What Ux Designers Actually Need To Survive The Ai Era

TITLE: What UX designers actually need to survive the AI era CHANNEL: Heigi Jeong DATE: 2026-04-28 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Thank you so much for making your time to be here. It was really beautiful day out here. I landed in New York on Monday. It’s been so cold since then and this was the most beautiful day I’ve seen since I got here. So, I’m really glad that all of you decide to be here. Hope you can make a meaningful time together. As Brian just uh gave a very warm introduction, I’m Hi. I’ll be the first presenter of the event today. And uh what I’m going to talk about is the timely skills product designers need now in 2026. So on that note um before I jump into topic I wanted to talk a little bit about myself or quite a bit about myself. Um I am currently a senior product designer at Lyft. That photo on the left was taken at the New York office a couple of days ago when I was visiting. And uh before Lyft I was at Capital One. That’s the photo on the right. When I was at Capital One office and before these two companies, I was at different fintech startups, sometimes B2B companies or sometimes 10% startups, too. And fun fact, these photos are two years apart, but I was wearing the exact same vest. So, I guess I really like wearing it when I go to the office. A little more formal than what I normally wear. And uh outside of my nineto-five job, I am a content creator uh influencer. Um so I started this a year ago. Um I got blessed by algorithm. So I’m glad the account grew very fast and it’s been a really interesting um challenging journey. I found it really difficult to understand like what people want to see from me but at the same time I really like the feeling of connecting with people. Yes, internet has its own harms but at the same time um when I feel connected with people I just see the more brighter side of it. And a little more about my background. I am originally from Korea. The photo on the left is when I graduated from my undergrad in Korea. And the photo on the right, I’m based in Toronto, Canada, but the photo is actually in the New York City that I took last year. So, um I I’m based in Toronto in Canada. Uh I have been moving around a lot in Canada, but that’s where I am now. So, on that note, let’s get into the topic. I wanted to start with this question. What do you think is on every product designer’s mind these days? Like literally every day all of the product designers think about Yes, you’re right. AI. Um, but not just AI, AI dot dot dot crying face. That’s how I feel about it and that’s how I found most of the product designers feel about it or honestly most of people feel about these days no matter they are in the tech industry or in in different industries. And um when I think about AI, these are the memes I found resonating. Claude just dropped another update and I start tearing up and they literally drop updates like every day if it’s not every the other day and I was learning and I’m like I was just catching up on and you just dropped new one. I have to learn it tonight otherwise I’m going to be behind on it. And the next meme I found is me trying to keep up with the 100 new AI design tools launched every day. So me focusing on one new AI tool while there are a ton of AI other tools like drowning and I’m like oh my gosh they’re all dying I don’t have time for all of them. So that’s how I genuinely feel and uh I found a lot of designers in these industries uh feel that way. So going back to this AI dot dot dot I don’t think it’s just this fancy tools that we pay a lot of attention to. um they’re all really great tools have been democratizing a lot of skills that was limited to um specific experts but at the same time I think on the other side of this bright side is something deeper and something more emotional and these are all the honest thoughts that I found we share which is like when is my job getting replaced is product design going to be a thing like in five years like dang I know nothing about AI and seems like I’m behind of everyone and like what the heck another update like I should learn about it or everything I learned last month is too old now. Let’s say last month maybe I could tell my corkers like this is a new AI tool I learned you all got to do it but now it’s old now. um and I don’t know how to keep up with it and again the thought around like aren’t we all just getting unemployed soon like when is it happening and some exhaustion coming from it and uh I want to say the reality is this is not just our anxiety this is not just our anxious thought or delusional thought this is the reality these are some of the articles I found released from like a couple of months ago or this month um layoff in tech always always has been a thing but now AI is accelerating it even more. It’s driving it even further. I have a lot of friends who got uh laid off like this year and honestly I wake up thinking like maybe it’s going to be next like the reality is there. So for that reason, we spend a lot of time like learning new AI tools like out of FOMO like I don’t want to get laid off laid off like maybe if I learn AI tools more maybe I’m going to get laid off later than most of people in the industry. So we spent a lot of time learning it which is great um catching up with what’s happening in the industry but at the same time I want us to like pause here for a couple of minutes and actually take a step back um beyond just learning new AI tools because getting better at AI tools and picking up more AI knowledge itself doesn’t solve all the problems. Yes, it’s there. we got to learn it. But that’s not the only thing we need to do now. So on that note, as we take a step back, I want us to think about what AI is actually good at versus what AI is bad at. They’re not perfect at everything. So what AI is good at, they’re good at analyzing data data or recognizing pattern as we all know. They’re really good at skimming through like really massive data sets and finding the patterns and similarities and anomalies and telling us the analysis result much faster than the human. And second thing um they’re really good at automating repet repetitive tests such as naming all the Figma layers. It used to be frame one 05 but then now they named into like something more useful or writing the code or building a prototype based on the existing UX patterns. They’re really good at it. They’re also really good at re combining existing ideas, pulling in um everything they have seen the world and turning into what I was looking for. But at the same time, AI is bad at those three things. Understanding nuance. AI is really bad at understanding like sarcasm or passive aggressiveness. If it’s aggressive, they’re going to pick it up because it’s very direct. But passive aggressiveness that’s so subtle, they’re also bad at picking up the humor. like something that humans