Latest / The Feed & The Thread / The Feed & The Thread - March 4, 2026

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The Feed & The Thread - March 4, 2026 · The Feed & The Thread

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  So designers are paying a hidden tax just to get their work
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  approved. And apparently the fix is... proving you belong by
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  speaking someone else's language? Right... Yeah, and
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  meanwhile, hiring managers say they're tired of polished
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  portfolios that hide the mess. Well, that's gonna upset some
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  people. Let's get into it.
• 0:20
  Welcome to The Feed and The Thread, brought to you by
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  Chicago Camps. Our next UX Camp event is coming up on Saturday,
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  May 30th. Tickets are free - with an option to pay if it's in
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  budget for you. There's an open call for speakers so now is your
• 0:30
  chance to get on stage and share your ideas! You can also find
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  The Feed & The Thread online at feed and thread dot com to
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  submit your feeds, or download our app for all the feeds and
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  threads delivered right to your pocket.
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  Today's Feed tackles a structural imbalance in design,
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  a new standard for research inclusion, and a hard truth
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  about what hiring managers actually want from entry-level
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  portfolios. Designers pay a hidden tax just to do their
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  jobs. Vlad Derdeicea calls it the "justification tax" in a
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  piece unsurprisingly called "The justification tax," at UX
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  Design.cc. While engineers refactor code on merit,
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  designers must constantly prove their work with data and
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  business cases. This extra burden delays approvals and
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  fuels burnout because design is the only discipline forced to
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  translate its value into finance and engineering languages. True
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  inclusion means moving past simple checklists. Dr. Michele
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  Williams argues this in a new book titled "Accessible UX
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  Research," announced by Smashing Magazine. The guide challenges
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  professionals to recruit disabled participants from the
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  start rather than just checking compliance boxes. It offers
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  practical strategies to confront ableism and avoid biased
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  questioning during sessions. Polished case studies are hiding
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  a problem. In "Entry-Level UX Portfolios Demand Judgment Over
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  Wireframes," at Mitoware, the argument is clear: hiring
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  managers are tired of seeing perfect deliverables that mask
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  the messy reality of product work. What actually stands out
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  is showing the decision path, the constraints you navigated,
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  and the tradeoffs between viable alternatives. If your portfolio
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  can't survive a whiteboard test, the tools aren't saving you.
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  Also publishing recently: George Joeckel at WebAIM on a new path
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  for digital accessibility, Kem- Laurin Lubin at UX Design.cc on
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  designing at the edge of AI harm, and Fabricio Teixeira on
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  agentic UX principles.
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  Welcome back to the community pulse, where the real
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  conversations are happening. The real question isn't whether
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  AI is fast, but whether speed kills the definition of good
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  work. "Stop Letting Execs Turn UX Into AI Builders," over on
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  r/UXDesign, is urging designers to speak up now or risk
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  irrelevance. One commenter argues that code is moving
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  faster than our ability to shape problems, calling this gap a
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  goldmine if we know how to use it. But another voice pushes
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  back hard, noting that UX only survives by delivering business
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  results, not by defending an ideology. If AI outputs perform
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  as well as a design team, companies will simply cut the
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  cost. The divide is clear: are we the strategists who define
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  the problem, or just the operators building the solution?
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  Meanwhile, the hierarchy of product teams is getting messy
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  again. "Anyone else seeing designers fill in when there's
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  no Product Manager?" over on r/UXResearch, highlights a
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  growing pattern where designers are absorbing product ownership
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  by default. The sentiment suggests that while this offers
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  designers more influence, it also blurs the lines of
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  accountability and burns people out. We see this shift happening
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  in real time, and it changes what a senior designer actually
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  does every day. It sure does feel like the community is
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  wrestling with the exact moment where our traditional roles
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  start to dissolve.
• 3:43
  Chicago Camps is hosting UX Camp Summer on Saturday, May 30th.
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  There's an open call for speakers so submit your idea
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  today! It's an online event, so you can join from anywhere in
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  the world! Tickets are free, thanks to the generosity of the
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  community! If it's within your budget, you can purchase a
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  general admission ticket for only thirteen dollars and fifty
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  cents. Get tickets now at Chicago Camps dot org.
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  The piece on the justification tax really stuck with me. Vlad
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  Derdeicea points out that designers carry a hidden burden
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  engineers don't. They've got to constantly translate their work
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  into finance and engineering language just to get approved.
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  That translation part is where the burnout starts. I see
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  designers spending more time building business cases than
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  actually solving problems. It feels like they're forced to
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  speak a language that isn't their own just to prove they
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  belong. I see it differently though. This friction might
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  actually be a superpower if we lean into it. By forcing
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  designers to understand the business case, we're creating a
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  new kind of strategic role that pure coders can't fill. But
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  that's a dangerous gamble. If the goal is just to justify the
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  work, the design itself often gets compromised to fit the
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  numbers. We end up optimizing for approval instead of
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  optimizing for the user. And that connects directly to the
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  thread about designers filling in for missing product managers.
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  The industry's already pushing us toward that ownership,
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  whether we like it or not. Exactly. So when we add the
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  justification tax on top of product ownership, we aren't
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  becoming strategists. We're just becoming unpaid product managers
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  who still have to design the screens. Maybe the real win is
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  realizing this extra burden proves our value in a way that
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  raw code never could. I hope so, but I worry we're just paying a
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  higher price for a job that's already stretched too thin.
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  That's The Feed and The Thread for today. Keep designing with
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  intention!