Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.
“In our current AI hype cycle, there is a feverish hope that AI will save us. The point of view is that AI will make us more efficient, effective, and resilient, and in some instances, this will be true. On the other hand, the pessimist (bearish) point of view is that AI is also reducing human input, eliminating thinking roles, and concentrating wealth and power. The sentiment that AI will kill us all.
How bearish or bullish you are with AI depends on your focal length. So let’s focus on what makes it all work.”
Keep making (AI will not save you) →
By Chris R Becker
Sidebar.io: 5 design links a day to keep the doctor away →
Editor picks
- Why AI is exposing design’s craft crisis →
The technical literacy gap that’s been eroding us for a while.
By Dolphia - So your AI wants a personality →
Emerging personality patterns that drive differentiation.
By Sharang Sharma - What is design when you barely have time to do it? →
A brief reminder and a hard reset during existential times.
By Lai-Jing Chu
The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.
Make me think
- Ideas aren’t getting harder to find →
“Fifty years ago, productivity growth in advanced economies began to slow down. Productivity growth — the component of GDP growth that is not due to increases in labor and capital — is the primary driver of rising incomes. When it slows, so does economic growth as a whole. This makes it an urgent trend to understand. Unfortunately, the most popular explanation for why it’s happening might be wrong.” - What’s going on here, with this human? →
“My goal in this essay is to help others make better decisions on a potential hire, business partner, or even life partner as quickly and as accurately as possible. It’s made up of suggested action steps and some of the ruminations that underlie them. At the end I include my own assessment of different personality assessments and some of my go-to interview and reference questions.” - What actually makes you senior →
“People love to describe senior engineers with a big checklist: architecture, communication, ownership, leadership, etc. But if you strip away the title, the salary, and the years of experience, there’s one core skill that separates senior+ engineers from everyone else: reducing ambiguity. Everything else flows from that.”
Little gems this week
Designing the 3 layers of AI context →
By Sen Lin
Design wrapped 2025: a year of meaningful friction →
By Liam Roberts
The most undervalued skill in product: knowing when not to optimize →
By Blanca Serrano Marco
Tools and resources
- 3 color contrast mistakes →
WCAG color contrast is more than just text.
By Allie Paschal - Product delighters →
The UX moments people remember and share.
By Ben Shih - Lowering the surprise →
How to apply the free energy principle to UX.
By Maxim Kich
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AI won’t save you, color contrast mistakes, the 3 layers of AI context was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.