Many AI and robotics companies have adopted warm colors, illustrations, and hand-drawn elements because those signals read as trustworthy and human. www.nngroup.com/articles/han...

The most infuriating thing about this is that his entire campaign was him saying “this time I’m going to be so much worse, you fuckers have no idea how shitty I’m gonna be”

iPhone Serif.® Get serious.™

The tools that make creation cheap don’t have any preference for quality. They’re equally good at producing a thoughtful app and a pointless one, a careful article and a rehash of five other articles. medium.com/tech-stackup...

please make way on the timeline, cattle coming through

AI makes course correction cheaper than it’s ever been: code in hours, analysis in minutes, copy tested in days. The cost of a wrong directional call is no longer a six-month detour. It’s a two-week correction, if that. jgothelf.substack.com/p/you-alread...

Thank goodness I have a job so I can go to therapy so I can process the trauma of having a job

Hands-on work creates better designers, ones who work through issues that previously got left for developers to figure out. As always, designing software is better when you work in the medium, not a level or two abstracted away. www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp...

“The alleged death of the design process has nothing to do with AI at all; production designers abandoned it years ago as they fully switched gears to mastering Figma layouts for a living, and AI is just an excuse for them to finally admit it.”

Working out when to let the mind wander, when to buckle down and exert conscious control, and how to flexibly move between these states of mind holds promise for optimizing performance. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/expe...

Organizations adopt technologies that increase output and reduce cost, and designers respond to those decisions. While practitioners can influence how technologies are applied locally, they rarely determine whether those technologies become standard practice. uxdesign.cc/sorry-design...

I wrote about why design keeps failing to gain autonomy, and why AI is accelerating the same trap. The answer has nothing to do with better frameworks or leverage skills but with the structure of the system designers are trying to (and ultimately always fail to) influence.

Asking yourself who they consider human will explain a lot.

Fifteen apps shipped. Twenty experiments running. A new launch every week. Shipping a lot isn’t the same as building well. And in a world where anyone can ship anything, the signal you’re sending with volume isn’t “I have great judgment.” www.antonsten.com/articles/tas...

Recent studies show that people who embrace their creative side are undoubtedly happier. Why? Because creativity fosters not just a sense of agency and empowerment, but also resilience to stress. www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-bu...

1. They hate us more. 2. Amongst themselves, their class solidarity is always going to prevail.

I’m starting a new role today and I think I might have girlbossed too close to the sun, unemployment was vibes.

At the senior level, you’re asking, “How do we build this well?” At Staff, you’re asking, “Should we be building this at all, and if so, why?” It’s not about doing more of the same thing better. It’s about doing a fundamentally different kind of thing. verifiedinsider.substack.com/p/how-to-ope...

Design principles can be personal, but usually they are committed to and shaped by the entire product team. Design principles aren’t just for designers. User’s experience is everything from performance to support to customer service. www.smashingmagazine.com/2026/04/prac...

A well-defined story with clear context, specific acceptance criteria, and a technical hypothesis isn’t just good practice anymore. It’s a strong starting point for a prompt. spin.atomicobject.com/user-story-a...

The developer implementing your component isn’t ignoring the detail you put in. They’re solving a different problem — architecture, logic, performance, the parts of the stack that sit far from the surface. uxdesign.cc/designers-fi...

Think of it like a trailer and a movie. The trailer gets people interested. The movie tells the full story. Your portfolio is the trailer. The interview is where you go deeper into your process and decisions. www.edkf.fyi/portfolio-ti...

Structure still communicates before content. Visual hierarchy still guides attention. Negative space still creates rhythm. The craft migrates to a different level of abstraction. But it remains craft. www.chrbutler.com/craft-is-unt...

That’s wild.

Every hour you spend confused is an hour you spend building the infrastructure inside your own head that will eventually let you do original work. There is no shortcut through that process that doesn't leave you diminished on the other side.

Holy moly, publicdomainlibrary.org/en/ is a gorgeous website, complete with unified cover design system.

