To meet the demand for quick certification, newer courses tend to drastically narrow their scope. Most UX courses do not go deep into the foundations of graphic design and UX writing classes tend not to cover UX research. This hyper-specialization works well for global enterprises like Google, but the reality is that in most companies, designers are expected to own all aspects of the experience. 

The more senior end of the spectrum is also in flux. With the shift to remote work, it’s risky for employers to hire early-career designers since they’re not receiving the standard in-person training and guidance. This creates increased demand for senior designers, giving them greater leverage to resign their current jobs and accept one of the many compelling offers they are receiving.

Companies that struggle to hire full-time designers end up tapping into Fiverr, Upwork, Toptal, and similar freelance platforms to meet their short-term needs — which gives newly-certified designers a great opportunity to get hands-on experience. As UX becomes more commoditized, it’s easier than ever to hire someone to “do your app UX/UI”.

new UX designers emerging from Google’s UXD Certificate alone

a common starting price for UX gigs on Fiverr

newcomers joining our UX Group on LinkedIn every day

increase in interest in UX roles in 2020 according to Hired.com

We complain that our stakeholders are focused on short-term metrics, but we do the same with our online presence, flooding people’s feeds simply to keep engagement metrics high. By focusing on numbers (and our efforts to increase them), we are teaching newcomers that having a large following is equivalent to a successful career.

Your time, attention, and money are limited, so you should choose how you spend them carefully. To avoid (or recover from) the burnout that so many people have been experiencing this year, we should stop worrying so much about catching up with the industry and simply learn how to do nothing from time to time.

As paid subscriptions become more common in the upcoming year, content creators have the responsibility to build positive communities around them. It’s time we shifted from reach to depth, and from putting ourselves in the spotlight to acknowledging and sharing other people’s work.

While some argue that design polls on social media don’t work because they’re shallow and lack context, they definitely fulfill their purpose: get the author tons of likes and claps. You didn’t think this was about getting real design feedback, did you?

As a professional design influencer, you can access a full catalog of platforms and tools that can help you earn money — through shared ad revenue, tip jars, paywalls, exclusive access, patronage, and whatnot.

For some time, we all had the collective delusion that joining audio rooms on Clubhouse was the way we were going to hang out with our designer friends — after spending hours on Zoom calls every day.

Following a process lends structure to our thinking, and can help shift our focus from our individual ideas to our shared goals. A well-established process allows our team to scale, makes our work more predictable, and reduces financial risks for the company. There are good reasons why the design process is a hot topic in our industry.

But... are we over-indexing on process to compensate for lack of trust? It feels safer to trust the process than the designer. A lack of trust can occur between team members as well as between company leadership and their design team. And sometimes we focus too much on the process because we lack trust in our own judgment and skills.

Just because a framework helps you arrive at a decision doesn’t mean that decision is the right one. Following a set of steps can streamline the work, but sometimes the right call is to pause, zoom out, and start over with a different approach. After all, no process is linear.

The pandemic didn't catalyze a new superior way of working, but instead threw us all into a murky unknown territory we weren’t prepared for. In the rush to find a "new normal" while trying to hold on to the old way of working, companies simply shifted in-person work dynamics to Zoom calls, making offices of our homes and requiring us to sit in front of a camera for eight hours a day. And that tore us down. 

For designers, this shift has had a major impact on how we collaborate. Relying on meetings is problematic because meetings are linear, while collaboration is, in many ways, spatial.

We need a space for making, not for talking about making.

In recent years, designers have realized how the digital products we create can be misused to spread far-right ideas, help extremist groups organize, propagate pandemic-related misinformation, and harm teens' self-esteem. But while we as a design community might collectively agree that something is not right, we don’t necessarily agree on the roots of the problem. While some thought leaders are horrified about how user-centered design has failed its mission of putting people first, others remind us that the UX industry has always been horrifying for designers from marginalized communities. The reality is that while most people and companies pay lip service to ideals of social justice and inclusivity, they are not willing to give up their comfortable positions to make any significant changes.

As designers in 2022, we have an incredible opportunity ahead of us. With a new generation of designers joining our industry and with our teams finding new ways of collaborating, this is the time to reset and rebuild.

Rather than trying to have all the answers, let’s make sure we’re asking ourselves the right questions:

• Which habits are you willing to let go as the world re-opens? Which ones do you consciously want to maintain?

• How can you go above and beyond in your day-to-day projects and advocate for people when having business-centric conversations?

• How can you have a more meaningful impact on newcomers, going beyond portfolio reviews and building stronger relationships?

• What’s holding you back from saying no to a meeting invite, or turning your camera off to focus on work?

• When you post something you’ve written online, how can you acknowledge and celebrate the people who have published on that topic before?

• How much are you willing to switch up your design process to generate more interesting outcomes?

• Wait, you haven’t updated your portfolio yet?

Thanks to our readers and writers at the UX Collective for all the ideas you have shared. Here’s to a better, more thoughtful, less convoluted future.

The UX Collective (ISSN: 2766-5267) is an independent publication built to help designers think more critically about their work. You can follow our content via Email, Medium, Essays, Twitter, Linkedin.

Written by:
Fabricio Teixeira, Caio Braga

Illustrations by:
Manoel do Amaral

Edited by:
Emily Curtin

Narrated by:
Laura Vandiver (play audio version)

Published by:
UX Collective

Special thanks to:
Rafael Frota and the Brazilian UX community

Inspired by the work of:
Precious Madubuike, Vivianne Castillo, Alden Tan, Ryan Anderson, Sheri Byrne-Haber CPACC, JS Tan, Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya, Femke, Michael Buckley, Ian Batterbee, Johann Roduit, Lillian Ayla Ersoy, Shane Close, Jamie Mill, Andrea Mignolo, Robert Sens, Dan Mall, Jorge Arango, Christina Wodtke. 

We dedicate this project to all the readers, authors, and friends of the UX Collective.