Curating Designing with AI 2025: Defining the value of UX with outcomes vs. output

UX and design professionals are at a pivotal moment in the AI “revolution”: do we choose to define our value in terms of output or outcomes?

Focusing on efficiency and deliverables (“output”) is the road to commoditization. But we still have an opportunity right now to shape the discussion about how to measure design impact. And I believe focusing on outcomes ensures that designers, researchers, and other UX professionals are positioned more as partners than as production.

You’ll hear this idea covered from different angles at Rosenfeld Designing with AI. Here are a few examples:

• Kritika Yadav was able to provide her company with metrics and quotes that proved her AI conversation framework resulted in a more engaged audience and a better shopping experience.

• Tom Armitage urges designers not to worry about clients using AI for early design explorations, and to recognize that the value they provide is in creating something of higher, shippable quality.

• Aras Bilgen proposes a shift in the design role, with designers taking on more responsibility for understanding the capabilities and limitations of AI as a material, while also working to understand its longer-term risks for human users. (Who else in most organizations would be positioned to do this?)

Are you focusing on output or outcomes in your own design work, and why?

Come join the conversation next week at Designing with AI.