Is UX Moving Too Fast, or Are We Just Renaming the Same Problems?

I was catching up with my mentor about a potential lead. Everything was going great until he leaned in and asked: “So, what’s your exposure to Agentic Design?”

I froze.

In my head, sirens were going off. I’d heard the term "Agentic" buzzing around LinkedIn, but I hadn't sat down to "study" it yet. I mumbled something vague, my heart sinking into my stomach. As the call ended, a wave of pure imposter syndrome hit me. I’ve been a designer for 14 years. I’ve managed teams. I’ve led product strategy.

And yet, in that moment, I felt like a loser. I felt like the industry had finally moved faster than I could run, leaving me outdated and irrelevant.

The "Aha" Moment

I went straight to my desk, opened about twenty tabs, and started digging into what "Agentic Design" actually is.

And then I started laughing. Not because it was funny, but because of the sheer irony.

I realized that for the last several months, I’ve been doing exhaustive work on exactly this. I’ve been building systems where AI doesn’t just wait for a click, but proactively handles tasks, manages complex logic, and navigates "if-this-then-that" scenarios for the user. I’d spent weeks obsessing over guardrails, trust loops, and system transparency.

I had done the work. I just didn't know the marketing team had given it a shiny new name.

The Jargon Trap

This is the toxic cycle of UX in 2025. We are so busy actually solving the problems that we sometimes miss the memo when the industry decides to rebrand those problems.

"Agentic Design" sounds intimidating. It sounds like you need a PhD in Robotics. But if you’re designing for AI that takes action on behalf of a user—if you're moving from "designing screens" to "designing behaviors"—you’re already doing it.

The jargon caught up to the practice, not the other way around.

Why We Shouldn't Panic

It’s easy to feel like our skills have the shelf life of a banana. We’re told that if we aren’t "AI-First" or "Agentic-Ready," we’re dinosaurs.

But here’s what I learned today: The logic of a problem doesn’t change just because the vocabulary does.

My years of experience didn’t evaporate because I didn't recognize a buzzword. In fact, those years are exactly why I was able to do "Agentic" work so well—because I understand human intent, business logic, and the friction that happens when a user loses control to a system.

To the designer feeling "behind"

If you’ve ever sat in a meeting and felt that cold prickle of panic because someone dropped a term you didn't know: take a breath.

Don’t let the buzzwords bully you. Most of the time, the "new" thing is just an evolution of the "old" thing you’ve already mastered. We aren’t losers for not knowing the jargon; we’re just practitioners who are too busy in the trenches to read the latest trend report.