Career paths and the future of work are anything but clear at this moment in time. 

As UX evolves in the AI era, we have all kinds of questions—how is it changing our value as it changes the work itself? How do we maintain craft, integrity, and quality? What should we do to change and continue to redefine ourselves in a landscape with increasingly blended, generalist roles? Is the AI bubble going to pop? 

Julie Norvaisas sat down at Co-Lab with a group of leaders who have a front-row seat to this evolution. They dissected what’s happening in the present and what it might mean for both the short- and long-term future. This article captures some of the main beats of this conversation. 

Tune in to Co-Lab Continued, November 12-13, to watch the full panel discussion, and to join the conversation yourself. Register today!

Moderator: Julie Norvaisas, Dscout

Guests:

• Cal Thompson, VP of Product Design & Research, Headspace
• Craig Mackintosh, Head of UXR, LinkedIn
• Eleanor Sandford, Director, Design Enterprise & Operations, Disney
• Gordon Ching, CEO, Design Executive Council 

“What shape was UX way back in 2022?”

To set the tone, Julie asked the panelists to have some fun with our conference theme, The Emerging Shape of a New UX. Each shared creative thoughts on the metaphorical question about the shape we are emerging from:

• Cal = A tree. In 2022, the shape of UX felt like a tree that had been partially cut down, trying to regrow its limbs. We were in that strange, post-pandemic in-between—unsure of who we were, working through screens instead of shared spaces, wondering if collaboration could survive. We’re now regrowing—refinding our roots, branching out again, and becoming more grounded.
• Craig = Origami fortune teller. At that time, when stakeholders asked a [product or design] question, we moved and ‘opened’ the paper folds to deliver an answer—but our methods looked mysterious from the outside. The questions and need for transparency now feel more pressing than ever as we’re redefining what we do.
• Eleanor = Hunk of wood. I think of my grandfather, who served in Roosevelt’s Conservation Corps, and passed down his carpentry tools to us. We know how to use them a little—but not with his mastery. UX had the tools and the ability to shape something meaningful, even if we are still learning exactly how to work with what we inherited.
• Gordon = Tectonic plate. I’ve been thinking about how cycles of change resemble earthquakes—unpredictable but inevitable. In 2022, we felt one of those quakes, caused by a mix of economic, political, and technological shifts colliding at once. It created real discomfort, but also marked a seismic moment for our field—one that we’re still learning to understand and navigate in practical ways.

How are these seismic shifts showing up in your organization?

Craig (LinkedIn): 

We’ve been exploring what we call the Full Stack Builder (FSB) model—something many of us, myself included, have written about publicly. It began as a philosophy from our Chief Product Officer and has now become part of how our entire product organization operates.

We’re still early in the journey, but the core idea is that anyone, regardless of discipline, should be able to move from idea or insight to impact. It’s about collapsing the traditional handoffs in the product development process and enabling people to flow more fluidly across stages—from discovery to design to delivery—using AI as a collaborative partner.

This approach emphasizes humans and AI agents working together to extend skill sets that were once distinct. For UX professionals, that can stir a lot of thoughts and emotions, but what’s been fascinating is how quickly the idea has taken shape in actual practice.

Just recently, one of our UX researchers shipped her first product using AI—something that would’ve seemed unusual before. And that’s what’s powerful–it can expand possibilities. People are starting to build in new ways, and it’s reshaping how we can think about boundaries, collaboration, and what it means to deliver impact together.

That’s raised real craft questions: What’s the quality bar? When do specialists engage? I see at least three paths for researchers:

1. Specialists who deepen rigor and explore new methods. Those who want to remain invested in a specific craft and iterate on it as the application changes. For example, we’re spending less time on “design research” and more on studying Human-AI collaboration–including how we partner with engineering on improving the models themselves.
2. Generalists who can ship, and are hungry to bring products to members and customers. Researchers can make some of the best PMs given their existing knowledge of who we’re building for and what they really  need.
3. Hybrids who build for builders—creating self-serve research tools and AI agents with the right guardrails. Spaces like “Research Operations” will begin to look drastically different as we build products for other FSBs—so if anyone is building research tools for non-researchers, who better than UXR and Research Operations?

