Latest / The Feed & The Thread / The Feed & The Thread - July 25, 2026

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The Feed & The Thread - July 25, 2026 · The Feed & The Thread

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  Design is shifting from documents to curated context for
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  AI. So we're just feeding the machine now? Exactly, and if you
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  don't curate that context carefully, your AI generates
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  garbage. We're breaking down how to do it right.
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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
• 0:32
  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 used to think design was about making things usable. Now
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  it's about shaping behavior, often for shareholders, not
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  users. And the people doing it are burning out. Christina
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  Wodtke makes this case in "Disappointed Optimists". She
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  argues that all design is fundamentally about behavior
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  change, usually serving corporate value over user well-
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  being. Recent surveys show designers are the most exhausted
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  professionals and least likely to recommend the job. This isn't
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  just bad management. It's also AI, which lowers the floor for
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  output quality without raising the ceiling for excellence.
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  Senior designers feel secure, but the middle is hollowing out.
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  Tony Alicea shifts the focus in "UX-Context Design: Using UX
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  Knowledge to Inform AI-Generated Design". He argues that as AI
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  generates interfaces, our primary output changes from
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  documents to curated context. Context means the requests,
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  standards, and examples we feed the model. Without it, AI
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  produces generic results that miss specific user needs. We
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  have to inject team-learned insights into the prompt, or we
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  lose our edge. Slava Polonski looks to Dubai's Burj Al Arab in
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  "Steal this UX framework from Dubai’s most over-the-top
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  hotel". He suggests we study luxury hospitality to understand
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  anticipatory service. Staff there predict needs before
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  guests ask, creating seamless experiences. Polonski says great
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  software should do the same. It should anticipate intent and
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  remove friction, rather than waiting for explicit commands.
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  That's the difference between a tool and a magic experience.
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  Other reads today from Jeffrey Zeldman on baseball metaphors,
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  Codrops on design integrity, and Nielsen Norman Group on product
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  sense.
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  Practitioners are asking who decides what design is for, and
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  the answers are shifting from usability toward shareholder
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  optimization. Over on r/UXDesign, a designer shared
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  that AI tools are finally clearing the technical clutter,
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  allowing them to focus intensely on core principles during early
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  planning. It's a quiet but significant shift because it
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  suggests the value of UX is moving back to strategy rather
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  than execution speed. When the grunt work disappears, the
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  strategic decisions become the only thing left that matters,
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  which is both a relief and a higher stakes responsibility.
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  In the same community, a senior designer is pushing back against
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  a COO who wants to judge a candidate's flair in a one-hour
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  hiring task. The tension here isn't just about fairness, it's
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  about what the business actually values in a designer. If
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  leadership expects meaningful output in sixty minutes, they're
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  prioritizing speed over depth, which sets a dangerous precedent
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  for the work that follows. The conversation continues with a
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  post arguing that visual spectacle is dying, replaced by
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  a demand for simplicity, performance, and trust.
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  Portfolios stuck on flashy aesthetics are becoming obsolete
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  because users now value reliability over complexity.
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  This marks a return to fundamentals, where good design
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  is invisible and efficient rather than loud and decorative.
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  Another designer is considering a psychology degree to escape
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  the exhaustion of fact-checking AI outputs and the lack of
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  social impact in ecommerce. It reveals a deep hunger for human-
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  centric rigor when the tools feel hollow. If we're shaping
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  behavior for shareholders, we need deeper understanding of
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  human motivation, not just faster interfaces. Finally, in
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  r/UI_Design, a redesign of Spotify highlights how corporate
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  focus on continuous optimization has created a confusing
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  experience. The frustration is clear because data-driven
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  incrementalism often destroys intuitive navigation. We're
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  optimizing for metrics while losing the user's ability to
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  simply find what they want. The field is splitting between those
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  using AI to reclaim strategic depth and those burning out
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  under the pressure to optimize for shareholders rather than
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  humans.
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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 shift from generating artifacts to curating context is
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  the most significant structural change I've seen in design
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  workflows. Tony Alicea argues that our output is no longer the
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  interface, but the prompt strategy that feeds the model.
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  If we don't inject our team's specific insights into that
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  context window, the AI defaults to generic, average results.
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  It's not about drawing screens anymore. It's about defining the
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  constraints that prevent the model from hallucinating a
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  mediocre user experience. I agree that context is the new
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  currency, but I'm worried we're treating it like a documentation
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  problem rather than a cultural one. The thread about the COO
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  demanding flair in a sixty- minute task highlights a deeper
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  issue. Leadership still values speed and visual spectacle over
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  the slow, invisible work of building that contextual
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  knowledge base. If the business expects magic in an hour, they
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  won't fund the months required to build the institutional
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  memory that makes the prompts work. We're trying to sell a
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  luxury product using a discount store budget. That tension
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  explains why designers are burning out. We're being asked
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  to do the heavy lifting of behavior shaping without the
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  resources to establish the standards that guide that
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  behavior. The Spotify redesign thread proves this. When you
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  optimize for metrics without a strong contextual guardrail, you
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  get a confusing maze. The data says users are clicking, but the
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  experience feels broken because the underlying logic wasn't
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  preserved. The AI or the optimizer doesn't know what
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  "intuitive" means unless we explicitly define it in the
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  context. So the risk isn't that AI replaces us. The risk is that
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  we lose the ability to define what good actually looks like.
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  If we don't have the time to build that shared context, we're
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  just feeding the machine our own confusion. The community is
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  already moving away from flashy portfolios toward reliability.
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  Users want trust, not spectacle. But our hiring processes and
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  executive expectations haven't caught up. We're judging
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  candidates on their ability to perform under pressure rather
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  than their ability to build systems that reduce pressure.
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  We're measuring the wrong things. We're optimizing for the
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  speed of the output instead of the quality of the input.
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  Exactly. The teams that survive this shift won't be the ones who
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  generate the fastest mockups. They'll be the ones who treat
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  their internal knowledge base as a strategic asset, not a filing
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  cabinet.
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  That's The Feed and The Thread for today. We'll catch you next
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  time!