Latest / The Feed & The Thread / The Feed & The Thread - May 6, 2026

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The Feed & The Thread - May 6, 2026 · The Feed & The Thread

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  The unwritten code of sharing is dead. So we just stop protecting
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  our work? No, we build walls because moral outrage doesn't
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  stop AI from scraping your portfolio. We're looking at the
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  new defense strategy.
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  Welcome to The Feed and The Thread, brought to you by
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  Chicago Camps. Leadership By Design is on Thursday and
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  Friday, September 17 and 18 and tickets are available now! And
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  while you're at it, get caught up on UX fundamentals with five
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  minute UX at five emm UX dot com. The Feed & The Thread is
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  available online at feed and thread dot com to submit your
• 0:30
  feeds, or download our app for all the feeds and threads
• 0:33
  delivered right to your pocket.
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  The line between human creation and synthetic generation is
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  blurring. We need new ways to prove authorship, while also
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  asking if machines can actually think like researchers. Marc
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  Andrew at UX Design.cc argues that moral outrage is no longer
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  enough to protect your work. In "Why you need to protect your
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  work more than ever", he explains that designers must
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  treat their output as high-value assets. The EU AI Act is coming,
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  and it demands transparency. But it only helps creators who can
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  prove they existed first. This shifts the burden of proof
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  entirely onto you. We often assume human intuition is
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  unbeatable in usability testing. But Jim Lewis and his team at
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  MeasuringU put that to the test. In "Can AI Detect Usability
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  Problems Like Researchers?", they compare LLM analysis
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  against human researchers. Four experts reviewed a single test
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  video. They found significant overlap in the problems
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  identified. This suggests AI might be a valid partner for
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  research, not just a novelty. Information architecture is
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  usually about static categories. Dan Brown challenges that view
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  on his blog. In "Claude is an information architecture
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  laboratory (Spilling Ink #15)", he describes using Claude as a
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  living laboratory. He used the model to test dynamic frameworks
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  for a complex product. It's not just about naming things. It's
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  about designing the rules that govern how information behaves
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  over time. Other articles today from LukeW on design futures,
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  Pavel Samsonov on organizational literacy, and Scott Berkun on
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  reviving design superpowers.
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  Hey everyone. Today's conversations feel heavy with
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  identity questions. Over on r/UXDesign, someone shared a job
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  offer that requires training AI models to simulate human
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  decisions. It's not design work. It's data labeling for a machine
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  that might replace them. One commenter pointed to articles
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  about companies using workers to train systems that automate
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  those same jobs. The tension here's stark. Do you take the
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  work to survive, or do you walk away to protect your craft? It
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  forces us to ask if our professional value lies in the
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  output, or in the human judgment behind it. Another designer on
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  r/UXDesign is stuck on a promotion title. Their role is
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  now sixty-five percent product management and twenty-five
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  percent design. They're torn between keeping a design title
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  to preserve their identity, or switching to Product Manager to
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  match their daily work. This isn't just semantics. It's about
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  how we define expertise when roles bleed together. If you do
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  the work of a PM but carry a design title, do you lose
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  credibility in either camp? The field is shifting, and titles
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  often fail to keep up with the reality of hybrid work. In
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  r/UI_Design, a developer asked for feedback on a photo editing
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  app with an animated orb feature. The post got zero
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  comments. Sometimes silence is the loudest feedback. It
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  suggests the community might be overwhelmed, or perhaps the
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  question didn't spark immediate interest. But it also highlights
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  a gap. We often wait for validation before shipping, but
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  real users rarely pause to critique your interface. They
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  just use it, or they don't. On r/UXDesign, a senior designer
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  with ten years of experience in India is struggling to get past
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  first-round interviews in Australia. They pass screens but
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  fail to advance. It raises a hard question about geographic
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  bias and how we evaluate experience. Does local context
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  matter more than a decade of proven work? It's a reminder
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  that our portfolios don't always translate across borders, and we
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  need better ways to signal competence that isn't tied to a
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  specific location. Finally, a web developer on r/UXDesign is
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  looking for deep theoretical resources. They know the tools,
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  but they want to understand the why behind the patterns. This is
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  the core of our craft. Tools change. Theory endures. If we
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  can't articulate why a pattern works, we're just decorating. We
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  need to go deeper than aesthetics to build products
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  that actually hold up. The common thread today is a crisis
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  of definition. Whether it's against AI, against job titles,
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  or against geographic borders, we're struggling to pin down
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  what makes a designer essential.
• 4:38
  Chicago Camps is hosting Leadership By Design on Thursday
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  & Friday, September 17 & 18. It's an online event, so you can
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  join from anywhere in the world! Tickets are free, thanks to the
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  generosity of the community! If it's within your budget, you can
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  purchase a general admission ticket for only twenty six
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  dollars - with limited early bird tickets at only fifteen
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  dollars. Get tickets now at Chicago Camps dot org.
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  Dan Brown's idea of using Claude as a living laboratory for
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  information architecture changes the game. It's not just about
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  static categories anymore. It's about designing the rules that
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  govern how information behaves over time. That's a systemic
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  shift from naming things to governing behavior. And that's
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  where the thread about data labeling hits hard. We've got
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  designers being asked to train models that might replace them.
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  If the model learns the rules of behavior, who owns those rules.
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  Is the designer the architect or just the fuel. The distinction
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  matters for career survival. It's about proof. Marc Andrew
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  points out that moral outrage doesn't protect your work. The
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  EU AI Act demands transparency, but the burden of proof is on
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  you. You have to prove you existed first. So treating
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  design output as a high-value asset isn't optional. It's a
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  legal necessity. Exactly. But here's the tension. Jim Lewis's
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  study shows AI can detect usability problems just like
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  human researchers. If the machine can do the analysis,
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  what's left for the human. Maybe the value isn't in the
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  detection. Maybe it's in the judgment of what to do with it.
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  That's the pivot. The machine finds the problem. The human
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  defines the consequence. But only if you've documented the
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  intent. If you don't have a record of why you made a choice,
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  the AI's output looks just as valid as yours. Documentation
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  becomes your intellectual property. So the skill set
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  shifts from spotting errors to articulating intent. We need to
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  stop treating documentation as administrative overhead. It's
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  the only thing that proves human authorship in a synthetic world.
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  Right. The teams that treat documentation as a core
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  deliverable will own the narrative. Everyone else is just
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  generating noise. We're moving from a craft of creation to a
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  craft of curation. And curation requires a ledger. If you can't
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  trace the decision, you don't own the product.
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  That's The Feed and The Thread for today. We'll catch you next
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  time!