It’s early and there’s a lot to figure out. There are definite risks we need to mitigate if everyone is a builder, but it’s also a chance to shape our own destiny.

Eleanor (Disney): I’m seeing a lot of similar themes in our work right now. In our product organization, our leader has really pushed us toward experimentation—running fast and learning as we go.

When you’re moving that quickly, there’s no time for the politics of how we show up between product, design, engineering, and research. The teams that already had strong relationships and knew how to work together as people are the ones getting experiments done faster, without worrying about those lines.

For example, take our customer service tooling group, which has people who’ve worked together for years. Design pushed for the right user perspective, Research backed it with data, and Engineering took bold, responsible risks supported by that trust.

It reminded me of the “Imagineers” on the Parks side: the name itself—imagine it and then make it real—gives permission to go beyond rigid roles. When we soften those boundaries and just show up as a great team that knows how to get things done, that’s when we’re most successful.

Cal (Headspace): We haven’t formally changed job titles at Headspace yet, but where I’ve seen AI really make a difference is augmenting tools and teams. Reiterating—the teams that already collaborate well and respect each other as humans are doing it best.

A great example: a PM “vibe-coded” a prototype for a missing website feature in Figma Make, then passed it to UX. Because of their strong working relationship, Research and Design quickly built on it, making it more usable and refined.

That prototype acted like a functional wireframe, helping uncover edge cases early and speeding up the process without replacing thoughtful design work. It showed how AI can serve as a creative jump-start, not a shortcut.

The Designer’s education and artistic background still shaped the final outcome—her discernment and specialist skills mattered deeply. To me, that’s the balance we need to strike: using AI to operate more like generalists, while holding tight to the specialist skills that make our work meaningful, usable, and human.

Gordon (Design Executive Council):  I tend to look at this through patterns across the broader landscape—both big companies and emerging ones. As organizations compress, I’m seeing two main shifts. 

1. The rise of what I call “black box teams”: multidisciplinary groups focused on a journey or outcome rather than traditional squad or triad structures. These teams blur boundaries and operate more fluidly around shared goals. 
2. As everyone becomes a “builder,” the big question is: how do we define and nurture quality at scale? Designers and researchers have a critical role in asking that question, because “quality” means different things to different people. When companies can align on a shared definition—especially within these end-to-end teams—it’s incredibly powerful, though not easy to achieve.

I’ve also been thinking about how sustaining trust and strong relationships is essential to executing at that level. It doesn’t just happen organically. And if everyone’s building, we have to ask: how much do we actually need to build? 

There’s a difference between quality at the building level—crafting something well—and quality at the problem level—making sure we’re solving the right thing. Both matter, and that distinction feels more important than ever.

How do you see the power and value of UX shifting in this era?

Gordon: I think design and research have a real advantage right now—we’ve been honing taste and craft far longer than many other disciplines. That gives us a head start in helping CEOs anticipate the governance and organizational risks that come with AI and structural compression. 

The best leaders I’m seeing are already thinking several steps ahead—building three-, five-, even ten-year plans to reinvent their business models and prepare for the future. It’s an exciting time, even if it comes with some unease, because there’s a real opportunity for Design and Research leaders to step into strategic conversations early.

At the same time, I remind leaders not to get stuck in endless questioning. Our field loves to expand scope, but we have to keep the business moving. Strategic Design leadership depends on knowing your mandate—whether you’re working on two-week cycles or multi-year horizons—and staying oriented to the expectations and deliverables tied to it.

The goal is to balance pragmatism with idealism: to keep the ball moving, understand its pace and direction, and use that awareness as your creative sandbox for meaningful impact.

And everything ends up coming back to profits and losses. It’s worth asking yourself:

• Whether you are challenging or aligning with business priorities, are you strengthening the business case through your work?
• How are you and your team’s role and reputation perceived when leaders are deciding where to invest or allocate resources?
• Can you articulate how your insights or pushback have directly propelled growth, savings, or strategic advantage for the business?

