culture
sentient design
Has the “AI Edge” Become a Dull Blade?
Today’s cutting-edge technology is becoming tomorrow’s ho-hum office tool. And that’s a good thing.
design
Redesigning Design, the Cliff in Front of Us All
Greg Storey exhorts designers to recognize that it’s a new era, like it or not. Don’t look back, he says—reinvent.
music
Why I Finally Quit Spotify
A personal account of how algorithmic personalization can lead to a creeping blandness and a "corporation-centered” experience.
inspiration
A Unified Theory of F*cks
Mandy Brown reminds that work won’t love you back. Give your heart to the living, not to institutions.
ai
We Need To Talk About Our AI Fetish
In a powerful and historically grounded essay, Jeremy Wagstaff asks that we not abdicate the vision for AI solely to the companies who stand to gain from it.
collaboration
Nobody Wants To Work with Our Best Engineer
Jacob Bennett on kindness as competitive advantage.
leadership
Do More with Less: Digital Leadership in Lean Times
Josh Clark shares nine principles to guide high-performing teams to deliver faster/better/cheaper in an era of shrinking budgets.
ai
Can AI Bridge the Dev/Design Gap?
Big Medium’s Kevin Coyle explores how AI can improve collaboration between product management, frontend and backend development, and design. Kevin shows how AI can bring us together instead of replacing or isolating us.
mindfulness
The Damaging Fiction of the Wellness Industrial Complex™
The unlikely pairing of capitalism and wellness has insidious effects, Liza Kindred writes. There are parallels for UX here, too.
privacy
With Brits Used to Surveillance, More Companies Try Tracking Faces
Companies use UK’s omnipresent security cameras as cultural permission to bring facial-recognition tech to semi-public spaces, tracking criminal history but also ethnicity and other personal traits.
facebook
Facebook Gives Workers a Chatbot to Appease That Prying Uncle
Facebook sent employees home for the holidays with robot talking points for their families.
culture
If Software Is Eating the World, What Will Come Out the Other End?
“So far, it’s mostly shit,” wrotes John Battelle.
business
“Trigger for a rant”
Nat Torkington has something to say about innovation poseurs—in the mattress industry.
culture
Should computers serve humans, or should humans serve computers?
Nolan Lawson considers dystopian and utopian possibilities for the future, with a gentle suggestion that front-line technologists have some agency.
alexa
s5e11: Things That Have Caught My Attention
Dan Hon considers the challenges and pitfalls in designing a one-size-fits-all system that talks to children and, especially, teaches them new behaviors.
business
Do You Have “Advantage Blindness”?
Harvard Business Review considers the responsibility of those advantaged by race or gender to acknowledge that advantage—and use it to help others.
ai
Stop Pretending You Really Know What AI Is
“Artificial intelligence” is so broadly used that the phrase no longer has much practical meaning, bemoans John Pavlus at Quartz.
principles
Politics Are a Design Constraint
John Warren Hanawalt writes that software design is inherently political. Make sure that your software’s politics line up with your own.