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 »
Interactivity
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 ...
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
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: 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: 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
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
The preventive healthcare product cycle: how ancient practices become “innovations” every 20 years
A 9,000-year vibe code analysis of 83 artifacts revealing the four cultural triggers that turn ancient traditions into billion-dollar “disruptions.The acceleration of history: A chronological mapping of health artifacts from 7000 BC to 2024 AD, revealing the extreme density of “innovation” in the 21st century.Collective amnesiaIt took four weeks, five days, and seven hours to finish this research — and I’ve barely scratched the surface. As a Product Manager in healthcare, I was taught that “habi