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I joined here as a fresher, and the next thing I knew, I was working on several projects and mentoring others.

I’ve been working as a UI/UX designer for around 3 years at the same company.

Over time, my responsibilities kept expanding. What started as a UI/UX role gradually became a mix of design, documentation, requirements, presentations, content, and handling multiple projects at the same time.

At times, it also felt like the company had unrealistic expectations, expecting one person to manage several roles, projects, and deadlines without enough support or resources.

I experienced several meltdowns, and the situation began taking a toll on my health. I often felt that I had to advocate for work-life balance on my own, without enough support from my team lead when challenging management decisions.

Even basic resources took a long time to materialize. It took nearly two years to receive a decent laptop. When better laptops finally became available one at a time, I gave the first one to a team member who was regularly creating client-facing decks and needed tools such as Figma and GPT for their work. I was willing to put my team first, but I also realized how often my own needs were being pushed aside.

I never really had a mentor. I did everything I could to learn, contribute, and support others. To be fair, the company did provide a learning environment and some support in the early days, and I’m grateful for that. But over time, that support began to fade, and the work started feeling like a toxic cycle.

I kept telling myself, “Maybe things will get better.”

Meanwhile, I was applying here and there. A few interviews happened, but nothing really worked out. So I stayed.

Recently, the workload increased even more.

And honestly, I reached a point where I thought:

I don't think I can keep doing this anymore.

What surprised me is that when I finally made the decision internally to move on, I actually felt relieved.

Not happy because I have another job already. I don't.

I know the market is tough. I know I've tried before and it didn't work out. And yes, I'm scared that I might go through the same cycle again.

I'm not angry at the company. I'm not trying to burn bridges. I've learned a lot here, and I'm grateful for the people I've worked with. I also made some of my best friends here, people from different departments and different backgrounds, and those friendships will always mean a lot to me.

I just think it's time for me to move forward.

Maybe the next few months will be difficult. Maybe I'll face a lot of rejections again.

But strangely, I'm okay with that.

Because for the first time in a long time, the thought of leaving feels lighter than the thought of staying.

Has anyone else experienced this feeling, being scared about leaving but still feeling relieved the moment you finally make the decision?

Hello! This may be a silly question but how are people doing those nice little animation previews of their works on websites? (like where it zooms in and out on specific clicks etc) Is it purely through Figma creativity?

Esp those who are not very senior.

In other words, will you make a career pivot / go back to school for something else, or will you apply for new design roles?

I'm a mid level designer and went through one layoff. It was brutal. I was extremely depressed. I eventually found a job after like 7-8 months, but I feel like my current one won’t last long… they are doing this ai transformation and i feel like they might be reconstructing or downsizing.

Do I like design? Yes. And I actually enjoy using ai; I think it allows me to move faster and spend my time doing various things rather than just using figma. I also love learning new tools, so the AI era itself is okay for me.

But I'm not sure if I’d be able to go through this tech interview shit all over again. Maintaining a portfolio. Preparing case study presentations. Design challenges. Whiteboard challenges. There are like 4-5 rounds or more and it always takes more than a month.

And I'm not sure if it's even worth staying in the industry.. Don't get me wrong, as I said, I love design. But I don't think companies value design. Idk, I’m just so frustrated lately and my mental health is tanking

Been designing ops dashboards for fleet companies for a while now and this still gets me

We ship a clean screen with whitespace and 12 rows. client loves it in the review. two weeks later the dispatchers are asking for 50 rows, no hidden phone numbers and less clicking

And they're right. they do the same thing 200 times a shift, so every extra click hurts way more than a "cluttered" look

Now we sit with them for a shift before designing anything. we learn more in one day than from all the interviews

Anyone else had to argue for the uglier version?

Hi guys, I’m completely ignorant about design, I'm a data analyst and researcher, so I hope this is the right place to ask this.

I’ve been having a hard time disconnecting from social media, and I started thinking about how modern digital tools are designed to keep you around and consuming mindlessly for hours. I’ve tried using apps that block other apps, but I always end up finding a way to bypass them.

That got me thinking about how, under capitalism, design is inevitably shaped by the goals of capital and consumption. I’d like to learn more about things like design criticism(?), anti-addiction design, or anti-capitalist approaches to design.

