Phillip figured out in 2023 that he was supposed to be a designer after all. Fortunately, even while uncertain, he worked in interesting spaces like some of the earliest commercial conversational NLU/NLP applications, nurturing enterprise services toward becoming enjoyable tools, and applying analytics to UX design decisions.

The path of the commercial software experience design profession has become much more murky and uncertain that nearly anyone anticipated. Today requires a new way of thinking about what we do, realizing that what led to our previous success will not lead us to more of it. This is not an uncommon human scenario, though.

Through some tough love for ourselves and going even deeper on what we actually do when we design, we’ll forge ahead and emerge better and stronger from this painful period. It might not be as hard as we think, either.