How UX roles are evolving with AI in 2025

Last week, I presented to the UX research community at the Library of Congress. Here’s what I shared about how UX roles are evolving with AI:

1. Understanding AI as a design material

As AI continues to evolve, we’ll need to devote more time to material exploration. It’s only through design experiments and user research that we’ll develop our intuition about how to work effectively with AI.

2. Understanding AI as a research tool

There’s enormous risk in taking AI output at face value, particularly in UX research. Too many researchers are still relying on trial and error and anecdotal evidence.  We’ll need to be prepared to run more rigorous, controlled tests (which I teach about in my workshops).

3. Disposable prototyping

Prototyping works differently with AI. While AI-generated interfaces may not be good enough to ship, they are a great way to rapidly visualize many design alternatives for your product team or your users. And they’re cheap enough to discard once you’ve answered your question.

4. Recognizing and mitigating human risks

Points 1-3 emphasize a lot of experimentation and testing. And when you’re testing AI in a human-centered way, you also encounter potential harms. UX practitioners are in a unique position to discover and mitigate these harms through our design decisions.

5. Discovering new capabilities

If you’re focusing exclusively on how AI can replicate existing UX workflows, you’re missing the bigger picture. Some of the most promising new UX work with AI involves entirely new possibilities, such as intelligent, contextual interfaces or novel data exploration tools.

I believe designers and researchers have much to offer in a world of AI. But it involves a lot more experimentation and discovery than we’ve done in a very long time.

Thanks again to Libby Bawcombe for the invitation to speak with the UXR Community of Practice–it was a great discussion!

I love helping product teams bring a more human-centered lens to AI. If you’re looking for a speaker for your organization, let’s get in touch.