Issue #744: The machine started feeling familiar
AI just called design’s bluff, Cognitive Bias Index, Articulation is design craft, Media queries range syntax, The web is fun again, and more.
Highlights of the week
- The year the machine started feeling familiar - Do not use AI to automate or take away the joy for the thing you used to have. Because if you do this, you will eventually lose your joy entirely. - Tobias van Schneider
- AI just called design’s bluff - AI automates what is lowest value first. For design, that was UI. Not because UI is easy. It isn't. But because it is repeatable. Learnable. Describable enough to train a model on. - Jessa Parette
Read all week, picked once. The best design links — every Tuesday.
Product design, UX/UI and PM
- Cognitive Bias Index - A tool for identifying and mitigating the systematic errors in thinking that affect the decisions and judgments that humans make. - Jon Yablonski
- Articulation is design craft - When a designer can't articulate why a decision was made beyond surface-level descriptions of what the decision is, they're not failing to translate internal knowledge into external language. - Cristian Morales Achiardi
Design engineering
- Install web apps with the new HTML install element - The new install HTML element changes that: drop a single HTML element into your page and the browser renders a trusted install button for you, with no JavaScript required. - Patrick Brosset
- Media queries range syntax - Media query ranges are clearer, easier to debug, and well-supported. Give them a try in a project, I’m sure you will find it useful. - Ahmad Shadeed
- The web is fun again - The promise is simple and exciting: take native HTML, render it into canvas workflows, and then apply visual effects with 2D Canvas, WebGL, or WebGPU. - Amit Sheen
Artificial intelligence
- Software gets personal: An introduction - Personal software is a solution that is good enough for a niche audience. It's software made by "anyone," for themselves and the people around them. - Fabien Girardin
Inspiration and creativity
- Mockups were never the hard part - The difficult work is, and always has been, maintaining coherency and intention across a product so it works for people, not the other way around. - Luke Wroblewski
- How Shopify's design director shapes product strategy (video) - Balancing metrics and vision, Redesigning the shopping cart UX, Taking a big bet on the shopping feed, and more - Katarina Batina, Michael Riddering
Last but not least
- The brand age - Brand is what's left when the substantive differences between products disappear. - Paul Graham