{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/web-and-digital-interface-designers/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Web and Digital Interface Designers",
    "soc_code": "15-1255",
    "category": "Tech",
    "us_employment": 113330,
    "median_annual_wage": 104000
  },
  "verdict": "COOKED",
  "risk_resistance": 31,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 8,
    "embodiment": 2,
    "liability_shield": 2,
    "trust_premium": 9,
    "judgment_accountability": 10
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Producing a Figma mockup, generating component variants against an existing design system, hand-coding a responsive landing page from a comp, and cutting image assets are all now single-prompt or near-single-prompt operations, which is why this lands at 8 rather than mid-teens — the residual defensible work is moderated usability sessions, information-architecture decisions from ambiguous business goals, and WCAG remediation that requires testing with a screen reader on real content.",
    "embodiment": "Everything happens in Figma, a browser, and a code editor; the only physical acts are handing a laptop to a participant during a usability test or checking a layout on a physical phone or tablet, which is why this is 2 and not 0.",
    "liability_shield": "There is no licence, no registration board, and no statutory sign-off — a client can hire an unlicensed contractor off a marketplace for the same deliverable, and even ADA/Section 508 accessibility exposure lands on the site owner or the agency's contract, not on the designer who drew the screen.",
    "trust_premium": "Freelancers and agency leads with a book of repeat clients do sell the relationship, and stakeholder trust earned across design reviews is real, but the in-house production designer's Figma files get inherited by whoever is next and the work is judged on the artifact, not the author — hence 9 rather than the 14+ of a named consultant.",
    "judgment_accountability": "Choosing a navigation model, deciding what gets cut from a checkout flow, or trading visual polish against page weight are genuine calls with revenue consequences, but they are made inside a brief, a brand system, and a PM's priority stack, and get overruled in review — real discretion, bounded scope, so 10."
  },
  "rationale": "The bulk of this job — wireframes, mockups, responsive layouts, component variants, hero images, HTML/CSS front-end assembly, design-system upkeep — is exactly the screen-and-pattern work generative tools now produce at usable quality and near-zero marginal cost. What resists is upstream: framing what the product should do, running usability research on real users, arbitrating between stakeholders, and owning conversion or accessibility outcomes. The modal worker here is a production designer on a marketing or product site, and that tier is compressing fastest; the strategy/research tier is smaller than the current headcount.",
  "outlook": "By 2035 expect far fewer pure production designers per product team, with surviving roles rebadged as product/UX strategists who direct generated interface output and answer for the metrics.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Accessibility enforcement that names a responsible human: the European Accessibility Act (in force June 2025) plus DOJ's 2024 ADA Title II rule adopting WCAG 2.1 AA create audit obligations. If a certification regime hardens — e.g. procurement contracts or an insurer's cyber/media liability policy requiring a named IAAP-certified (CPACC/WAS) individual to sign the conformance statement (VPAT/EN 301 549 declaration) — a subset of designers gains a countersignature role AI cannot hold. Today VPATs are signed by vendors, not licensed individuals; the change to watch is a licensed or certified natural person on the attestation.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 5
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Dark-pattern and consent-design liability landing on the designer of record: FTC's ongoing dark-pattern actions (Amazon Prime 'Iliad' case), the EU DSA Art. 25 ban on interface manipulation, and California's CPRA consent-UI rules. If firms respond by designating an accountable reviewer for consent flows, pricing screens and cancellation paths — the way a DPO is designated under GDPR — that decision ownership sits with a senior designer.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Pure task-mix shift, no law needed: this occupation genuinely has two tiers. If production output (mockups, component variants, responsive layout, CSS assembly) is fully absorbed, the residual role is discovery framing, moderated usability research with real participants, stakeholder arbitration and conversion/experiment ownership — work models do poorly. The score rises for whoever remains; headcount falls at the same time. Watch job postings shifting from 'Product Designer' to 'Design Lead / Researcher' with no IC production listed.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Narrow but real: brand-identity and editorial design work where clients pay for an authored point of view and named credit. If provenance labelling (C2PA Content Credentials, now in Adobe and Google tooling) becomes a client procurement requirement for brand assets — 'human-authored, credentialed' — a premium tier persists. This does not reach the modal production designer on a marketing site.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Realistic ceiling roughly mid-40s, and only for the strategy/research/accessibility-attestation tier. No licensure body exists or is being proposed for interface design, so liability_shield cannot reach the levels seen in engineering or medicine, and embodiment has no route at all. Any gain here is concentrated in a minority of current headcount; the aggregate occupation can decline while individual survivors' scores rise."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 82380,
        "wage": 79890
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 97350,
        "wage": 83240
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 111060,
        "wage": 98540
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 111400,
        "wage": 98090
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 113330,
        "wage": 104000
      }
    ],
    "from": 2021,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 37.6,
    "comparable_from": 2021,
    "spans_soc_revision": false
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}