In this candid, first‑person video, Andres Gonzalez ("Andres the Designer") warns aspiring and current UX designers about the less‑glamorous aspects of the profession. He begins by acknowledging his love for UX but stresses the need for honesty so viewers can decide if the field truly fits them. He outlines four major pain points: (1) design‑by‑committee, where multiple stakeholders impose conflicting opinions, often sidelining user research and leaving designers as "pixel pushers" and producing unusable portfolio pieces; (2) constant debates and the necessity of articulating design decisions, which he frames as a core skill and links to a book he’s reading; (3) confusing terminology across product, development, and client teams, requiring designers to translate and standardise language; and (4) frequent presentations to clients, internal teams, and during hand‑offs, which can be daunting for those who dislike public speaking. For each issue he suggests mitigation tactics such as conducting independent user research, UX audits, competitive analysis, aligning the team on a shared strategy, and improving communication skills. He briefly promotes the Setapp suite of productivity apps. The video concludes by inviting viewers to share their own negative experiences, encouraging those who still feel motivated to pursue UX, and directing them to further resources.
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Look, don't get me wrong, I love UX design. It's one of my passions. I mean, the name of the channel is Andres the Designer, and it's a big part of who I am. So I don't want this video to discourage you from pursuing UX design if that's something that you truly want to do. But it's important that I'm honest about this industry and this job, because if you're considering making an investment of your time and your money into the industry, You need to know the facts, the pros, the cons, the positives, the negatives. It's important for you to know exactly what you're getting into because UX design may not be right for you, and that's completely okay. I've actually tried tons of things before I landed to UX design. I, I thought I was gonna be a business analyst, and then I was a compensation analyst, and then I thought I was gonna run a Shopify store, and then I thought I was going to start a marketing, uh, agency. So there was a whole bunch of different things that I tried before getting to UX design. And so don't be discouraged if this video pushes you into another direction, or maybe it does the opposite. Maybe it reinforces that, you know, some of these negative qualities aren't really deal breakers for you and you still want to move forward with UX design. So what are those negative aspects about UX design that you need to know? For starters, let's talk about design by committee. See, you might work on a design project where everyone from the client, the developer, the project manager, product manager, their moms, their grandma, their sister all have strong opinions about the designs that you're working on. And sure, you know, great designs really do come from anywhere, and I'm not here to debate that, but it's impossible to design something that meets everyone's opinions or needs. And so as a designer, you're constantly faced with the opinions of others while you're working in a UX design project. And I often find that projects that are run by design by committee often never value user research. Research. They don't have a clear strategy of how the product needs to get developed. They don't know who their target user is and overall just have a lack of organization on how this product should be built. And ultimately they treat you as a pixel pusher rather than the digital architect that you're meant to be. And at the end of these sort of projects, sometimes you can get into this Frankenstein design that looks nothing like you would have imagined. And now what makes it worse is now you don't even want to put it on your portfolio. It's Terrible. And you know, there are things you can do to save projects like these, like doing the user research, figuring out who the target user is, doing a UX audit, doing a competitive analysis. Even if they don't ask for it, you can do it to try to save the project. And the only way to really solve this committee by design problem is to align the entire team on an overall strategy. Which leads me to my second point: debates. You have to be able to fight bad ideas. You might have a client that wants to make their logo really, really big. Or maybe you have to have a debate with your product manager that the neon color makes a terrible color for a button because it lacks contrast and makes it difficult to read. Or maybe you're debating an entire team to make room for user research because it's an important part of the UX design process. You can't just start designing shit without figuring out who you're designing for and doing some level of user research. You need to figure out what their pain points are, what similar products they might use, and what pain points you're actually addressing with this product that you're working on. So at least in my experience, I've noticed that debates and convincing are a huge part of the job, which is why I'm buying this book called Articulating Design Decisions, because this is a skill that every UX designer needs. Having the ability to communicate why you made certain design decisions is absolutely important. Important to the entire process. It's absolutely important to the teams that you're working on because the team needs to be able to first understand why you're making certain design decisions and then eventually you get to a place of trust. So if you hate debates, this might be a deal breaker for you. And before I talk about my next point, I want to tell you about our sponsor for today's video, Setapp. Setapp is a place where you can find tons of apps to help you in your creative process. Some of my personal favorites are Hustle, where you can record long time lapses of your screen so you can share it on your portfolio or social media, or Sip, where you can get the exact color palette you need and check contrast for accessibility. Or even PixelSnap, where you can measure the exact pixels between any design you come across. And these are just a couple apps that I found. They have tons of apps that might help you that are productivity related, help speed up your Mac, and you can try Setapp completely for free for 7 days. And as always, link in the description. So the next thing that you need to know is that there is a whole bunch of confusing words. And listen, this is a big one. The amount of time that I I've spent translating between product managers, clients, developers, and other sort of team members is absolutely insane. Most people don't even know what UX design means. And when I tell people I am a product designer, they often think of the physical products like a mouse instead of a digital product like Airbnb or Uber. There's things like end user, target user, and persona, which all kind of mean the same thing. And everyone has slightly different words to describe very common UI elements. For example, Apple calls this a tab bar. Google calls this a bottom navigation bar. And yes, I've also contributed to the problem. I think I've called it a short navigation bar, a short nav bar, a menu, like a whole bunch of different things. So I'm also at fault here. But this sort of ambiguous language is something that you'll have to deal with as a UX designer. You'll first have to understand what all these words mean and then describe these concepts simply to everyone you work with. Which brings me to my third point: presentations. If you hate presentations, I'm not sure this job might be right for you because presentations is a huge part of my job. I've had to present my portfolio to potential clients as a way to earn their business. Then if they became clients, I had to present their work back to them to get their feedback. Then if The client approves the designs, then I have to present it to the development team during the design handoff phase. I'm trying to do a lot of presentations on tools like Tella or Loom where I can kind of just record myself and my screen and then send that video recording to the team. But sometimes you do just have to get on, you know, a Zoom or Google Meet meeting and just have a discussion about whatever your designs are. I've talked to some other UX designers as well, and I've heard that this is a very common thing. So if you don't like presentations, again, UX design might not be right for you. If you're a UX designer and you have some negative qualities that you want to share too, to help all these other aspiring UX designers get a full picture of what this industry and what this job entails, go ahead and comment them down below. And if UX design is still something that you want to do, then congratulations, this is a step in the right direction to finding your purpose, to finding the thing that you want to dedicate your life to. To that, I can only wish you the best of luck. Godspeed. And to watch this next video to help you on your UX design journey.
