Latest / The Feed & The Thread / The Feed & The Thread - March 26, 2026

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The Feed & The Thread - March 26, 2026 · The Feed & The Thread

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  Your users say one thing in interviews, but their screen
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  flow data tells a completely different story. That gap is
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  huge, and honestly, it means we've been designing based on
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  lies. And the research shows that gap is bigger than we ever
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  expected. Let's get into it.
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  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
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  Summer on May 30th, so now is your chance to get on stage and
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  share your ideas! You can use our Proposal Counselor to help
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  you get submitted today. The Feed & The Thread is available
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  online at feed and thread dot com to submit your feeds, or
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  download our app for all the feeds and threads delivered
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  right to your pocket.
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  The panic about UX design dying is a mirage that keeps appearing
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  with every new tech shift. Luis Berumen Castro at UX Design.cc
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  calls out this recurring anxiety in "The mirage of UX Design's
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  demise keeps coming back." He argues that while job titles
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  change, the core discipline of human-centered design remains
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  essential. AI doesn't replace the need for empathy, it just
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  expands the designer's toolkit. But if AI agents are taking over
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  complex support tasks, how do we actually ensure they're behaving
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  correctly? Traditional metrics like CSAT scores just aren't
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  enough anymore. Alissa Tyrangiel writes about this at Intercom in
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  "Announcing Monitors: Opening the AI black box." Her team
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  built a tool to inspect high- risk conversations using custom
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  scorecards instead of random sampling. That rewrites the
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  assumption that we can trust AI without deep visibility. And
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  for those feeling stuck in standard web work, a pivot to
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  gaming might unlock new creativity. Maria Vargas shares
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  her decade-long journey at Codrops in "From Web UI to Game
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  UI: How Gaming & Creativity Reshaped María Vargas' Career."
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  She shows how web design foundations hold up, even when
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  you face the unique constraints of dynamic game experiences.
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  Mitoware connects two federal deadlines nobody else is
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  linking. The CDC's AI inventory shows almost 10% of their
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  deployments are already agentic — tools running literature
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  reviews without a human in the loop. Meanwhile, state and local
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  governments face an April 30th WCAG deadline under Title II of
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  the ADA. The White House's new AI framework says nothing about
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  what happens when an autonomous system produces public content
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  that violates accessibility law. If an agentic tool generates a
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  health summary without semantic structure, it fails the same
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  criteria the agency's website is legally required to meet — and
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  right now, nobody in the regulatory chain is addressing
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  that gap. If you're hungry for more, UX Design.cc, UX
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  Planet, and Rosenfeld Media all published strong pieces today.
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  The community is wrestling with some heavy ethics questions
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  today. Over on r/UXDesign, folks are trying to explain
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  their value to healthcare leaders who don't speak tech.
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  It's not just about pretty screens anymore. You've to prove
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  that good design actually saves lives or cuts costs in a way a
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  doctor understands. That translation gap is where the
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  real work happens. A user on r/UserExperience noticed a huge
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  gap between what people say in interviews and how they actually
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  navigate an app. Users promise one thing, then click another
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  when the real pressure hits. This disconnect reminds us that
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  observation beats self-reporting every single time. The line
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  between smart dynamic pricing and a dark pattern is getting
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  blurry on r/UXDesign. When does optimizing revenue become
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  manipulating the user? The field is watching closely to see if
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  we're designing for fairness or just for the bottom line.
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  Things got weird when a developer forum discussed cookie
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  consent flows leading to a rick roll. On r/UXDesign, everyone is
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  asking how this even passed review. Pranks might be funny,
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  but they destroy the fragile trust we spend years building
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  with users. The mood today feels less about tools and more
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  about holding the line on our ethics.
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  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.
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  Alissa Tyrangiel's piece on opening the AI black box forces
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  us to confront a hard truth about metrics. Exactly. We can't
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  rely on CSAT scores anymore when an agent is handling a complex
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  support crisis. Her team built custom scorecards to inspect
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  high-risk conversations instead of using random sampling. That
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  shift from random checks to targeted inspection is where the
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  real work begins for product teams. It rewrites the
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  assumption that we can trust AI without deep visibility into its
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  decision-making process. And that connects directly to the
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  panic about UX dying that Luis Berumen Castro called out today.
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  He argues the discipline isn't disappearing, but the toolkit is
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  expanding to include these new inspection methods. Right, but
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  empathy alone won't catch a hallucinated agent promise that
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  a scorecard will flag immediately. So the designer's
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  job shifts from building the interface to designing the
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  guardrails that keep the agent honest. That's the pivot. We
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  stop asking if AI will replace us and start asking what
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  guardrails we need to build today. The next generation of
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  senior designers will be the ones who can audit the invisible
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  logic behind the screen. And the teams that give them that
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  authority will ship products that actually keep their
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  promises to users.
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  That's The Feed and The Thread for today. We'll catch you next
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  time!