AI is good at the mathematical half of this job, which is code. It's not good at the part that makes a product feel like something. Here's where I think that leaves designers by 2028.
Half these job postings mean a real senior IC track with ownership. The other half mean two jobs for one salary. Here's how to tell them apart.
Clients now arrive with a working Lovable prototype before the first design conversation happens, and that's quietly breaking the brief, and I often hate it.
Web3 isn't dead. The solo, freelance version of it mostly is. What's left in 2026 is corporate, funded, and hiring full time.
Most product designers are working blind to how the thing actually gets built. A CS degree closes that gap, and it changes what you're allowed to propose.
The lesson wasn't about affordances. It was about how differently people remember the same design, and why that gap is the actual job.