#62 New UX Roles: Product/AI/UX/XR
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Hello friends and welcome back to the future of UX podcast your number one resource about the future of design and technology my name is Patricia Reiners i'm a UX and innovation designer based in Zurich Switzerland and in today's episode i want to talk a little bit about new roles for UX designers new niches there's a lot of discussion at the moment is UX still future proof

What about the future of UX designers? Is this still relevant in times of AI? And we will do a deep dive into this topic, have a look at the different roles and also add some future

interesting niches for your ex designers. But before we are diving into that, I quickly want to remind you that the AI mini training is still available for you. It's for free, so you don't need to pay for it. So for zero euros, you can just sign up with the link in the description box and learn about the three important strategies for leveraging generative AI as a designer. And now before we are taking a peek at the future of your ex design at the different

roles and also how things are headed we will we will have a look at where we are right now so generally ux has come a really long way since don norman coined the term user experience yes this was don norman in the early 1990s and i found an interesting study from the nielsen norman group they actually say that the number of ux's has increased from 1 000 to 1 million

Between 1980s and 2017. I guess it's much more because there has been such a high demand for your ex-designers from 2018 to 2021.

21, I would say. And the Nielsen Norman Group actually predicts the profession to grow, so the profession of the UX designer, further from 1 million to 100 million UX professionals by 2050. Wow. So it's pretty interesting to understand the different revolutions or the different stages that the tech industry went through.

The first is the personal computer revolution. This was basically a marking shift towards user-centric design as computing became mainstream.

The more computers, easier interfaces and user-centric was a term at that time. The second important wave was the web revolution, which brought about a new era of digital interaction. It really emphasized the importance of a solid

online user experience. Before that, no one really thought about these things. And number three, the era of the great press between 2010 and 2017, when UX design became a huge buzzword

beyond the design community, highlighting its importance to a wider audience. And with all the rapid development of the UX profession and nearly 1 million UX designers employed around the globe, can you believe that? 1 million UX designers! So what we can say for sure is that the need for UX is not disappearing, it's not going anywhere pretty soon. But of course the term will

will adapt and evolve to meet users' needs as new technologies also come on the scene like AI or the Apple Vision Pro. And at the moment when you talk to companies and I'm also

noticing that when I'm talking to clients or to startups or to companies everyone knows what UX is they understand that this is important maybe they don't know the word UX but they know how important it is to understand the user to do research they know how important good design is

of course they don't understand it in depth as a designer would do but they get a sense they hear about these discussion in these conversations so things have already changed

design has become more important, I think, also for the business. So UX designers are just as in demand as ever. Because your field really adapts and evolves with technological advancement, the expectations for UX designers naturally evolve along with it. Some UX designers might worry that eventually AI will do the job for them and

that their positions would become obsolete. While it may be possible that certain tools will build an app in the next coming years, maybe in the next decades, there are still these gaps that technology has not filled yet and probably won't fill. There are gaps that the field of UX design adapts to meet and it really thrives in this rapid technological environment. Ask the right questions, understand which is the right method to interview users, to do user testing.

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Hopefully see you in AO4 Designers. So I personally think the future of UX is looking great. So when we are talking about UX, there are different roles that

call themselves UX specialists or who are working with UX basically. One is called the UX designer and the other one is the product designer. And this is also a question that I got quite often on Instagram. What's the difference between a UX designer? What's the difference between a product designer and

What does it mean for the future? What's more in demand? I would say first, I'm going to talk real quick about what a UX designer is. UX designer or user experience, UX is all about really enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability, the accessibility and pleasure provided in the interaction with a product.

UX designers focus on the overall feel of the product, working closely with users to ensure their needs and desires are met. And they are also the bridge between users and the product team. They are constantly advocating for the user's perspective throughout the development process. So it's all about the user.

What is a product designer? So a product designer on the other hand is more like a broader term that encompasses the entire process of identifying a market opportunity, defining the problem, developing a proper solution for that problem and validating the solution with real users. So product designers are concerned not just with the aesthetics or the user interface but with the whole product. You know it's about the product, product designer.

