Latest / The Feed & The Thread / The Feed & The Thread - June 22, 2026

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The Feed & The Thread - June 22, 2026 · The Feed & The Thread

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  Generative AI is basically a digital Magic Eight-Ball. That
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  sounds terrifyingly reductive. It's probabilistic fortune-
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  telling with a radically different user experience, and
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  we need to talk about what that means for trust.
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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
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  feeds, or download our app for all the feeds and threads
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  delivered right to your pocket.
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  We often mistake confidence for competence in our interfaces.
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  That confusion is dangerous because it hides the mechanics
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  of how systems actually work. Patrick Neeman at UX Design.cc
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  explores this tension in "The Magic 8-Ball vs. Gen AI: a
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  surprisingly interesting comparison". He compares
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  generative AI to a Magic Eight- Ball, noting that both rely on
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  probability. The Eight-Ball shows you its randomness, while
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  AI hides it behind fluent text. Users trust the confident tone,
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  even when the content is wrong. This masks the uncertainty that
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  should be visible. Pavel Samsonov at Product Picnic
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  argues in "The glassholes are back, thanks to AI" that AI
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  surveillance isn't new. He traces current privacy
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  violations back to early smart city projects. Fear-based
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  narratives normalize biometric scanning under the guise of
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  safety. We're seeing a return of pointless wearable tech that
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  ignores user consent. The promise of solving urban
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  problems failed, leaving only data exploitation. DashDigital
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  Studio writes in "Designing Beyond the Surface: How
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  DashDigital Turns Complexity into Clarity" that clarity comes
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  from deep research. They argue against rushing to prototype
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  without understanding the problem first. Skipping
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  discovery leads to superficial solutions that miss core needs.
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  Designers must invest time in strategy before touching a
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  canvas. True quality stems from rigor, not just aesthetics.
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  Other articles today from UX Design.cc on flow states and
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  Jeff Gothelf on product management.
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  Designers today are wrestling with a strange contradiction. We
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  see teams praising strategic vision while ignoring the craft
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  that makes it visible. That gap reveals how much we still
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  confuse confidence with competence in our daily work.
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  Over on r/uxwriting, a senior content designer is asking a
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  pivotal career question. They've twelve years of experience in
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  government and finance. Teams consistently value their
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  strategic ideas more than their specific writing skills. They're
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  being pulled into non-content meetings for their ability to
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  connect dots. The question is whether to pivot toward pure
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  strategy or double down on craft. It highlights a tension
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  where "thinky" qualities often overshadow execution. If you
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  lean too hard into strategy, you risk becoming a consultant
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  rather than a designer. But if you ignore that pull, you might
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  miss a natural evolution in your role. In r/UXDesign, a newcomer
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  is asking what questions to ask during initial research. It's a
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  fundamental query about process hierarchy. They want to know if
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  observation is truly the first step. This reveals a common
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  anxiety about getting the order right. The field often treats
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  research as a rigid phase rather than a continuous mindset. When
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  we treat it as a checklist, we miss the nuance. The real value
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  isn't in the questions themselves, but in the humility
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  to ask them before designing. Also in r/UXDesign, a user
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  shared a job posting that felt aggressively unrealistic. They
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  described the requirements as hitting like machine gun
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  bullets. This reflects a broader frustration with hiring
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  practices that demand everything from everyone. It's not just
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  about skill sets. It's about the tone of exclusion. When job
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  posts scream for perfection, they hide the messy reality of
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  how design actually happens. Competence isn't about checking
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  every box. It's about solving the problem at hand. Another
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  thread in r/UXDesign comes from a non-designer founder. They
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  want to know how to prepare for hiring a designer. They're
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  asking for collaboration, not just a transactional handoff.
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  This is a refreshing shift in mindset. Too many clients treat
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  design as a service rather than a partnership. By asking what
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  they need to provide, they're acknowledging that good design
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  requires input. It's a small step, but it matters. It moves
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  the conversation from output to outcome. Finally, a high school
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  student in r/UXDesign is asking about salary and AI threats.
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  They want authentic insights, not generic search results. This
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  anxiety is real and widespread. The fear of automation is often
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  a fear of irrelevance. But design is human-centric. AI can
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  generate layouts, but it can't understand context. The
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  profession will change, but the need for empathy won't. We're
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  seeing a pattern where strategy is valued over craft, and hiring
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  is valued over humanity. That imbalance is dangerous. It hides
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  the mechanics of how systems actually work.
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  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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  The comparison of generative AI to a Magic Eight-Ball hits a
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  nerve because it exposes a structural flaw in how we build
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  trust. We're confusing fluent text with factual accuracy. The
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  interface hides the probability behind a confident tone. And
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  that confidence is exactly what makes it dangerous for the teams
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  relying on it. When the tool sounds certain, the human stops
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  questioning the output. We lose the critical friction that
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  usually catches errors in a design review. But look at the
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  r/UXDesign thread where the founder wants partnership, not
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  just a handoff. That mindset shift is the antidote. If the
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  client expects deep strategic input, they won't accept a
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  confident hallucination as a final answer. That's
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  optimistic. Most organizations are still optimizing for speed,
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  not rigor. They want the answer, not the discovery process.
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  Unless we change the incentives, that founder's approach remains
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  the exception, not the standard. Then we need to make the cost of
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  skipping discovery visible. When superficial solutions fail, the
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  data should prove that strategy matters more than the initial
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  prototype. The market will eventually price in the value of
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  that rigor. But until then, the ability to explain why the easy
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  answer is wrong is the most valuable skill in the room.
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  That's The Feed and The Thread for today. We'll catch you next
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  time!