by Eric Ellis - User Experience and Design Strategy | AI and UX Leader
UX is evolving, not dying. Host Eric Ellis brings two decades of design leadership to conversations with UX veterans who've navigated everything from Web 2.0 to mobile to AI. These aren't tool tutorials or hot takes—they're strategic discussions about professional resilience and the irreplaceable human elements of design. New episodes monthly. Because the future of UX isn't about choosing between human and machine—it's about designing the fusion.
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Publishing Since
7/31/2025
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June 1, 2026
<p><strong>What if the clearest view of where UX is headed isn't inside our industry — but outside of it? </strong></p><p>Dr. Travis Bell spent 12 years in broadcast journalism before stepping back to study what happens when technology reshapes a profession from the inside out. </p><p>As an Associate Professor of Digital and Sports Media at the University of South Florida and a researcher focused on media framing, he's watched sports journalism get automated, consolidated, and fragmented — and he's drawn some uncomfortable conclusions about what gets lost when we let algorithms do the storytelling.</p><p>Sound familiar?</p><p>This conversation goes places most UX podcasts never do. We use sports media as a mirror to examine what's actually happening in design and product — the automation of craft, the return of the one-person band, the fragmentation of trusted sources, and the deep risk of AI trained on historically biased data presenting its output as objective truth.</p><p>Dr. Bell closes out Season 1 of UX Evolved. It's a fitting end to a season built on the premise that UX is evolving — not disappearing — and that the practitioners who will thrive are the ones willing to look beyond the tools and interrogate the craft itself.</p><ul><li>Guest: Dr. Travis Bell, Associate Professor of Digital & Sports Media, Director of Graduate Programs & Research, Zimmerman School of Advertising and Mass Communications, University of South Florida</li><li>Host: Eric Ellis, UX Evolved</li><li>📩 Newsletter: https://ericwebdesigner.substack.com/</li><li>💼 Connect with Eric: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericellisdesign</li></ul><p>#UXDesign #AIAndDesign #UXEvolved #MediaFraming #ProductDesign</p>
April 1, 2026
<p>Whitney Tolley was our first-ever returning guest on UX Evolved — and for good reason. When she joined us last time, she left us with a line that stuck: if designers keep seeing themselves as UI generators, they'll be replaced. A lot has happened since then.</p><p>Figma MCP is real. Agentic workflows are real. And Whitney — Design Director at Cloudbeds — has been living inside all of it. In this conversation, we go beyond the hype to talk about what's actually changing on design teams right now: how power dynamics between designers and engineers are shifting, why synthetic user research is a legitimate pre-screening layer (not a replacement for real humans), and what the role of design looks like when the cost of building collapses.</p><p>Her closing answer alone is worth the listen: she wasn't using AI wrong — she was using it to speed up a broken process instead of questioning whether that process needed to exist at all.</p><p><strong>In this episode:</strong></p><ul><li>00:00 — Introduction</li><li>01:22 — Has the definition of what designers own changed?</li><li>02:57 — Figma MCP and escaping "polish and fix" mode</li><li>04:38 — How AI is shifting power dynamics between design and engineering</li><li>06:11 — A real example: AI agents closing backlog bugs in 15 minutes</li><li>07:20 — What a designer's week actually looks like now</li><li>08:20 — Designers as trust builders in an AI-slop world</li><li>09:26 — AI collapses the build cycle — does prioritization change?</li><li>10:00 — Designing with context, not just coverage</li><li>12:09 — Is human judgment in research changing?</li><li>12:33 — How Whitney uses synthetic AI users in lean research</li><li>14:55 — AI-assisted heuristic evaluation: speed without replacing instinct</li><li>17:23 — The growing overlap between UX and product management</li><li>18:31 — Where does UX fit in agentic enterprise SaaS?</li><li>19:11 — The UX maturity model as a survival framework</li><li>20:52 — Does Figma have a future?</li><li>25:06 — Are your products agent-friendly? The question every team should be asking</li><li>26:10 — Who are we hiring in 2027? (Spoiler: unicorns)</li><li>29:18 — Specialization isn't dead — it's a quality gate</li><li>30:08 — "Fail fast" vs. "fail forward"</li><li>31:34 — Closing question: what do you wish you'd known when we first recorded?</li><li>32:16 — The biggest unlock: stop optimizing broken processes, rebuild them</li></ul><p>Connect with Whitney Tolley:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitneydoyle/Claire Vo's podcast (referenced in episode): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5X4_mYoiM8Connect with UX Evolved:Substack: https://ericwebdesigner.substack.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/uxevolvedUX Evolved is a podcast for UX professionals navigating the AI transformation of design. New episodes drop monthly.</p>
March 2, 2026
<p>"The biggest thing PMs get wrong about UX? That it's just about the UI. It's actually about psychology."</p><p>Blanca Barragan — PM at Versapay, Forbes Technology Council member — knows that the best product decisions happen when there's healthy tension between disciplines. </p><p>In this episode, we get into what actually happens when PMs and UX leads collaborate on AI products.</p><p><strong>What we cover:</strong>→ Why Blanca loves when designers tell her she's completely wrong→ The real PM/UX collaboration cadence (not the org chart version)→ Who owns the decision when AI can't deliver what the design promised→ What's happening when PMs start prototyping themselves→ The traditional UX skills AI teams are undervaluing→ Direct advice for UX leads worried about becoming irrelevant</p><p><strong>Guest:</strong> Blanca Barragan, Product Manager at Versapay & Forbes Technology Council Member</p><p><strong>Host:</strong> Eric Ellis, UX Leader with 20+ years navigating technology disruptions</p><p>For UX professionals worried about their relevance in an AI-first world: Blanca's betting on the psychology, the human insight, and the creative tension you bring to the table. Not the UI you generate.</p>
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UX is evolving, not dying. Host Eric Ellis brings two decades of design leadership to conversations with UX veterans who've navigated everything from Web 2.0 to mobile to AI. These aren't tool tutorials or hot takes—they're strategic discussions about professional resilience and the irreplaceable human elements of design.
New episodes monthly. Because the future of UX isn't about choosing between human and machine—it's about designing the fusion.
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