Interactivity

A Green Book for AI Apps

A Green Book for AI appsWhere to build, where to borrow, and how to leave.NotebookLM’s visual interpretation of the 1946 edition of The Green BookI use software as a creative instrument: in workflows, publications, client systems, and in all the quiet machinery that keeps institutions pulsing through connected ideas. I’ve now lived through two platform shifts up-close: the dawn of the consumer internet and the explosion of Web 2.0's networked creativity. The lesson that stuck is simple: the

Who’s Spotting You When You Automate

Who’s spotting you when you automateDesigning for humans in high-pressure environments.A good spotter reduces your fear of a catastrophe. They’ve positioned themselves close enough to you, don’t interfere with your lift, and you know they’re watching to step in if needed. This certainty allows you to feel safe. But when you don’t trust your spotter? You pull back because the risk feels too high. It’s no secret that teams wrestle with trust, governance & cross-boundary automation across the i

2.5 billion prompts later, there is still no system

AI prompts feel productive, but real AI success depends on systems thinking and design.Continue reading on UX Collective »

Show HN: Free Z-Image – A Fast, High-Quality AI Image Generator for Creators

I built Z-Image, a free, fast, and creator-focused AI image generator designed for artists, game developers, designers, and anyone who needs high-quality visuals without the usual friction or cost.Try it here (free): https://aiocmaker.com/z-imageWhy I built itMost AI image tools fall into two categories:Great quality but expensive, slow, or require subscriptions.Free tools but low quality, restrictive, or overloaded.As a builder working in the game/anime space, I needed a gen

Framework-agnostic Select and Toast components built with Web Components

Hi HN,I’ve been working across multiple frontend stacks over the past few years (React, Vue, Angular, etc.), and one recurring frustration kept coming up:Core UI components like selects and toast notifications get rewritten every time the framework changes.Even when the behavior and UX are essentially the same, the implementation is tightly coupled to the framework, which makes long-lived UI logic surprisingly fragile.So I decided to experiment with a different approach: building UI primitives a

Facebook has made it impossible to delete Pages – dark patterns everywhere

I'm honestly shocked at how bad the current Facebook interface has become. I’m trying to delete a Page I own, and the platform basically makes it impossible. The options have moved or disappeared, the Page Settings menu leads to the wrong profile, Business Suite doesn’t show the Page, and the “Access and Control” section doesn’t list it at all.Facebook keeps bouncing me between: – personal profile settings – business portfolio settings – Meta Business Suite – classic Page UINone of them giv

Show HN: Audit8n – Free, privacy-first n8n workflow analyzer

I built Audit8n (https://audit8n.com) to solve a problem I kept running into: n8n workflows that looked fine on the surface but had hidden security vulnerabilities, performance bottlenecks, and reliability issues.The tool runs 100+ checks across three categories:• Security: hardcoded secrets, public webhooks without auth, RCE via Execute Command nodes • Performance: aggressive polling intervals, AI token bloat, N+1 SQL patterns • Reliability: fragile loops without error handling, block

Pixels of the Week – January 11, 2026

Why accessibility helps everyone, the AI-fueled crash of tech giants, and why people sound like chatGPT. Also: placeholder cats, responsive letter spacing, and a critique of Pantone’s 2026 very white color of the year.

When agreement becomes impossible

Evaluation, judgment, and the erosion of professional knowledgeContinue reading on UX Collective »

Presentations Are Your Career Currency: Here's How to Cash In

Your career works like a bank account. Every project you finish and every skill you develop is a deposit. When you explain your work clearly, you’re investing in your own reputation. Each presentation pays dividends over time. Master presentation skills, and you’ll watch your career grow exponentially like wealth that compounds with every word.David works incredibly hard. He stays late, does the research, builds his technical skills, and always delivers high-quality work. But he doesn’t get much

UX in board game design

I treated my board game like a product. How UX practices and “killing my darlings” improved its UI, simplified the game, and maxed the fun!Continue reading on UX Collective »

Your Brand Just Evolved: The Rise of AI-Generated Identities

What if your favorite brand could change its logo, colors, and voice in real time — just for you? Generative branding is turning static identities into living, adaptive systems that evolve with context, mood, and audience. It’s the biggest shift in design since the logo itself — and it’s rewriting what “brand consistency” even means.

