My honest take about becoming a UX designer in 2025

You've probably seen this video. Don't go into UX if you're afraid of competition. Or this one. The truth is you're probably not going to get a great job in tech as a UX/UI designer. Or maybe this is the one you saw. Big tech is slashing hundreds of thousands of jobs and blaming artificial intelligence. Now you're wondering, is this still a good time to become a UX designer in 2025? I'm glad you found this video because I want to help you make that decision. I'm Samuel Fabayo and I've been a UX designer for 8 years. In that time, I've worked with startups in Lagos, Nigeria, and a few high-growth companies in London. And currently, I'm a senior product designer at Monzo Bank. In this video, I'm going to tell you 5 reasons why UX design has been an attractive profession in the last 6 to 7 years. For each reason, I'll tell you what the catch is, because there's always a catch. And I'll also tell you what I think the future looks like for UX designers. I, I can see the future. By the end of this video, I'll have provided you with enough information that should help you decide if you should pursue a career in UX design in 2025 or not. So I promise to be as objective as possible. Before we get into the reason why UX has become an attractive profession, let's go back in time to understand how UX came to be a profession in the first place. The term user experience design was first introduced by a cognitive scientist called Don Norman in the early '90s when he joined Apple. His role at Apple was called user interface architect, but he changed his title to user experience designer because he realized that his work at Apple covered every aspect of a person's experience with the system, which includes graphics, industrial design, digital interface, physical interactions, and product manuals. But before Don Norman, before Apple, and before we had websites and other digital interfaces, the concept of user experience design has been practiced by pioneers like Walt Disney in building Disney World and Henry Ford in using human-centered design to improve the tools and efficiency of workers in the Ford assembly line. A few years later, Toyota also adopted a similar design strategy in their assembly line. So what do Don Norman, Walt Disney, and Henry Ford have in common? It is the fact that they didn't have any kind of design qualifications or degrees that made them UX designers. They were all trying to solve a problem, and that's how they stumbled on the concept of user experience design. Now, that brings us to the first reason why UX is an attractive profession, and it is the fact that you don't need a degree to become a UX designer. In fact, some of the best designers I know have never been in the four walls of a university classroom. And listen, don't let the bootcamps lie to you. Anyone can design a fancy site. A certificate, slap a signature on it, and claim it will help you get a job. But that's not true. I have nothing against bootcamps or online design courses. I just don't like how they promise so much and deliver so little. Some certificates give you a bit of credibility as a beginner, but you don't need a certificate to get hired as a UX designer. What gets you hired is how well you demonstrate your problem-solving abilities by showing your work with a portfolio. Now you're probably thinking, it's easier to become a UX designer then since I don't need a degree or certificate. No, it's not. The catch is there's so much competition at the entry level because the barrier to entry is really low. So you might complete your 3-month bootcamp or 6-week online design course and apply for many months without landing your first role. And you might not even find a job if you don't find ways to stand out from the competition. The second reason is because the pay is good. According to a 2023 Glassdoor survey data, the average salary of a UX designer in the US is $95,000. This is $33,000 more than the average salary across all occupations in the US. In the UK, which I'm a lot more familiar with because that's where I work, the average salary is about £48,000. With a few more years of experience, it could go up to £65,000. But with a lot more experience and exposure to the right industry, network, and company, you could earn anything between £100,000 to £200,000 per year, especially when you add stock benefits and other types of compensations. I think you'll agree with me that if you're able to take home over £4,000 or $5,000 after tax, you're relatively well off. Now, I understand that not everybody is watching this video from the UK or US, but even in India or Nigeria, people that find themselves in low technical roles like UX design, product management, data analysis, and the likes earn more than their friends that don't work in tech. But again, there's a catch. To be in the high earning bracket, you have to be at the very top of your game, and it takes time and years of experience to get to that level. You won't just roll into a £100,000 a year job. For the first few years of your career, you have to dedicate your time to learning, networking, and improving your craft every day. Also, the reasons these companies are able to pay these huge amounts of salaries is because they get a lot of venture capital money, in essence, a lot of funding from investors. So once the company is not able to generate the revenues to make their investors happy, the layoffs begin. So what you gain in high salaries and all of the fancy office equipment and all of the