“Right now I’m helping build software whose whole job is to package how one particular person thinks. The point is not to have this product replace anyone’s thinking with hers, but to take the way she works through a hard decision, the method she’s spent a career building, and hand it to anyone.

We are, in the plainest terms, productizing a person.

If that gave you a little Black Mirror chill, good. This isn’t science fiction. It’s a much closer reality than you imagine.”

Bottle your judgment and make it outlive you →

The AI Notepad for back-to-back meetings →
[Sponsored] Notes, actions and memory. Without a meeting bot. Give it a try on your next meeting.

Editor picks

Chat is the wrong interface for AI →
The problem with over-simplification of AI Agents’ interfaces.

Own the room, or leave it →
Unlearning the habit that quietly dissolves design’s authority.

Rethinking friction in an AI world →
Why the best UX often disappears. And when it shouldn’t.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

Drawesome: a drawing toolbar for React →

Make me think

The hierarchy of competence →
“Some people are easy to work with. Not pleasant, not agreeable, easy. You hand them something and it stops being your problem, and the relief you feel has very little to do with whether you enjoy their company. I’ve spent a long time trying to name what those people actually do differently.”

The last product design tool →
“The design system has already made all the visual decisions for me. When I use a rectangle that says “Dialog”, I know how my particular shade of dialog looks and works. All I am deciding is whether a dialog belongs at this point in the overall flow. An AI coding tool of choice maps the wireframe to real components, and those components bring their actual spacing, typography and behavior with them.”

The plateau of sad gray icons →
“I’ve been building a Claude Code prototype for a payroll product using a barebones design system. Without strong, specific UX patterns to lean on, the agent started filling the gaps by inventing its own. Calling this inventing is generous. The agent just repeated the same pattern over and over.”

Little gems this week

The cybernetic application →

The architecture of watching work →

Design @ ACME: Learning from Coyote’s mishaps →

Tools and resources

What I’ve learned writing for billions of users →
Insights from products that grow and grow.

Context files I always create →
What your AI co-designer can’t infer from your hex values.

Design.md →
The one standard file carries your visual identity, for humans and agents.

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“The discourse surrounding generative AI in the creative arts is frequently characterised by a sense of historical rupture, a seismic shift unlike any that has come before. Critics often frame the emergence of Large Language Models and diffusion-based image generators as an unprecedented existential threat to the ‘soul’ of human expression, a black swan event that may signal the end of human creative sovereignty.

However, when we look back over the history of Western art and technology, it becomes clearer that this anxiety is not a new phenomenon but rather a recurring structural feature of the relationship between human intent and technical innovation. Whenever a new tool emerges that threatens to lower the barrier to entry or automate a process previously governed by arduous manual labour, the established artistic class has responded with a mixture of moral panic, accusations of ‘soullessness,’ and a retreat into essentialist definitions of what constitutes ‘true’ art.”

The algorithmic atelier →

Visualize striking 3D embellishment mockups →
[Sponsored] DREAMCOMPOSER ® transforms designs into impressive 3D mockups. Try 100+ KURZ transfer decorations and share results instantly.

Editor picks

Information architecture is the foundation AI is starving for →
Every AI problem you chase traces back to IA.

Rethinking friction in an AI world →
Why the best UX often disappears.

Your people get AI. Get out of their way. →
Companies that win will be the ones willing to trust people.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

Originkit: a free animated component library for the web →

Make me think

You don’t have to be smart if you can think clearly →
“When you’re on fire, problems are transparent: they’re solved simply by the act of looking at them. Even complicated layers of multiple problems can simply be glanced through like stacked panes of glass. But nobody can work that way all the time.”

Vercel project cards →
“I started by tweaking the padding and co-located information to reduce the vertical space occupied by each card. Some data was also omitted, for example we realised that we don’t need to show the project branch on the card which is generally always ‘main’.”

The era of personal software →
“But on the walk home, I realized something strange had happened. Or rather, something hadn’t happened. I never opened Google. I never searched GitHub for “activity monitor CLI.” I didn’t spend an hour trawling through “Top 10 GitHub Tools” blog posts, or installing three different utilities only to find out one was deprecated and the other required a subscription.”

Little gems this week

The UX of contrast: lessons from Indika’s game design →

The consciousness mirage in AI design →

The MOS 6502: the people’s princess →

Tools and resources

Battling AI fatigue: a practical guide →
AI is great, but it doesn’t have to take over your life.

The accessibility paradox →
How making the web easier for humans also made it easier for machines.

Redesigning TikTok in five weeks →
Exploring the user experience issues behind TikTok’s high churn rate.

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“This photographic series slips into the hours after the badge comes off—the unbranded life where designers become someone the job never meets.”

Five to nine →

Design with real imagery, without leaving Figma →
[Sponsored] With the Stills Figma plugin, you can search, test, and insert curated imagery from real artists—without ever leaving Figma.

Editor picks

Lonely at a lower latency →
Everything got faster, closer, more certain.

The brainstorm that couldn’t storm →
On the small delay that makes a brainstorm actually storm.

