Is UX Design too Saturated? (2024)

I see this phrase thrown around a lot in the design world. Especially by industry designers who poke fun at design certificates or young designers having trouble breaking into the industry. There is this common train of thought that somehow “UX Design is saturated” — So let's address it.

Who says so?

There's tons of anecdotes from in-person conversation to LinkedIn and TikTok. I found a reddit post saying, “The 20-teens era of UX was fun, but it is now in the past.” They go on to say, “it’s time to build new skills. This is not to say the 2020s will have no full-time UX positions, but those will mostly be occupied by the best of the best, a tiny percentage of the total competition. If you’re able to land a full-time UX position during the early 2020s, recognize what a privilege that is.” This was not posted recently, it was 2 years ago — Yet this feeling continues to prevail.

In the present day, even more people I talk to feel like this is the reality of UX Design. But, I don’t think it has to be this way. The Redditor speaks to something interesting, “it’s time to build new skills.” I think this is the main take away from their opinion. A new skill — This doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be different from UX, just a new skill, possibly within the UX umbrella.

A new skill can get you far now as jobs become more narrow and niche in areas of design. Many people tend to define saturation as competition, but to me when we use this language we belittle the concept of competition. To me saturation and competition are different terms. Saturation would be UX beyond the point of being necessary, and to that I would never agree on. There is still a lot of work to be done in UX.

Is UX Design spanning across industries? Is it becoming part of everybody's job? Not in a meaningful way — Most people still have no idea what you mean when you say “UX,” and even if the term is being thrown around by the Marketing Teams of the World, actually implementation of concepts is minuscule. Is there too many people learning UX Design skills than there are viable job openings? Is the market too competitive? Let us take a look.

Saturation as Competitiveness?

Let me start by saying this: If you’re getting hired it is because they think you would be a great fit, and help benefit the company. Not because they want to be nice or somebody owes you a job.

Honestly from my experience as a junior designer, and from my UX friends who are on the job search at this moment, UX Design can be a very competitive role. We can even look to online job boards. The amount of applications on LinkedIn for people applying to entry-level UX Design at say Meta or IBM can get into the hundreds, and that is only one role, and limited to what job searchers see.

When I was looking for internships and for junior design roles around 2020, the competitiveness was crazy. We are talking Human-Computer Interaction Masters students applying to underpaid internships just to try and get professional experience.

Why is UX Design so hard to break into? I had one of my friends float the idea that there is an abundance of Junior Designers, but not Senior Designers, or at least designers who know how to manage design teams effectively. This appears to be true, the market expanded exponentially in the 2010s all the way into the 2020s. There was more demand for this new role than there were experienced designers and now as the expansion continued and everyone piled on while growth continues, experienced and skilled senior designers are few and far between in the current market.

So if it is competitive — We can’t really complain. Every career is competitive. All our friends in graphic design, to product managers, to software engineers, and any other job you can think of that gives good pay is competitive.

This isn’t a new finding, design has always be competitive!

The only question left for us to answer related to the idea of competitiveness is, do you actually want to be a UX Designer? Or — Is there another reason you’ve decided to take this career path? If you have a passion for UX, want to learn, are a hard worker, and can communicate with others effectively, than competitiveness should not bother you, because those traits are what can get anyone a career in the field they love, no matter what it is.

UX Design isn’t this easy to learn skill that will make you six-figures that many people make it out to be. It is competitive, and if that means saturation, then yes, UX is saturated with junior and inexperienced designers who want UX jobs.

If UX is your dream career the outlook is still very good, and I have high hopes for the coming years.

The Good News

Adaption from companies is still on the upward trend, UX is being thrown around everywhere, but still many companies are reluctant to allocate salaries to these roles that they still might not quite understand the value of.

With this said, UX Design is at a competitive level especially for entry-level roles.

We don’t know what UX will look like in a couple years but my bet is we’re going even further down the rabbit hole of design. All the skills of design, research, interactions, usability, and experiences are being separated out.

In Conclusion: It Is Deeper Than That.

Most people mistake UX Design as this single role that encompasses it all, but UX Design goes deep.

UX Designer, Experience Designer, UI Designer, & Product Designer.

Although a lot of people use these terms interchangeably. These are all different jobs.

And it is not just that, it goes even deeper: UX Developer, User Researcher, Information Architect, UX Architect, Interaction Designer, Usability Engineer, UX Analyst, User Experience Strategy…

These are all different things!

I think people who are asking if UX is oversaturated need to ask themselves, “what do I want to do or accomplish within the field of UX?”

If your goal is to still be a general UX Designer, then yes, competition is inevitable. Keep learning. A Bachelor’s of Science in UX Design with internship experience got me 20+ rejections before I landed my current UX job.

So… Next time you think to yourself that UX is saturated, ask yourself, “what part of UX is saturated?” Because UX is much more than one skill.