Interactivity

The 80% job: how design leads are using AI — and it’s not about mockups

The 80% job: how design leads are using AI — and it’s not about mockupsDesign leads spend 80% of their time communicating, aligning, and justifying. That’s exactly where AI helps most.Image generated with MidjourneyPart 1: The Reality of Design LeadershipHere’s what my job description says I do: set design vision, mentor designers, elevate craft quality, drive innovation.Here’s what I actually do: run 1:1s, mediate conflicts, write justifications for decisions, align with stakeholders, update Ji

When AI passes the capitalist Turing test

AI was meant to explain and augment human intelligence. Why aren’t we getting any closer?Collage created by the author. Source for original images: https://www.tvfilmprops.co.uk/, https://www.brainline.org/tbi-basics/interactive-brainNearly every modern conversation about AI begins by acknowledging how transformative it is for everyday life — how it’s changing routines, replacing jobs, restructuring our social networks. As with any kind of rapid and uncontrollable change, opinions about it are p

The natural design process

Exploration of the essence of what we do and how we do itPhoto by Jon Tyson on UnsplashIt might be a sign of changing of the times and of our industry, it might be a marketing push from the companies betting big on AI. I don’t know. But there seems to be a sort of a urgency for something new. For speed. For freedom. For paving a new path. For simplicity. For flexibility. A push for something else rather than Design Thinking as the standard design process.I am talking about the new wave of intuit

Embrace the mess: how to tell honest UX stories that help you grow

How trying to hide the mess of design projects caps your careerContinue reading on UX Collective »

Designing useful ads

Redefining the relationship between AI utility and digital advertising.(AI disclaimer: billboard asset produced with AI assistance; the billboard copy, and rest of the banner are my own design) Banner for “Useful Ads,” showing a nighttime billboard warning a specific driver about a broken headlight and pointing them to nearby repair shops.AI usage disclaimer: AI tools were used for editing visual assets, writing feedback, assistance in locating relevant sources, & Chicago-style citation form

Can you run out of creativity?

There’s a particular kind of panic that hits when you’re facing a creative problem, and the well just feels… empty. Every idea seems stale…Continue reading on UX Collective »

What design leaders must unlearn to lead in an AI-first world

The path to designing for AI is in questioning the fundamentals of what design stands forImage Credit: AI Generated ImageI admire artists and industrial designers who challenge assumptions. Ross Lovegrove is one of them. If you’ve never heard of him, he is one of the most visionary creators in the world, and designs all sorts of devices, including door handles, computers, fragrance bottles, and concept cars.In an article in the popular design magazine Wallpaper, he claims that the potential of w

Why is real-world ASR still ~85% when lab models claim >95%?

Curious to hear what approaches people are taking, what the bottlenecks are, and whether anyone here is pushing toward the goal of "AI that understands you, the first time."I've been diving into the gap between benchmark ASR performance and real-world speech. Models like Whisper and Deepgram show impressive >95% accuracy in ideal conditions. But in the wild — accents, noisy environments, emotional speech, code-switching, overlapping speakers — accuracy often drops sharply, ofte

Exciting New Tools for Designers, February 2026

There are so many new – and good – tools for designers out there right now. From tiny bits of artificial intelligence to icons that delight, there’s something to help almost every creative professional work more efficiently, while creating products that look amazing. This list includes a few OS-specific goodies too, with a couple of […]

Intuitive designer, AI delegation matrix, the new UX toolkit

Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.“You likely know, or at the very least know of, a designer who just gets it. I’m talking about the designer who solves complex problems with elegant, user-centered, buildable solutions without breaking a sweat. Or maybe that designer who turns everything they touch into something genuinely beautiful. Or even the one who gets up on a stage and says what we’re all thinking more clearly and eloquently than we can. Maybe all three. Love or

Emotional design: let’s design for silence

The most powerful communication happens before language. And there are psychoneurological reasons.Continue reading on UX Collective »

AI’s text-trap: Moving towards a more interactive future

AI assistants don’t have to communicate in paragraphs. They can communicate through interfaces.Generated using Google GeminiLLMs have made AI assistants a standard feature across SaaS. AI assistants allow users to instantly retrieve information and interact with a system through text-based prompts. Mathias Biilmann, in his article “Introducing AX: Why Agent Experience Matters,” discusses two distinct approaches to building AI assistants. The Closed Approach involves a conversational assistant em

Pixels of the Week – February 8, 2026

This week we dive into how the same UI is perceived differently for disabled users, how sound can improve UX, and how to choose the right list form controls. Also: data-viz inspiration, accessibility patterns, and a few brain-bending curiosities.

How to make any text scannable

9 science-backed ways to get people to read your stuff (any stuff).Continue reading on UX Collective »

The Design Vibeshift

A change is happening… for a lot of designers, code is becoming our new canvasContinue reading on UX Collective »

Bringing buttons back: rethinking how smart your smartphone should be

The return to physical keyboards in the age of the touchscreen.Continue reading on UX Collective »

Micro-interactions still matter

Little micro interactions and accessibility concerns make a big difference to showing your attention to detail. Key Links ...

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: 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: 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