Questions every tool should answer (even Figma) →
Understanding AI training model usage.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

What do America’s earliest restaurant menus teach us about America? →

Make me think

Against design system federation →
“Design systems operate under one of the following governance models: centralised, federated, or hybrid. All approaches have different benefits and drawbacks, swaying the decision-making scales depending on organisational priorities, maturity, size, and resourcing. (…) What if federating is a panacea to the most pressing tech landscape challenges?”

AI mania is eviscerating global decision-making →
“The people in charge either have no plan, or see no path forwards other than keeping their heads down. Not at banks, not at hospitals, not in our government institutions. The world’s organisations have been captured by people in the throes of frothing excitement, and saner people who now live in a state of constant commingled fear and frustration.”

Earning taste and judgment →
“Over time, I learned to handle increasingly complex abstractions and tradeoffs. That’s how a junior developer matures into a senior one. But agents will automate all of these reps. This will fundamentally change the path from junior to senior.”

Little gems this week

The aggressively mediocre fight →

Steal this UX framework from Dubai’s most over-the-top hotel →

The screens are getting demoted →

Tools and resources

AI can fake your portfolio →
But it can’t fake the second question.

Nir Eyal’s Hook Model for AI products →
How to apply them safely.

The case for monochrome data visualization →
Less color, more reading.

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“We increasingly talk about taste as though it were something that can be collected, measured, or encoded. We assume that if enough people agree, or if enough data is available, the right answer will eventually emerge. But taste has never worked that way.

Taste begins with knowing what good looks like. It comes from exposure to exceptional work, from studying history, understanding proportion, typography, interaction, composition, and learning to recognize quality with consistency. Designers who struggle to make strong decisions often do not lack confidence. They simply have not yet built that internal reference library. Yet recognizing quality is only the beginning.”

Taste cannot be delegated →

An AI certification for designers tired of the hype →
[Sponsored] AI won’t make every designer 10x—but it is changing how great products get designed. Our AI Product Design Certification combines three practical courses, a capstone, and a credential focused on real capability. Download the program guide.

Editor picks

Designers are sharpening knives for the wrong fight →
Why is the whole conversation still about how to build?

AX is just the orchestration layer →
The work didn’t vanish with the screen. It fell one layer down.

The interface has left the building →
How chat, voice, and agentic AI are rewriting UX.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

Museum of the Human Web →

Make me think

The hard things about design →
“This one is for the folks deep into the vocation. The veterans running teams, the senior craftspeople who’ve been at this for a decade or more. We know the romance of the craft. What we don’t talk about as much is its costs, the ones we keep absorbing every day, and why design carries costs that engineering and product management mostly avoid. So here’s an accounting of what it costs us, and why.”

The people who will thrive in the AI age →
“Every time some new labor-saving technology is introduced, there are experts (the ones who know a lot about technology but not much about psychology) who predict that people will use the technology to make life easier. Soon we’ll all be enjoying 15-hour workweeks! Instead, many people use the technology to make their life more frenetic and full.”

Punch yourself in the face with reality →
“What is hard are things like:
- Taking real risk with your life
- Putting your name on something publicly
- Getting rejected to your face over and over again
- Having the courage to go on when nobody believes in you
- Being willing to let other people down
- Being willing to see your friends and your network progress ahead in life while it seems like you are getting stuck”

Little gems this week

The Kintsugi problem →

When design becomes the organization, and AI becomes the design →

Designing with web standards: the playbook for this AI moment →

Tools and resources

SAID framework →
Reclaiming the design process.

Sustainable design →
Making it the default, not the exception.

How AI became part of my UX design workflow →
Intentional experimentation.

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“That question didn’t exist not that long ago; and now, it’s becoming less obvious to answer (at least in some cases). As consumers, we evaluated creative work on its quality and the overall outcome. We have rarely been given access to the work’s process or “behind the scenes” knowledge.

But can you blame people (myself included)? Now that we’re in a world where almost anything can be generated by AI, we are naturally redefining what we value and trust about creative work.”

Wait, who made this? →

On trial: Is AI accelerating research or flattening insight? →
[Sponsored] Good research lives in what you observe. But when AI does the listening, does depth survive? Two research leaders. One debate. July 22. If you’ve looked at a summary & wondered “Is that really the whole story?” – this one’s for you. Register now.

Editor picks

The crisis of the what →
AI took the how. Now it’s coming for the what.

Designing excuses →
Perhaps it is the market that draws the norm into the open.

Losing the spark in their eyes →
What we lose when we use AI every day.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

Paper Shaders: ultra fast zero-dependency shaders for your designs →

Make me think

What is product craft in the age of AI and design systems? →
“Ask a design system team how they’ll raise the quality of the products they support, and you’ll usually hear one of two options. The first is to make better components, perhaps with more opinionated defaults. The second is to tighten up the quality gates: give the DS team the authority to approve quality, not just the aspiration to improve it.”

What design engineering is, how it’s changed, and where it’s going →
“Historically, design engineers often sat between design and engineering. They prototyped ideas, built design systems, preserved interaction details, and helped reduce the translation loss between intent and production. Design engineering is less about sitting between functions and more about combining the parts of those functions that let one person ship beautiful product.”

Understanding is the new bottleneck →
“Aren’t we supposed to be taking ourselves out of the loop now, and letting the agents loop themselves? As the agents get smarter, doesn’t it become less important for us to be in the details? I think many people — even those who are pro-understanding — have a slightly incorrect answer to this question!”

