Business leaders have been questioning the value of UX investments for years. Now, with mature design systems in place and AI promising automated solutions, traditional interface-level design work may seem less important.
But this view fundamentally misunderstands where UX value is heading. The next frontier isn't about perfecting individual screens or workflows — it's about orchestrating complete customer journeys that span months, channels, and technologies. For businesses ready to evolve, this shift presents massive opportunities to create lasting competitive advantages.
Is UX Dead?
The recent wave of UX layoffs and the speculation about AI replacing product designers suggest that some business leaders have forgotten a fundamental truth: value to customers equals value to business. This value exchange is what creates satisfied, loyal customers.
Although advocating for the value of UX has always been a challenge for some organizations, even businesses that once prioritized UX are cutting UX jobs. Practitioners whose research and strategy skills were once used for impactful problem-solving report feeling commoditized. They say they feel reduced to pixel-pushing on business directives that don’t seem user-centered at all. Instead, business leaders make myopic decisions in pursuit of short-term incremental improvements to the next quarter’s shareholder report.
Back in the 1990s, when Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen were at the forefront of defining this practice, the value of UX was pretty obvious. People weren’t going to adopt the technology if they couldn’t use it. It worked, and our UX skills contributed to creating the digital systems that today run our entire world.
Almost three decades later, our digital business ecosystems are mature. Many organizations have well-established design systems in place. It seems that business leaders think that we’re done now: all the problems are solved, and we can stop spending money on user-centered design. We already know what customers need, and it’s quick and easy to design these systems now.
This is a shortsighted conclusion.
The New UX Paradigm
There may be some truth that points to this conclusion. Through product-centric design, we’ve been able to optimize the user experience at the micro level (within product interfaces) down to the most effective form design and button copy. But, unfortunately, today, product-focused design enhancements are no longer likely to generate significant business value. That doesn’t mean we are done.
There is much more innovation possible and many opportunities for UX problem solving. UX can still bring in business value. The field is at a tipping point. It should shift focus toward optimizing the macro experience customers have over time, as they traverse our channel ecosystems.
Before mobile computing, designing product interactions was enough. But people are now immersed in brand relationships. They get emails, push notifications, and text messages outside of their interactions with a product; these all create a narrative that is more connected than ever before.
Shifting focus from product UIs to designing for journeys (journey-centric design) will enable organizations to apply user-centered principles both at the micro level (interfaces within products) and at the macro level ( service delivery over time, through a variety of channels and touchpoints) and thus increase the value delivered to customers.
This is still UX. But it is applying UX beyond the interface and embracing the totality of a customer’s experiences. If we stop focusing on this human component, we risk being outflanked by competitors who do.
The New UX Is About Making Movies, Not Moments
This all reminds me of a documentary I watched about Walt Disney. If product-centric UX design was the animated short, we should be evolving our craft toward making animated feature films.
Disney had early success making animated shorts like Steamboat Willie and Silly Symphonies. A mix of technological advancements, economic factors, audience demand, belief in emotional storytelling, creative ambition, and willingness to take risks pushed him to feature-length animated films. His first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), revolutionized the industry.
Like Disney, we should be designing the larger experience, not just the moments. Touchpoint experiences are scenes in a larger emotional brand story we can create. We must use system thinking to optimize both the moments and how they come together to create the feature film.
Just like a computer operating system becomes outdated, unable to keep up, and unable to process effectively over time, an organization’s operating system does, too. To compete in this new era of digital business, the operational approach to user experience desperately needs to be updated to accommodate journey-centric design.
Journey-Centric Design + AI: The Winning Recipe
The paradigm shift in how user-centered design is applied in business brings four major benefits:
- More opportunity for design innovation, resulting in improved business outcomes
- A more strategic and business-driven approach to service delivery through aligned CX and UX operations
- More advanced analytics and ability to measure the return on investment (ROI) that design brings to revenue-generating journeys
- Opportunities for AI-driven solutions to personalize service delivery and improve business outcomes
AI will be instrumental for companies that successfully manage this shift. But AI applied to an outdated operating system will bring shallow returns and plateau. How much can you really do with a souped-up program running on a 10-year-old computer?
Upgrading the business operating system gives us more power to utilize AI. That, combined with a human-centered value proposition, will maximize profitability.
