I don't think UX/UI is dead… I think AI has made it one of the most valuable skills I've ever learnt.

A few years ago, I signed up to study UX/UI through Love Circular.

At the time, I wasn't planning on becoming a designer.

I wasn't planning on building websites.

And I definitely wasn't expecting that a few years later I'd be spending my evenings rebuilding Balloonology almost entirely through AI.

I was just curious.

I've always been fascinated by why people behave the way they do.

Why one website instantly feels premium.

Why another makes you want to leave within seconds.

Why one button gets clicked and another gets completely ignored.

Back then, I thought I was learning design.

Looking back…

I was really learning how people think.

I remember learning about things I'd never even heard of before.

Visual hierarchy.

Typography.

Whitespace.

Eyebrows.

Hero sections.

Information architecture.

Cognitive load.

Accessibility.

The psychology behind colour.

At the time I remember thinking…

"This is interesting… but will I ever actually use it?"

Fast forward to today.

I'm rebuilding Balloonology through AI and vibe coding.

And honestly…

Those lessons have quietly become one of the biggest advantages I've had.

One thing I've found really interesting recently is seeing people say that UX/UI is becoming obsolete because of vibe coding.

Personally…

I think it's done the complete opposite.

Vibe coding has made it easier than ever to build a website.

It hasn't made it easier to build a great one.

There's a huge difference.

AI can absolutely generate beautiful interfaces.

But beautiful doesn't automatically mean intuitive.

It doesn't know where your customer's eye should naturally go first.

It doesn't know whether your headline answers their biggest question within the first three seconds.

It doesn't know if your typography creates confidence or confusion.

It doesn't know whether your call-to-action is competing with your navigation.

It doesn't know why a customer abandons halfway through your booking journey.

That's where I think understanding UX/UI becomes your edge.

It's the difference between asking AI:

"Build me a homepage."

…and asking:

"Build me a homepage where the user immediately understands what Balloonology does, naturally follows a clear visual hierarchy, feels reassured enough to trust us with one of the most important moments in their relationship and is guided towards a single action with as little friction as possible."

Same AI.

Completely different result.

Not because the model changed.

Because the thinking behind the prompt changed.

And that's probably been my biggest lesson.

People keep talking about AI replacing skills.

I actually think it's rewarding people who've invested time learning them.

Psychology helps me understand behaviour.

UX helps me understand digital behaviour.

Copywriting helps me communicate value.

Hospitality helps me understand how people remember experiences.

Technology consulting has taught me how to break complex problems into smaller ones.

Now AI allows me to bring all of those things together.

Which is why I still believe prompt engineering matters.

Not because it's about writing clever prompts.

But because it's about structured thinking.

Understanding the objective.

Understanding the user.

Understanding the constraints.

Understanding the outcome you're trying to create.

The prompt is simply the final expression of that thinking.

The more I build, the more I realise AI isn't replacing expertise.

It's amplifying it.

And that brings me to something I've been thinking about a lot recently…

Maybe learning is never really wasted.

Looking back, so many of the things I've learnt over the years felt completely unrelated at the time.

Studying Psychology.

Working in technology transformation.

Learning UX/UI through Love Circular.

Reading DotCom Secrets by Russell Brunson.

Watching countless Alex Hormozi videos on value propositions and clarity.

Learning from Dan Koe's approach to writing and simplicity.

Even spending time understanding HTML and CSS through Code First Girls because I simply wanted to know how websites worked.

None of those things felt connected.

Until now.

Now, every time I sit down to build Balloonology, they're all in the room with me.

When I'm rewriting a headline for the tenth time, I hear Alex reminding me that clarity beats cleverness.

When I'm thinking about the customer's journey through my website, Russell's teachings on reducing friction and guiding people through a journey come flooding back.

When I'm stripping away unnecessary words, Dan's philosophy on simplicity creeps into my thinking.

And when I'm deciding where a button should sit, how much whitespace it needs or whether my typography is doing its job, I find myself thinking back to those evenings learning UX/UI through Love Circular.

It's funny really.

None of these people have ever worked on Balloonology.

Yet they've all played a part in building it.

So, a genuine thank you.

To the founders of Love Circular, thank you for creating a programme that gave me a foundation in UX/UI and design thinking. I had absolutely no idea how valuable those lessons would become.

To Mark Johnes, thank you for opening my eyes to the world of product design. You taught us to ask "why?" before "what?" and to see every digital experience through the eyes of the user. Looking back, that way of thinking has shaped far more than the way I design—it has shaped the way I solve problems, build products and think about every experience I create.

To Russell Brunson, thank you for changing the way I think about customer journeys.

To Alex Hormozi, thank you for making me obsessed with clarity.

To Dan Koe, thank you for reminding me that simplicity is often the hardest thing to achieve.

And finally…

To AI.

Not for replacing any of those lessons.

But for giving me a place to finally use them all at once.

Because maybe that's the biggest thing I've learnt through this whole journey.

AI hasn't made knowledge obsolete.

It's made curiosity compound.

And I don't think that's talked about enough.