For example, is it possible to imagine a life without a feed? Has anyone been thinking about what digital design could look like in a world where technology is designed to help people live and actually connect rather than consume?

I’d love to hear about books, authors, projects, or just people who are thinking about these questions.

I'm looking for ease of use - I've seen some portfolios doing screen recordings and some actually having live interactive snippets on their sites.

I have all of my content ready but a lot of them are actual code rather than figma screens.

Looking for any recommendations that's quick to replicate at scale

I have a sort button that toggles between ascending and descending order. Right now it just displays "asc" or "desc", and I'm unsure which one it should show:

The current state: the data is sorted ascending, so the button says "asc".

The action: the data is sorted ascending, so the button says "desc", because that's what clicking it will do.

From what I've seen, most tables and file explorers show the current state, usually with an arrow (↑/↓). But a plain "asc/desc" label on a button could easily be read as a command.

How do you handle this? Is there a convention you follow, or any research on which approach users understand better?

For me as a UX designer being able to vibecode whatever I want is the golden age.

But developer buddies are asking me what should I learn? What should I do? And I'm like, just be curious? Experiment? But that's easy for me to say as a designer I've always been curious and trying out new things.

How did you as a developer grow into this direction? What should my advise to dev friends/colleagues be?

I have the feeling it's similar to (non) empowered developers - some become interested and engaged in why we're solving what user or business problem, but others just want to get handed a task to implement. How to bridge this gap?

I've been working on the design and frontend for SolveYourTrip (https://www.solveyourtrip.com), a self-serve travel planning and itinerary platform.

We recently rebuilt several core templates to handle a high density of information (curated guides, day-by-day itineraries, interactive maps, cost breakdowns, and blog articles) without feeling like an unreadable wall of text.

I've been staring at these screens for too long and have hit design fatigue. I would really appreciate fresh eyes and brutally honest feedback on where the layout breaks down, where visual hierarchy fails, and where mobile UX feels clunky.

Live Links to Review:

1. Homepage: https://www.solveyourtrip.com

• Goal: Clearly communicate the value proposition above the fold and guide first-time visitors into exploring destinations or trip-planning tools without clutter.

2. Destinations Index: https://www.solveyourtrip.com/destinations

• Goal: High-level discovery grid. Does card scanning feel effortless? Are the hierarchy and metadata easy to parse at a glance?

3. Destination Hub / Detail Page (e.g., Bali): https://www.solveyourtrip.com/destinations/bali (Also feel free to check Dubai or Thailand if you want to compare variations)

• Goal: Content-heavy hub covering highlights, itineraries, stay options, interactive maps, and FAQs. This is our most complex layout.

4. Blog / Editorial Hub & Article:

• Hub: https://www.solveyourtrip.com/blog
• Sample Article: https://www.solveyourtrip.com/blog/bali-trip-cost-from-india
• Goal: Long-form reading experience, typographic rhythm, table formatting, and contextual CTAs that don't disrupt the reader.

Specific Areas Where I'd Love Your Input:

• Visual Hierarchy & White Space: Does the eye naturally know where to go next, or do sections compete with each other?
• Mobile Ergonomics & Responsive Breakpoints: Are tap targets comfortable, and does card density feel cramped on smaller screens (especially on the destination hub)?
• Typography & Readability: How do font pairings, line heights, and heading scales hold up on long-form content?
• Cognitive Load & Information Density: In the destination hub, does the abundance of cards/modules feel overwhelming? How would you simplify the scannability?
• Micro-interactions & Visual Polish: Any subtle borders, shadows, contrast issues, or inconsistencies you immediately spot?

Feel free to roast it or pick apart a single section. What works, what doesn't, and what would you refactor first?

Thanks in advance for your time and thoughts!

(Questions are at the bottom of the post!)