A healthy company will have space for challenging and sharpening strategies, but the way you do it is the crux of Design leadership effectiveness. 

Cal: I was living in Vermont all summer. It’s a community that is deeply human and generous with each other. It’s also generally a very rural and self-sufficient state. An old VT saying is, “Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without.” The AI bubble is NOT present in Vermont. I made a graphic for my friend using Figma’s generative AI feature and they said, “Cool, but why would you make a poster with AI?” 

I share that because, yes, every Design and Research leader needs to understand business. But what we are really talking about is perspective and influence. How we, as Design leaders, can show up with the right kind of voice and impact.

Many of us who’ve been in tech leadership for a while have learned to be the “good kids”—to nod politely when executives, boards, or investors float ideas we know are misguided or even harmful. But part of our job is to challenge assumptions and push back thoughtfully. Design and Research give us the tools to ask the right, sometimes uncomfortable, questions that prompt reflection—and to pair those questions with clear, constructive solutions.

In my world, working on about a one-year roadmap, I see that balance as critical: knowing when to provoke deeper thought and when to propose actionable paths forward. Ultimately, our role is to bring the business closer to the humans it serves—to translate user insight into direction that’s both strategic and empathetic. We’re that connective tissue between organizational ambition and real, observed human need.

As Designers, we’re supposed to be solving human and systemic problems—that’s what our practice and industry is about. Industrial design is one of our origins—building physical tools and products.

But in a world of AI vibe coding, tools are being built that don’t have handles, or things are heavy and slippery so they’re easy to drop on your toe while you’re using them. We can build bad tools that back capitalism, but not people. UX’s role explicitly is to ensure this doesn’t happen at our companies.

Eleanor:  Many of us joined Disney wanting to “make magic,” but the reality is that the business doesn’t measure itself in magic—it measures outcomes and ROI. What I’ve learned is that true magic only happens when the fundamentals are flawless.

If you see the cards up the magician’s sleeve, the illusion is ruined. So as a Design organization, we’ve built tools to help us ensure quality through something we call PIES—Predictable, Intuitive, Efficient, and Streamlined. It’s a metric we apply to every design decision to make sure we’re nailing the basics.

By getting the fundamentals right, we create space for those moments of emotional resonance—the real magic. It’s like at the parks: you don’t have fireworks all day long. You make room for them, and when they happen, they’re unforgettable. PIES gives us the confidence that everything else will work seamlessly, so when those moments of delight appear, they truly shine.

Craig: I think there are several forces working in our favor now compared to a few years ago. As an industry, we’ve spent years fighting for a seat at the table, proving our value, and trying to tie Research more closely to the business. Historically, Research hasn’t always been connected to the P&L or core strategy—but that’s changing fast.

Now that AI is part of the business strategy, researchers are uniquely positioned to bridge those conversations: to show where it’s working, where it’s not, and what the downstream impact will be. If we understand what metrics and dashboards the company—and especially the CEO—cares about, we can credibly influence decisions and help leaders see when a chosen path won’t deliver the results they want.

We’re all trying to get past metrics and be more user-centered, but the hard part is putting those two sides of the coin together…and to draw the line from there to what our team does.

Practically, that means embedding insights directly into the work, not just presenting them after the fact. We’re experimenting with cross-functional pods that share common goals, and each week we highlight one research study across the entire product org—not just what succeeded or failed, but what it means strategically for that initiative. 

We’re also working to integrate insights into narrative docs, plans, and roadmaps so that our peers can easily make the connection between Research and business outcomes. The lines between disciplines are blurring, and that’s a good thing—it’s opening up new ways for research to shape strategy from within.

The fact that UXR for instance has traditionally been associated with Design and Product—and not associated with things like revenue—means we haven’t always been associated with business strategy. We have to make that clear now. Old playbooks no longer apply, and it’s a chance to reset on the impact we can have.

What are some important skills that individuals and teams need to develop to meet this moment?

