Issue #738: Design at the edges
Taste is not a feature, The design paradox, AI in design systems, Craft is untouchable, The design engineer symptom, and more.
Highlights of the week
- Design at the edges - When agents absorb the middle of the workflow, what's left is what always mattered. - Roger Wong
- Taste is not a feature - On judgement, context, and why AI makes taste more important, not less. - Joshua Leigh
Read all week, picked once. The best design links — every Tuesday.
Product design, UX/UI and PM
- A practical guide to design principles - Design principles with references, examples, and methods for quick look-up. - Vitaly Friedman
- Craft is untouchable - AI doesn't threaten craft—the temptation to skip iteration does. - Christopher Butler
- The future of apps - I opened Spotify this morning to make a playlist, and halfway through I realized I was doing something that might feel, in a few years, like winding a watch. - Dan Saffer
Design engineering
- The design engineer symptom - What a rising job title reveals. - Anna Lefour
- AI in design systems - What’s changing in 2026. - Elyse Holladay
Artificial intelligence
- Agentic AI, design systems and Figma: a practical guide - The Figma basics you were told to get right just became the foundation for something much bigger. - Christine Vallaure
- I built a design team out of AI agents - 10 agents that run an inclusive design process while you direct. - Marie-Claire Dean
Tools and resources
- Storybook MCP - We get into what it actually feels like to be “scaredcited” right now. - Brad Frost, Dominic Nguyen
- Figma skills for MCP - This article describes the skills that Figma provides for the Figma MCP server. - Figma
Inspiration and creativity
- The last quiet thing - Your possessions came alive. Now they won't stop talking. - Terry Godier
Last but not least
- The design paradox - Design jobs are flat. The design process is "dead." So why does design matter more than ever? - Ethan Eismann