can read the room and understand from something very subtle. AI is not really good at that. And second thing is AI is bad at having a common sense. I believe all of us experience like using chat and you tell it to do something but it’s just not following the common sense and now you have to verbalize everything that you thought is very common and normal and AI does not understand it. And third thing AI is bad at is handling unfamiliar scenarios. So how AI functions is again pulling in what they have seen out there and then respond to what they see here. But if it’s a very new situation they didn’t get any input on they are going to be very bad at responding to it. But beyond what AI is bad at I want us to think about what AI cannot do. So this is beyond what they’re bad at. First is creating original ideas. AI will never give you something that has not existed in the world. That’s just how AI is built. So it will it probably can draw your portrait in the style of Picasso or Van Go in a very similar way similar way. But then it will never draw your portrait in the art style that has never existed in this world because AI is not going to create it. And second thing AI cannot do is building trust or relationship. So think about like who you trust or have good relationship with. It comes from the risk and vulnerability you have with that people. you know that oh this person acts like that when they have a bad day and they make a mistake and they this is how they apologize this is how you make it up to so trust trust and relationship is coming from the vulnerability and AI has does not have that that’s why AI is not going to be responsible or accountable accountable for any tasks you do at work and last thing AI cannot do is empathizing or motivating so the empathy that AI shows is based on what they learn They simulate the emotional reaction, but it’s not that they’re going to feel the feeling you share with AI. Um, and also it’s not going to motivate you. Think about how many times Chachi Pitty told you this is an excellent question and you didn’t feel flattered, right? It tells you like this is such a great idea and you’re like, yeah, of course you tell me all the time. You don’t feel it compared to if a human tells you, hey, that was a really great question. You’re like, oh, maybe I ask a great great question. Right? So empathizing and motivate AI is not going to do it. And uh what the reason I have been talking about this is there’s three things AI cannot do. It goes into one skill which is storytelling. And that’s the number one skill I would want us to focus on. In terms of storytelling, this is the quote I really like. It’s very cliche. It’s probably overly used um quote in marketing world. So it says facts tell but stories sell. I found this quote really applicable to any industry that we can think of. So facts the screens we design, the codes we write, um the prototype we built, it’s going to tell the number. Yes, it’s going to tell something the fact, but what helps you sell it is the story. So story really goes a long way. And on that note, um, going back to this AI tools that we looked into earlier as these tools and many many other tools are available, anyone can build anything. I’m a designer now. I can launch an app without talking to an engineer. And an engineer can design something without talking to me at all. So, anyone can build everything. Cool. And uh in this age because everyone can build everything. It’s not about building fast or many anymore. Everyone can do it like um any time like overnight while you’re sleeping. So it being fast or being many what you built it’s not going to be a gamecher. But what matters now is how you’re going to sell it. It’s about how you’re going to sell it through your stories. And storytelling is the best way to sell something. And on that note, what do you think is a really good story? Like what’s the story that you’re like, “Ah, that story was really, really good.” And uh to be more specific, how can we make a good story for our audience? Something that will help our audience to remember it and feel something out of it. And I would say the clearest sign of a good story is when the audience roots for the protagonist success. you see the protagonist is struggling and then you’re like, “Oh, I feel for them. I want them to be successful. I want them to succeed.” So, that’s a clear sign when um the presenter delivered a really good story. And I found superhero story is a really great example for that. Um I got the photos of the Marvel. Um I grew up in Korea. I didn’t much I didn’t watch uh much of Marvel stories, but whichever background you have, every culture has their own superhero story. So what does this um superhero story does is they follow the hero’s journey. You think about every superhero that you can think of and then they start with some kind of conflict. Maybe they got abandoned by the parents or the world is falling apart or now they got kicked out of the village they grew up in. Um so that first part is the conflict and now they have the failed attempts. They try to do something like oh let me save the world. Let me be a nice person. let me help other people and uh a lot of those attempts go into failure and then last step is the breakthrough. They make their final action and finally works and that’s how we enter the phase of like everyone happily lived ever after. So the hero’s journey consists of this three factors and uh I now want to talk about how can we actually replicate this at work. Okay, the hero’s journey is really good, but how can we position ourselves like that at work? So this is the structure I just showed you. So the hero’s journey consists of first conflict and if second step is failed attempts. Not all the things have failed attempts and in that case we got to talk about the cost of conflict and then last step is breakthroughs and applying this to work. Conflict means the business or user problem or the problem that your team has experienced. And failed attempts means past initiatives that your team or other teams worked on and did not pan out. Or if you don’t have failed attempts, you it’s your time to talk about the cost of conflict, which is the negative impact of the problem. And you can really expand on how bad the problem was, like how severely it was affecting the team and the business. And last step, it’s time for you to position you, your team, and your project as the breakthrough. See, I’m positioning this amazing project as the final solution that’s solving all the problems that other teams could not solve. So, that’s the step you’re going to go through and I want to drop a very specific example so you can apply it to your working situation. So let’s say we’re presenting a project at work and uh we can introduce it as this project is to reduce the churn rate. It’s fine. Yeah, it’s it’s okay. Yeah, it’s just the work statement you’re going to going to