Cal: Think of AI as a material. I’ve been thinking a lot about something an advisor at Headspace often says: every era of tech brings a new medium. We’ve gone from the dot-com boom (“everyone needs a website!”) to boxed software, to the mobile-app rush. Now we’re in the AI wave. AI is a new material to design with—powerful, but not always the right one for every problem. 

We need to get better at asking: Is AI the right material for this? Just as you wouldn’t use clay to make a dress, not every challenge needs a generative or agentic solution. This moment is about learning how to design with AI thoughtfully—understanding when it truly adds value to solving human problems, and when another approach might serve better.

Cause a little trouble. We have been “good kids” a lot in our corporate lives who “go along with” trends and eras as they change. But this is not a moment to be lost in our minds and theories. As UX practitioners, our role is to center humans, and actually listen to what they need and what they’re experiencing. 

Make your ideas tangible. A Design mentor once taught me that people often think they’re aligned—until you make something visual. The moment there’s an artifact to react to, they realize they were talking about entirely different things, and that’s when real alignment happens.

For Design Researchers especially, who may not have traditional wireframing skills, AI now makes it possible to “vibe-code” a quick prototype and say, this is what I meant. That ability to turn thinking into something real is an incredibly powerful new skill. Design research can finally not rely on having to influence design and product to build helpful solutions, but instead move into showing and making and even building. This is a powerful evolution from observation to > insight to > offerings.

Eleanor:  Lower the fidelity. There’s a value in stepping away from devices, revisiting core ways of old-school design thinking, and just being near other people. Even making and sharing at all levels of fidelity matter. Just because we can make something polished ASAP, doesn’t mean we should. We actually lose the intent. 

In concept design, there’s a reason sketches were done so gesturally. I still take sketch notes in every meeting—it’s such a valuable skill, whether you can draw or not. There’s something powerful about getting up to a whiteboard or putting pen to paper to think things through. I’ve even stocked the office with half sheets and Sharpies—much to Facilities’ dismay—so anyone can grab one and start ideating. Bringing back those physical, tactile materials helps us make ideas tangible again.

Also, design beyond the user. I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of “consequence scanning” with my team. It’s the idea you take any idea or concept and pass it through filters, groups, and systems that the idea could have consequences on—whether that be the environment or a demographic of people who may be negatively impacted. 

One simple example: the straw is the perfect design for a human who wants an on-the-go beverage that doesn’t spill, but the design and material harms turtles. We put ideas through these larger systems and filters because sometimes what works for one user could be potentially harmful for others. With AI, we can use it to help us assess this, but also we need to check AI for it.

Gordon:  Expand your perspectives: ‘Problems have wisdom, ideas are naive.’ There are deepening demands for improved discovery and understanding at scale, and a better understanding of end-to-end journeys. This means deepening your critical thinking and judgment by putting yourself in new situations that help you learn and access new ways of looking at things. 

And get out of the UX bubble! Step outside the Design and Research circle—go spend time with business people and people of different walks of life. And yes, especially your non-traditional stakeholders and partners.

Craig:  Give yourself permission to play. Explore adjacencies, be curious, and get excited about what got you into this field in the first place. Use that creative spark and take advantage of the moment when role distinctions are blurring, and give yourself license to problem-solve creatively. Problems you might have worked on years ago that were impossible to resolve, or projects your team would never get to—what would you do now?

Be mindful of potential pitfalls of AI as you do:

• Being in AI echo chambers
• Building in or replicating inherent bias
• Synthetic participants interacting with AI moderators
• AI slop in terms of content production versus real thought leadership
• Losing sight of serendipity in the face of automation
• Over-relying on AI—hold tight to your critical thinking and creative confidence

Are you seeing signs that the AI hype cycle is winding down, wearing thin, or gaining momentum?

Cal: AI is gaining momentum. For us as practitioners, the urgent questions are turning to things like, are we solving a real problem? Does anyone need this problem solved? And being thoughtful about whether AI should solve the problem. Or if not, is it a process, an object, an app, a website, a generative AI tool, an agentic AI, a community garden, a…?”

