Ireland’s UX Scene and Layoffs: AI Isn’t the Problem. It’s an Opportunity

The hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth about AI wiping out UX jobs in Ireland would be more convincing if Ireland actually a meaningful UX industry to wipe out. Invest in soft-skill acquisition and refocus.

Let’s be honest. Irish UX is largely a fiction. A handful of fancy-titled roles in Big Tech’s Dublin campuses - researcher, experience strategist, design lead - that exist to justify the kombucha-on-tap budget while the decision-making and most of the real work is done in the USA. Strip that crowd out and what’s left? Small “design” agencies doing marketing websites and loyalty apps, billing clients for wireframes and colourways nobody cares about, but are a nice big earner. As for public sector UX? PowerPoint karaoke cosplay, a solution hanging on the end of a lanyard in the canteen. Any visual design is outsourced to the crowd above using public money flung their way by some manager who doesn’t even look the part of a design professional.

Don’t knock it. You’ll learn more than you will in college or down the accelerator (image via ChatGPT)

Then, there’s the tech bro startup ecosystem (beloved of the Business Post lot), where UX means someone watched three YouTube tutorials on user journeys before the seed round, and got a few tattoos and a gilet with the words “Problem solver” on it. “We’re very design-led” in Irish startup-speak translates reliably as: a Notion board and strong opinions about fonts pontificated at some “fireside chat” down the local accelerator hub with the diversity-approved tech bros and girl bosses.

Buzzing around all this ca-ca like a dying horsefly are Ireland’s art and design colleges and institutes. These tiresome paint-sloppers and scribblers spotted a lucrative opportunity, slapped “UX” on existing graphic design curricula, lifted a load of stuff off the NN Group website and began churning out graduates clutching portfolios of hypothetical redesigns of the Dublin Bikes app who couldn’t even talk to people. Industry relevance asserted loudly, demonstrated rarely.

The real problem isn’t AI. It’s that Irish UX is mostly pixel-pushing and visual decoration with a new name. That’s not a discipline. That’s a mood board. What really suffered as a result was the soft-skills of listening, persuading, making compromises, defusing situations, managing risk, and bringing people along with you. The adults in the room. The soft skills.

If you are laid off or about to be in Ireland, then drop the “UXer” BS. Try looking for jobs in general management, administration, or product and project management. There are hundreds of small to medium sized companies in Ireland crying out for an adult in the room who has a bit of cop-on. Someone who can actually talk to people and relate in human terms. Someone with hands-on team and leadership skills. Spending any redundancy money on coffee and meeting people to build relationships in those SMEs is a better ROI than poring over Indeed and LinkedIn for “UX jobs”.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating — Oscar Wilde (Irish). Another shameless use of Claude AI.

AI is there too in those little companies, so go and build real applicable soft skills they want: listening, communicating, problem solving, persuading, dealing with disappointment, managing risky situations showing direction, speaking with people face-to-face. How? Get a job on a supermarket checkout or stacking shelves and interact with real people. Or how about a job as a postman? Your An Post delivery driver navigates genuine human needs, reads context without a research brief, solves all sorts of problems in all weathers, and deals with difficult people every day for little thanks. That’s a real human-centred design solution.

AI can’t replicate soft-skills. A pixel-pusher with a UX title can’t either, and won’t get them by doing selfies at “design” and “UX” meetups. Shelves that stack up will yield better results than what you stack up in a portfolio or profile on LinkedIn.