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After 22 straight years as a UX Director, I've decided to exit the game. A little over two weeks ago I gave notice. Last Wednesday was my last day as VP of UX and Design at HungerRush.
First, a huge… | Soudy Khan, MS | 150 comments
After 22 straight years as a UX Director, I've decided to exit the game. A little over two weeks ago I gave notice. Last Wednesday was my last day as VP of UX and Design at HungerRush. First, a huge thank you to HungerRush. I spent almost three and a half years there working with some of the most talented people I have ever worked with. The company always supported my team and me, and I'm grateful. So why am I walking away? It's not about any one company or its design philosophy. It's about where the entire industry has been going. The focus, overall, has been on increasing output. In digital UX, that typically means creating designs in Figma. We've seen the tools adapt to, and even drive, this emphasis on efficiency. Shared libraries, auto layout, the ability to change a button in one place and have it update everywhere. Useful. But faster production does not automatically mean better experiences. We got faster at making screens. That does not mean we got better at understanding people. Now the next wave is here: AI. The pitch goes like this. You have 10 designers. Cut to 5, give them AI, same output, lower cost. In a mass production world, that math works. But it's the wrong question. The smart move is to keep the team and spend the saved time on real user experience work: - Diary studies - Ethnography - Customer interviews - Surveys on Prolific - Time with customers, where they work - Doing the actual job you design for Spend one week working at a fast food restaurant and you'll learn things about designing for fast food that no workshop can teach you. One week will not make you an expert, but it will give you your bearings and challenge your assumptions. Too few teams get that opportunity. Why? Because much of our industry is built for the exit. Grow fast, show the numbers, sell or IPO, move on to the next one. Understanding customers takes time. Increasing output is easier to measure and easier to sell. So we keep measuring what designers produce instead of whether people's lives and work actually get easier. Speed tools. AI as a cost cut. Exit-first thinking. Put them together and you get designers who are busy, but have less and less time to do the work that makes design matter. After 22 years leading UX teams, I still believe in what this work can accomplish. But I've reached a point where I need to rethink where, and how, I can make the greatest difference. That's why I'm stepping away. To the designers who feel burned out right now: you're not wrong. The craft isn't broken. The way companies (and us) use it is. How are you seeing it? | 150 comments on LinkedIn
