The Return of the UX Generalist

This content originally appeared on NN/g latest articles and announcements and was authored by Sarah Gibbons, Evan Sunwall

Summary: AI advances make UX generalists valuable, reversing the trend toward specialization. Understanding multiple disciplines is increasingly important.

For years, our industry has debated (and sometimes derided) the concept of the “UX unicorn,” that mythical professional who can do it all: qualitative research, quantitative research, design, content strategy, and more. Over the past decade, we’ve concluded that specialization is more practical, especially as larger design organizations and focused roles became the norm. As AI reshapes our field, we’re seeing an interesting shift: the return of the generalist.

The Era of Specialization

In the past decade or two, UX has been highly specialized in large organizations with higher UX maturity . These organizations have typically employed:

This specialization makes sense — each area requires deep expertise and specific tools, and in large organizations, there’s been a high enough volume of work to justify employing a separate role. When structured correctly, these separate roles collaborate, bringing their specialized skills together to create well-rounded, vetted solutions.

This content originally appeared on NN/g latest articles and announcements and was authored by Sarah Gibbons, Evan Sunwall