Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.
“Hey team, can we use AI to help here?
The question dropped into the Slack channel before the user research summary. Before the problem was clearly defined. Before anyone asked if users actually needed this feature.
Your product manager already generated three interface options in ChatGPT. Now they’re asking which one to build. Not whether to build. Not why to build. Which.
And when you slow the conversation down to ask those questions, you’re about to discover that strategic thinking now reads as bottleneck behavior.”
When design stops asking why and starts asking: can AI do it? →
By Dolphia
The Sidebar Newsletter: 5 design links a day, nothing else →
Editor picks
- Vibe prototyping is a double-edged sword →
It’s so fun we forget what prototypes are for.
By Ed Orozco - Going analog in 2026 →
Can UX coexist with analog living?
By Daley Wilhelm - Beyond the waterfall state →
Why missions need a different decision-making architecture.
By Jack Strachan
The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.
Visualrambling: just a place to ramble visually →
Make me think
- Sometimes your job is to stay the hell out of the way →
”I have tried and completely failed to build a Wolf-like role within two different companies. I used different approaches and different framing in each attempt, but each was a failure. Existing Wolves were, at best, distracted from their work and, at worst, left the company because they felt like I’d forced them into management.” - CTA hierarchy in the wild →
“Hyperlinks are subversive. Big Tech must protect themselves and their interests. But now it seems like everywhere I go, software is increasingly designed against me..” - Privacy is a value we can lose →
“Sometimes, I think about the fact that society at large could just stop caring about data protection and privacy, and there goes everything that I worked towards and am passionate about. Humbling.”
Little gems this week
Giraffe, muppet, or human? →
By Catherine Chu
The rise of the Orchestrated User Interface (OUI) →
By Daniel Ruston
The quiet normalization of dark patterns →
By Elvis Hsiao
Tools and resources
- AR/VR vibe coding →
Prototyping immersive reality with AI.
By Albertmauri - Are we doing UX for AI the right way? →
How chatbot-first thinking makes products harder for users.
By Katya Korovkina - Designing AR that listens →
A longer tale from the camera front lines.
By Ivan Dzmitryievich
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Can AI do it, vibe prototyping, Orchestrated User Interface (OUI) was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.