Member-only story

Feel like quitting UX? You’re not alone

Chuck Rice
UX Collective
Published in
8 min readAug 30, 2022

The emotional cost of practicing UX, causing burnout, death by learning, and the quarter-life crisis.

Large emoji of an unamused face, an a series of smaller head emojis shouting at it.
An abstract illustration of a typical designer in a typical business, typically feeling “done with this”.

UX design is one of those fields where there isn’t, or wasn’t, a direct path into the practice, and as a result I feel we’re generally passionate about what we do. The problem with mixing passion and pleasure though, is you can start to become sick of it. Some days I think it’s simply burnout, but there’s definitely more to it—whether you’re sick of trying to break into the field, or just not changing the world the way you thought you would. Whatever the cause, I’ve outlined a few strategies you can use to take back control of your life.

If you need support, there’s help and information available such as Mental Health UK or Mental Health America.

Early warning signs

Earlier this year the media coined the term “The Great Resignation”—a phenomenon whereby a substantial part of the working population were resigning from their jobs all at once. It didn’t seem to be limited to any industry or profession, either. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, one study found two main reasons people were quitting:

  • better compensation
  • better work-life balance

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Published in UX Collective

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. Curated stories on UX, Visual & Product Design. https://linktr.ee/uxc

Written by Chuck Rice

Sr. Product Designer, DevX and Design Systems @ Moonpig 🌙🐷 • Figma Community Advocate • 🎓 Educator: chk.fyi/LearnFigma • 400k+ Medium views

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