AI is indiscriminate. It will respond to anything (vague, misaligned, incomplete )and return something that looks finished. We’ve been here before. We’ve seen wireframes built on assumptions and prototypes shipped without hypotheses. Now we’re watching the same happen with prompting. Vague instructions fed into AI are producing surface-level answers. The crux is in how we shape the conversation. If we […]
You and I both know there’s a point in a project where the real decisions happen. The budget is set, the timeline fixed, and the constraints already agreed, sometimes long before anyone calls us in. If we arrive at that point, we’re already downstream. We can still produce good work, but it’s reactive. We’re supplying, not shaping. In that case, […]
“You are not the user” shaped how designers worked. It forced humility, removed ego, discouraged shortcuts, and drove us to research instead of assuming. It influenced how we reviewed work, planned research, and avoided designing for ourselves. But taken too literally, it can create distance from the product, so much that we stop experiencing it ourselves. Direct use can lead […]
What does your hero section communicate before a single word is consciously read? In less than 50 milliseconds (quicker than a blink) people are already deciding if what they see feels relevant, trustworthy, and worth their time. This is supported by decades of usability research: Nielsen Norman Group’s F‑pattern and Gutenberg Diagram studies show that the hero area is almost […]
“If you want to encourage a behaviour, make it the default.” We know this works in UX because we are wired to conserve mental energy. Defaults exploit our tendency to satisfice, to accept ‘good enough’ over ‘optimal’ when cognitive resources are low. That makes the default one of our most powerful tools in UX. When users don’t act, it becomes […]
How do you think most design ideas fail? Is it poor execution? Is it a lack of skill? Is it the wrong tools or resources? No, not really. More often, it’s due to poor explanation. Why? Because when it comes time to communicate why our work matters, we often stumble. We’re conditioned to believe that impact is proven through numbers, […]
Trust was always invisible. Until we lost it. It has always been present in UX. Just quiet. We relied on it without naming it. A login form looked secure. A progress bar meant something was happening. A CTA didn’t feel like a trap. But then the internet changed. Content became infinite. Outputs became automated. The authors disappeared. Now we’re designing […]
There is a moment between wanting to do something and actually doing it. And another between doing it and knowing if it worked. These are the two gulfs that define the usability of any product: the Gulf of Execution and the Gulf of Evaluation. One measures how well users can translate intent into action. The other, how easily they can […]
Trust was always invisible. Until we lost it… It has always been present in UX. Just quiet. We relied on it without naming it. A login form looked secure. A progress bar meant something was happening. A CTA didn’t feel like a trap. But then the internet changed. Content became infinite. Outputs became automated. The authors disappeared. Now we’re designing […]
hy do users drop off at the crucial moments? It is often down to the fact that journeys get shaped around what is buildable rather than what is usable. The paths users take are too often reverse-engineered from either backend logic or business constraints. But a good UX audit interrogates their very existence. It asks who the design is really […]
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