Figma Make prompts, with real examples

What actually goes into a good prompt, and why most advice skips thisIf you’re trying to learn how to write good Figma Make prompts, you’ve probably hit the same wall I did.Most advice stays abstract.Be clear. Add context. Explain intent.None of that helps when you’re staring at an empty prompt box wondering what actually needs to go in there.What’s missing in the industry right now isn’t more frameworks. It’s real examples. Full prompts. End-to-end inputs you can actually read and learn from.By

Inside insight: How I set up a research repository in Notion

Hi, I’m Nikki. I run Drop In Research, where I help teams stop launching “meh” and start shipping what customers really need. I write about the conversations that change a roadmap, the questions that shake loose real insight, and the moves that get leadership leaning in. Bring me to your team.Paid subscribers get the power tools: the UXR Tools Bundle with a full year of four top platforms free, plus all my Substack content, and a bangin’ Slack community where you can ask

Penpot Is Experimenting With MCP Servers For AI-Powered Design Workflows

This article is a sponsored by PenpotImagine that your Penpot file contains a full icon set in addition to the design itself, which uses some but not all of those icons. If you were to ask an AI such as Claude or Gemini to export only the icons that are being used, it wouldn’t be able to do that. It’s not able to interact with Penpot files.However, a Penpot MCP server can. It can perform a handpicked number of operations under set rules and permissions, especially since Penpot has an extensive A

Show HN: Sushidata – automating the painful parts of competitor and VoC research

Hi HN,A few months ago we noticed a pattern. Every GTM, product, and marketing team we talked to had the same problem. They were drowning in external data from Reddit, Discord, Slack communities, competitor sites, and social channels. But turning all of that noise into something structured and useful took an enormous amount of time.We watched people spend days copying screenshots into spreadsheets, tagging posts, and checking competitor websites by hand. We were doing the same thing ourselves an

Post‑COVID user research needs a revised safeguarding plan

A story from the field: the day safeguarding became realLaptop, phone and book chained together, symbolising safeguarding and data security in user research fieldwork. Source: Pexels.During a discovery project, I was visiting education settings across England to run in‑person research. That meant working inside real-world constraints: safeguarding processes, visitor protocols, staff availability, young people moving through corridors, rooms that suddenly became unavailable, and the constant awar

When your best work gets tossed

We have decades of data proving design’s business value. So why do we still lose every budget fight?Generated using MidjourneyI’ve watched it happen too many times. You spend weeks researching, prototyping, testing. The users love it. The data backs it. Then someone in the room says “I don’t like blue” or “my wife thinks this is confusing” and suddenly everything’s back on the table. Design decisions get discarded like they’re optional decorations, not strategic choices backed by evidence.In mos

Same, but new: UX Research in the age of LLMs

How researchers can define quality, guide prompts, and shape the value of AI outputs.AI agents, synthetic users, deep research, staying relevant as a UX researcher can feel like a challenge that resets every week. Teams across product, design, and engineering are moving faster than ever, often powered by the same underlying AI technologies. Prompt engineering and system design have quickly become central topics across disciplines, raising a familiar, and uncomfortable, question: where does UX re

Pivoting Your Career Without Starting From Scratch

Has work felt “different” to you? You show up, do your work, fix what needs fixing, and get the job done, but the excitement isn’t quite the same anymore. Maybe the work has become too routine, or maybe you’ve grown in a way your role hasn’t kept up with. You catch yourself thinking, “I’ve been doing this for years, but where do I go from here?”It’s not always about the burnouts or frustrations. Sometimes it’s just curiosity. You’ve learned a lot, built things, solved problems, and now a small p