Latest / The Feed & The Thread / The Feed & The Thread - August 3, 2026

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The Feed & The Thread - August 3, 2026 · The Feed & The Thread

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  Chat is the wrong interface for AI. But it's everywhere right
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  now. It oversimplifies complex tasks, so we're exploring better
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  ways to design for AI agents.
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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 em UX dot com. The Feed & The Thread is
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  available online at feed and thread dot com to submit your
• 0:29
  feeds, or download our app for all the feeds and threads
• 0:32
  delivered right to your pocket.
• 0:41
  We're building tools that talk, but we're forgetting how to
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  show. That shift changes everything about how we design
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  for intelligence. Maxim Kich challenges the chat interface in
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  "Chat is the wrong interface for AI". He argues that text-only
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  conversations create a bottleneck, forcing users to
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  linearize complex needs instead of interacting with dynamic
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  outputs. This obscures the AI's reasoning and limits how we
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  visualize data. We need to move past the chatbot model to unlock
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  true multi-modal potential. Jeff Gothelf finds a shift in
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  "The ten product management posts you read most this year".
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  As AI automates standard specs, storytelling becomes the core
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  survival skill for product managers. He urges us to audit
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  our problem-framing abilities, noting that agentic engineering
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  is essentially product management. Tailoring insights
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  to stakeholders matters more than writing documents.
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  Bonhomme shows how interaction design carries the narrative in
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  "The Story Is in the Interaction: Bonhomme’s Digital
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  Experiences for Luxury Brands". For luxury brands, the story
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  isn't just in the content but in the mechanics of the interface
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  itself. Advanced UI techniques evoke the tactile qualities of
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  physical goods. This approach shifts focus from functionality
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  to emotional resonance, reinforcing brand heritage
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  through digital touchpoints. Other reads today from UX
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  Design.cc on scaling design systems and navigating AI
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  fatigue.
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  Designers are trading their portfolios for Python scripts
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  today. It's a visible shift from showing work to building the
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  intelligence that generates it. Over on r/UXDesign, a freelance
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  designer is asking if merging product design with AI
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  engineering is actually a stable career path. They're worried
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  that design tools change too fast, so they want to learn
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  Python and large language models to future-proof their skills.
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  This question matters because it reveals a deep anxiety about the
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  shelf life of visual skills. If the tool can generate the
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  interface, the designer's value shifts from execution to
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  orchestration. You have to decide if you're building the
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  house or writing the blueprint for the robot that builds it.
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  In r/UXDesign, another practitioner is questioning
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  whether anyone genuinely wants to learn how AI supplements
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  design workflows. They're trying to separate the hype of AI slop
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  from structured, tool-based usage in large companies. The
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  tension here's about agency. Do designers want to evolve their
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  workflows, or are they content with traditional Figma habits?
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  If we're building tools that talk, we need to know if we're
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  designing for intelligence or just automating mediocrity. The
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  interest is there, but it's cautious. A new grad on
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  r/UXDesign is facing a conundrum after a Microsoft return offer
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  was rescinded. They now hold a low-stress startup job while
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  weighing two new offers: a mid- sized software role and a
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  contract position at an insurance firm. This highlights
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  the brutal trade-off between brand recognition and immediate
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  stability. When your resume's biggest asset vanishes
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  overnight, you have to choose between the prestige that might
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  not last and the paycheck that keeps the lights on. On
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  r/UXDesign, a former designer shares their experience of
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  losing three jobs in four years. They moved to a non-design role
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  that offers superior stability and work-life balance,
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  expressing significant anxiety about returning to the field.
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  This isn't just about burnout. It's about the fundamental
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  insecurity of a profession where layoffs are frequent and
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  portfolio evidence is easily dismissed. Stability has become
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  a luxury feature in UX. Over on r/UXResearch, a team shares how
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  their internal generative research outperformed a costly
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  year-long engagement by a prestigious consulting firm. The
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  consultants used leading questions and missed depth,
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  while the internal team delivered agile, strategic
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  insights. This proves that expensive external validation
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  often lacks the context that internal teams hold. You don't
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  need a fortune to get good research. You need the right
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  questions and the courage to ask them yourself. We're seeing a
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  split between those who want to code the intelligence and those
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  who just want to keep their jobs.
• 4:31
  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
• 4:41
  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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  The tension between Maxim Kich arguing that chat is the wrong
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  interface and Bonhomme showing how luxury brands embed
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  narrative in interaction mechanics feels like the
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  defining conflict of this quarter. We're trying to force
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  complex reasoning into linear text boxes while simultaneously
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  ignoring that the medium itself carries meaning. That linear
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  constraint is exactly why internal teams are beating
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  expensive consultants in generative research. When you
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  force a user or a researcher to type out a complex need, you
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  lose the nuance that exists in the gap between thoughts. The
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  r/UXResearch thread proves that agility beats prestige when you
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  stop treating the interface as a dumb pipe and start treating it
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  as a thinking partner. But that agility relies on the user
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  having the vocabulary to frame the problem correctly, which
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  brings us back to Jeff Gothelf's point about storytelling. If the
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  interface doesn't guide the narrative, the user defaults to
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  the path of least resistance, which is usually a vague prompt.
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  We need systems that visualize reasoning, not just output
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  answers. I worry that visualizing reasoning becomes
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  another layer of opacity if we don't get the interaction design
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  right. The Microsoft offer rescinding thread highlights how
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  fragile external validation is. If your brand value rests on a
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  logo rather than the quality of the interaction, you're
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  vulnerable. The insurance contract role might be less
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  prestigious, but it forces a focus on functional stability
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  over brand hype. Stability is good, but it shouldn't mean
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  stagnation. The shift from document-heavy product
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  management to agentic engineering means we need to
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  audit our problem-framing abilities in real-time. We can't
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  just write specs anymore; we have to design the context in
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  which the AI operates. So the real work isn't building the
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  tool, it's designing the environment where the tool makes
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  sense. We need to stop asking users to translate their
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  intuition into text and start building interfaces that accept
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  intuition as input. We've spent a decade optimizing for clarity
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  of expression. Now we have to optimize for clarity of intent.
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  And until we do, we're just automating the bottleneck.
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  That's The Feed and The Thread for today. We'll catch you next
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  time!