Little gems this week

Never mind the prompts, here’s the thinking →

Should you really aim to be the best? →

The promotion that didn’t take →

Tools and resources

DesignOps in the age of AI →
When governance becomes orchestration.

The spaghetti table protocol challenge →
The 15-minute AI stress test every designer can run.

Designing in regulated industries →
When the legal team has as much say as the user.

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“This is the real shift. Design system debt used to be paid by one person, quietly, in files nobody else opened. Now it gets paid by the engineer whose generated component is wrong, the PM whose timeline slips because handoff broke, the marketer whose banners came out off-brand. The cost moved out of your corner and into theirs.

Designers have argued for years that a design system is not a deliverable but a product that needs governance, funding, and an owner(…) The argument was always correct and almost always lost, because the people who held the budget never felt the failure. Now they do.”

Figma just made your design system debt everyone’s problem →

Visualize striking 3D embellishment mockups →
[Sponsored] DREAMCOMPOSER® transforms designs into impressive 3D mockups. Try 100+ KURZ transfer decorations and share results instantly.

Editor picks

This is your real value in tech companies →
You’re missing the point.

AI personality is a design problem →
An interface we build deliberately.

Discovery is a capability, not a phase →
The judgment layer most discovery practice leaves unexplored.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

How to design arrows →

Make me think

Legibility of effort →
“Until recently, “someone cared enough to write this” was an ok heuristic. Plenty of writing on the internet was bad, but you could convince me that you cared about something just by writing it down.”

Repricing of software engineering labor →
“I don’t think software engineering is disappearing. I think the market is repricing it. For years it rewarded implementation throughput. Engineers that were able to move fast and build stuff are becoming obsolete overnight. These are large middle implementation-heavy generalists whose value was mostly shipping software built from known patterns.”

On the semantic web →
“The easiest way to make an interface harder to maintain is to rebuild the browser badly. (…) That sounds obvious until you look inside a lot of modern component libraries. The visual layer is treated as the source of truth, then the behaviour is patched back on afterwards. It works in the demo. It usually works with a mouse. Then someone tries to tab through it, submit it from a form, use it with VoiceOver, disable it properly, or nest it inside a more complex flow, and the component starts leaking implementation detail everywhere.”

Little gems this week

The stone that blocks nothing →

Game UX: the cursor that wasn’t supposed to be there →

You don’t design the UI anymore; you design the deciding →

Tools and resources

How designers need to change for an AI-powered world →
A panel discussion.

39 principles for designing human-AI interaction →
An applied framework for designing AI interfaces.

Research is not a deliverable →
The gap between what data shows and hides.

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“For more than a decade, Figma defined modern product design. It made collaboration effortless, turned design into a shared language, and became the default workspace for teams building software. But as AI reshapes how products are planned, prototyped, and shipped, the central question is the extent of Figma’s usefulness. Or rather, will the canvas remain at the centre of gravity, if at all?

Unlike the previous conference, Config 2026 makes that question more urgent. Figma no longer just defends a collaborative design canvas; it is actively expanding that canvas into code, motion, shaders, and agent-driven workflows. That shift reveals how much pressure the old model is under.”

Rethinking Figma in an AI world →

Try the #1 AI Product Design tool for FREE →
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Editor picks

The organizational cost of low taste →
Organizations don’t fail in strategy, they fail in decisions.

Your design system runs on one person’s judgment →
AI is about to prove it.

Dear Figma, I believe you can survive →
Here’s why.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

Show your hands honor for the strange power they bring you →

Make me think

The Layers of AI experience →
“The introduction of generative AI into digital products has upended the interaction model that anchored much of the previous era of design. Great AI products are multi-dimensional. Small changes to one can have an outsized impact on the whole.”

Less is more, more or less →
“Everyone knows the age-old saying of quality over quantity but sometimes it’s difficult to understand exactly what it means in practice. In the age of AI, more people can make more things, much faster. Quantity still matters and it always will, but more things being made doesn’t mean better things are being made.”

Consistency, but in excellence not appearance →
“Systems prescribe rules because they are the easiest attributes to document, enforce, and automate — “All icons must use this shape, this lighting, this stroke.” Excellence, by contrast, is harder to systematize. It requires judgment, taste, care, experience, and a sensitivity to context — all in service of meaning and purpose, not superficial similarity.”

Little gems this week

What sits on the engawa →

Your banking app is lying to you →

Someone designed this →

Tools and resources

How to stop re-explaining yourself to Claude →
Here’s how I fixed that.

Creative cadence →
Exploring the links between music and creativity.

Your AI-generated prototype is probably not a prototype yet →
Not proof that an experience works.

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“I’ve seen PMs and sales teams build working prototypes with AI tools that genuinely work — they ship, users can use them. But there are details underneath: interactions that are slightly off, components that don’t quite fit the pattern, decisions that made sense in the moment but will create friction as the product grows or when someone tries to bring it into visual alignment with everything else. Nothing catastrophic. Nothing a user would name. Just the accumulation of choices made without a framework for what “right” looks like beyond “it functions.”

