Digital Insights

Every year around this time, I start seeing the prediction pieces roll in. "The year of X!" they declare. "Y will change everything!" And every year, I find myself wincing a little, because most of these predictions age about as well as milk left on a radiator.So rather than trying to predict the future (I learned my lesson after confidently declaring QR codes were dead in 2019), I want to talk about what I'm seeing among the UX professionals I work with, and what I think it means for 2026.The uncomfortable realityLet me start with the bit nobody wants to hear. UX is on the corporate chopping block again. If you've been in this industry long enough, you'll recognize the pattern. We saw it after the dot-com bust. We saw hints of it during various economic downturns. And we're seeing it now.Some folks think rebranding will save us. We tried that before, remember? We went from "usability" to "UX" and it bought us some time. But slapping a new label on the tin doesn't change what's inside.The interesting thing is