Interactivity
The ecology of a merger
Gregory Bateson and the art of staying in conversation with yourself.This week, someone asked me a question that deserves more than a quick answer:How can a company get bigger without making the experience worse for the people who already trust it?I’m Nate Sowder, and this is unquoted, installment 10. Today, we’re talking mergers and acquisitions.At first, it sounds like a design problem. Or maybe a customer service one. Add new markets, new systems, new customers, and suddenly the challenge is
How To Make Your UX Research Hard To Ignore
In the early days of my career, I believed that nothing wins an argument more effectively than strong and unbiased research. Surely facts speak for themselves, I thought.If I just get enough data, just enough evidence, just enough clarity on where users struggle — well, once I have it all and I present it all, it alone will surely change people’s minds, hearts, and beliefs. And, most importantly, it will help everyone see, understand, and perhaps even appreciate and commit to what needs to be do
The New Reality of UX Careers | Mindaugas Petrutis (Lovable)
Listen now on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.—In our conversation, we discuss:Why traditional org charts and career ladders are breaking down and what that means for researchers and designers.How AI and startup culture are reshaping roles, shrinking teams, and pushing senior-level decisions onto mid-level professionals.Why most people feel unprepared for their new responsibilities and how to close the gap without waiting for formal mentorship.How to build your own “board of directors
[1/10] How to create micro-interactions in business website #uianimation #uxdesign #framermotion
I create an example of micro interaction, UI animation in the website. I build websites for businesses. #FramerMotion ...
The illusion of alignment
How designers create true alignment with visual thinkingI want to tell you about my favorite apple. It’s incredible. It’s hands down the most delicious apple of all time! When you see it hanging on a tree, its color invites you to come closer and take a bite. When it’s ripe, the flavor is amazing, complemented with a delightfully pleasing texture. It’s a fantastic fruit that fills you with delight.What kind of apple are you imagining?Now, what kind of apple did you imagine? Was it red, green, or
The economics of AI in UX
Reasons to be optimisticAdvancements in AI continue to generate excitement for those in tech and product-focused fields. Coming along for the ride with that excitement is proportionate anxiety for many, especially those in UX. New AI advancements and employer expectations raise various concerns that tend to fall under the larger banner of something like “will AI reduce the need for UX designers and researchers?”. Thomas Stokes at Drill Bit Labs reports a year-over-year increase of almost 7% in U
Design for Amiability: Lessons from Vienna
Today’s web is not always an amiable place. Sites greet you with a popover that demands assent to their cookie policy, and leave you with Taboola ads promising “One Weird Trick!” to cure your ailments. Social media sites are tuned for engagement, and few things are more engaging than a fight. Today it seems that people want to quarrel; I have seen flame wars among birders. These tensions are often at odds with a site’s goals. If we are providing support and advice to customers, we don’t wa
Against images as accessories
Today, too many images are little more than filler and bait.It feels like almost all text published online today needs an image with it. White paper, blog post, social post, news article: these things must have an image with them to survive — how do you expect your writing to reach people by throwing away all the engagement that images give you?But, obviously it wasn’t always like this. See below an image of the cover of the New York Times on armistice day 1918:And a screenshot from CNN from tod
Feedback Fatigue: Why AI Will Stop Asking for Your Opinion
You still think you’re in control when you click that thumbs-up? Think again. In the near future, AI won’t ask for your opinion — it’ll steal it from your behavior, without you even knowing. The age of consent is over; welcome to the era of invisible feedback.
Beyond random: why systems behave in predictable ways
Hidden patterns of system behaviorUnderstanding the feedback loops and recurring designs that govern our livesA Frank Lloyd Wright Stained Glass Window | source: https://www.artic.edu/Systems don’t behave randomly. They behave based on their design. As a result, many systems, even those found in nature, exhibit frequent, common behaviors. Moreover, these behaviors will typically manifest the same problems and issues, so much so that we may even name and categorize them. These are sometimes calle
Trust isn’t a feature — it’s the interface
The hardest thing to automate is confidence.Continue reading on UX Collective »
The importance of taste, and other lies we tell ourselves
It’s not taste that will set designers apart from AI. It’s judgment.Composite AI-created image by authorThere’s that word again. Taste.Listen to a few podcasts with designer A talking to designer B in echo chamber C, and you’ll likely hear it a few more times.We’re talking about taste like it’s the thing that will keep the cyber robots from stealing away our jobs.It’s not that I disagree. But I think once again we’ve rushed out of our way to promote exactly the wrong word to convey what we reall
How to keep design strategic when you’re suddenly in a startup environment
When your company shrinks back to startup size, how can you adapt?Continue reading on UX Collective »
It’s not you, it’s hierarchy
How I demoted my tree diagrams.Image AI Generated (Midjourney)It’s 9:03 a.m. I join a Zoom meeting titled “Team Structure Alignment — Attendance Required,” the type of meeting title commonly reserved for nightmares. As soon as I join HR appears in one tile, smiling like this is definitely covered in their onboarding. It isn’t. We’re here today to demote a sentient diagram.Long story short: afew years ago a lightning bolt totally hit a Texas data center while someone had Lucidchart open, and a In
The AI Avalanche: Are We Drowning in Our Own Creation?
AI isn’t making life easier—it’s burying us in tools we can’t keep up with. Every new app promises magic, but all we feel is burnout. This isn’t progress—it’s overload disguised as innovation.
Butterfly effect, nostalgia in UX, a framework for emotions, privacy with smart glasses
Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.“As designers, we constantly make decisions. Whether we design objects, devices, websites, apps, or policies, we choose one option over another, setting parameters for subsequent actions to unfold.The law of unintended consequences observes that every decision made can have both positive and negative outcomes that were not foreseen by the person making the decision.”The UX butterfly effect →By Martin Tomitsch and Steve 'Doc' Ba
Visual design’s future is the scenic route
How design will evolve from solving functional problems to creating depth, connection, and significance in the age of AI.Image source: dreamstime.comI recently stumbled across a LinkedIn post by Rafael T. making a bold prediction—by 2030, 90% of interfaces will be invisible. According to him, voice, chat, and autonomous agents will replace screens and buttons as the primary ways we interact with technology.Designers, he argued, will no longer focus on crafting pixels but on choreographing conver
The Grayscale Problem
Last year, a study found that cars are steadily getting less colourful. In the US, around 80% of cars are now black, white, gray, or silver, up from 60% in 2004. This trend has been attributed to cost savings and consumer preferences. Whatever the reasons, the result is hard to deny: a big part of daily life isn’t as colourful as it used to be.The colourfulness of mass consumer products is hardly the bellwether for how vibrant life is as a whole, but the study captures a trend a lot of us recogn
AI interfaces and the role of good writing
Why clear, strategic writing is more critical than ever.If you’ve used an AI product recently, you probably know that the technology is incredible. The UX? Not so much.Maybe you’ve gotten comfortable writing prompts or using simple one-click tools. But as AI interfaces start to take different forms, many of them are still kinda hard to figure out. Navigating them can be overwhelming. It doesn’t feel like you’re using these products so much as deciphering them. The engineering is powerful, but th
What Perplexity’s AI browser reveals about UX’s future
A systematic analysis of the first truly AI-native browser and what it teaches us about designing for intention rather than navigationOn day 3 of testing Perplexity’s Comet browser, something remarkable happened: I stopped typing URLs entirely. My brain had completely rewired from “where do I go?” to “what do I want?” — and this cognitive shift happened before the AI could reliably deliver on that promise. This gap between mental transformation and technical reality defines the next decade of UX