A remarkable photo from #NoKings in DTLA from Connor Sheets of @latimes.com www.latimes.com/california/l...

I am going to be sharing this article a *lot*

What the average person thinks HR is supposed to do for them at a job is what unions are actually for.

If you use GitHub (especially if you pay for it!!) consider doing this *immediately* Settings -> Privacy -> Disallow GitHub to train their models on your code. GitHub opted *everyone* into training. No matter if you pay for the service (like I do). WTH github.com/settings/cop...

Seven foreign doctors and aid workers who volunteered in Gaza described a perverse situation in which Israel permits doctors into Gaza but not medical equipment—even months into a supposed ceasefire—prompting several to smuggle medical supplies in, even as they treat new casualties of war.

The discussion about why design teams don’t achieve the impact they should in companies isn’t solely the companies’ fault. We designers, in part, have built a path and a perception of our work that keeps us at that level. uxdesign.cc/leading-desi...

“The designer who remains employed after the restructuring of the last few years now works inside a specific arrangement, in fewer in number, responsible for more surface area, equipped with tools that generate output at a rate that exceeds any single person's capacity to evaluate it critically.”

Blocks let designers build smarter, collaborate faster, and create layouts that feel consistent and adaptable across any device or content type. Modular approach supports healthier ecosystems and gives teams the freedom to experiment without breaking structure. designshack.net/articles/lay...

When the cost of building collapses, the cost of building the wrong thing increases dramatically. If shipping becomes frictionless, the real scarcity moves elsewhere: clarity of intent, product judgment, and long-term coherence. blog.mozilla.ai/when-shippin... #ProductDesign

Did Spotify replace all designers with AI? This looks like someone threw a grenade into a bucket of buttons.

When you only see your piece of the puzzle, you optimise your piece. But customers don't experience your function - they experience the product. And the product is shaped by every function at once. blog.zeroblockers.com/p/as-ai-comm... #ProductDesign

Vibe-coded prototypes fall apart past a few sessions because LLMs compound their mistakes silently. Each session introduces new fabricated values, new inconsistencies, new drift from the source design system. hvpandya.com/llm-design-s... #DesignSystems #ProductDesign

When design has real influence inside an organization, leadership tends to appear in small but consequential decisions. Leaders notice where people hesitate. Where explanations repeat. Where workarounds quietly become habits. www.entrepreneur.com/starting-a-b...

Force Mapping helps you to build a mental model of all the internal forces, problems and challenges you’re facing so that you can figure out the best way of addressing them. mdalmijn.com/p/force-mapp...

Most advice about building judgment tells you what to do. What it never gives you is how to think while doing those things. The Three-Layer Read is one lens you can apply to any product, any screen, any flow. medium.com/design-bootc... #UXDesign #ProductDesign

“Creativity looks like nothing for long stretches. Staring out a window is working. A file untouched since Tuesday is working. The ideas that matter most grow in the gaps between the trackable moments.” x.com/riyvir/statu...

For designers, AI feels overly aggressive because it makes making trivial. For many designers, making things is the hardest part of the job, and if we’re already doubting our abilities, AI is provoking existential questions about what value we can provide at all. www.jonkolko.com/writing/a-de...

"AI" has become semantically meaningless. The term now encompasses everything from a regression model to an autonomous robot, creating confusion in strategic discussions, partner conversations, and product positioning. dropleaf.app/d/AlXez8scbd...

A Figma library, no matter how comprehensive, primarily helps designers. The moment a project moves to implementation, engineers are translating those designs into code. Every time. The real value comes when patterns exist in production code. www.shaunbent.co.uk/blog/is-ther...

Designing for agentic AI is designing for a relationship. This relationship, like any successful partnership, must be built on clear communication, mutual understanding, and established boundaries. www.smashingmagazine.com/2026/02/desi...

We need more of this all over the world.

Overnight oats are the ultimate lazy person breakfast I don’t make the rules