The field has blown up and rebuilt itself three times in twenty years. This is the third.Everyone thinks AI is coming for design. The truth is uglier and older. The field has done this to itself twice before, and it’s about to do it again.The UX job market right now is genuinely grim.Jeff Sauro, PhD and Jim Lewis, PhD found that UX job postings are down 71 percent from their 2022 peak, and research postings are down even further. They also found that one in three organizations cut UX staff in a single year, the worst reading on record, worse than the one right after the 2008 financial crisis.When companies trimmed their teams, UX roles took a bigger share of the cuts than their headcount would predict. Open your feed on any given day and someone talented is announcing they’re leaving the field, or asking if they should.The excuse used to explain it is that AI came for us. The tools...