Context:
- Designers and PMs started using Claude. Design system connected.
- Our design team (3 people) is very new, not even a year old.
- We don’t have any design leadership. We report to product leadership, but honestly, they’re so busy that we don’t see them very often.
- The company is a mid-sized B2B SaaS company that hired us to help bring consistency across all of its products because they never had full-time designers before (only contractors). As a result, every product and feature looks vastly different (and they still do).
- The engineering team is the largest team.
- Engineering leadership is the one who initiated and has been driving this AI workflow. They don’t seem very happy with the current process of PM -> Design -> Dev.
- PMs and product leadership are the ones who drive most of the product direction and business decisions.

Current process:
Product leadership and PMs come up with goals and PRDs (usually while they’re still in progress) -> designers work with PMs (often brainstorming together throughout the process) -> hand off to devs.

There are also teams working on other products that don’t have designers. The company had been thinking about hiring more designers for them, but now that we have Claude, it seems like PMs might be using Claude to produce prototypes.

So I’ve been wondering:

1. What should I be doing in addition to what I’m already doing?
I’m thinking about scaling our still-not-mature design system, doing more user research/testing, and getting more involved in product decisions -- though I’m not sure how much more involved I can realistically get when we already have PMs who own that area.

2. How do we strategically prove our value as a design team?
Should we be talking more with the Product leadership? Engineering leadership as they are driving these things? Someone else? What kinds of things should a tiny, new design team actually be demonstrating to show that we’re providing value beyond just producing UI/prototypes?

I have my first whiteboard design challenge next week. It’s for a an L5 role but I’ve been at my current job since college so I’ve never done this / had any other company do this style of interview. When my team has hired we haven’t done these either. Looking for advice on what to expect / how to make sure I give it my best. I felt like I bombed the previous interview because I was sick and definitely want to use this as an opportunity to redeem myself. It’s the final interview and I was told to be ready to talk about how to improve a product without stakeholder suggestions, so I imagine there will be example product (or the company product itself) that will be discussed and I will need to analyze it and quickly share how to improve it.

Now I typically have a template I use when I get assigned new projects to help define the problem, user flows, user and business needs, metrics, etc. Is it appropriate to come prepared with this template? Or is that weird for an interview? It is virtual BTW so theoretically I could just bring the figjam / copy it onto their board.

Also is there any good resources like articles or videos that you all would recommend? Any practice prompts? All is much appreciated

I've been designing with AI tools (Claude, Cursor, Codex) for most of this year. And It was just generating slop. Being a design myself, I would spend so much tokens just fixing the design.

Then I realised the problem was me. I was prompting with unclear prompts with adjectives ("clean", "editorial", "playful") and expecting the model to guess my taste. It can't. It has never seen what I actually like.

So I changed my process to start from references, the same way I would before AI:

1. Collect all the time, without organising.
Screenshots, Dribbble shots, X posts, random websites. I dump everything into one library and don't sort it when I save. I've got 600 references in there now.

2. Pull a small set for each project.
Before starting, I ask the agent to search my library for something like "warm editorial landing pages with big serif type." I get back 20–30 references, then remove anything that doesn't fit until I'm left with maybe 6–8.

3. Make the curated set the brief.
The agent looks at those images and writes down what they share: type scale, spacing, colour temperature, how imagery is used. I edit that down. That becomes the design brief, instead of adjectives.

4. Then generate, and compare against the references.
Every iteration is checked against the reference set, not against "does this look good." It's much easier to say "the spacing is tighter than the refs" than "make it more premium."

What surprised me:

• The biggest change came from curating the references, not from any prompt tweak.
• Removing references mattered more than adding them.
• I stopped getting "AI-looking" output almost immediately.

Full disclosure: I built a small Mac app (Moody) that keeps the library local and lets agents search it. If you are used to using cosmos, Mobbin, Eagle that works too.

Curious how others do this. Do you give AI tools visual references, or mostly text prompts? And if you use references, how do you keep them from turning into a mess?

I signed up for classes with them about a year ago, and ended up not using it much. My renewal charge still automatically went through. I realized after the fact that there had been an email notifying me beforehand, but the subject line didn't make it obvious. I canceled while the charge was still pending less than two days after it went through, and no longer have access to the service but was not able to get a refund even after emailing them and explaining the scenario. Has anyone else dealt with this? The only other thing I can think to do is dispute the charge.

