A UX Carol

"Ulysses was a UX designer - or a "Product Designer," or maybe a "Digital Experience Architect," or a "Product Experience Manager," depending on which day you asked him. Currently, however, he felt more like a Figma monkey. He sat in his Scandinavian designer chair, bathed in the orangey light of a dual-monitor setup (because you gotta filter out that blue light), reading yet another hot take about how AI had rendered his so-called career - which was kind of a joke, anyway - obsolete."

"When he opened them, his MacBook and monitors were gone and his Spotify playlist "Coffee Shop Background Noises" replaced by the screeching, static-filled sound of a 28.8k modem connecting to the internet. The First of the Three Spirits Standing before him was an ethereal, slightly translucent figure dressed in flannel and holding a copy of HTML for Dummies. "I am the Ghost of UX Past," the figure said, its voice crackling like a 32-kbps RealAudio. "Come with me.""

"Suddenly, Ulysses was back in 1995. He saw an attic. A solitary figure sat hunched over a CRT monitor, coding in what looked like a very old-school Apple Notes, typing on a keyboard that seemed way too clunky and loud. "Is that ... a developer?" Ulysses asked. "No," the Ghost corrected. "That is Max. He's what's called a webmaster. In this era, there are no silos. He designs the page, writes the HTML, configures the server, and crops the JPEGs in Photoshop."

Ulysses Xavier, a UX designer with many titles, scrolls LinkedIn on Christmas Eve and feels his career made obsolete by AI. He laments losing the days when designers owned research and journeys. A sudden transformation replaces his modern setup with the sound of a 28.8k modem and conjures the Ghost of UX Past. The ghost transports him to 1995, where a lone webmaster named Max handles design, HTML, server configuration, and image editing. The scene highlights an era without silos, when one practitioner combined multiple web and design responsibilities.

Read at Medium