This is the thing that access alone doesn’t provide. Senior designers aren’t valuable because they know more shortcuts. They’re valuable because they know what problem is worth solving, which tradeoffs matter, and what quality looks like — all things that require judgment built from years of contact with what didn’t work.”

Access is not mastery →

Live demo: How to build & test multi-device fintech apps →
[Sponsored] Standard design tools force you to fake multi-screen UX. Join us live to see how to build and test a fully synchronized, multi-device FinTech prototype completely code-free. Learn screen syncing, real QR scanning, and live data passing.

Editor picks

The T-shaped UX professional is giving way to the polymath architect →
Depth alone no longer pays the rent.

We used to know that it was a person who wrote it →
Now you check everything.

What computers can’t do and what designers should →
Don’t skimp on the creative struggle.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

CSS Buttons →

Make me think

You got gaster. Your company didn’t. →
“Fast forward to today, and he pastes the context into a model and hits send. A few minutes later, the agent hands back a plan several times longer than anything he would’ve written by hand. Well, he’s more productive now, right? A fraction of the time, many times the output. But what about everyone else? A handful of reviewers open a document several times longer than it needs to be, with that unmistakable AI smell on it.”

Every frame perfect →
“Why care about every frame? It builds trust. Users can’t see the code, so UI is the only way for them to judge the quality of the app. If UI looks good, that means developers had time to polish it, which means that they probably spent a comparable amount of time to iron out the code. It’s a heuristic, but a reasonable one.”

What Figma made visible →
“You create a component, attach a style, and watch a change move through a file the moment you make it. The first time a colour style update spread across an entire file without me touching anything else, something clicked — not in how I used the tool, but in how I understood the work. That’s where the engineering thinking I’d built up started talking to the design thinking I’d been developing, and the two stopped feeling like different careers.”

Little gems this week

Lord of the TTL chips →

The board is not the game →

The hidden UX of payments →

Tools and resources

A2UI under the hood →
Designing for the new era of radically adaptive UI.

Your strategic guide to winning design awards →
A roadmap to recognition.

How difficult could it be to design a chatbot? →
Harder than you think.

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“I can usually tell when something was built by AI before I’ve read a word of it. There’s a face it wears: a centered hero with a confident headline and two buttons, rounded cards floating on a soft gradient, a sans-serif working very hard to seem neutral, spacing so even it feels exhaled rather than drawn.”

AI design isn’t ugly. It’s fluent—and that’s the problem →

Research matters. So why doesn’t it shape more decisions? →
[Sponsored] Based on a survey of 309 researchers and leaders, this report explores the listening gap between consumer insights and decisions. Discover hidden workflow frictions and AI opportunities shaping modern research today. Get the report here.

Editor picks

The flaw is the feature →
What is polish actually worth?

Strategy in the age of the machine →
Moving past the myth of productivity.

The gesture and the instruction →
Two kinds of design work, two kinds of tired.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

fonts.xyz: a creator-driven indie type platform →

Make me think

Exploring vs Exploiting →
“The outcomes in exploitative work are often immediately measurable and it’s easy to draw a line between discovery and how it impacts the outcomes stakeholders care about. Explore has none of that. Exploration is messy and the output is unclear - unknown even.”

Discovery vs Delivery →
“In talking to my peers and in consuming far too much AI content — there’s a tension I’m feeling when discussing how AI can speed up delivery. The fear is usually that quality will suffer — which quickly turns into a vague conversation about intuition, judgment and craft romanticism. Outside of design teams, the conversation gets harder still, with any opinion that isn’t explicitly “AI is the answer” framed as being protectionist, or somehow against progress.”

Falling in love with the build →
“You build something lovely. A transition that springs just right. A loading state that feels alive. Then, quietly, you start working backwards. You go looking for the reason to ship it. Not because the reason came first, but because the alternative is deleting work you enjoyed making.”

Little gems this week

Liquid Glass: who gets to decide how an interface looks? →

What a walled city in Hong Kong can teach us about the future of AI →

We used to log off →

Tools and resources

Design for pain →
How to make the worst moment better.

Design without borders →
How icon design reveals a perspective on accessibility

What is AX Design? →
Why do we need this new role.

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“Super efficient, but over time, that efficiency started to shape how I thought. I was moving faster towards answers, but along narrower paths. Ideas felt more predictable, and I was less surprised by where I ended up. The work converged quickly, sometimes too quickly. That’s when I started noticing how much the tools were quietly changing where my attention went.”

A sharp tool can still ruin the cut →

Designing AI products: The next frontier for UX →
[Sponsored] Most designers are learning how to use AI tools. Far fewer are learning how to design AI-powered products. Learn the patterns and frameworks behind today’s leading AI experiences in this new 4-week course.

Editor picks

AI token scarcity and arcade economics →
The rising cost of computing.

Design’s alive and kicking →
It just got some flashy new names.

AI meets Sturgeon’s Law →
Why does more content not mean more quality.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

heerich.js: a tiny engine for 3D voxel scenes rendered to SVG →

Make me think

The user is visibly frustrated →
“For some reason, bad results often feel exasperating. But why am I getting mad at an algorithm? Am I the only one affected? Are coding agents surfacing a sadistic streak I didn’t know I had? I think there’s another explanation: the conversational UX is bound to frustrate you.”

