The role of UX is changing.
The future belongs to UX Generalists (a.k.a. Generalistas) who expand beyond pure craft into strategy, product sense, business acumen, and AI tools.
Find out where you stand and get your roadmap to evolve.
Three Forces Are Reshaping UX Roles
Understanding what's changing is the first step to evolving with it:
Democratization of Design Expertise
Anyone can prototype with AI. But executing the process isn't the same as knowing what to build. The advantage is strategic judgment about what's worth building, not just how to build it.
Read Force #01AI Closing the Execution Gap
AI enables PMs to prototype, engineers to design interfaces, and anyone to execute basic UX tasks. What remains valuable: judgment about what to build and the design lens to direct it.
Read Force #02Role Consolidation in UX
15,000+ UX positions eliminated at major tech companies since 2022. The work didn't disappear. It got absorbed by fewer people doing more. The professionals keeping their roles are the ones who expanded into adjacent skills.
Read Force #03The UX professionals who are thriving are expanding beyond pure craft into strategy, product thinking, business acumen, and AI tools. They keep the design lens that made them valuable and apply it to bigger problems.
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UX professionals who expand capabilities don't lose their design perspective. They apply it to more surfaces. That's what creates value.
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Latest Content
Understanding what's reshaping knowledge work.
See patterns before they're obvious from conversations with UX leaders at LinkedIn, Uber, Stripe, Amplitude, and more
Learn from real examples of how designers pick up strategy, how researchers move into design leadership, how both learn AI tools
Get practical frameworks like work-integrated learning for UX, capability prioritization, skills mapping for designers and researchers
February 2025
• 42 min
Aryel's Journey From UXR to PM at LinkedIn
The conversation explores Aryel's transition from UX research to product management, highlighting the challenges, fears, and organizational shifts. Key takeaways: Product orgs are now made of builders not roles, now is the time for rethinking your UX path, and fluidity in career paths is common now.
February 2025
Shared Context Is The Process
When teams build shared understanding through actual work, they ship the right thing faster than any process could deliver.
January 2025
What Happens When Everyone Can Build?
When everyone can build with AI assistance, teams work in parallel. Different professional lenses converge on shared artifacts.
January 2025
Waiting Is the New Blocker
AI commoditized baseline execution, making dependencies optional. How teams work in parallel when waiting is no longer inevitable.
January 2025
Force #1: Democratization of Specialization
Why sharing expertise expands influence, not shrinks it
January 2025
Force #2: AI Empowering Execution
The gap between expert and novice collapsed. What remains valuable.
About
Head of Design at Evisort AI (Workday)
I'm John Garvie. In 2016, I was the first UX Researcher on LinkedIn's advertising business (now a $4.2B operation). I went on to lead research for 130M+ users across Uber Eats and Uber for Business. Then I became the first UX Researcher at Uber to transition into design management, eventually becoming Design Director at Uber for Business. I joined Amplitude as Director of Design to accelerate AI integration. Now I'm Head of Design at Evisort AI (Workday).
Now I help UX professionals navigate this evolution. I document how designers and researchers can expand into adjacent capabilities (strategy, product sense, business acumen, AI tools) while maintaining the design lens that makes you valuable. This isn't about abandoning craft. It's about making it more powerful.
MBA Design Strategy, California College of the Arts • Columbia University • Division 1 Track and Field Athlete • 5K+ LinkedIn followers • Published author on UX thinking • Insight Out 2024 Speaker • Co-Lab Speaker by Dscout 2025