Once, UX design was the flagship of the digital revolution. We were proud of making products that were simple, clear, and human-centered. We truly believed that good UX could make technology more humane.
But somewhere along the way, things went wrong. UX turned into one of those words everyone seems to know — yet few actually understand. Companies began to see UX as “making things pretty” or “following the design guidelines.”
If you’re a designer, you’ve probably heard it too often: “Just add an icon, make it fast.” Research gets cut, testing turns into stakeholder opinions, and eventually UX stops being about understanding behavior — and becomes pure decoration.
Why UX Lost Its Depth
The problem started when the profession began to fragment. In the 2010s, we divided ourselves into UX designers, UI designers, researchers, content designers, and product designers. Each person focused on their own layer of the experience — but the whole picture got lost.
UX also drifted away from business. Design teams focused on usability and clarity, while businesses wanted to see how design affects profit, retention, and loyalty. Without alignment, UX lost its strategic power and became a service function.
And the pace only got faster: Agile sprints, endless releases, AI automation, team reductions. There’s no time for deep thinking anymore — and UX, once about empathy and insight, became operational.
How the Design Industry Is Reacting
That’s why Experience Design is emerging. It’s not a trend. It’s a return to roots — a natural evolution of UX design.
If UX is about how something works, Experience Design asks why it matters and what a person feels while using it.
Big brands already know this. Airbnb no longer talks about “products” — it talks about the human experience of travel. Headspace designs not just meditation tools, but feelings of care and calm. Spotify builds emotional music experiences, not playlists. Even McDonald’s has shifted its slogan from “fast service” to “pleasant moments,” embedding emotion and context into its digital design language.
What’s Changing in the Approach
Traditional UX design focuses on screens and flows. Experience Design looks wider — at motivation, emotion, and environment. The goal is no longer just a usable interface, but a relationship: trust, empathy, and engagement.
And that means new metrics. Instead of clicks or CTR, we now care about retention, repeat behavior, and emotional response.
Nike, for example, tracks not only user activity but also when motivation drops — and adapts content to match that emotional state.
AI has become a powerful catalyst for this transformation. It generates text, designs interfaces, and analyzes patterns — freeing designers to focus on what truly matters: understanding why people do what they do.
Products are getting smarter, more contextual, and more conversational. And designers must learn to design relationships between human and machine, not just static screens.
The Calm Example
Take Calm, the meditation and sleep app. A traditional UX approach could focus on streamlining navigation, removing clicks, or improving load speed. But the Calm team went deeper: Why do people open the app at all?
They discovered that users weren’t chasing “meditation.” They were seeking peace of mind.
So Calm rebuilt the design around emotion: soft sounds, slow animations, personalized messages of support.
The result? Higher retention, more subscriptions, and countless reviews saying, “It feels like the app understands me.” That’s the essence of Experience Design — not just a convenient interface, but an emotional connection.
How We Measure Experience
Classic UX metrics like CTR or time-on-task still matter, but Experience Design introduces new emotional indicators:
- Trust in the product
- Return rates and repeat actions
- Brand perception after interaction
- Emotional tone of user feedback
Apple, for example, measures not only how people use its devices, but how they talk about them — in social media, reviews, and videos. For Apple, it’s not just “works great,” it’s “feels right.”
That’s emotional UX in action.
Where the Design Profession Is Heading
UX and CX are merging. User experience and customer experience are now one continuous story.
AI is not a threat — it’s an ally. It gives designers more space for creativity, empathy, and meaning.
Designers are becoming generalists again: researching, ideating, visualizing, and helping businesses understand why design matters.
The focus has shifted from interface to intention. An Experience Designer doesn’t ask, “What should I draw?” They ask, “What will this person feel — and why will they return?”
UX design isn’t dead. It’s evolving. It simply grew beyond screens. Experience Design brings design back to where it always belonged — to people.
Let’s agree on one thing: we no longer design buttons — we design relationships. A great product doesn’t just work. It earns trust and makes life feel a little better.
