I've been doing UX and UI for many years. I just returned to it two years ago, having been an art director for about 10 years in between.
Its been really exciting for these two years and I'm even coming up to some new interesting projects, but a lot of times I'm really not feeling it. I think it's probably also because I'm alone in a small team. The team is great, ultra supportive, great bunch of people.
Still, often I feel like my talents should be in programming somewhere. But definitely not web development. I've done that in the beginning of my career and I never want to do it again. I think that currently UX is best positioned to be one of tyne most important professions in the digital space. Our tools will evolve closer and closer to the actual apps and we will need less and less engineers between prototypes and final apps. Why would I want to be a programmer?
I just have this jearning of writing stuff down in a code and that it works exactly like I want to. Design is flimsy by nature. It's not mathematics.
Its a weird feeling I often get. I like ux. I'll for sure stay longer and see where it goes.
I was feeling a certain way about UX too and the industry is currently requiring designers to be more than designers, which to me kind of sucks but a necessary path. At my current job I’ve been diversifying my skill set with product, eng, & sales knowledge that I’ve got just from being pulled into other short-staffed opportunities. I didn’t even want to but I did and I’m happy I learned it
I’m going back to school next month to finish my BA in business administration and try and see what opportunities I can bring my thought set to in the future. The act of digital designing was never long term for me, but I do love to solve problems at the end of the day. My background is consulting so that’s fueled a lot of that drive
RE your tools comment - I know tools will evolve to help us and that might spell doom for the workforce if there’s a level of confidence that POs find to automate everything they need…copywriters went first and this might be a risk for designers next unless we’re shepherding the process