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

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

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  AI agents are bringing back the terminal. So we're just typing
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  commands again? Exactly, and that shift means managers need
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  to lead the change, not just the designers.
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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
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  delivered right to your pocket.
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  Control is slipping from the interface to the agent, and that
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  shift forces us to rethink who really runs the show. It's not
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  just about tools anymore, but about structure, trust, and the
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  very definition of design work. Aurélie Radom at UX Design.cc
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  frames this tension in "When the canvas starts acting, who’s
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  really in control?". She argues that AI agents are turning
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  interfaces into active participants rather than passive
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  canvases. This brings back terminal-like interactions where
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  users describe outcomes instead of executing steps. The problem
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  isn't just a blank prompt, but a hidden system that lacks
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  affordances. We need to reinterpret Nielsen's heuristics
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  for agents that act on their own. If the interface hides its
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  capabilities, users can't trust it. Nick Babich at UX Planet
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  challenges the push for individual skill in "We Don’t
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  Need AI-First Designers. We Need AI-First Managers.". He contends
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  that designers adopting AI tools doesn't automatically fix
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  organizational effectiveness. The real bottleneck isn't the
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  designer's ability, but the management structures around
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  them. Leadership must evolve to support these new workflows for
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  true transformation to happen. Individual productivity is easy
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  to measure, but systemic integration is where the value
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  lives. Jemma Ahmed speaks with juliahansen at Rosenfeld Media
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  in "Taking back control of UX and research: An interview with
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  Shift UX curator Jemma Ahmed". She insists that UX isn't dead,
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  even as job titles shift and AI generates noise. The core skill
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  remains identifying human needs and reducing harm. Curated
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  signals like conferences help cut through the influencer
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  clutter. The work persists under different names, like strategist
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  or policy roles. We need to look past the market noise to find
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  the enduring value of the discipline. Other reads today
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  from Codrops on real-time datamosh effects, UX Design.cc
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  on engineering boundaries, and UX Planet on product design
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  fables.
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  Practitioners are shifting their focus from building interfaces
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  to managing agents, which forces us to redefine who actually
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  controls the user experience. Over on r/hci, a student is
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  asking whether a human computer interaction course is too
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  intense for someone with presentation anxiety. It's a
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  vulnerable question that highlights how much pressure we
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  put on ourselves to perform rather than just learn. We often
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  forget that design is a craft, not a stage, and accessibility
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  in education matters just as much as accessibility in
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  products. In r/UI_Design, a junior designer shared an early
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  Xbox concept featuring a custom power-saving icon called Feather
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  Session. It's a classic show- and-tell moment where the real
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  value isn't the visual polish, but the willingness to expose
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  unfinished work. Asking for feedback on a specific icon is
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  smart because it grounds critique in a tangible detail
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  rather than vague aesthetic preferences. Also in
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  r/UI_Design, someone is debating whether a particle explosion
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  effect for deleting a pocket in the Revolut app is delightful or
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  over-designed. The tension here's between emotional
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  engagement and functional clarity. If an animation
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  distracts from the severity of a destructive action, it fails, no
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  matter how beautiful the particles look. Back in r/hci,
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  a master's student is researching why trust in voice
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  assistants like Siri and Alexa still breaks down despite years
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  of natural language processing improvements. This connects
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  directly to our theme because trust is the new interface. When
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  the agent acts on your behalf, you need to believe it
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  understands your intent, not just your words. Finally, in
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  r/UI_Design, a designer built a web app with AI assistance and
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  used a slot machine animation for displaying options. They
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  chose a desaturated palette to reduce noise, but admit the
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  mobile layout feels cramped. It's a reminder that AI can
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  generate the structure, but the designer still has to solve the
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  spatial constraints. Today's discussions show that whether
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  we're dealing with academic anxiety, agent trust, or
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  animation ethics, the core challenge remains defining what
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  good control actually looks like.
• 4:32
  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 tension between AI agents acting as active participants
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  and the need for visible affordances is reshaping how we
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  define control. Aurélie Radom argues that when the interface
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  hides its capabilities, trust erodes because users can't
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  predict outcomes. That's the systemic risk, but on the
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  ground, designers are already wrestling with the spatial
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  consequences of that shift. We saw a thread where a designer
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  used AI to generate structure but still had to manually fix
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  cramped mobile layouts. The AI gave the skeleton, but the human
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  had to solve the physical constraints. Exactly. The tool
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  generates the layout, but it doesn't understand the hierarchy
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  of information. If we treat the agent as a black box, we lose
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  the ability to critique the structure. We need to
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  reinterpret Nielsen's heuristics for systems that act on their
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  own, not just respond to clicks. But here's where I push back.
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  We're focusing so much on the interface hiding capabilities
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  that we forget the human element of judgment. Jemma Ahmed points
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  out that the core skill is identifying human needs and
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  reducing harm. The animation debate in the community shows
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  this clearly. A particle explosion might look delightful,
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  but if it distracts from a destructive action, it fails
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  functionally. So the judgment call is about emotional
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  engagement versus functional clarity. The agent can produce
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  the particles, but the designer must decide if they serve the
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  user's understanding of the action. That's not just editing;
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  it's ethical curation. Right. It's curation. And that curation
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  requires a manager who understands the stakes, not just
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  a designer who knows the tools. Nick Babich argues we need AI-
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  first managers, not just designers. If the manager
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  doesn't value the judgment call, the designer's curation becomes
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  optional. So the bottleneck isn't the tool's ability to
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  generate. It's the organization's willingness to
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  treat judgment as a deliverable. Precisely. The gap between
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  generation and judgment is where the actual design work lives
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  now.
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  That's The Feed and The Thread for today. We'll catch you next
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  time!