S. E. Thomas [1] states that “interviews with experienced people are useful in UX research because they provide nuanced insight, reveal blind spots, and reduce assumptions when making design decisions.” Since I didn’t want to be in a vacuum I decided to do a short interview with a fellow UX/UI designer who is also currently studying Interaction Design while working in an AI startup.

Interviewee

The interviewee is a 28-year-old UX/UI designer working in a small startup here in Graz. Their role includes the full process from early research and structuring user flows to final UI design and prototyping for development handoff. This already shows how blurred the boundaries of UX roles are, where “designing screens” is only a small part of the expected responsibilities.

Do you use AI in your workflow?

When talking about AI in their workflow, they described it as something that increases productivity rather than replacing their actual design thinking. They use AI mostly for UX writing and for exploring variations when they feel less confident with wording. In that situation AI becomes a kind of assistant, but not something they would rely on for final decisions. They also mentioned that AI-generated interfaces (like from Figma Make) are “not to great” at the moment and therefore not ready to immediately go online.

From this answer it seemed that the final judgment still lies with the designer.

What is the future of UX/UI design?

When confronted with their feelings about the future of UX/UI design, the interview said that real creativity may actually become more valuable and that designers will still be needed for high quality and original interfaces but AI might take over more standardised or repetitive design tasks and typical products. This makes it clear that there’s a tension between efficiency and originality as well.

So when talking about the role of designers she believes that we won’t become “approval machines” or get replaced. Rather than becoming obsolete, the role seems to be shifting toward refining, filtering or curating AI-generated interfaces.

Designers vs Developers using AI

One of the more interesting points came up when comparing designers and developers using AI tools. The interviewee said that it’s okay for developers to use AI for user interface design but only if they are also trained in it. One can very easily spot when a design is made by a developer and it’s very obvious. It’s always functional but not always usable. This emphasised how usability isn’t the same as functionality and that disconnect comes from lack of knowledge. However, this goes both ways, as they mentioned that understanding both the tech and design side is a big advantage for designers.

They also mentioned that they haven’t had an experience like mine (with AI being used to replace her), because “the developers want to keep their jobs too”.

Conclusion/Reflection

The interview made the main tension in my research feel more tangible. AI can definitely speed up parts of the design process, but it doesn’t replace the kind of contextual thinking that human-centered design is built upon. At the same time, it didn’t feel like a simple story of replacement. It felt more like things are still changing and designers are figuring out how to work with these tools in practice, especially within a team. I found the “we want to keep our jobs” comment really interesting as well, because it also points to a sort of on-purpose reduced usage for the sake of job security.

References

• [1] S. E. Thomas, “Expert Interviews,” The Practical Guide to Experience Design. [Online]. Available: https://www.practical.guide/experiencedesign/expertinterviews. [Accessed: Jul. 3, 2026].