On the word “intuitive”
Every brief I have ever received contains the word “intuitive.” Sometimes it appears once, near the end, like a signature. Sometimes it appears four times in one paragraph, which I have learned to read as a cry for help. “We want it to be intuitive.” “Users should find it intuitive.” “Can we make the checkout a bit more intuitive?” Nobody has ever written, “We want it to be confusing.” That is the strange thing about the word. It sounds like a requirement, but it rules nothing out.
On “can we add AI?”
There is a moment in almost every product meeting this year. The roadmap is on the screen. Someone has just finished explaining a perfectly reasonable feature. And then, from the end of the table, usually from someone who has been quiet until now: “Can we add AI?”
On “taste,” now hiring
Some design job listings now ask, without irony, for an arbiter of taste. I read one aloud in class. A student asked what everyone in the room was thinking: “Can you actually learn that? Or do you just have it?” It is the question I am asked most often, in different costumes. “Is design talent?” “Am I visual enough?” “Some people just see it, right?” And it usually comes from the students who are most worried that they don’t. For years I gave a diplomatic answer. I am now prepared to give a less diplomatic one.
On feedback at the wrong altitude
Not all feedback is useful. Most designers learn this slowly, and usually the hard way. In the early stages of a project, feedback arrives in abundance. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone sees something they would change. “Make it more modern.” “It needs to feel more premium.” “I’m not sure about this.” None of these are wrong. None of them are actionable either.
The problem is not the intention. It is the altitude.
On teaching UX in the age of AI tools
My students ask me a version of the same question every semester now."Should I learn this AI tool or will it be irrelevant in six months?" My answer is always the same: learn the thinking behind the tool. The tool will change. The thinking will not.
At the end of the year
There is a particular atmosphere in the room at the end of the year.
The work is finished, or as finished as it will be. The deadlines have passed. The presentations are done. The all-nighters have been survived, some more gracefully than others. What remains is something quieter. A collective exhale. And underneath it, something that is harder to name.
Students look at their work differently at the end of a year than they do at any other point.