Interactivity

Context matters… A lot

Building intuitive AI products requires designing for context managementSelecting the right context among the noise can make the world of differenceLarge language models are becoming remarkably good at executing tasks.They can summarize documents, generate content, analyze data, and even reason through complex problems in ways that feel almost human. In many cases, they outperform what most people could do on their own.And yet, they still get things terribly wrong. Not just in obvious ways, such

Running your life from terminal is peak 2026 — and that’s not the flex you think it is

“I run my life from terminal.” Peak 2026 energy. And I get it — I really do.Hilary Gridley was just on “How I AI” — the sister podcast to Lenny’s Newsletter — talking about turning #ClaudeCode into your personal life operating system. Calendar management, task capture, workflow automation, preference learning — all orchestrated from a terminal window. She narrates her day to Claude, lets it observe her behaviour, and it gradually takes work off her plate. No elaborate system design. No complex i

Interview with Amy Huang, Leadership in Design

Amy Huang has a fintech and healthcare background including creative direction at Citibank and consulting for BCBSRI.She has a B.F.A. in Industrial Design from RISD as well as various other qualifications in business and tech including Harvard Business School Online.Amy moved from China to New Zealand when she was five years old and currently lives in the Dallas, Texas area with her dog Dolly and two cats Tiger Lily and Sesame.You can find her on LinkedIn.Can you tell us a little bit about your

Is AI addiction a thing?

And is it really that bad?Photo by Mia Anderson on UnsplashAn article published in 2025 proposed a newly observed disorder called Generative AI Addiction Syndrome (GAID), describing how some users feel anxious when cut off from AI, lose sleep over it, or withdraw from social contact. Is AI really addictive, or is it the way it’s designed that hooks us? As AI becomes more common, these are questions worth asking.What’s AI addiction?Researchers define AI addiction by three core traits: loss of con

Show HN: VantageKit – a lightweight data room with staging, analytics, & AI Q&A

Hi HN,I’m the solo developer behind VantageKit. I was a PM for a long time and recently decided to get back into coding. I’ve been building this part-time for just under two months (first commit was Dec 26). I was able to move this fast largely by leaning heavily on Claude Code to accelerate my workflow, and I wanted to share the result here to get your feedback.THE PROBLEM: - Sharing pitch decks, proposals, or due diligence docs is full of friction. You either send PDF attachments (and fly blin

Ask HN: Anyone doing production image editing with image models? How?

Hey HN — I’m building an app where users upload “real life” clothing photos (ex. a wrinkly shirt folded on the floor). The goal is to transform that single photo into a clean, ecommerce-style image of the garment.One key UX requirement: the output needs to be a PNG with transparency (alpha) so we can consistently crop/composite the garment into an on-rails UI (cards, outfit layouts, etc.). Think “subject cutout that drops cleanly into templates.”My current pipeline looks like: 1. User-uploa

Show HN: Intentify – Point at your UI, describe a change, get a PR

Intentify is now generally available.It turns UI change requests directly from your app into structured tickets and pull requests.How it works: 1. Point and describe – Click on any element in your app and describe the change in plain language. 2. Review the proposal – Intentify generates a preview by updating the page. You review and approve 3. Create a PR – A pull request is opened for engineers to review and merge.Engineers stay in control. Nothing auto-ships.Intentify adapts to your code patt

Show HN: I built a Chrome extension to let my OpenClaw Bot remote in

Sharing a build-in-public update.I’ve been working with my assistant “Gideon” (running inside OpenClaw) to solve a very specific problem:I want the agent to control my real browser (logged-in sites, my normal cookies, my actual tabs) - not a sandboxed headless browser - while still keeping the control surface simple and auditable. This means my OpenClaw won't break the moment a site gets "clever".So... We built it! I say we but it was mostly Gideon and I was along for the ride as

Show HN: UseWhisper.dev – AI Code Reviewer (please test and roast it)

Hey HN!I built UseWhisper.dev — an AI code reviewer that analyzes your code diffs, PRs, or snippets and returns review feedback instantly. It runs in the browser with no signup required, and is meant to give developers quick second opinions on logic, style, security, and best practices.https://usewhisper.devWhat it does:Paste a diff, GitHub PR link, or code snippetGet line-by-line intelligent feedbackSuggestions on readability, errors, anti-patternsNo login, minimal UI, fast responsesW

Show HN: utils.live – Developer utilities that run entirely in your browser

I kept opening different websites for simple dev tasks — formatting JSON, encoding Base64, testing regex patterns. Each one had ads, signup walls, or sent my data to a server. I wanted a single place where everything runs client-side with nothing leaving my browser.Each tool is a stateless pure function defined with Zod schemas. The schemas validate input at runtime and also generate the UI automatically — editor language, form fields, and output format are all inferred from the schema shape. To

How To Run a Qualitative Usability Test

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

Every designer on my team ships the same quality now

That’s the problem. The skills you dismissed just became the most expensive ones on your team.Continue reading on UX Collective »

AI is rewriting the rules. Language is following.

Language has always evolved. But this time, it’s being rewired faster than most of us can keep up with, and our sentences are caught in the middle.There’s a word you’ll have noticed lately. It turns up in LinkedIn posts, academic lectures, workplace emails, and the kind of semi-formal prose that used to carry a whiff of genuine effort. The word is delve. It has been there, technically, for centuries. But something changed around the end of 2022, and now it appears with an unusual frequency that

Human-Centred Design has grown up. It’s time we did too.

We spent twenty-five years making technology work for users. Now we need to make it work for human beings. These are not the same thing, and the distance between them is where a generation of harm accumulated.In the year 2000, Steve Krug published three words that became the operating philosophy of a generation of designers:Don’t Make Me Think. The message was radical in its simplicity — technology should work for people, not the other way around. Usability was the revelation. Friction was the e

The UX Case Study of a Refrigerator

What if the most broken user experience you deal with daily… is your refrigerator? This UX teardown applies product thinking to the humble fridge — exposing its dark patterns, terrible navigation, and hope-based interaction design.

A Practical Guide To Design Principles

We often see design principles as rigid guidelines that dictate design decisions. But actually, they are an incredible tool to rally the team around a shared purpose and document the values and beliefs that an organization embodies.They align teams and inform decision-making. They also keep us afloat amidst all the hype, big assumptions, desire for faster delivery, and AI workslop. But how do we choose the right ones, and how do we get started? Let’s find out.Real-World Design PrinciplesIn times

Rethinking design awards in an AI world

Why design awards are still relevant and what needs to changeContinue reading on UX Collective »

Agentic AI, design systems & Figma: a practical guide

The Figma basics you were told to get right just became the foundation for something much bigger.I watched a demo recently that I keep thinking about. Brad Frost, who wrote Atomic Design, joined Dominic Nguyen, co-founder of Chromatic, for a live session called Agentic Design Systems in 2026. Kyle, a developer experience engineer from the Storybook team, was running it, showcasing their MCP-in-the-making.I will be honest with you, as a designer and educator, I watch those kinds of demos out of d

DeepSeek and Grok cloud dancing data color schemes

Data Visualization Studies with the 2026 Pantone Color of the Year.Continue reading on UX Collective »

Designers finally have a say in the product they design.

AI didn’t teach designers to code. It gave them back the decisions that were always theirs.I’ve been thinking about a particular kind of frustration that most designers I know have felt at least once or probably more. You finish a component. You’ve thought through every state, every transition, the exact weight of the animation as it resolves. It goes into development. It comes back. And something is off. Not broken, just slightly dulled. The easing curve is close, but not right. The hover state