UXCrunch August: Debate Night - Is AI Coming for Design Jobs?
Is AI changing design, and if so, what happens to the designer?
One side argues AI will make the traditional design role obsolete. The other argues AI isn’t the threat, employers wrongly believing it can replace designers is.
Tonight, we debate: is AI replacing traditional designers, or are employers just getting it wrong?
Agenda
6:00pm — Doors open
6:30pm — Welcome & intro
6:45pm — First talk - TCB
7:30pm — Food & drinks
8:00pm — Second talk Sam & Steph
8:45pm — Pub, First Drinks on us! @ The Lord Raglan
📍 Location: Lloyds Banking Group
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Lloyds Banking Group
Owned & Presented by
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Supported by
Gale & Co
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P.S.S Please bring a valid I.D to the venue, as security staff need to check this against the guest list
Meet the speakers
Steph - Senior Designer at Owendale Advisory
Abstract:
AI isn't taking your design job. The real threat to our industry, and to the quality of software being built, is employers wrongly believing it can.
The market is rough and designers are being laid off. This talk isn't going to sugarcoat that, or hand you the usual advice to adapt and upskill (we all saw how "learn to code" worked out). But it is going to question whether the companies making those layoffs have made the right decision.
Having spent this year implementing AI into real users' workflows, I've seen the gap between the "look how fast I built this with AI" demo and what it actually takes to make AI work inside a real organisation: understanding how people genuinely work, finding the right problem, and building something they trust. AI builds on whatever you tell it the problem is. Get that wrong and you've built the wrong thing faster. MIT found that 95% of enterprise AI pilots deliver no measurable return, not because the technology doesn't work, but because it doesn't fit how people actually work. That's not an engineering gap. That's a design gap.
This work needs the human in the lead, not the human in the loop. AI is a call for more design, not less; employers have simply misread our role. This talk looks at how to sharpen your skills for the messy reality of implementing new technology into people's workflows, and when to stop asking whether AI can do your job and start asking whether your employer understands what your job is. Because if you're questioning your worth, it's worth asking who did the valuing.
Sam - Founding Designer at Rezonant
Abstract:
AI will make the traditional design role obsolete. Designers need to rebrand to survive.
Scott Wu, CEO of Cognition, the company behind the AI agent Devin, describes their product roadmap as moving Devin up the rungs of the career ladder. Follow that to its end point and the question lands on us: what does a designer do when the agent can do it all?
The junior roles that have gone are not going to come back. Further up the ladder, the roles we recognise today will go too. But just because the role goes, doesn’t mean the Designer has to. This shift will reward a different type of designer - one whose craft is in the decisions, not the deliverable.
This talk is about the gap between a traditional Designer and an AI-native Designer, and why closing it is the only way design survives the most transformative moment in the history of the tech industry.