hear from any work. It’s fine. It does the job. But the audience is not going to really engage with their story. Behind your Zoom call, they have some kids crying next to them or they have some coffee machine like just breaking down or maybe the car on the street is really loud. They’re going to listen to you, but they’re not going to really focus on you or like engage with the project that you’re going to share. So, what you can do is following this the hero’s journey um framework. So, first is conflict. We’re going to talk about in this meeting we’re going to talk about the problem the business has been experiencing in the past three quarters. We have been seeing consistent drop off of users 15% every month after three months of signing up to our product. This has been costing to our business a lot. To be more specific, it created a loss of this many dollars of marketing every month. So this marketing budget gets wasted because marketing team spends a lot of money on acquiring new users and uh improving the brand awareness. So people have better awareness of the brand and then more people get interested in joining our product. Well, that money got wasted and past projects like this project or that project did not meaningfully improve the churn rate and from those failed uh attempts we learned that what actually mattered is this xyz meaningful insight and leveraging this important lesson and we’re going to the breakthrough part. We discovered that users who turned consistently did this very unique behavior especially after two weeks of acquisition. So our learning is that oh this two weeks of acquisition after that um that’s the best time for us to tackle this user churn problem. So for that reason our project targeted that unique behavior we found from users and res resulted in reducing the churn rate by 8%. And from now on I’m going to walk you through the design solution we built. And from there your audience will be like oh oh your team tried something and you failed and like oh this is the best solution you found. They already gone through the here’s journey very quickly in a way that they will get more interested in the story you were talking about. So going back to this slide I said earlier um when the audience roots for the protagonist success you have to think of it as when you apply to work the audience is your stakeholder your manager or product manager engineers or CTO CEO everyone you have to get the buy in from um for your project to be successful and the protagonist here is you or your project or your team in a way that your stakeholder will be like, “Oh, I want this team’s project to be successful. I want their stuff to go well.” So, that’s how you can apply um the trait of a good story um into the project that you’re working on. So, going back to the structure, I want to say the most important part is the second one. failed attempts, cost of conflict, like all the ugly side that you normally don’t want to talk about, especially at work because it doesn’t sound great, but that’s what makes a story really, really, really interesting. Imagine there’s just a flat perfect story like, oh, there was a problem and I solved it immediately and you’re like, yeah, okay, good for you. But if you saw someone or the team struggling through something, then that’s how the audience starts rooting for you. And I want to tell you that this is the part AI cannot generate. You have all these ugly sides because you are the living human living in this world and making the mistakes out of it. And AI is not going to create that for you because AI is not just walking around running into all the people with different personalities and like unique problems of the team. And at this point you may think like but AI can write me a story. I asked Claude yesterday night and wrote me a pretty good story. like what about that? And I want to tell you, yes, it will write you a story, but that’s something nonoral that’s copy and pasted and perfectly polished. And think about a very perfectly polished story. You’re not going to engage with it. It’s very flat. And since it’s copy and pasted, maybe it will pull in some articles that someone wrote about the work conflict they wrote about. they’ll maybe uh recombine that into the story that you can copy, but it’s not going to give you an original story because AI was not at your work talking to your co-workers and your managers. They’re not doing it for you. So, I want to tell you the most interesting part of your story comes from the your originality. And out of your originality, what people find most interesting are usually not the beautiful sides like, oh, I got promoted to this role. I moved to this company, I got a raise by this much. All the beautiful sides is like, yeah, okay, great. But like they don’t have strong emotional engagement to it. What people had the strongest interest in is the ugly sides. Such as what you and your team were struggling with and how did it affected the team in a negative way. um what you or the team like misinterpreted, what was an oversight, what was the mistake you you made and why was there a conflict and how did you convince the team and what were all the push backs and frictions you experienced along the way? So as you share this, this is what makes your story much more engaging, unique and compelling. So now I got this blank slide. I was thinking a lot about how I could wrap up what I have prepared for you and give you one takeaway to step away with when you leave this room later and uh I decided to go back to my originality which is my background in Korean. And this is the expression I really like in Korean. I’ll read it as and that means if I translate it word by word it means to move move people’s hurts and to be more contextual. means to resonate with somebody. You touch them emotionally or you inspire them or you sometimes steer something in the people. So that’s the expression that I really like and I wanted to tell you a good story is the one that moves people’s hurt. Story is a really great tool to engage someone emotionally which AI a lot of times lack at. So this is a one quote I hope you can remember as the only takeaway out of my talk is the stories that move people’s hurts um come from your lived experience and your originality story again is a really great tool. So how I hope you can leverage it as something that really unique to you that you cannot replicate or ask AI to generate even tonight um when you go back home brush your teeth and lie down on your bed you probably will forget about most of the things I talked about and in a few weeks or a few months you probably would have forgotten about me or how I looked where this was exactly but if my story moved your heart you will remember the feeling and story is a really strong way to give you certain feeling and that’s how you build something that’s going to get remembered by people. Thank you so much for listening.