Why Instagram’s ad breaks feel worse than ads
The psychology of interruption, control, and broken scrolling expectations.Continue reading on UX Collective »
Interactivity
The dawn of Authentic Experience (AuX)
Why AuX in 2026 is about designing intelligence, not interfacesContinue reading on UX Collective »
Feelings are the new features
A strategic framework for emotional design when function is freeContinue reading on UX Collective »
Pixels of the Week – January 18, 2026
A fun API to say "no" with different excuses, Instagram’s failure on video accessibility, and why we shouldn’t humanize AI. Also: Microsoft's Fluent UI resources for designers, cute animated icons, and creepy cute cozy game vibes.
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
Cross-Device AR: How to Ensure a Seamless Experience
Augmented Reality (AR) UX has endless opportunities to make a usable and engaging product. Place-based storytelling can show information spatially in a way that is easier to understand than abstract ideas. However, AR isn’t always practical or safe to use, which makes it hard for users to want to use it all the time. One solution is to use multiple platforms, media and devices in a holistic approach to your product that leverages the strengths of AR when needed.The future of augmented reality is
The case for the uncertain AI: Why chatbots should say “I’m not sure”
Why chatbots should admit uncertainty. An analysis of RLHF, tokenization, and the future of transparency in Artificial Intelligence.Continue reading on UX Collective »
When tools pretend to be people
We are building LLMs to sound human. When we add personality and emotional tone, we increase the risk that people will trust them like people. Design them as tools. Not as companions.People ask AI systems for therapy, moral judgment, and legal authority. The interfaces we design invite this behavior. Think about how these systems present themselves. Conversational framing. Continuous memory across sessions. First-person responses that sound like someone talking back to you. Every one of these is
How to Use the Environment in Your AR Experience
Augmented Reality (AR) is an exciting medium because of the unique way it interacts with physical space to add new information and meaning. Let's look at what makes AR unique: the context of use. Unlike other devices and platforms, using an AR headset or mobile phone for AR allows you to interact with the world differently than usual.UX designers of all sorts pay special attention to the context of use. Frank Spillers is the founder of UX consultancy Experience Dynamics and an AR/VR designer. In
Beyond chat: 8 core user intents driving AI interaction
Intent-first framework you can use to design purpose-built AI experiencesThis essay was originally published on my Substack Syntax Stream, where I write about principles of human–AI interaction.The majority of AI products remain tethered to a single, monolithic UI pattern: the chat box. While conversational interfaces are effective for exploration and managing ambiguity, they frequently become suboptimal when applied to structured professional workflows.To move beyond “bolted-on” chat, product t
How to Reframe Negative Feedback Without Losing Confidence in Yourself
Negative feedback hurts. There's no way around it. Your stomach drops, your heart beats faster, and your thoughts race: “Am I about to lose this client?” “Are they questioning if I'm the right person for this job?” “Will this affect my reputation?” But what if you could change your relationship with feedback and turn it into a tool for career growth, without losing confidence? You can easily master this skill: it just needs a different approach!Think about the last time you received feedback tha
Show HN: I built a Finances app for Mac where you own the SQLite database
Hey HN,I feel like there is a gap in personal finance apps: local-first options typically have less polished UIs, while those with great design like Monarch Money are not local-first. This app fills the gap by providing a modern UI like Monarch/Monzo along with a database that you can hack around with outside of the app. File > app!- Local-first: transactions are stored in an encrypted SQLite database on your Mac, so you can read/write to it with Claude Code or your favourite DB cli
Show HN: Skedular, a Smart Booking and Workspace Management Platform
Hi HNI have been working on Skedular a platform that helps organizations councils co working spaces and local businesses manage bookings shared spaces and multi location operations in a simple modern wayWhat Skedular does - Manage rooms desks studios sports facilities meeting spaces and any kind of bookable asset - Handle multi location multi team scenarios - Provide public booking pages for venues - Offer a clean dashboard for operators to manage availability payments customers and sched
Show HN: LogiCart – Agentic shopping using Generative UI (A2UI pattern)
Hey HN, I’m the solo builder behind LogiCart.I recently refactored my frontend to use a Generative UI pattern (inspired by Google's new A2UI framework) because I realized a static chat interface fails for complex shopping intents.The Problem: A user buying a single item needs a completely different UX than a user planning a complex project. A standard "list of cards" doesn't work for both.The Solution: I built an Intent-to-UI engine where the LLM decides the interface structu
Show HN: Speaker Analyzer – Get analytics on who spoke how much in your meetings
Hi HN!We built Speaker Analyzer to solve a simple problem: after long video meetings, I wanted to know who actually spoke, for how long, and how the conversation was distributed. I found myself wondering "did I dominate the conversation?" or "who barely spoke up?" With remote teams using Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet, I can now export these transcript files and easily analyze participation patterns.What we built:A privacy-first tool that turns your meeting transcript files (*.
Cursor vs. antigravity after a week of real use
in the first week of 2026 i ended up using cursor and google antigravity back to back, not by plan but because i burned through two cursor ultra subscriptions faster than expected and decided to try antigravity on the free tier.my normal usage is ~$60–100/month. within a few days it jumped to $500+, with the dashboard projecting ~$1.6k/month. max mode was off, and the ui consistently showed a 200k context window.what i eventually pieced together is that cursor maintains a large hidden
Building technology products is easy, but we made it complicated
There are a thousand ways to fail in executing a digital product project. Regardless of the many variables, failure to deliver a project will always be due to foundational risk factors that compromise its successful completion.When you have people who are not suited for the job, the consequences might be catastrophic for everyone and everything involved.It’s been almost 20 years since I started my career in product design, and, as you might imagine, many things have changed dramatically since th
Usability heuristics and competition in games
Hi, my name is Oleksandr, I’m a Senior UX/UI Designer at Ubisoft, in my previous article, I talked about why every person on a team has an impact on UX. In this one, I want to dive deeper into usability and heuristics.UX Layers & Team. Source: Why is everyone on the team a UXer? Layers of player experienceUsabilityAccording to the Nielsen Norman Group, usability is about how easily and pleasantly users can achieve their goals when interacting with a product.It is an important factor for a pr
How UX directly impacts P&L
UX isn’t decoration; it is the mechanism that converts product value into business revenue.As a C-level executive at two consecutive VC-backed startups (ARxVision, AdInMo) and Senior Manager at major players like Ubisoft and the BBC, I’ve utilized design to solve critical P&L issues. The hardest part has often been building the business case to convince decision-makers to invest in user experience. Here are two distinct examples where UX was directly tied to business success.In some cases, e
Why Designers Are the New Bureaucrats
Modern designers aren’t creating anymore—they’re managing frameworks, meetings, and Figma files like corporate clerks. Creativity’s been replaced by process, and originality has drowned under layers of “alignment.” It’s time to admit it: designers have become the new bureaucrats—and the real rebellion is making something weird again.