#169 The New AI Identity: What Product/UX Designers Need Now

So first, let's be precise about what actually changed, because I think we often describe it too, maybe too vague, and then feel bad without knowing why.

So the visible part of our job market got cheap.

Making the screens, building the flow, putting the design system to work.

That's the part that everyone could see, and that's the part the tools now do in short time, pretty much.

The visible part, like all the thinking, uh, about who is it for or...

No, I think, like, this is actually, like, the invisible part.

So the invisible part, which is all the thinking about who is this for and what actually happens in their life, thinking about the user, what never really explained to anyone outside of the room.

So this is transparent.

[chuckles] We just did it quietly and assumed people understood what it was worth.

So when the visible half collapsed in prices and the invisible half was never visible, you end up in a room where people do not know what you're for, and they're not being mean about it.

They just can't see it.

And then discovery becomes a two-hour workshop with colleagues, research becomes an AB test or synthetic users, and you spend your week polishing something that a product manager already prototyped.

And I think this is the part that we don't talk about enough.

That doesn't just threaten your job, it also takes the thing out of the work that made it good in the first place, at least for me.

You came into this because you liked understanding people, and now you're doing production maybe.

So what do most of us do at this point? We go, we learn a tool, and I also did exactly this, as many of you.

And I thought, "Okay, I will get really good at new things.

I will put it on my website and it will be fine." But it did not work, and it took me a really long time to understand why.