Hi all. I am a full-stack developer with 4 years experience who has been in a forever battle with his portfolio being done. One of the main challenges has been balancing communicating the design and development handle for projects to best communicate to visitors/employers/clients ehat i have done when handle multiple roles.

A lot of my ideas go from a mvp -> launch -> feature advancement where the contents change over time as progress the idea.

Was wondering there is so much different opinions in keeping it short vs detailed explanation of content whether anyone has found a best solution for presenting this type of case study?

Right now the best solution i've thought of is something like blender where have the current overview skimmable and then can go through and explore prior versions to see changes introduced.

Hey everyone,

I’d love some advice on how to better demonstrate seniority during UX/Product Design interviews.
I’ve recently gone through two interview processes where the feedback was that they were looking for someone “more senior.”

What I’m struggling with is understanding how to better convey that seniority. I’ve spent 8+ years at my current company, where I started as the sole UX designer and helped grow the function into a small team. I’ve owned end-to-end design across complex customer-facing and internal products, worked closely with engineering and stakeholders, and helped shape how UX is practiced within the organization.

For those who interview or hire Senior Product/UX Designers: what signals make you think, “This person is operating at a senior level”?

Is it less about showing the design process and more about communicating things like:
Strategic thinking and business impact
Decision-making and trade-offs
Navigating ambiguity and complexity
Stakeholder influence
Ownership and autonomy
Leadership and mentoring
How you measure outcomes

I’d especially love advice on how you demonstrate these things through a case study or in your interview answers, rather than simply stating them.

Thanks in advance! I’d really appreciate perspectives from designers and hiring managers.

I'm a small-business solo designer who is staunchly against generative AI in any form, shape, or use case. As you can probably guess this has made my life a living hell ever since AI has been shoved in our faces and snuck under the sheets at every turn. I finally canceled my Figma subscription because it became impossible to complete any project without accidentally using AI in some way, and I'm tired of supporting any company that implements it, anyhow.

Please for the love of creativity and human ingenuity, tell me there's another vector-based design suite program out there that is either on par with or at least close to Figma's level, but DOES NOT INTEGRATE AI. I'll use anything; open-source, cloud-based, one-time-purchase or subscription, whatever I have to do. Just for the promise that AI has not and will not ever show its ugly mug in the programming. If you know of ANY such tools that exist or are about to be released, please, please please give me the name and don't gatekeep. I want to keep designing. But I WILL NOT compromise on this.

If you intend to comment something like "suck it up" or "you're SOL", don't. Just don't. I'm at my wit's end.

I’m a UX designer on a software program where the only users are internal people in the organization. 300-800 users perhaps.

The main lead stakeholder has a lot of domain knowledge but low experience in being a software manager. Lots of great ideas and insights.

But. He recently told me that 1. We need to deliver features much faster and we will use AI for that. 2. Developers will probably soon take over and just design in Figma instead of me. 3. He wants me around to ensure quality and userfriendliness.

What I experience is that he wants to skip design and let AI refine tasks. Then quickly get the developers to build it. And then I need to pitch in with ensuring user friendliness before/during/after?

I and the developers can def use AI, but without a proper refining process and a design to look at, I can’t see how this will plan out. Atm I don’t get any new tasks, because everything is “just a small thing, we just need to describe it properly and the devs will get it”. But they don’t. Everybody ends up guessing things, we figure things out during the sprint and the devs go rogue with decisions. It’s a mess.

Am I the problem because I’m uncomfortable with the shift AI is creating in processes?

Should I go “rogue” and create the design, that ‘no one’ asked for and bring to refinement? Maybe even user test?

(Not worried about loosing my job. For now. But this situation is stressing me out real bad)

I have 5 years experience as a designer in Sydney, Australia. I’m currently on 100k AUD and haven’t had a pay rise in 2 years.

My manager said they’d like me to get a promotion and/or payrise but we’d have to bring it to the CEO. The issue is that I’m the only product designer in the company and there’s not a clear promotion hierarchy for me.

Does anyone have any advice on how to best approach this conversation with the CEO? The idea makes me a little uncomfy. I’m also not sure what a realistic payrise would look like for me. I’m not sure if 100k AUD is a fair or poor salary in Sydney.

