by Becoming Design Directors in an AI Era Where Everyone Thinks They’re a UX Designer
For years, UX teams built their influence through specialisation. Organisations created dedicated roles across research, interaction design, content, and visual systems, allowing design functions to mature through deep expertise.
As AI lowers the barrier to creating prototypes and flows, the real differentiator becomes judgment, interdisciplinary thinking, and the ability to navigate complexity across organisations. For senior UX leaders, the conversation raises a timely question: what happens to UX expertise when everyone suddenly believes they can do UX? This is exactly the tension Simon Truckenmüller, Principal UX at Mercedes-Benz.io, explores in this interview ahead of UX360 Europe 2026.
Watch the full conversation:
The Rise of Cross-Functional UX Leadership
Traditional UX career structures may no longer hold up in the AI era. The industry spent years encouraging deeper specialisation, but the next generation of UX leaders may need broader organisational awareness instead of narrower expertise.
The conversation suggests a future where value comes less from owning a specific discipline and more from connecting perspectives across business, technology, research, and customer experience.
UX Moves Beyond Delivery
There is also a broader repositioning happening inside organisations. UX is moving away from being seen primarily as a function that produces outputs and closer towards one that shapes direction.
That changes the nature of influence. The real challenge is no longer simply improving interfaces, but helping organisations navigate uncertainty, make better decisions, and recognise where meaningful customer understanding still matters inside increasingly automated environments.
Communication Becomes Infrastructure
One of the more subtle changes emerging from AI-driven workflows is that communication itself becomes operational. The ability to frame intent clearly, describe complexity, and guide collaboration starts to directly influence outcomes.
In that environment, articulation is no longer a soft skill sitting around design work. It becomes part of the work itself. Clarity, synthesis, and adaptability begin to carry the same strategic weight as traditional executional expertise once did.
Making UX Research Count at the Decision Level
For UX and research leaders, the focus is shifting from delivery to influence—ensuring insights shape decisions, not just inform them.
UX360 Europe 2026 brings together senior leaders working at that level. This is where leading organisations apply research to guide product strategy, examine case studies grounded in execution, and gain frameworks that link UX work directly to measurable business outcomes.
Connect with peers facing similar challenges and learn innovative methods and cutting-edge strategies from DHL, Google, Airbus, Mastercard, Volvo Cars, and more.
If you work in or with UX, research, or product teams, this is directly relevant to your role.
UX360 Europe 2026 | June 23–24 | Berlin, Germany
Regular Rate Ends May 23 — register now.