And they have a hand in the product from iteration to delivery, combining UX, UI and often also the business strategy to bring a cohesive product to the market. And technology is

far from really completely removing the need for quality UX work. While it might seem sometimes like the profession is fading, UX is simply just evolving with the times. What we may think of as UX will probably look a little bit different in the next years. And especially the role of the product designer is super interesting because this is someone who really understands more or less like a generalist

who has an understanding of the whole process, understands the business, the user and have an overview and can use perfectly AI for the different parts of the process, right? To help to go a little bit deeper into the process. I'm also going to link a few interesting resources of the comparison between a product designer and a UX designer. My personal prediction is that

Product designers will be in a very high demand in the future. They have this amazing overview. They also understand the product and this will be super important. Data and analytics will become more important and the business part, really understand the business. So if you are your ex-designer and are already

some kind of like or have a personality who's also interested, I would say, in the business and other parts and not just UI. I would try to lean a little bit into product design and have a look at things left and right of just proper UX, especially focus on the business. Besides that, I don't think that the role of the UX designer is

vanishing, I think it will definitely evolve and I'm pretty sure that there will be new niches for UX designers to dive into. I'm thinking of really new interesting specialization more focused on the ease of use through motion design and gestural interfaces. I think it's no longer enough to have just useful products that solve the user's problem.

Now and in the years to come, users are expecting more. The products they use should just not be useful as well. They should also be easy to interact, they should be engaging, visually appealing. Motion design is a great way to keep users hooked and make their experiences frictionless. And also filling blank spaces with relevant animations, lively transitions is a way to appeal to the user's emotions as well.

Users are also relying on mobile devices on a regular basis. They expect to be able to achieve everything they would be able as on the website or smartphone or tablet. So smaller devices means less screen real estate. And there are also new products on the market like the AI pin. I also recorded a separate episode about the AI pin or the Rabbit R1, right?

all these new AI gadgets that basically give opportunities for the user to interact with it very, very differently than we are used to with voice commands or with gestures. And I think this is definitely pretty interesting. So I think there is definitely a lot of opportunities. Designing these intuitive gestural interfaces allows also more content to be stored within an app without overcrowding the screen or

overwhelming the user. So I think your ex-designers will definitely become more specialized. The future of your ex is definitely a specialized future as the expertise and capacity of your ex-designers of all levels increase.

It's going to become much more important for designers to have maybe specialty or focus discipline. It's already been reflected in many of the current job listings for UX designers. We are seeing a trend of companies asking for a combination of UX UI specialists, interaction designers, UX researchers, AI is a hot topic at the moment, augmented reality as well.

So moving from being a generalist to specialist is quite easy with an already established background in UX. And also a great time to really expand your skill set and diversify your expertise learning to code, brushing up on design strategy, team leadership, or getting more into AI and AI workflows and really understanding that.

By the way, the AI for a designer course opens end of April, beginning of May again for cohort number two. If you want to be a part of it, learn about AI, you can sign up for the waiting list, get informed, also get some interesting bonuses if you decide to sign up. You can find everything in the description box. There's also no doubt that futuristic technologies like virtual reality, zero UI products, I already mentioned the AI pin for example,

and 3D interfaces will become more accessible and widely used as time goes on. Corporations like Ikea, Target or Home Depot are already incorporating augmented reality into their online shopping experiences and with the Apple Vision Pro out there for the consumer market, this will already increase, right? Let's not forget about Pokemon Go's AR technology. This took over the globe. I mean, this is 10 years ago, I think, so...

some time ago and now things are changing because we we now have the right gadgets these the glasses another really interesting trend is of course voice design and interacting with voices commands integrating different kind of problems and finding an interesting combination between prompt

prompting and also the general user interface. But overall, I think working alongside AI is super important. It's always been the mark of a great designer to be able to really analyze the past, present data and predict the user's behavior and needs. But with the ability of artificial intelligence,

to do virtually the same thing and half the time. And with the need of your ex-designers will definitely increase. So the more strategic you can present yourself as the designer, the better. Your ex-designers will still be needed in order to determine what problem needs to be solved, what the right questions to ask and apply empathy and use the challenges involving maybe illness, disabilities, finances, family, all these very

important questions. AI will definitely make the job of UX designers faster and easier. They will be able to hand off most of the data analytics to AI systems and put more energy into their designs.

So long story short, as a little summary, of course there are different roles at the moment and I think the biggest differentiator at the moment is UX at product design. I personally think that especially product designers have an amazing future because they have this overview of different disciplines and also understand the business.

And for UX designers, I'm pretty sure that this role will definitely also move into different directions, a lot of different specializations. So if you're currently maybe looking for a job, if you have been laid off and are maybe UX designer, product designer, I think now is an amazing time to really level up and skill up, focus on AI, learn strategic methods.

methods focus on the business part and really level up do courses read books and really use this time to learn and to improve yourself in these areas because this will really help you to stand out i hope this was a good overview of the different roles and a little bit about the different specializations that are coming up thank you so much for listening and hear you in the future