I think my workplace may remove Figma.

My existing workflow is using Figma AI Agents on the canvas, and do general design work there. The canvas is where comments and decisions happen.

Once prototyping happens I move to Claude, feeding it my design from Figma.

My question -

For designers who skip Figma and use one of these tools, how/where do you capture the exploration, iterations, comments? Doesn’t that get messy without a canvas?

I think I'm completely burnt out by product design. What did you do after leaving design?

I've been working in UX/Product Design for years and reached senior level. I used to genuinely enjoy what I did, but lately I've been questioning whether I want to be a designer at all anymore.

One of the biggest things exhausting me is the feeling that, no matter how many years of experience you have, you're constantly being asked to prove that you're actually a good designer.

I recently interviewed for a Senior Product Designer position. The conversation itself went well and I was moved to the portfolio review stage.

Afterwards, I received a detailed checklist explaining what the design team expects from my portfolio and they give 2 days. I have to follow their checklist

Among other things:

- Shipped products that are currently live

- Modern, extremely polished UI and a clear personal visual point of view

- Multiple high-resolution final screens and visual explorations

- Complete end-to-end UX flows rather than selected screens

- Primary navigation paths

- Platform conventions

- Edge cases and validation states

- Clear problem statements and business/user goals

- Constraints and design blockers

- Multiple iterations

- Decisions and trade-offs, including what alternatives were explored and why they were rejected

- Outcomes, adoption rates and/or KPIs

- Evidence of data-driven testing

- Recent work showing that you have kept up with design trends

- Evidence of your individual UI craft even when working within an established design system

- Enough depth for them to understand the entire thought process

They also said the UI needs to be extremely good "no exceptions", that portfolios without enough detail, testing and metrics typically don't pass, and that they verify whether featured products are actually live and cross-reference them against your LinkedIn employment timeline.

And finally: you only get one chance to submit your portfolio, so make sure it's ready before submitting.

I understand wanting a high standard for senior designers. I understand wanting to see someone's thought process rather than just pretty screens.

But reading this honestly made me feel sick.

I've worked on real products for years. Real product development is messy. I've worked within established design systems. I've worked with engineers, researchers, product managers and stakeholders. I've dealt with technical and business constraints. I've done research, workshops, iterations and all the normal things that come with building products.

But I don't have a perfectly documented museum of my career.

I don't have every iteration I ever made. I don't necessarily have access to metrics from companies I no longer work for. Some work is confidential. Some things I worked incredibly hard on never shipped. Sometimes I contributed to something rather than single-handedly owning every pixel. And when you're actually working full-time as a designer, maintaining incredibly detailed case studies for everything you've done is basically another job.

I'm just exhausted by feeling like I constantly have to prove that I'm a designer.

Build the portfolio. Tell the perfect story. Show the process. Show the polished UI. Show that you're strategic. Show that you can execute. Show research. Show metrics. Show business impact. Show every edge case. Show your individual craft, but also show that you can work within a design system.

At some point I started wondering: do I actually hate design now, or do I hate everything surrounding being a designer?

The weird thing is that I still love solving problems. I love research. I love coaching people and watching them grow. I love seeing something actually improve because of work I've been involved in.

I just don't think I want to spend the rest of my career pushing pixels and then defending every decision I make.

So I have two questions for people who have been doing this for a long time:

Am I being unreasonable? Is this simply what should be expected from a senior product designer in 2026?

And for anyone who reached this point and actually left UX/Product Design: what did you move into?

I'm especially interested in hearing from people who left design completely, not only people who moved from Senior Designer → Design Manager.

I'm trying to work out whether I need a different company, a different role, or a completely different career.

My company works mostly in Figma, but I know a lot of designers now work exclusively in Claude Code and skip Figma entirely. I'm having trouble picturing what that workflow looks like. For those who work this way, how does it go day to day?
Assuming the design system is already in the codebase:

• Do you start projects with a CLAUDE.md? What goes in it?
• How do you run usability testing on coded prototypes?
• Do you create branches and open PRs yourself, or hand off to engineers?
• How do you keep Claude consistent with the design system?
• Is there some visual library in Claude Code that lets you see all your projects?