The erosion of design authority, burnout problems, invisible customers

Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.

“The excitement surrounding these tools does not come from the design itself. It comes from the collapse of the distance between description and interaction. An interface appears immediately, behavior responds instantly, and possibility becomes visible before structure exists. That is genuinely new. What is not new is the gap between something that looks finished and something that is.”

Vibe coding is accelerating the erosion of design authority
By Michael Buckley

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Editor picks

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

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Make me think

  • Should designers “code”?
    “There’s a question that never goes away in design: should designers code? My answer has always been yes. But for a decade or so, the complexity of front-end development made it impractical for most. Thankfully, AI coding agents have reopened the door.”
  • AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it
    “I want to talk about it honestly. Not the “AI is amazing and here’s my workflow” version. The real version. The one where you stare at your screen at 11pm, surrounded by AI-generated code you still need to review, wondering why the tool that was supposed to save you time has consumed your entire day.”
  • The machines are fine. I’m worried about us.
    “The discourse around LLMs in science tends to cluster at two poles that David Hogg identifies cleanly: let-them-cook, in which we hand the reins to the machines and become curators of their output, and ban-and-punish, in which we pretend it’s 2019 and prosecute anyone caught prompting.”

Little gems this week

Beyond the user: why design needs to widen its circle
By Dora Czerna

Falling apples and crumbling algos
By Eleanor Howe

Taste.md: the new tech buzzword
By Pablo Stanley

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The erosion of design authority, burnout problems, invisible customers was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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