Latest / The Feed & The Thread / The Feed & The Thread - May 12, 2026

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The Feed & The Thread - May 12, 2026 · The Feed & The Thread

• 0:00
  Designers are drowning in AI spam on Upwork. That sounds like
• 0:03
  a hiring nightmare. And the real talent is getting buried under
• 0:06
  generated noise. We need to talk about filtering.
• 0:13
  Welcome to The Feed and The Thread, brought to you by
• 0:15
  Chicago Camps. Leadership By Design is on Thursday and
• 0:18
  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
• 0:24
  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
• 0:30
  feeds, or download our app for all the feeds and threads
• 0:32
  delivered right to your pocket.
• 0:41
  We keep treating AI like a magic wand for visuals, ignoring how
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  it changes our thinking. That shift is reshaping the entire
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  design workflow today. Suleiman Shakir argues we should stop
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  using AI just for pretty screens. He builds a system
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  where the tool holds all the project context for you. This
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  lets designers focus on high- level reasoning instead of
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  searching for data. It's a concrete way to automate the
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  boring stuff without losing nuance. You can see this method
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  in "How I use AI to partner on design problems" at UX
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  Design.cc. Giorgio Schirò challenges the idea that
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  creativity is strictly individual. He shows how AI
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  accelerates existing cognitive loops rather than creating new
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  ones. This makes the distributed nature of our thinking visible.
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  It suggests our minds have always extended into our tools.
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  Read his take in "The thinking was never just mine" at UX
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  Design.cc. The industry is also grappling with blurred lines
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  between design and engineering. Rosenfeld Media added new
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  sessions to address this friction in their conference
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  program. They're looking at how to manage work when roles
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  overlap. There's even a panel on vibe coding and its constraints.
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  Check out the updates in "New sessions added to the Designing
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  with AI 2026 program" from Rosenfeld Media. Other reads
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  today from UX Design.cc on prompt interfaces and LukeW on
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  mockup myths.
• 2:03
  The community is sorting through the noise today. Over on
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  r/UXDesign, hiring managers are pushing back against AI-
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  generated applications. They say legitimate designers are
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  drowning in superficial work. One user noted that referrals
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  are becoming the only safe hiring path to avoid the AI
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  slop. This connects directly to how we view the craft. When AI
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  handles the visual output, the thinking behind it becomes the
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  actual differentiator. We can no longer judge skill by a polished
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  mockup alone. We have to judge it by the reasoning that
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  produced it. In r/UXDesign, the debate over unpaid take-home
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  exercises is intensifying. With AI generating prototypes in
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  minutes, these long tasks no longer test process effectively.
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  They just test how much free labor you're willing to give.
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  One designer suggested replacing them entirely with live
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  portfolio reviews. That shift makes sense. If the tool removes
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  the friction of execution, the interview must focus on the
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  strategy. The value is in the why, not the how. Over on
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  r/UserExperience, a practitioner pointed out that users often
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  rewrite their own memories. They claimed to use a search feature,
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  but analytics showed they used browser commands instead. This
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  gap between reported behavior and actual data is widening.
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  Qualitative research isn't dead, but it's incomplete without
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  behavioral context. We need to stop trusting self-reported
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  narratives as the sole source of truth. The data tells a
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  different story than the interview. Finally, in
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  r/UXResearch, the community is rejecting the idea that pure
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  qualitative research is finished. They're tired of
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  doomer narratives that dismiss human-centric inquiry. One
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  commenter called out the fatigue with LinkedIn debates about AI
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  replacing roles. The reality is simpler. Mixed methods are
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  standard because humans are complex. AI can synthesize data,
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  but it can't understand the structural issues of the
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  industry. We need both speed and depth. The tension today is
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  clear. We're moving from valuing output to valuing insight, but
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  the hiring and research processes haven't caught up yet.
• 4:03
  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
• 4:08
  join from anywhere in the world! Tickets are free, thanks to the
• 4:12
  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 disconnect between what users say they do and what the
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  data shows they actually do is widening. We're seeing a gap
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  between reported behavior and behavioral context. That
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  r/UXDesign thread on hiring managers rejecting AI-generated
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  portfolios feels like the same problem. We're judging the
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  output instead of the reasoning behind it. Exactly. If we can't
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  trust self-reported narratives, how can we trust a polished
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  mockup as proof of skill. The visual layer is becoming noise.
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  So we have to judge the thinking. But how do you measure
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  thinking when the tool handles the visual execution. You
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  measure it by the quality of the questions asked, not the pixels
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  produced. The context management is the new deliverable. That
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  shifts the entire incentive structure. We stop valuing the
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  artifact and start valuing the audit trail of decisions. The
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  artifact is just the receipt. The value is in the transaction.
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  Then we need to stop asking for screens and start asking for the
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  logic that generated them.
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  That's The Feed and The Thread for today. We'll catch you next
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  time!