AI job grief: the unnamed psychological crisis hitting tech workers →
“A 2025 qualitative study in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being found that participants experienced AI-related job displacement as “the symbolic loss of professional identity, autonomy, and future prospects.” The researchers were explicit that the harm was not primarily financial. Job displacement “was experienced not just as a career disruption but also as an erosion of personal identity.””

The speed of prototyping in the age of AI →
“The thing nobody really warned me about is how much AI changes the shape of engineering work, not just the speed of it. When I’m not the one typing every line, I’m forced to think differently. I’m thinking about boundaries, contracts, and how the pieces fit together. I’m writing prompts and specs that describe the system holistically, before the system exists.”

Little gems this week

Your user doesn’t care about your organization chart →

Employment expiry and the end of workplace loyalty →

The third role: how designers and solution architects are converging →

Tools and resources

Designing the pass-through in agentic computing →
A restaurant analogy.

Is your website ready for AI agents? →
Why accessibility is your new best friend.

AI-created document fatigue →
How I designed my way out of it.

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“We have extraordinary capability and almost no shared conventions for handing it to people — no settled patterns, no agreed vocabulary (ambient, really? They’re just fancy Cron Jobs), half the tooling still being written as we use it, literally by the technology itself. The tools are remarkable; the ground under them is soft, shifting like a tech quicksand.

That isn’t a complaint. It’s an invitation.”

Designing for AI means designing like it’s 1999 →

94% say research matters. Only 27% act on it. →
[Sponsored] What’s behind this “listening” gap? Join leaders from Included Health, OnePay, and UX Outloud as they discuss findings from Marvin’s latest report and why customer insights still struggle to influence business decisions. Register now.

Editor picks

Designing locality, by redrawing the lines →
On Bruno Munari, an old Buddhist phrase, and an empty field.

7 things that Vibe Design can’t replicate →
Vibe design with intention, eyes open.

We haven’t lost the battle for empathy. Have we? →
A meditation on presence.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

Mechanical pencil: An illustrated celebration of the engineering around us →

Make me think

When everyone has AI and the company still learns nothing →
“Are people using AI, or is the organization learning from it? What changed because we spent those tokens? And who moves discoveries from individuals to teams to organizational capabilities?”

Cynicism is a luxury; hope is a necessity →
“A working system has that strange quality: it disappears. We notice the plumbing only when it leaks, the power only when it fails, the road only when it is closed. Attention is drawn to friction—to the broken and the missing—and slides off whatever is quietly doing its job.”

The orchestration tax is you →
“Starting more agents is easy now. However, more agents running doesn’t mean more of you available—your cognitive bandwidth doesn’t parallelize. (…) Orchestration tax is basically the price you pay for forgetting this and the only real fix is to start architecting your own attention like you architect any concurrent system.”

Little gems this week

The book cover as a relational object →

You are no longer the user. You are the principal. →

Is hot coral a feature or a liability? A closer look at your bank card →

Tools and resources

Designing how designers master AI →
Personal, divergent, and never finished.

The permalink problem in AI chat →
AI chat made the conversation ephemeral.

AI and cognitive delegation →
The hidden cost of AI that works too well.

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“The way we talk to technology has always said something about us. We barked commands at early voice recognition software. We typed queries into search engines like telegrams. Now we chat, negotiate, apologize, and occasionally vent to systems that, by any reasonable measure, couldn’t care less. What’s changed isn’t just the technology. It’s the tone.”

Should we be kind to machines (for our own sake, really)? →

Watch AI Build a Prototype — Free Recording →
[Sponsored] See how ProtoPie AI turns a prompt into a fully interactive prototype with triggers, variables, and animations in minutes. Watch the recorded live demo and discover what AI-assisted prototyping looks like in practice.

Editor picks

A designer’s path →
From faster pencil to AI Experience Architect.

Designing the Human+AI system →
The new product mandate.

The best AI tools make users better →
Most AI tools only make them faster.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

3Dsvg: turn any SVG into interactive 3D objects →

Make me think

Your design system might be AI-ready. Your organisation probably isn’t. →
“I’ve been watching the design systems community gear up for AI with considerable energy. Token structures are getting cleaner, documentation is becoming more explicit, component naming is moving from visual description to semantic intent. Teams are putting in serious structural work, and it matters.”

Don’t outsource the learning →
“There’s a default loop most of us have settled into. You paste in a spec or error message. The model hands you a fix. The symptom vanishes. You ship. Somewhere in that loop, the messy struggle between problem and solution stops happening at all.”

The text is not the product →
“It is a widespread fallacy that by using AI, students can learn faster. Another dean of my university (let’s be graceful and not mention the discipline) recently said in a meeting that students could use AI to let it summarize “500 pages of text” for them. But why should an employer want to hire graduates who have just read the AI summary of these 500 pages, rather than actually having worked through them?”

Little gems this week

The quiet genius of Claude’s branding: less hype, more humanity →

Opening your place to the street →

Two gears, one compass: designing at velocity while sustaining quality →

Tools and resources

AI UX debt: a new bottleneck →
The illusion of completion and the birth of the ghost.

Your DESIGN.md should tell a story →
How to write a DESIGN.md file Claude can actually use.

The undo problem in AI products →
AI products skipped undo and shipped branching as the retrofit.

