Alexa, cancel these pseudo Product Designers

I recently had the chance to interact with a couple of product designers from the Bangalore startup scenes. The huddle also included a few who are quite active on the LinkedIn community - where they constantly talkabout craft, user empathy, design principles and what not! But when you really listen to what they are saying - they are just all fluff and no meat. They just want to beautify things for the sake of it. There’s no depth in understanding the users. When asked “What measures do you take to empathise with the users?”, this senior and ‘awarded’ designer casually answered - “ We just go with the VIBE!” I MEAN, REALLY? Looks like the marketing effort that goes into building their social profile is all these designers care about. The future of UXD scares me. Sorry for the betrayal, users. 💀