Fear vs Play
Fear is choking out thoughtfulness in tech, and it can't be replaced with "more productivity" — because productivity is not what motivates corporate layoffs.
AI saved the feature factory
When outputs are valued above all else, hallucinations and slop aren't bugs — they're features.
Can Designers Avoid Meetings?
LLMs are not the first tool to promise that they can free us from having to talk to people so we can "focus on the work." But talking to people IS the work.
Imitating the future, breaking the present
Tech companies are only pretending to innovate, through copying futuristic aesthetics from science fiction without understanding their purpose.
Apple's Liquid Glass is a grim portent for UX
Industry leaders like Apple and Shopify are redefining design excellence from making products usable to solely luxury branding.
The glue is the work
Tech orgs only function thanks to people who volunteer for thankless "glue work." This is the space where UX lives; for the field to get respect we need to make this work visible.
The AI Hangover Era (The Everything App Part 3)
Some leaders are starting to realize the extent to which AI has broken their ability to prioritize and ship value. Others are still doubling down.
AI is not an assistant – it's your new boss (The Everything App part 2)
As managers continue to outsource data-gathering and decision-making to LLMs, the person above you on the org chart is transforming into a chatbot's clerk – and leaving product teams with the consequences.
The Everything App is a symptom of Nothing Management (part 1)
Leaders who surrender their point of view inevitably arrive at the same conclusion: we must solve every problem for every user. This approach demolishes the possibility of real impact.
Figma Dreamweaver
The dream of being able to generate working websites will remain out of reach until UX redefines its practice around semantic structure rather than layouts.
The AI job crisis is a crisis of groupthink
Unmoored from user needs as the driver for decision-making, executives increasingly perform innovation for their peers. Today, that means AI products and AI workflows – no matter the cost.
If you're comfortable, your principles aren't working
Design principles are a tool for delegating and scaling the ability to say "no" to many good ideas, so that they can say "yes" to one great idea. If your principles aren't constraining these kinds of decisions, then they are not actually fit for purpose.
Taste is a dead end; what you should have is a point of view
By justifying decisions on the basis of taste, designers are throwing away the influence they need for preventing low-value feature bloat
Attack of the Template Ronin
Learning “best practices” by rote has produced a cohort of shallow generalists. Solving real-world challenges requires tailoring your methods to the problem's unique context.
Design without feedback is theater (why design goes wrong and how to set it right part 4)
The building blocks of feedback loops are learn, design, build – in that order. It's Design's job to create these loops, because no one else will do it for you.
Design is a leadership skill (why design goes wrong and how to set it right part 3)
A seat at the table is no good unless design is part of the strategy. To find the right place to apply leverage, designers need to embrace systems thinking.
Steering a design career (why design goes wrong and how to set it right, part 2)
The work of design starts long before you open Figma. We must first seek out – or create – conditions in which good design is even possible, by building our own relational power.
Why design goes wrong and how to set it right, part 1
At the root of design's crisis is an incentives crisis throughout tech. But we have tools that let us cut through the magical thinking of feature factories - if we're willing to use them.
The bounty of the commons
You'll never be able to make effective trade-offs without thinking holistically about the entire system, and the other people within it
The algorithm is not an excuse to stop systems thinking
Algorithmic search has pushed both users and designers towards design patterns that use removing friction as an excuse to take away control. But some tools are bringing thoughtfulness back.