The Mismatch Between Designed UX and Lived Experience

In Part 1, we talked about what AI exposed, not what it broke.

This part goes one step further.

Because once the illusion of control fades, another tension becomes visible:
what designers intend is no longer what users experience.

This isn’t a failure of skill or craft. It’s a mismatch between how UX is designed and how experience now unfolds.

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Designers Design Flows. Users Experience Decisions.

Most UX work still relies on flows.

Flows imply order. They suggest that if a user does A, the system will respond with B. They make experience feel explainable, predictable, and intentional.

But intelligent systems don’t always follow flows. They infer. They prioritise. They optimise based on signals users never see.

When a system skips a step, changes a recommendation, or reshapes content dynamically, the experience isn’t broken but it’s no longer explained by the flow that was designed.

At that point, the question isn’t “Does the flow work?”
It’s “Does the user understand why the system chose this outcome?”

Designers Design States. Users Experience Transitions.

Traditional UX is comfortable with states.

Empty. Loading. Success. Error. Each state is named, designed, and reviewed. They give designers a sense of control over what users will encounter.

But in intelligent systems, the most meaningful moments often happen between states.

A pause feels different when a system is “thinking” rather than loading.
A suggestion feels different when it’s inferred rather than selected.
A delay feels different when intent is unclear.

Yet we often represent all of these moments with the same neutral patterns.

When transitions carry meaning but design treats them as technical artefacts, users fill in the gaps themselves usually with uncertainty.

What they experience isn’t the state.
It’s the ambiguity between states.

Designers Design Interfaces. Users Experience Behaviour.

Interfaces are shared.
Behaviour is not.

Over time, users learn how a system behaves — what it prioritises, what it ignores, and how it reacts when it’s uncertain. These lessons aren’t taught explicitly. They’re inferred through repeated interaction.

That’s why two users can use the same product and walk away with completely different impressions of it. The interface is identical. The behaviour they experienced is not.

And behaviour doesn’t live neatly in components or design specs. It accumulates slowly, shaped by data, feedback loops, and system decisions.

Which raises an uncomfortable realisation:
much of what users experience today is shaped by systems designers influence — but do not fully control.

When Experience Emerges, UX Shifts

The gap between designed UX and lived experience isn’t a sign that UX failed.

It’s a signal that experience is no longer bounded by what designers specify upfront. It unfolds over time, through system behaviour, adaptation, and interpretation.

In that world, UX quietly changes role.

Not from designing screens to designing meaning —
but from designing meaning to negotiating it.

Negotiating expectations.
Negotiating trust.
Negotiating how much agency a system should take, and when.

That shift doesn’t make UX irrelevant.
But it does make it incomplete in its current form.

A Quiet Question to Carry Forward

If experience is shaped as much by system behaviour as by interface design, then UX can no longer be just about what users see or do.

It must account for what systems decide, how they explain themselves, and how users learn to trust them over time.

This is the moment where we must ask not just what we design, but how we design trust, how we design for emergence, and how we help users navigate that journey.

And that leads to a question worth sitting with — not answering too quickly:

If experience continues to evolve after launch, and outside the interface, what exactly are designers responsible for shaping now?

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