Eleanor: It feels like every new car or physical product is like, “AND NOW WITH AI!” It’s a bit too broad of a brushstroke and the trust isn’t there. There is a need for specificity to help cut through the noise. I think if anything, we’ll see form factors and use cases change. 

We’ve found in our work that it’s most effective when you give people a clear reason to use AI. I really love some of the things we’re seeing in travel, from Expedia to Mindtrip. These use cases have the specificity of a real problem—have you ever planned a trip with friends? I hope we see more creations like that.

Craig: AI is gaining momentum both in our processes and self–reported usage, but it’s refreshing to see the intellectual honesty balance the apparent productivity.

We all know the importance of unintended consequences when designing for people, and the power of lived experience isn’t something an LLM can replicate. We talk internally about using AI so we have more time to spend on vision, empathy, communication, creativity, and judgment—and that’s really key.

Gordon: Depending where you sit in the industry, it’s different. If you’re in big tech, it’s only accelerating and intensifying. They are the infrastructure and platform builders and providers.

For many other industries, it’s going to be far more painful as they are largely consumers and users of the AI, rather than the creators. For those outside of the big tech firms, we’re likely going to see a period of saturation, greater scrutiny of AI investments, and a return to common sense and being able to answer those simple questions: do people even value this? Does it serve our bottom line?

So I’d say it’s not hype disappearing, it’s hype maturing. The story is moving from curiosity and pilots to accountability and specificity. The winners will be those who shift the conversation from tools to outcomes:

• What’s the business value?
• What’s the human impact?
• What’s the risk if we get it wrong?

What is the emerging shape of UX?

To wrap up the conversation, Julie again asked panelists to think about shapes, this time, what is UX now and in the future. What shapes are we trying to manifest?

• Cal = Compost. I see UX as breaking down what no longer serves us and transforming it into something nourishing that allows new growth. When we truly observe what people and the world are struggling with, and help shift our companies closer to addressing those needs, we’re essentially turning waste into nutrients—creating fertile ground for better solutions to grow. 
• Craig = Kaleidoscope. Right now, I think the shape of UX is a kaleidoscope—we’re twisting it, watching new patterns form, and no one really knows what the final image will be. We’ll recognize it when it comes into focus, and only then can we judge whether it’s good or bad. For now, the pace of change is faster than our ability to respond, so the challenge is simply to keep adapting and keep up as best we can.
• Eleanor = Knitting needles. Lately, with so much change swirling around us, I’ve been grounding myself through a small nightly ritual: knitting. Each stitch—like a line of code—is shaping something new. It helps me reconnect to what’s human and tangible, beyond screens and speed. We’re all making this future as we go, one stitch at a time, and the best way forward is to breathe, slow down, and keep creating.
• Gordon = Kintsugi/circle. After much thought, I landed on Kintsugi as my shape. It’s the Japanese art of repairing a cracked bowl with gold, where the imperfections become part of its beauty. To me, it symbolizes the ‘golden repair’—the idea that through breaking, reassembling, and reflecting, we create something of greater value than before. Seeing change and challenge not as damage, but as transformation. In times of upheaval, we may crack a few times—but knowing how to rebuild ourselves thoughtfully and with care is where true growth and wisdom happens.

Wrapping it up + join us for Co-Lab Continued

Just like the technological leaps before it, AI is already changing the way we work and what we focus our energy on—radically so. But that doesn’t mean we should ever let go of the human side of what we do, and who that work is ultimately for. Get in touch with your analog side and reconnect with grounded activities that have meaning to you. 

Avoid making the mistake of outsourcing critical thinking to AI, or leapfrogging past different iterations of a product just because it may be easier or faster to produce a polished version quickly. That can be a slippery slope to AI slop.

As an industry and a practice, it’s important for UX to help organizations step out of the tech bubble and challenge insular assumptions.  Let’s look at the bigger picture of how AI is impacting our mental health and resource consumption as well. We can help raise the conversations about consequences. 

Ultimately, companies that apply AI thoughtfully to sustainable products and services that humans really want and need will separate themselves from the noise.