Designing your own path in an uncertain UX landscape with Catt Small
09/17/2026What if uncertainty isn’t something UX professionals need to survive — but an opportunity to reshape what comes next? Catt Small and Lou explore how designers can reclaim agency at a moment when familiar roles, tools, and assumptions about the industry are shifting. Drawing on her own evolution from web designer to staff designer, Catt argues that career paths aren’t fixed: designers can identify where they bring the most value and help shape roles around their strengths.
Catt and Lou discuss why today’s upheaval isn’t entirely new, how experimentation can help designers navigate ambiguity, and why the optimism that once surrounded technology has become more complicated. They also explore design’s role within the realities of business—and why making things better sometimes means slowing down, adding friction, asking harder questions, and helping organizations make more thoughtful decisions.
Catt, who will open the inaugural Shift UX conference, ultimately offers a hopeful message: even in uncertain times, designers have agency—and uncertainty can be an ideal time to make meaningful moves.
What you’ll learn from this episode
- How to shape a design career around your strengths rather than a prescribed path
- Why agency matters when roles, tools, and expectations are changing
- How today’s UX uncertainty echoes earlier periods of industry transformation
- Why designers increasingly help organizations explore possibilities and make better decisions
- How business realities complicate the goal of designing for people
- Why uncertainty can create opportunities to experiment, advocate, and make meaningful career moves
Q&A with Catt Small
Q: What should UX designers do when the UX job market and technology are changing rapidly?
A: Start by recognizing that uncertainty is not a signal to freeze. The UX industry has always changed: job titles evolve, tools shift, organizations reorganize, and new technology changes how teams work. What matters is understanding where you create the most value and making intentional choices about the problems, teams, and types of work you want to contribute to.
Rather than waiting for a clearly defined career path, designers can build agency by identifying their strengths, experimenting with new directions, and helping shape the role they need to do their best work. Times of uncertainty can be a particularly good time to make meaningful moves because old assumptions are already being questioned.
Q: What does responsible UX design look like in the current technology landscape?
A: Responsible UX design means asking harder questions about what a product enables, who benefits, who may be harmed, and whether speed or convenience is being prioritized at the expense of people. The technology industry has often treated innovation as automatically positive, but designers need to examine the real impacts of the systems they help create.
That requires designers to look beyond whether an experience is usable or visually polished. Responsible UX includes considering incentives, downstream effects, user autonomy, privacy, accessibility, misinformation, exclusion, and the social consequences of a product decision. Design is not neutral when it shapes what people can do, what they understand, and what choices are easiest to make.
Q: How can designers advocate for better product decisions?
A: Advocacy starts with connecting design concerns to the goals and language of the organization. If you want leaders to consider a user need, a risk, or an ethical concern, explain how it affects customer trust, product quality, adoption, retention, operational cost, or the company’s long-term reputation.
It also helps to bring evidence and options. Instead of only saying, “This is a bad idea,” show the user impact, describe the tradeoff, and propose a better path forward. Designers can use research, prototypes, scenarios, and clear storytelling to make abstract risks concrete. Good advocacy is not just criticism; it helps a team see a more responsible and effective choice.
Q: What is the best career advice for UX designers facing uncertainty?
A: Know yourself and understand the value you bring. The most useful career decisions are not based solely on what title appears next on a ladder. They come from knowing your strengths, your interests, the type of impact you want to have, and the conditions under which you can do your best work. A career is not a straight line, and you do not have to be told what kind of job you should have. In a changing UX landscape, self-awareness, adaptability, and a willingness to make intentional moves are forms of leadership.
Q: How can UX teams use uncertainty as an opportunity?
A: The key is not to romanticize uncertainty—it can be difficult and destabilizing. But when change is already happening, UX professionals have an opening to participate in shaping what comes next. Designers can use that moment to advocate for better decision-making, more intentional products, and career paths that reflect real value rather than outdated expectations.
Q: Why is uncertainty in UX a useful theme for Shift UX?
A: Uncertainty is already part of the reality many UX professionals are navigating. Roles are changing, teams are changing, tools are changing, and the expectations placed on design are changing. Shift UX creates space to talk honestly about that—not as a reason to panic, but as an opportunity to question assumptions about what a successful UX career or practice is supposed to look like.
Q: What will attendees learn from your Shift UX keynote, “Your Future is Nebulous—and Why That’s Good”?
A: I want attendees to leave with a more useful relationship to ambiguity. The goal is not to pretend that career changes, AI, shifting job titles, or organizational instability are easy. The goal is to see that a less certain future also makes room for experimentation, agency, and paths that may not have been visible before.
UX has changed many times before. Instead of waiting for the industry to provide a perfect next step, attendees can consider what they want to learn, what kind of impact they want to have, and how they can shape a role around their strengths and the needs they see around them. That is especially important when the traditional UX career ladder no longer reflects how work actually gets done.
About our guest
Catt Small is a Staff Product Designer who has done design work for companies of all sizes including Asana, Etsy, SoundCloud, and Nasdaq. She started coding around the age of 10 and designing at the age of 15. She graduated from SVA with a BFA in Graphic Design in 2011 and later received an MS in Integrated Digital Media from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering in 2016.
An observer at heart, Catt focuses on ways to improve the lives of people through design. She is interested in ways to increase empathy through interactive media. Many of her personal projects center around the human experience and tackle issues related to interpersonal relationships, self-expression, gender, and race. In addition to her product design work, Catt makes video games by herself and with friends. She is co-organizer of the Game Devs of Color Expo, an annual event that amplifies the creative power held by people of color in games. In her spare time, she writes about professional development and creates artwork of all kinds.
Quick reference guide
0:10 – Meet Catt Small (and her kittens), and learn about Catt and Lou’s ground rules for their conversation
3:27 – The career ladder is made up, so we should feel free to change it
7:26 – Embracing constant evolution rather than resisting change
10:20 – Advice for embracing change: know yourself
13:26 – Lessons gleaned from others
16:39 – A sale on book pre-orders
17:38 – UX returns to experimentation
21:28 – Tech’s optimism vs harder questions about progress and impact
24:47 – Designing for people while navigating the realities of business
26:57 – Shifting from removing friction to facilitating better decisions
29:32 – Finding agency and making meaningful moves
31:02 – About Shift UX 2026
32:08 – Catt’s gift for the audience
