A Quiet Year for UX (and What I’m Carrying Into 2026)

For me (and for many people I know) 2025 was a quieter year in the UX community.

Not quiet in the sense that nothing happened. Really the opposite. It was loud with layoffs, reorganizations, shrinking teams, and a constant background hum of What now? Some of us pulled back (Or maybe it was just me…?). I stopped posting. I stopped mentoring as much. I even stopped showing up to events the way I used to.

It was almost like I was an ostrich with my head stuck in the sand.

UX in ATX went dormant for some of the year. We had some wonderful people finding online programming so we could keep going. But attendance was low. So by November things got really quiet.

That wasn’t an accident or a lack of care. It was a reflection of where I (and many others) were putting our energy: survival, learning, recalibration.

A bit of context on UX in ATX

You know, UX in ATX didn’t start as a side project or a brand exercise.

It formed in late 2019, with our first meetup in January 2020, largely because there weren’t many active, practitioner-led UX groups in Austin at the time. There were design events, but not many spaces focused on honest, working-level conversations about UX practice.

Then COVID hit.

We were in the right place at the right time. Our events went to Zoom, and attendance skyrocketed. It was like that for a long time. But as companies went back to the office, Zoom fatigue became a real thing. Like a lot of community efforts, UX in ATX struggled to find its footing in a post-pandemic world. Remote work changed how people showed up. New organizations formed. Others went quiet. The ecosystem got bigger, but also more fragmented.

For a while, it wasn’t clear what role UX in ATX should play anymore. That uncertainty mirrored what many of us were feeling in our own work.

Looking back, 2025 made it clear that forcing momentum wasn’t the answer. Pausing was.

Now, coming back to it in 2026, the goal isn’t to recreate what UX in ATX was in 2020. It’s to create a space that reflects where the practice — and the people in it — actually are now.

A year of focus, not visibility

Personally, 2025 demanded focus.

I took on new projects that required real depth, not surface-level attention. I stepped into a large contract doing conversational design. It’s work that pushed me into unfamiliar territory and forced me to learn fast. I spent months skilling up, reading, experimenting, and trying to understand where AI was actually changing the work versus just changing the conversation.

That kind of learning doesn’t always look good on LinkedIn. It looks like “disappearing” for a while.

And honestly, I needed that.

Watching the ground shift under other designers

During the year, I had conversations with former students, some who are now well established in their careers and doing fine. But I also talked with a lot of designers who weren’t.

People who were doing everything right:

• Strong portfolios
• Solid experience
• Thoughtful interview prep
• Willingness to adapt

And still… nothing.

Over time, I found myself pulling back from mentoring and teaching — not because I stopped caring, but because my advice wasn’t landing the way it used to. It’s a strange and uncomfortable feeling to realize that the playbook you trusted no longer guarantees results.

How could I say I was helping if people were following the guidance and still struggling?

That question weighed on me more than I expected.

A quiet shift back to IC work

Another pattern I noticed: senior designers and researchers stepping away from management and back into individual contributor roles.

Not as a fallback. As a choice.

And almost universally, they seemed relieved.

There was something grounding about focusing on craft again — on solving problems directly instead of navigating layers of organizational complexity. I felt it too. In a year full of uncertainty, the work itself became a kind of anchor.

That felt important to name.

The uncomfortable truth about my own work

Here’s the part that’s hardest to talk about honestly.

Most of my opportunities in 2025 came from relationships, not my resume.

I didn’t land work because I had the perfect portfolio. I landed work because I’d spent 10–15 years building a network, staying in touch, helping others, and then (very intentionally) reaching back out when I needed to.

Yes, I shared my portfolio. But it wasn’t the deciding factor.

That doesn’t feel fair. And it doesn’t translate cleanly into advice for people earlier in their careers. But it’s true, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone.

Moving into 2026 without a crystal ball

As we head into 2026, I don’t feel like a soothsayer. If anything, my predictive powers feel broken.

I don’t know where the industry is headed in a clean, linear way. I don’t know which roles will stabilize, which will disappear, or what new titles we’ll all be trying to decode a year from now.

There’s a lot of uncertainty. I can really only see what’s directly in front of me, and I’m hoping—  (like many of you) that the path I’m on continues in a positive direction.

What I do feel certain about is this: AI isn’t slowing down. And designers can’t afford to stand still.

A beginner mindset, again

The only way I know how to respond to this moment is by returning (again) to a beginner mindset.

That means learning constantly. It means following people who’ve helped shape the field before (Jared Spool among them).
And it means paying attention to how the boundaries between product, design, and engineering are getting blurrier by the month.

The work is changing. The roles are changing. And expectations are changing.

I don’t think any of us fully have it figured out yet.

Why I’m shifting UX in ATX

That uncertainty is exactly why I want to shift UX in ATX — not as a showcase, but as a place to think out loud with other practitioners.

Not to pretend we have answers or to promise career fixes. But to sit with the questions together.

If 2025 was a year of retreat and recalibration, I hope 2026 can be a year of careful reconnection. I want us to be grounded, honest, and focused on the work in front of us.

That’s where I’m starting.