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“You have likely seen companies quickly introduce AI mandates to keep pace with these trends. In the blink of an eye, we went from having no money for a Mural license to heavily investing in a bulk subscription to Copilot. Vanity metrics, such as the number of tokens used (tokenmaxxing) have been used to measure implementation speed, without a direct link to how they will affect OKRs or, for UX, how they can deliver consistent results for our users.”

Be like water: Rethinking the design process with AI →

Fix seller UX and improve marketplace performance →
[Sponsored] Download the free checklist with 8 proven UX patterns that help sellers onboard faster, list products more easily, and stay active. Grab your free copy.

Editor picks

The thinking was never just mine →
Maybe “mine” was never about origin.

Low cortisol solution to big problems →
The strange details we only notice when we slow down.

The death of the empty state in AI products →
AI products replaced 20 years of empty-state research.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

Nudges.fyi: biases & heuristics for the age of AI →

Make me think

The organization is the bottleneck →
“The pattern with AI coding agents is strikingly similar. If you don’t have automated tests, or documentation, or CI/CD pipelines that support progressive delivery, you won’t succeed with microservices—and you won’t succeed with AI coding agents either. The organizations reporting the best results are the ones that already invested in the foundations.”

The internet you grew up on isn’t dying →
“The places you spent your younger years are gone or unrecognizable, and the places you use now are visibly straining under a flood of machine-generated text nobody asked for. There is a low ambient grief about it, and a faint guilt, something like: I should be doing something. I should be somewhere else. I want the old thing back.”

AI slop is killing online communities →
“Like a young child coming home from kindergarten with their latest crayon scrawls, the internet is currently awash with people sharing their AI-generated work. And just like the young child’s drawings, much of that work should be proudly put up on the walls within the artist’s house—and no further.”

Little gems this week

Can a typeface be safe? →

Rethinking design with your hands in the AI world →

The one-dimensional pipe between two high-dimensional minds →

Tools and resources

AI holds the context, I do the thinking →
How I use AI to partner on design problems.

Discovery is the work AI gives back →
Productivity is the floor of AI’s value, not the ceiling.

AI for UX →
The guide you wish someone had given you sooner.

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“The most advanced artificial intelligence systems in history now ask us to communicate through a blinking cursor in an empty text box. We have, in the most literal sense, gone backward. For the last forty years, the entire trajectory of interaction design has been a movement away from the command line and toward direct manipulation.”

The prompt is not an interface →

Hear how Microsoft moves faster without cutting corners →
[Sponsored] Join Microsoft Principal Researcher Maryam Maleki, Ph.D. on May 21 to learn how she uses AI to analyze at scale, deliver insights faster, and never compromise on standards. Register now.

Editor picks

You skipped the first question. Now you’re adding AI. →
AI made the gap impossible to ignore.

We took away psychological safety →
And then told everyone to be more productive.

We built this. Now we own it. →
The dark side of ‘user-friendly’ AI.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

Caligra c100 Developer Terminal →

Make me think

Design is the work →
“We’re in a moment where it has never been cheaper or faster to build something convincing. The cost of taking an idea and making it look real, feel functional, or seem finished has collapsed. That is genuinely good news if you already know what you’re building and why. It’s dangerous if you don’t.”

Design from the inside →
“This is the reality of design at high-growth startups in the AI era. Engineers can build so fast and so independently that trying to map out the product area is a lost cause. Some of the traditional tools of product design — mapping and evaluating UX from a bird’s eye view — are useless. So what do you do instead?”

The “Passive Income” trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs →
“Somewhere between 2015 and 2022, “passive income” stopped being a boring financial planning term and became, I don’t know how else to put this, a salvation narrative. I mean that literally. There was an eschatology if you want to get nerdy about it. The Rapture was the day your “passive income” exceeded your monthly expenses and you could quit your job forever. People talked about it with that exact energy.”

Little gems this week

The forgotten conversation problem in AI chat →

10 UI patterns that won’t survive the AI shift →

The left-handed rope →

Tools and resources

How to make Claude follow your design system →
Skills that bind every value to your design system.

Designing data-intensive applications →
Advice for interaction designers.

Thoughtful AI implementation for UXR leaders →
Right tools, right context.

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“So much of our creative communication as human beings so deeply depends on the emotion, connection, and meaningful context created and consumed between the creator and consumer. If I (the author) tell you (the reader) I love you, that’s very different from someone you actually care about, someone you have a history with telling you they love you. Real, true communication between people, especially through art, requires emotion, connection, context, and meaning.

Unfortunately for some, but to the benefit of the rest of us, those are all things that artificial intelligence lacks within the content it generates.”

Collected consciousness →

Designers can’t believe it’s for free →
[Sponsored] Every new feature forces redesigns, overrides, and Figma chaos? Silk is a developer-friendly design system that keeps UI consistent across products, platforms, and teams. Documented decisions alongside each component. Find Silk in Figma Community.

Editor picks

What is AI really costing the planet? →
A growing environmental bill nobody wants to pay.

How AI may reshape elderly care →
A unique design challenge.

