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

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

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  Senior designers are becoming commoditized labor. Just for
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  making pixel-perfect mockups? Exactly. Critical thinking is
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  the only thing keeping you from being replaced. Let's define
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  what that actually looks like.
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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
• 0:31
  feeds, or download our app for all the feeds and threads
• 0:33
  delivered right to your pocket.
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  We often confuse structure with content. But good structure is
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  invisible. It just works. Chris How argues that findability
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  matters more than how neatly we organize things internally. In
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  "Yippee IA: Six principles for creating a successful
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  information architecture," posted at UX Design.cc, he makes
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  the case that we should label for users, not for our own
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  comfort. The shift moves focus from internal logic to user
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  tasks — clarity beating cleverness every time. Static
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  maps are boring — but scroll- driven animations can tell a
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  story. In "Creating Scroll- Driven SVG Map Animations with
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  GSAP," Tom Miller at Codrops shows how to turn scrolling into
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  a cinematic journey. The trick is syncing motion with user
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  behavior, so a flat image becomes an experience. Senior
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  designers don't just make pretty screens — they solve root
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  problems. In "What critical thinking means for senior
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  designers (and how to apply it)," Kai Wong at UX Design.cc
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  argues that critical thinking is the real differentiator. As AI
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  handles execution, strategy becomes the value. The job is
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  questioning the why behind every requirement. Other reads today
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  from UX Planet on Markdown best practices, the future of search,
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  and attention spans in the AI era.
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  We're looking at how structure holds everything together today.
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  Over on r/UXDesign, someone is revisiting The Social Dilemma
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  six years later. They want to know if our ethical compass has
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  actually shifted since that documentary aired. The question
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  isn't just about nostalgia. It's about whether we've truly
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  integrated those critiques into our daily work. If good
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  structure is invisible, then our ethical frameworks should be
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  too. They shouldn't feel like a checklist. They should just
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  work. In r/UXDesign, another practitioner is drawing a hard
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  line between ease of use and ease of understanding. An
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  interface can be technically functional yet cognitively
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  exhausting. Minimalist designs often hide actions that force
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  users to decode subtle hierarchies. This creates mental
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  fatigue despite low visual complexity. Structure here isn't
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  about removing elements. It's about reducing the cognitive
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  load required to navigate them. If the user has to work to
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  understand the path, the structure has failed. Over on
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  r/UXResearch, teams are weighing in on AI moderated tools. The
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  consensus leans toward using these platforms for tactical
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  discovery rather than strategic insight. They're great for
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  prompting deeper explanations in unmoderated tests. But they
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  don't replace the nuance of human intuition. The tension is
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  clear. We need speed, but we can't sacrifice depth. Using AI
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  to scale research is smart. Using it to replace judgment is
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  risky. In r/UXResearch, the mood is darker. A post features
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  an image that says welcome to the club, grab a mop. It's a
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  bleak look at the current state of the profession. Many feel
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  less like innovators and more like cleaners for technical
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  debt. One commenter noted that if research actually fixed
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  designs, it wouldn't be first on the chopping block. This reveals
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  a painful truth. We're often hired to polish broken systems
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  rather than build better ones. Over on r/UXDesign, someone
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  reactivated LinkedIn and immediately regretted it. The
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  feed is flooded with low quality UI comparisons. It drains the
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  value of professional networking. We're confusing
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  content with noise. Good structure filters out the slop.
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  It lets the signal through. Right now, our professional
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  spaces are struggling to do just that. We're drowning in opinions
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  while starving for insight.
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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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  Kai Wong's point about critical thinking as the real
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  differentiator hits hard when you look at the community mood.
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  The r/UXResearch thread about being hired to clean up
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  technical debt instead of innovating suggests our strategy
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  layer is hollow. It's not just hollow. It's defensive. When
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  designers become cleaners for broken systems, the "why" behind
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  requirements stops mattering because nobody trusts the
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  answer. We're optimizing for speed, not insight. Exactly.
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  Chris How's argument that findability beats internal logic
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  mirrors this. We organize for our own comfort, not user tasks.
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  If we're just polishing broken systems, we're using clever
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  internal structures to hide the fact that we don't understand
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  the user's actual problem. And that's where the risk lies. If
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  AI handles the execution of those clever structures, we're
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  left with a facade. The value isn't in organizing the mess.
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  It's in deciding whether the mess needs to exist at all. So
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  the shift isn't about doing more research. It's about having the
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  authority to stop building the wrong things. Right. The teams
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  that survive won't be the ones with the fastest tools. They'll
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  be the ones brave enough to say the current structure is the
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  problem, not the solution. We've been confusing activity
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  with progress for years. Now the bill is coming due.
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  That's The Feed and The Thread for today. We'll catch you next
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  time!