Latest / The Feed & The Thread / The Feed & The Thread - May 19, 2026

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The Feed & The Thread - May 19, 2026 · The Feed & The Thread

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  We're stuck using AI as a faster pencil. Just a speed hack, not a
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  real shift. But the real bottleneck isn't the tool, it's
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  your organization's readiness to let agents do the work.
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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
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  Speed is no longer the point. The real question is what
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  happens to the work itself when the tools get faster. Patrick
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  Neeman at UX Design.cc makes the case in "From faster pencil to
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  AI Experience Architect: a designer’s path" that we're
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  stuck in a transitional phase. He calls it the faster pencil
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  stage. It offers limited long- term value because it just
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  accelerates old tasks. The real opportunity is becoming an AI
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  Experience Architect. You design the workflows, not just the
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  screens. Neeman draws on Jevons Paradox here. As AI lowers the
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  cost of design, the demand for design expands. That rewrites
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  the assumption that AI replaces designers. It actually creates
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  new roles for those who manage that elasticity. Nick Babich at
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  UX Planet argues in "Claude Haiku: The Most Underrated AI
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  Model on the Market" that we're overlooking a key tool. Claude
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  Haiku is significantly underrated for product design.
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  Larger models dominate the headlines, but Haiku balances
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  speed and cost better. It handles high-volume repetitive
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  tasks without the latency of heavier models. Babich suggests
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  designers should adopt a tiered approach. Use Haiku for rapid
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  ideation or summarizing user research data. It generates
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  initial copy drafts quickly. This lets you save the expensive
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  models for complex reasoning. It's a practical shift in how we
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  allocate computational resources. Jennifer Murphy at
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  Intercom Blog writes in "Agents can do the work" that the
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  bottleneck isn't technical. It's organizational readiness. She
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  identifies five types of readiness, noting most companies
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  fail at the latter three. Procedural readiness fails when
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  tacit knowledge isn't documented. Data and execution
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  readiness fail due to unreliable APIs. Teams hit a wall when
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  trying to automate complex actions. They're forced to
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  redesign workflows from scratch. The technology can do the work,
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  but our structures can't support it yet. Other articles today
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  from Codrops on WebGPU pipelines and UX Design.cc on empty
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  states.
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  What's happening in the community today. Over on
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  r/UXDesign, there's a growing concern that clean visual
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  interfaces are being mistaken for good user experience. The
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  argument is that modern, AI- assisted tools make it easy to
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  produce polished, minimal screens that look great in
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  static screenshots but fail in real-world interaction. They
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  lack clear hierarchy and user guidance. This connects directly
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  to our theme of speed. When tools make visual production
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  instant, we risk optimizing for aesthetic cleanliness rather
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  than functional usability. The speed of creation shouldn't
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  outpace the rigor of thinking. In r/UXResearch, a practitioner
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  is asking whether to disclose unemployment status to a
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  recruiter after initially withholding it to avoid salary
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  lowballing. This highlights a tense reality in the current job
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  market. The fear of being undervalued is real, but so is
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  the anxiety of potential deception. It reveals how much
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  trust is eroding in the hiring process. Designers and
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  researchers are navigating a landscape where transparency
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  feels risky, yet hiding information feels unsustainable.
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  Also on r/UXResearch, there's a sobering discussion about the
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  disappearing bridge between junior and senior roles. Big
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  Tech is increasingly relying on vendor pipelines for execution
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  work while hiring staff-level strategists. This removes the
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  middle ground where juniors traditionally learned the craft.
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  The implication is stark. If we automate or outsource the
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  foundational work, who teaches the next generation how to
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  think? Speed in hiring and execution is hollowing out the
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  career ladder. In r/UXResearch again, someone is looking for a
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  way to host AI-generated HTML prototypes for unmoderated
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  testing without exposing the source code. Standard platforms
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  often struggle with raw HTML files from AI tools. This
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  technical gap shows how fast AI generation is moving compared to
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  our testing infrastructure. We're producing artifacts faster
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  than we can safely evaluate them. The tooling hasn't caught
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  up to the speed of creation. Finally, over on r/UI_Design, a
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  designer is seeking feedback on a CRM dashboard, worrying that
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  the flow feels off. They're considering a dark theme
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  overhaul to fix visual weight issues. This common struggle
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  balances aesthetic preference with functional usability. It
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  reminds us that even with fast tools, the core problem of
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  complex application design remains. Visual tweaks don't fix
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  broken flows. The pattern today is clear. We're generating
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  interfaces and career paths faster than we're understanding
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  their consequences. Speed isn't the goal. Understanding the
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  impact is.
• 5:05
  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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  Jennifer Murphy says the bottleneck isn't technical. It's
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  organizational readiness. Most companies fail because they
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  haven't documented their tacit knowledge. The tools can do the
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  work, but the structures can't support it. That hits hard
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  because we're generating artifacts faster than we can
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  evaluate them. I saw a thread today where designers are
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  hosting AI-generated HTML for testing. They can't even protect
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  the source code. We're outpacing our own safety rails. Exactly.
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  Patrick Neeman calls this the faster pencil stage. We're just
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  accelerating old tasks. But Neeman also points to Jevons
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  Paradox. As AI lowers the cost of design, the demand expands.
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  It creates new roles for those who manage that elasticity. I
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  like that frame. But managing elasticity requires a shift in
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  mindset. We need to stop thinking about screens and start
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  thinking about workflows. If we don't redesign the process,
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  we're just filling a bigger bucket with the same water. So
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  the risk isn't replacement. It's stagnation. We keep optimizing
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  the pencil when we should be building the architect's
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  toolkit. The technology is ready. The workflow isn't. We
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  have to stop treating speed as the metric. The metric should be
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  structural integrity. Agreed. If the foundation cracks under
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  the weight of the output, the speed was never an advantage. It
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  was just noise.
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  That's The Feed and The Thread for today. We'll catch you next
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  time!