The forgotten conversation problem in AI chat →
Why persistent context is a usability must.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

154 Macs since 1983 →

Make me think

Do I belong in tech anymore? →
“You join a meeting with a coworker. Your coworker has enabled an AI tool to automatically take notes and summarize the meeting. They do not ask for consent to turn it on. The tool mischaracterizes what you discuss.”

Output isn’t design →
“Design keeps being misunderstood in our industry. New tools keep promising to generate interfaces faster, move words to product instantly, or collapse design directly into code. The assumption behind them is clear: that design is the act of producing.”

Field notes from the in-between →
“Then AI coding tools showed up. A handful of people started saying something I hadn’t heard before. Not designers should code. Not designers should learn to code. Designers can code now. That’s a huge shift. But I still waited.”

Little gems this week

The most interesting, exhausting moment of our careers →

The right touch: mapping AI presence to user intent →

The most dangerous pronoun in design →

Tools and resources

UX Research with AI →
Setting a vision will guide you and team to the right tools, in the right context.

10 UI patterns that won’t survive the AI shift →
Examples of what’s replacing them.

Designing with AI without losing your mind →
Keep early ideas raw, the loop tight, and the thinking yours.

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“The invisible walls for designers have been broken down. Maybe we don’t know it yet, but this year is the perfect time to start reframing the influence and vision of product design within and beyond companies.”

Product design in 2026: the beginning of a fantastic voyage? →

New playbook on modern research: Building Influence through Participation →
[Sponsored] Researcher Mahad Bullo rebuilt his research model to produce 4x the output with fewer resources. This playbook reveals he turned stakeholders into active participants, structured projects around AI, and shared insights instantly. Read the playbook.

Editor picks

Rethinking the shape of design teams in an AI world →
For our juniors, organizations, and future generations.

The misrepresentation of “good taste” →
One of the most misleading phrases in UX at the moment.

The web trained AI to deceive →
Now designers have to un-train it.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

Charcuterie: a visual explorer for Unicode →

Make me think

Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design →
“Why fuss around in a lossy approximation of the thing when you can work directly in the medium where it will actually live? If we want to make pottery, why are we painting watercolors of the pot instead of just throwing the clay?”

I love AI, but it still can’t design for shit →
“People. This is basic. You are accountable for your output. The AI does not look bad if your AI slop is on show. You do. Especially if the person the other end knows anything about how these models work.”

Expansion artifacts →
“Every AI-generated output is an extrapolation from that blurry source, vectored toward your prompt, filling in plausible detail where the compression threw information away. The output gets inflated into blog posts and LinkedIn thoughtspam, software platforms, omnichannel advertising campaigns, and movie cameos from dead actors. Chiang compared the gaps and confabulations to compression artifacts.”

Little gems this week

The art of subtraction in a world of infinite features →

Learnings from designing open source technology →

AI is ruining the way you talk about your work →

Tools and resources

The rulebook for designing AI experiences →
Guidelines from three of the largest tech companies.

Becoming an AI-native designer →
On demos, tacit knowledge, and building your own scaffolding.

How to mitigate risks with AI →
AI that simply makes sense in an enterprise environment.

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“The sentiment of the change brought on by AI has never been more relevant than it is now. Technology has always accelerated, but it feels like we are at an inflection point. Where AI business innovation, AI automation, and AI-driven technological disruption are shaping us faster than we can behold. Whether you like it or not, our tools are shaping us, and we are complicit in their methods and tricks.”

We become what we behold →

Recognizing excellence across the globe! →
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Editor picks

The trust-latency gap →
Why the future of UX is intentionally slower.

Autopilot, agentic AI, and the dangers of imperfect metaphors →
The words we use have power and meaning.

AI, UX, and the factory model →
Strategic orchestration and the industrialisation of user experience.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

Branding Amazonia →

Make me think

When moving fast, talking is the first thing to break →
“When you make speed and “moving fast” the biggest priority on a project or in an organization, the first thing to breakdown is talking to each other. Talking takes time. Consensus is expensive and slow. In a pressurized environment there’s no time to schedule calls, get input from subject matter experts, or resolve key differences of opinion.”

One developer, two dozen agents, zero alignment →
“At this point, in early 2026, all coding agents are designed as single player experiences. But building software isn’t a single player game. [Here] I talk through why we need collaborative AI engineering tools and show how we’re exploring the problem.”

Design and engi­neer­ing, as one →
“The only problem is that building complex digital products is nothing like shovelling pig iron more efficiently at Bethlehem Steel. Yet over a hundred and twenty years later, most of us are still running product teams on a model that was designed for a problem we don’t have.”

Little gems this week

I watched the Manosphere doc; here is how design is making things worse →

Oh, but there’s one more thing →

Notes from the people building your future →

Tools and resources

Your AI agent doesn’t know your product →
How to feed AI coding agents.

Folder instructions →
Instructions for system-level AI.

Designing haptics →
How to build a consistent cross-platform solution.

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“The excitement surrounding these tools does not come from the design itself. It comes from the collapse of the distance between description and interaction. An interface appears immediately, behavior responds instantly, and possibility becomes visible before structure exists. That is genuinely new. What is not new is the gap between something that looks finished and something that is.”

Vibe coding is accelerating the erosion of design authority →

How top UX & Product Design teams level up →
[Sponsored] Designlab helps UX and product teams build practical capability in AI workflows, Figma, business thinking, and more. Hands-on training designed around real tools, real constraints, and real product work. Learn more.

