Zooming out - understanding the bigger picture

Currently, there is a lot of debate about the future of UX. I have been thinking about this a lot recently, especially how teams will be affected, which has resulted in this post. The themes that I cover are:

• New tools, still solving problems

• Smaller teams, bigger remits

• Designing for more than just screens

New tools, still solving problems.

Throughout design history, designers have adapted and experimented with each technological revolution. The tooling we use has and will always evolve, but the essence of what we do as designers hasn’t changed - we are still problem solvers.

Companies will still need us for our ability to act as translators between the business needs and the user needs while being able to create something that engineers can build. To prevent most interfaces from becoming very similar and generic, designers must keep innovating and evolving design systems and patterns. 

Smaller teams, bigger remits

Increasingly companies are becoming more and more cost-conscious, you can see it in the mass layoffs that have happened over the last couple of years. Off the back of that, I think many companies will favour teams that are a lot smaller with wider remits. I think designers will no longer be working on small features but end-to-end experiences. Similar to how people are starting to use AI to help them start a new idea or refine an existing one. New AI tooling will mean that designers don’t need to focus on small, time-consuming details but are able to zoom out and focus on the wider experience -  focusing on solving broader user problems. 

Grammarly.com has developed an AI writing assistant

Designing for more than just screens

As a result, designers will look at how users experience a brand beyond a website or an app. Users have access to more and more connected devices, giving them more options to search and find services and also to experience a brand. 

Humane AI Pin projecting on to hand

As an example let’s look at search, typically as a design team we would focus on a user searching via a search engine and landing on our site, typically that would be via a web browser. But users now have different entry points for example they could ask their smart speaker. 

Designers have an opportunity to think about the different touch points and with that comes new ways of solving problems. There are also opportunities to unlock to access people that might have otherwise found it difficult to use the website. 

I think Jacob Nelson might be right when he said that there might be more of a need for more generalist designers, designers that can do it all so that they can handle the wider remit. Although I think he is right, I still think there will be a need for specialists, but there will be a lot fewer specialists within a typical team, ie. 1 UX researcher and 1 UI (user interface) designer vs 5 generalist designers. The UI designer will focus mainly on maintaining the design system, and the UX researcher will probably be working on strategic research projects that feed into the work of the generalist designers. 

So there you have it—my predictions for the future of design teams. I can’t say I know what the future holds, but one thing is certain: as designers, we need to hang in there and adapt. Remember, the essence of what we do won’t change. We are problem solvers who advocate for our users.