The Tools Are Changing. Curiosity Isn’t.

On the changing practice of UX, the enduring value of curiosity, and finding work that fits who you are.

There has never been a better time to learn UX — and perhaps never a more confusing time to ask whether you should.

AI can now generate a polished interface in seconds. Ideas that once took hours to translate into screens can become tangible almost instantly. More people are discovering the value of understanding users before building products, while others are wondering whether the skills they’re about to invest in will still matter in a few years.

So I keep hearing the same question from mentees: “If AI can design in 30 seconds, what is the value of a UX designer?”

After more than 15 years working across different UX roles, I think we’re asking the wrong question.

We’re focusing so much on what AI can produce, how quickly it can produce it, and what that means for the future of design that we’re overlooking a more fundamental question: What makes UX meaningful in the first place?

The tools are changing. The way we work is changing. But the reason UX exists hasn’t changed.

Why I Chose UX

Sometimes a career starts with a question you can’t quite let go of. For me, that question was about design itself: what if designing something well wasn’t just about what we created, but about how deeply we understood the people we were creating it for?

I came into UX from a different design discipline. I already knew how to design things. What I was becoming more interested in was everything that happened before the design — how we understood a problem, how we learned what people actually needed, and how we could make better decisions before committing to a solution. That question reframed what I thought design was supposed to do: understand the person first, understand what they actually need, understand how they think and what they’re trying to accomplish, and only then create something around those needs.

What I didn’t expect was that UX would change how I thought outside of work too.

I started applying it to everything. The way I observed people. The way I asked questions instead of jumping to conclusions. The way I noticed when someone meant something different from what they were saying. The way I sat with unclear situations instead of trying to resolve them too fast. UX stopped being a discipline I practiced and became a way I moved through the world.

And then there was the part I didn’t anticipate caring about so much: being at the front of defining and designing something that would eventually be used by millions of people. Not as a credit line. As the realization that this work gave me the chance to influence experiences at scale — that the care I put into understanding users would be built into what they experienced on the other end.

That’s what pulled me in and what kept me here. Not the tools. The curiosity about people, and the chance to turn that curiosity into something that mattered.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

Every shift in design has changed how we work. New tools change how we create. New processes change how we collaborate. AI is another shift, but it’s one that pushes us to look at something more fundamental: where does the value of design actually come from?

On one side, AI makes it possible to generate interfaces, explore variations, summarize research, and turn ideas into something tangible at a speed that would have been hard to imagine a few years ago.

On the other side is the work that gives those outputs direction. Understanding people. Asking better questions. Recognizing which problem is worth solving. Noticing when a good-looking solution doesn’t actually address what someone needs.

These aren’t opposing forces. They’re two parts of the same practice.

Generating a hundred design options is useful. Knowing which ones are worth exploring, what criteria to use, and whose needs should guide the decision is what makes the hundred useful in the first place.

AI can make something in 30 seconds. But what is it making? AI can help us analyze what someone said, but someone still has to decide what the analysis actually means. It can summarize a research session, but someone has to notice what the summary flattened. It can generate a flow, but someone has to judge whether that flow makes sense for the people who’ll use it.

I want to be careful about one thing: human involvement alone doesn’t guarantee a better outcome. Judgment isn’t automatic. It requires research, evidence, experience, and the willingness to challenge our own assumptions. What matters isn’t whether a human is in the loop — it’s how thoughtfully we use the tools and evaluate what they produce.

That’s where the conversation about AI and UX needs to move. When making becomes faster and easier, our responsibility doesn’t shrink. We still have to decide what deserves to be made, why it matters, and whether it actually helps the person it’s for.

For me, curiosity is what connects both sides of the coin. It drives us to explore what the tools make possible, and it also pushes us to question whether those possibilities actually solve the right problems. It’s what moves the work from producing more to understanding better.

AI can expand what we can make. Curiosity helps us decide what’s worth making.

Before You Choose UX, Ask Yourself This

The pull people are feeling toward UX is real. It sits at an interesting intersection — close enough to technology to feel current, close enough to psychology to feel human, close enough to design to feel creative. For people coming from adjacent fields, it offers something many careers don’t: proximity to the humans their work actually affects.

But that’s also why the question “should I move into UX?” can’t be answered by looking at market viability or AI timelines. It has to be answered by looking at yourself.

AI will shape how you work. It won’t shape whether the work matches you.

Here’s what I actually ask mentees to sit with:

• Do you enjoy being curious?
• Do you enjoy asking why?
• Do you enjoy discovering that your first idea was wrong?
• Do you enjoy changing your mind when the evidence tells you to?
• Do you enjoy talking to people who don’t think like you?
• Do you enjoy sitting with an unclear problem instead of immediately trying to solve it?
• Do you enjoy making something complicated easier for someone else?

If the answer to those is yes, you’ll likely find a lot to enjoy in UX. The work will match something in you.

If the answer is mostly no — if ambiguity frustrates you, if being wrong feels like failure, if you’d rather execute than investigate — UX will probably be harder for you than other fields that reward different strengths. These capacities aren’t fixed, and some of them do develop over time with practice and the right environment. But they’re worth being honest about going in. No amount of market analysis changes which kind of work energizes you.

Honestly, this isn’t only true for UX. Any field you choose will depend on what you’re willing to learn, how you build your skills, and how you apply them. A career becomes meaningful when you aren’t just collecting skills — you’re curious enough to keep developing them, and honest enough to notice when the work isn’t matching who you are.

Would I Still Enter UX Today?

Yes. But I wouldn’t learn UX simply to make better screens. I’d learn how to understand people, technology, systems, and problems deeply enough to make better decisions.

The tools will keep changing. AI will change how we work. The field will keep evolving. But curiosity is still where good design begins.

And maybe that’s the better question to ask — not “Will AI replace UX?” but:

“Am I curious enough to keep learning what comes next?”

The Tools Are Changing. Curiosity Isn’t. was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.