Editor picks

We didn’t mean to build this →
How well-meaning designers became complicit in broken systems.

Who are we really designing for? →
The individual User and the collective Customer.

We are perpetuating our own burnout problem →
The job market is brutal.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

Shot on iPhone in black & white →

Make me think

Should designers “code”? →
“There’s a question that never goes away in design: should designers code? My answer has always been yes. But for a decade or so, the complexity of front-end development made it impractical for most. Thankfully, AI coding agents have reopened the door.”

AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it →
“I want to talk about it honestly. Not the “AI is amazing and here’s my workflow” version. The real version. The one where you stare at your screen at 11pm, surrounded by AI-generated code you still need to review, wondering why the tool that was supposed to save you time has consumed your entire day.”

The machines are fine. I’m worried about us. →
“The discourse around LLMs in science tends to cluster at two poles that David Hogg identifies cleanly: let-them-cook, in which we hand the reins to the machines and become curators of their output, and ban-and-punish, in which we pretend it’s 2019 and prosecute anyone caught prompting.”

Little gems this week

Beyond the user: why design needs to widen its circle →

Falling apples and crumbling algos →

Taste.md: the new tech buzzword →

Tools and resources

Data models →
The shared language your AI and team are both missing.

Designing for the invisible customer →
Are consumers’ Openclaw agents becoming the real consumers?

Design challenges →
You’re not supposed to get it right.

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“To have a perspective is to say ‘no’ to things that are technically possible but strategically wrong. Most products fail not because they lack features, but because they lack a clear stance on what they are not. Every feature added without a clear perspective dilutes the ones that actually matter. Design is an editorial act: the more you leave out, the more weight you give to what remains.”

Perspective →

5 design links a day, curated by the folks from UX Collective →
For people who still believe in the web as a platform for knowledge sharing, long-form writing, and community.

Editor picks

The ground is shaking →
Why designers must flip the script on AI.

Designers finally have a say in the product they design →
AI gave desugbers back the decisions that were always theirs.

Rethinking design awards in an AI world →
Why design awards are still relevant and what needs to change.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

Ban Ray: Your face is not inventory →

Make me think

Your ticket is a prompt →
“The agents are behaving like the tickets they learned from. The scope-narrowing, the deference to small pieces over whole outcomes, the instinct to fragment before thinking.”

Why are executives enamored with AI but ICs aren’t? →
“Here’s my current posit for why there’s such a big divide: executives have always had to deal with non-determinism and focus on nondeterministic system design, while individual contributors are evaluated by their execution on deterministic tasks.”

Take my job, AI! →
“On the personal side, I’ve become more and more disillusioned with product design. It can be a shit role where you’re stuck between product managers on one side, engineers on the other, “the business” above you, and your actual users below you. What remains is an increasingly cramped space for decisions we actually “own”, which is basically which color lip stick to put on the pig.”

Little gems this week

Every designer on my team ships the same quality now →

AI is rewriting the rules; Language is following →

The long and short of telephone progress →

Tools and resources

Context matters… A lot →
Building intuitive AI products requires designing for context management.

The many paths in the life of a designer →
Way-finding in the work/life journey.

The rise of synthetic users →
The future of consumer research?

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“Despite the title proliferation, there is a shared DNA. Design Engineering lives at the intersection of visual design and front-end development. Not simply being good at both, but a distinct discipline focused on the space where design decisions meet technical implementation.”

The design engineer symptom: what a rising job title reveals →

AI for UX Design — Nearly 1,000 Designers Trained →
[Sponsored] Join designers from companies like Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and LinkedIn who have taken Designlab’s AI for UX Design program. Learn practical AI workflows across UX tasks, continuously updated as tools evolve. Next cohort starts April 17.

Editor picks

Who can actually afford AI tools now? →
They keep arriving with open arms and leaving with your wallet.

The mirage of UX Design’s demise keeps coming back →
Why do we declare endings when we don’t understand transitions?

Sorry, designers, we don’t decide the future of design →
How AI is forcing a renegotiation of what being a designer actually means.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

Fran Sans Essay →

Make me think

So where are all the AI apps? →
“So, skeptics reasonably ask, where are all the apps? If AI users are becoming (let’s be conservative) merely 2x more productive, then where do we look to see 2x more software being produced?”

The political use of operating systems →
“Choosing an operating system means not only choosing the stack of our virtual life, but it also means adopting a particular perspective, prioritizing certain needs and choosing the way we interact with technology.”

Some things just take time →
“Trees take quite a while to grow. If someone 50 years ago planted a row of oaks or a chestnut tree on your plot of land, you have something that no amount of money or effort can replicate. The only way is to wait. Tree-lined roads, old gardens, houses sheltered by decades of canopy: if you want to start fresh on an empty plot, you will not be able to get that.”

Little gems this week

What AI exposes about design →

When AI experiences fail, who is held accountable? →

You can’t design what you won’t maintain →

Tools and resources

Design career: The three thirds →
A third say it got better. A third say it got worse. A third aren’t sure.

Design systems in the age of AI →
What happens to the design system when AI changes the product?

Forget your “lovable” products →
The real leverage point was always learning.

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