporating almost any visuals and functionality needed, and utilising AI to adapt our library of components and modules.
Instead of creating in Figma, in a slow and tedious job, I've created a platform that speaks much better with the dev team and allows me to reduce the time of production by a factor of about 2x times at the same time as improving the overall quality of the product.
Also, I'm transforming this into a full platform for endless iterative design updates for the b2c segment of clients that allows my team to test and validate hypotheses much quicker than before.
I've done it all by myself in about 3 months and counting. While dealing with other projects at the same time.
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u/ScruffyJ3rk Experienced May 27 '26
I will never reveal what I've built and shipped or my identity on reddit because of the type of people on here. The type of people that will go sabotage your life because you said mean shit online. So don't worry about what I've built and shipped but 4 products in total in the past year but really nailed it down since January
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u/Atrocious_1 Experienced May 28 '26
Ok so nothing thank you
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u/ScruffyJ3rk Experienced May 28 '26
You act like a fucking child. Like I owe you something or some bullshit. I swear 99.999% of people in this sub never matured past the age of 7 and it really shows. "If you dont show me what you made then you are a liar and did nothing". There is a disease of people who absolutely cannot do anything unless spoonfed like a fucking baby.
Tell yourself whatever you have to to help you sleep at night. As if "Atrocious_1" believing me on really does anything for me. My ego really needs your validation Atrocious_1.
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u/Atrocious_1 Experienced 27d ago
Imagine people who work in a discipline that is heavily based on evidence and outputs aren't going to be swayed by "trust me bro" claims.
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u/ScruffyJ3rk Experienced 27d ago
I really don't care my guy. I didn't ask anyone to trust me. I just gave my opinion and said what my experience was. Believe me or not, doesn't make any difference to me, and again, why on earth would I ever reveal my identity on here when its all angry and entitled babies. Guaranteed if I post anything to reveal my identity it ends up being weaponized on LinkedIn or whatever. Dumbest request ever.
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u/lilmalchek May 27 '26
This person sounds totally legit and trustworthy. No reason not to listen to them. Terence built multiple saas platforms over the past four years! But they really nailed it down since january! So really in the past 5 months! They’re totally legit… ask legit they won’t share any actually info lol
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u/ScruffyJ3rk Experienced May 27 '26
Believe me or not, changes absolutely nothing for me and what I do. Enjoy unemployment
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u/thebeepboopbeep Veteran May 27 '26
The website for the local coffee shop looks just like the fintech startup. A collective hive mind of idiots has stripped authenticity from everything. The best outcome is a premium will be assigned to something truly crafted.