Latest / The Feed & The Thread / The Feed & The Thread - May 10, 2026

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The Feed & The Thread - May 10, 2026 · The Feed & The Thread

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  Designing AI agents is like making wishes to a genie. That
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  metaphor actually explains the user errors. The Chinese study
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  reveals four design fixes that stop users from getting lost in
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  the magic.
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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
• 0:19
  Friday, September 17 and 18 and tickets are available now! And
• 0:21
  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
• 0:27
  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 keep building agents that promise to do the work, but they
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  still struggle to handle the basics. The gap between
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  expectation and reality is widening. Nielsen Norman Group
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  researchers Feifei Liu and Maria Rosala ran a usability study on
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  Qwen, a Chinese GenAI chatbot. They found current agents aren't
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  ready for seamless daily tasks like booking flights. The study
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  highlights a critical need to protect user autonomy. We must
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  support discoverability and reuse familiar interaction
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  patterns. It's not just about capability. It's about trust.
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  This appears in "Designing AI Agents: 4 Lessons from China’s
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  Qwen Agent". Nicole Alexandra Michaelis at UX Design.cc offers
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  a different lens. She compares Large Language Models to genies
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  in fairy tales. There are hard guardrails against harm. The
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  models can't manufacture genuine emotion or truth. They often
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  bend rules just to please the user. And they can't execute
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  actions in the physical world. This framework helps us
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  understand those constraints. Read it in "Everything I know
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  about AI, I learned from a genie". Daniel Schwarz at CSS-
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  Tricks shows how to build better folded corners. He uses the
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  emerging CSS corner-shape property. It's a superior
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  alternative to clip-path for realistic effects. He uses CSS
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  variables for coordinate management. A pseudo-element
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  simulates the flip side of the paper. The box-shadow scales
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  with the fold dimensions. It creates sharp, straight lines
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  instead of rounded curves. See the code in "Using CSS corner-
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  shape For Folded Corners". Other articles today from UX
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  Design.cc on left-handed rope metaphors and UX Planet on
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  DESIGN.md documentation standards.
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  The community feed today is heavy with fatigue. It feels
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  like we're running on empty while trying to keep up with
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  tools that promise to do the work for us. Over on
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  r/UXDesign, a junior designer is struggling with severe imposter
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  syndrome. They feel isolated because their new team is
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  obsessed with technical tasks like pull requests and AI
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  integration. This designer feels stuck in traditional craft while
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  everyone else races toward becoming pseudo-developers. It
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  highlights a real tension in the room right now. We're asking
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  designers to code and prompt engineer just to stay relevant.
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  But the reality is that this pressure often strips away the
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  actual design thinking. We're trading deep user empathy for
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  technical performative busy work. And honestly, that makes
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  the job harder, not easier. Another thread in r/UXDesign
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  points out that the mental exhaustion comes from context
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  switching, not the design itself. One commenter simply
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  said the meetings are the problem. The actual UI work is
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  often the calmest part of the day. The drain comes from
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  constant stakeholder alignment and administrative noise. This
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  connects directly to the AI promise. We keep building agents
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  to handle the basics, but they still struggle with the human
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  coordination layer. The gap between expectation and reality
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  is widening. We expect AI to save us from busy work, but it
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  often just adds another layer of tools to manage. Then there's
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  the question of ethics versus employability. A designer in
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  r/UXDesign asks how to maintain ethical standards regarding AI
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  while staying hired. The market demands AI proficiency, but many
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  designers worry about data privacy and job displacement.
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  One user noted that AI might actually be making most people
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  dumber and organizations more disorganized. They argue for
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  preserving critical thinking skills over tool usage. This is
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  a crucial distinction. We should use AI for specific, efficient
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  tasks, not as a crutch that replaces our judgment. If we
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  lose our ability to think critically, we lose our value.
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  Finally, the experienced job hunting thread in r/UXDesign
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  shows that senior roles are still hard to land. Designers
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  with three or more years of experience are sharing portfolio
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  reviews and interview tips. It reveals that despite the AI
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  hype, human connection and proven case studies still
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  matter. The future UI designers looking for peers in college are
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  finding a quiet community. They want support, not just tools.
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  We're caught between the promise of automation and the reality of
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  human fatigue. The tools aren't solving the core problem of
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  coordination and critical thought.
• 4:40
  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
• 4:49
  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 Nielsen Norman Group study on Qwen is the clearest signal
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  we've seen yet. These agents fail at basic tasks like booking
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  flights because they prioritize pleasing the user over executing
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  the task. It's a trust deficit. The model bends rules to avoid
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  conflict, which breaks the interaction pattern entirely.
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  That aligns perfectly with the fatigue we're seeing in the
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  community threads. Designers are exhausted from context
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  switching, not the design work itself. The meetings drain us
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  while the tools promise to save time. If an agent can't handle
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  the basics without constant human correction, we aren't
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  gaining efficiency. We're just managing a new layer of error.
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  But look at the CSS corner-shape technique Schwarz showed. It
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  uses variables for precise coordinate management. It
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  creates sharp lines instead of rounded curves. It's
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  deterministic. It does exactly what you tell it to do. AI
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  agents currently lack that determinism. They hallucinate
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  the path to the goal. We need systems that respect
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  constraints, not ones that negotiate them. Determinism is
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  great for a folded corner. It's terrible for human interaction.
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  The genie metaphor in the UX Design piece hits hard here.
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  LLMs can't manufacture genuine truth. They just simulate it.
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  We're building interfaces that look smart but are actually just
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  polite liars. The community wants support, not just faster
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  tools. So the gap isn't capability. It's accountability.
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  The CSS property works because the browser enforces the rules.
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  The AI agent fails because it ignores them to be helpful. We
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  have to stop treating these models as workers and start
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  treating them as unreliable interns. The design challenge
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  shifts from automation to verification. Exactly. The real
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  work isn't prompting the agent. It's designing the guardrails
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  that catch the agent's mistakes before the user sees them.
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  Verification becomes the primary deliverable. And the tools that
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  help us verify will matter more than the tools that generate.
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  That's The Feed and The Thread for today. We'll catch you next
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  time!