How designers create true alignment with visual thinking I want to tell you about my favorite apple. It’s incredible. It’s hands down the most delicious apple of all time! When you see it hanging on a tree, its color invites you to come closer and take a bite. When it’s ripe, the flavor is amazing, complemented …
Year: 2025
Nostalgia as product strategy
The emotional design behind the latest AI marketing campaigns. illustration by author If you haven’t seen them yet, OpenAI’s launched new ad campaign of short 30 seconds videos that embed AI into an idealised, warmly analog, version of the past. They’re quite visually pleasing, to be honest, with a slight VHS grain and muted colours, and …
Building a product that doesn’t exist
Designers, product, and engineers are all guided by the “Product Ideal.” The problem is, they’re all seeing a different one. Continue reading on UX Collective » All it takes is one creative spark to ignite a fire. source: DSRUPTR.com I recently wrote about the 5 powerful business insights that prove the value of design. While it’s incredible …
From products to systems: The agentic AI shift
Agents are here, how we build and use them is challenging many of the foundations for building software that we established over the last few decades — and even the very idea of what a product is. Prompt by the author, image by Sora. This article is a continuation of previous explorations on the theme of how AI is …
Liminal design seeks likeminded revenue model for committed relationship
We know how to design liminal products that deliver deeper and more interesting experiences, not just more and faster transactions. But current business models are stuck pumping around the same corporate water in the aquarium until the fish die — we now need to look for brand new revenue perspectives to keep up. The famous 1910 Kuleshov experiment …
The airport: Where we pretend to have arrived
The junkspace non-place of the modern aerotropolis. Moving walkway, Changi Airport station, Singapore, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons. Lines. Crowds. That brief certainty you’ll be stopped at security and sent to jail, or that your bag will end up in Fort Lauderdale. Even when it doesn’t, you have to watch it plop out of that diabolical …
What designers can learn from the first interface — the human face
What designers can learn from the first interface — the human face Applying the oldest form of communication to modern design systems. Image source: https://appliedalliance.wordpress.com/2014/06/16/micro-expressions/ The idea that the human face is our “original interface” is well established. Psychologists, anthropologists, and HCI researchers have argued for decades that it is the most intuitive system we’ve ever used. What often …
Should every country have a design minister?
Why national design policies and even design ministers could reshape our collective future Design is no longer just about products or services. From Singapore to the U.S., nations are weaving design into policy, and designers must decide if they are ready to step up (image source: Flag Plaza, Doha) Walking into Dear Designer It was a little …
From skim to substance: Designing the future of reading
Skimming isn’t the death of reading, it’s the beginning. What matters is whether design leaves readers at the surface, or builds the doorways that invite them into depth. Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash Benjamin Cain recently published a polemic against “skimmable texts”, arguing that only fake readers want to read while multitasking, and only fake writers …
How to be the designer in the AI Loop
Exploring the evolving relationship between humans and AI in product design Continue reading on UX Collective » Lillian Gilbreth and the two definitions of “Better” In 1912, at a manufacturing plant in Providence, Rhode Island, two people were watching the same workers but seeing two different things. Frank Gilbreth stood with a stopwatch, tracking every movement …