Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.
“The main thing I’ve realized after talking with dozens of designers in 2025 is that design can’t be a cost center and hope to survive. In an uncertain economy, many organizations are looking to reduce costs. If you’re seen as nothing but a cost with little benefit, your team may be on the chopping block.
So if executive whims are throwing you around, don’t just learn to follow orders or question them to the point of being seen as a roadblock. Learn to get executives to realize that what they’re proposing is a bad idea on their own.”
How do you deal with an executive demanding features? →
By Kai Wong
The easiest feedback tool for UX teams & designers →
[Sponsored] Tired of chasing screenshots, Slack threads, and vague emails? With Pastel, clients leave all their feedback in one place, no login required. Loved by 10,000+ creatives including teams at Calendly, Dropbox Bentobox and more.
Editor picks
- Why “good UX” isn’t enough →
Lessons from the internal combustion engine.
By Jon Daiello - Generative AI’s dehumanization problem →
The defects of traditional media, on steroids.
By Neel Dozome - AI + the age of choice →
Less noise and more quality.
By Chris R Becker
The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.
Dicing an onion the mathematically optimal way →
Make me think
- We must build AI for people; not to be a person →
“AI companions are a completely new category, and we urgently need to start talking about the guardrails we put in place to protect people and ensure this amazing technology can do its job of delivering immense value to the world. I’m fixated on building the most useful and supportive AI companion imaginable.” - Vibe coding and the illusion of progress →
“While artificial intelligence has revolutionized how we write code, it hasn’t touched the fundamental human work of discovering genuine user needs, validating solutions through real-world testing, and adapting products based on market feedback. This distinction matters now more than ever, as AI-powered development tools create a dangerous illusion of progress that threatens the very foundation of successful product building.” - Easy will always trump simple →
“Simple and easy aren’t inherently in conflict, but are instead orthogonal. Simple is an absolute concept, and easy is relative to what the software designer already knows.”
Little gems this week
What GPT-5 could have learned from Apple’s headphone jack →
By Youjin Nam
From skim to substance: designing the future of reading →
By Wira Indra Kusuma
What’s human agency, anyway? →
By Helena Mathiesen
Tools and resources
- AI in UX research →
What to automate, augment, or keep in human hands.
By Juhee Dubey - Designing how AI thinks →
A scrappy guide to prototyping conversational AI.
By Mike Waszazak - Design beyond sight →
How to make your product work with screen readers.
By Gabriella Chuffi
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Dealing with feature requests, AI’s dehumanization problem, AI in UX research was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.