Ideas and Discoveries
Personal and professional notes about our craft, technique, and the role of design in the world.
events & workshops
Workshop: Craft AI-Powered Experiences with Sentient Design
Reserve a private workshop to teach your product and design teams to imagine, design, and deliver AI-powered features and products.
ai
The Already-Here Future of Prototyping
With LLM tools like ChatGPT and Claude, it’s easier than ever for anyone — including and perhaps especially non-developers — to develop ideas in code.
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What we’re reading
Change Blindness
Ethan Mollick shares striking visual reminders of how far generative AI has come in just 21 months.
Introducing Structured Outputs in the API
The more that AI models can reliably return structured data, the more we can design interoperable and radically adaptive experiences with them.
Why I Finally Quit Spotify
A personal account of how algorithmic personalization can lead to a creeping blandness and a "corporation-centered” experience.
AI Is Confusing — Here’s Your Cheat Sheet
A helpful glossary of fundamental AI terms from The Verge.
Turning the Tables on AI
Oliver Reichenstein shares strategies for using AI to elevate your writing instead of handing the job entirely to the robots.
Doctors Use A.I. Chatbots to Help Fight Insurance Denials
Is this an example of tech leveling the playing field, or part of an AI-weaponized red-tape arms race that no one can win?
Recent Writing
icons
Your Sparkles Are Fizzling
Let’s retire the sparkle emoji, purple hues, and rainbow gradients for AI-powered features.
sentient design
Data Whisperers, Pinocchios, and Sentient Design
Podcasts from PDFs! Working code from pen-and-paper sketches! Discover the new AI-powered design patterns that liberate content from frozen formats—and create new experience paradigms.
sentient design
Say Hello to Sentient Design
Sentient Design is the already-here future of intelligent interfaces and AI-mediated experiences. Discover this framework and philosophy for working with AI as a design material.
sentient design
The Shape of Sentient Design
Use this diagram to think through and explore AI-mediated experiences in your product design.
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.
future
The Future is Built on Solid Foundations
Stability and innovation can sometimes seem to be in tension, but they are more complementary than competitive. Consider AI and design systems.
ai
AI and Design Systems
The new crop of AI tools are already supercharging design system efforts across many categories, and we’re helping our clients use AI to do exactly that. Big Medium’s Brad Frost, Kevin Coyle, and Ian Frost show how.
design system
The Art of Design System Recipes
Recipes take a design system’s components and make delicious, product-specific compositions out of them. Brad Frost breaks down the art of wielding recipes for digital UI success.
process
Ship Faster by Building Design Systems Slower
Successful design systems can and should move more slowly than the products they support—but a deliberate pace doesn’t have to create bottlenecks. Josh Clark shows how to reconcile the needs and speeds of product versus design system.
sentient design
A.I., Snake Oil, and Miracle-Cure Expectations
Be distrustful when AI is hyped as a cure-all—but don’t assume it’s useless just because it doesn’t live up to outlandish promises.
design system
Don't Put Crap in the Design System
Crap is rushed work, shortcuts, experiments, and other unvetted/unverified work. While crap is an unavoidable part of product design and development, it has no place in a design system.