nice things that you get to do in the office, you lose in job security, and it almost feels like you have to constantly be on your toes, and these layoffs might even happen while you are working on a really impactful project that you care about. And I'm speaking from experience, literally. And that brings us to the next reason why UX is attractive, and that is the opportunity to have an impactful career. As a UX designer, the work I do every day impacts millions of people that bank with Monzo, and that makes me excited to wake up every day and get to work. I know that the little workshop I'm running with my team or the designs I'm working on could help customers save up for a mortgage or finally afford that trip that they've been looking forward to. And it's the same with designers working in other industries as well. If you're in health tech, you can help people get healthier. If you're on social media, you can help people stay connected with their loved ones in a better way. If you're in the productivity industry, you can help people reach their goals just by being a UX designer. But not all impact is good impact, to be honest. As a designer, you also have to prioritize business goals while meeting user needs. And in most companies, the business goals take the higher priority because remember, Investors need to get their investment back with profits. This sometimes leads to using manipulative design patterns to get money or attention from the user. And also remember that the pay is good and you're already comfortable receiving that salary every month, so you just want to keep doing what you're asked to do, and that actually sucks. If you're someone that's naturally curious about people, technology, or the world in general, then being a UX designer is never boring. As a UX designer, you get to solve different kinds of problems depending on the kind of industry that you find yourself in. My first UX design role was in the fintech sector. The next one was in the lifestyle and social interaction sector. Then I moved to the food and logistics industry, and now I'm back to the fintech sector. Working across all these different sectors exposes me to new challenges and different types of users. And while it's so much work finding your feet in a new industry, it's always exciting to learn new things about that industry. But this excitement is slowly fading away, and the user interface design part of being a UX designer is becoming repetitive because of the use of, um, design systems and templates. Companies are investing in design systems because it saves time and keeps the product's look and feel consistent, but it also makes junior designers to use their brains less. Designers are not thinking of smart solutions, and most designers are just dragging and dropping components on Figma, and everyone's design looks literally the same, and that's really boring. If you want to become a UX designer because you want a profession where you can be creative, you should be ready to take on as much creative side projects as you can. Because your full-time job as a designer might not completely quench your thirst for creativity. The 5th reason, which is arguably the most important and likely very controversial, is that UX design is a future-proof career path. The name and the title might change. We've been called UX designers, digital designers, product designers, design technologists, design engineers, software designers, and different names, but the role of a designer will always exist. Also, the technologies will evolve as we are seeing it today with artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. But again, the role of a designer will always exist and designers will always be in demand. The Nelson Norman Group predicts that there will be about 100 million UX professionals in the world by 2050. And that's based on the growth of UX design professionals in the world between the 1950s and 2017, which I think has grown from between, I think, about 1,000 to 1 million. You might say, but AI is already creating UI designs and people are getting laid off because of AI. But I don't think that's true. I don't think any company has laid off designers because of AI, and I don't believe AI can replace designers. In fact, I think now more than ever, we need more designers to really understand AI by collaborating with it so they can shape the way humans interact with AI. Because in a few years, almost anyone that can write a prompt will be able to build a working product that people can use. This means we might have lots of products out there that are not satisfying its users' needs because the builder does not deeply understand the user needs and the design principles required to meet those needs. And that's the role of a designer. It's not just drawing rectangles on Figma. Anyone can do that, including AI. Before technologies like AI, the internet, and personal computers, we already had designers like Don Norman, Walt Disney, and Henry Ford making people's lives easier with human-centered design. And as long as humans exist and interact with products in any form, there will always be a designer in the middle making that experience a lot better for the user. So the question is, are you going to be that designer, or do you think the entire workforce is going to be replaced by AI and you're doomed? I hope everything I've said in this video helps you make your decision. If you've decided to become a UX designer in 2025, then this video was made for you. You should watch it next, and I'll see you there.