Latest / The Feed & The Thread / The Feed & The Thread - March 31, 2026

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The Feed & The Thread - March 31, 2026 · The Feed & The Thread

• 0:00
  What if a spike in oil prices makes AI data centers too
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  expensive to run? That's terrifying. Do companies even
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  have a backup plan for that? They don't. And we need to talk
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  about what happens when the lights go out.
• 0:14
  Welcome to The Feed and The Thread, brought to you by
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  Chicago Camps. There's an open call for speakers for UX Camp
• 0:19
  Summer on May 30th, so now is your chance to get on stage and
• 0:22
  share your ideas! You can use our Proposal Counselor to help
• 0:25
  you get submitted today. The Feed & The Thread is available
• 0:28
  online at feed and thread dot com to submit your feeds, or
• 0:30
  download our app for all the feeds and threads delivered
• 0:33
  right to your pocket.
• 0:41
  When hardware scaling hits a wall, regulation and software
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  efficiency become our only paths forward. Neel Dozome traces
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  this history in "The long and short of telephone progress" at
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  UX Design.cc. The piece argues that just as antitrust laws once
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  birthed Silicon Valley, today's physical limits demand a new era
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  of ethical software innovation. That rewrites the assumption
• 1:01
  that faster chips are the only way to solve our industry's
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  bottlenecks. Tokenism happens when we collect feedback but
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  never use it to shift power. Samuel Martin calls this the
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  'placate' phase in "Rosenverse Live: 7 Insights on Sharing
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  Power in Co-Design with Samuel Martin" at Rosenfeld Media. He
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  insists that compensating experts is a non-negotiable
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  baseline, not a nice-to-have. This challenges the fear that
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  community members will make unrealistic demands, noting they
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  often provide grounded solutions instead. A perfectly designed
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  form is useless if your business workflow can't process the data.
• 1:34
  Iqra Naaem highlights this gap in "Form Automation Tips for
• 1:38
  Happier User and Clients" at CSS-Tricks. The author shows how
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  normalizing data at the front end prevents downstream errors
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  like duplicate CRM entries. Treating email submission as
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  just a notification creates bottlenecks that hurt the client
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  and the user. Other reads available from Codrops on studio
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  storytelling, UX Planet on working with Claude Code, and UX
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  Planet on improving generated code quality.
• 2:07
  Let's dive into the real talk happening in our community
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  today. Over on r/UXDesign, folks are asking what happens
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  when oil prices skyrocket and AI data centers become too costly
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  to run. One user noted that companies will just raise prices
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  and wait for the market to correct itself. This reveals a
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  harsh truth about business resilience that often ignores
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  actual user needs. In r/hci, an open thread from Indiana
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  University students is sparking a look at how academic training
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  meets current industry chaos. It highlights a growing gap between
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  what schools teach and the volatile reality designers face
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  right now. r/UXDesign is also wrestling with the question of
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  backup income as AI threatens to shrink design roles. The
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  community is realizing that traditional career ladders might
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  not exist soon. This forces us to rethink what value we bring
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  beyond just output. Over on r/UXDesign, someone asked who
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  the favorite designers are right now. It's a simple question that
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  exposes how hard it's to find role models when the entire
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  field feels like it's changing underneath us. Finally, in
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  r/UXDesign, a thread questions who will actually be left to do
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  the work if we keep sprinting toward productivity. One
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  commenter argued that the endgame is zero employees and
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  total automation. This tension between efficiency and human
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  necessity is the real story today. The field is chasing
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  productivity while quietly wondering if there will be
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  anyone left to use the tools we build.
• 3:35
  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.
• 4:02
  Samuel Martin calls it the 'placate' phase, and it's a
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  sharp warning that collecting feedback without shifting power
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  is just tokenism. That hits hard because the community keeps
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  asking about backup income while companies treat their insights
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  as free research. Exactly, and Martin insists that paying
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  experts is a baseline, not a perk, yet we still see teams
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  fearing unrealistic demands. But the fear is misplaced because
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  grounded people usually offer the very solutions those teams
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  are too rigid to see. The problem is structural, not just
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  cultural, since a perfectly designed form fails if the
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  workflow can't handle the data it collects. So we're building
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  better inputs while the downstream machinery stays
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  broken, which means the bottleneck just moves to the
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  backend. We need to stop asking if the user is demanding too
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  much and start asking if our systems are ready to receive the
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  truth. The gap between listening and acting is where the real
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  work happens, and that's the only place value gets created.
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  That's The Feed and The Thread for today. We'll catch you next
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  time!