Latest / The Feed & The Thread / The Feed & The Thread - February 27, 2026

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The Feed & The Thread - February 27, 2026 · The Feed & The Thread

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  We're kicking off with a design problem that's only getting
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  harder: when deepfakes can mimic emergency information, "make it
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  usable" isn't enough anymore. Then in the community, a popular
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  discussion asks whether UX is really about design at all, or
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  just managing trade-offs.
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  Welcome to The Feed and The Thread, brought to you by
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  Chicago Camps. Our next UX Camp event is coming up on Saturday,
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  May 30th. Tickets are free - with an option to pay if it's in
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  budget for you. There's an open call for speakers so now is your
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  chance to get on stage and share your ideas! You can also find
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  The Feed & The Thread online at feed and thread dot com to
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  submit your feeds, or download our app for all the feeds and
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  threads delivered right to your pocket.
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  Here are some of the best finds from the past day. Designing
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  for trust just became a survival skill, and distinguishing real
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  from fake is now a design problem. That's Josh LaMar's
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  argument at UX Design.cc, and it's uncomfortable: if emergency
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  information can be deepfaked, the products we build need to
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  prove their own authenticity. That's a shift from "make it
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  usable" to "make it trustworthy." SmashingConf
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  Amsterdam is trying something interesting: speakers designing
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  and coding live, not presenting polished slides. Iris Ljesnaric
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  covers it at Smashing Magazine. If the format works, it could
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  change what we expect from design conferences. And
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  Valentin Mor at Codrops makes the case that you don't need a
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  framework for smooth page transitions. His vanilla JS
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  guide with GSAP pulls off async crossfades that most React apps
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  struggle with. Worth bookmarking. Also publishing
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  recently: iA, I Love Typography, and UX Planet.
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  Here's what the community has been talking about. Over in
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  r/UXDesign, one post racked up forty-two upvotes and over
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  thirty comments with a simple observation: UX feels more like
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  decision-making under constraints than design. The
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  argument is that the real skill isn't wireframing or research;
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  it's choosing trade-offs. Time versus depth. Clarity versus
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  flexibility. User needs versus business pressure. And the
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  community agreed: the hardest part of the job is deciding
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  which compromises are acceptable. Vibe coding came up
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  again, and the frustration is real. One designer described
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  putting deliberate thought into user flows, only to watch it
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  dissolve between handoff and implementation. AI-generated
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  solutions override intentional decisions, components land
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  slightly off, and the team attitude is "ship it." The craft
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  of UX is getting quietly sidelined in the rush to move
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  fast, and that tension between speed and quality resonates with
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  a lot of us. Finally, someone working on B2B clinical tools
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  shared a pattern we've all seen: leadership insists every feature
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  should be so intuitive that internal stakeholders understand
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  it without training. The problem is those stakeholders aren't the
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  users. Designing for "obvious to everyone in the room" is a
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  different goal than "designed for the people who actually use
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  it," and conflating the two wastes everyone's time. And
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  that's some of the top conversations across the
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  community today.
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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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  Josh LaMar's take on trust as a survival skill really lands hard
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  today. It does, and that shift from usable to trustworthy feels
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  less like a feature and more like a necessity. But then you
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  look at the community where designers say their job is
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  mostly just managing trade-offs now. And with vibe coding, even
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  those trade-offs are being made for them. Deliberate design
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  decisions getting overridden by "just ship it." That creates a
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  weird tension where the tools meant to help actually erode the
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  designer's role. And when your work starts to feel like
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  everything but design, you lose the very trust those products
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  need to prove. So we're building for authenticity while
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  simultaneously watching the craft get sidelined. It's a
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  tough spot, but maybe that friction is where the real
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  design work actually begins. That's The Take for today.
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  Thanks for the discussion!
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  That's The Feed and The Thread for today. Keep designing with
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  intention!