
Generative UI Still Needs a Designed Sequence
AI models can now generate the interface. In AI strategy tools, the harder problems are drift, numbers nobody can trace, and a model that agrees too easily.

Design as a way of thinking, not just a deliverable: research, experience, systems, and the craft of making things people actually enjoy using.

AI models can now generate the interface. In AI strategy tools, the harder problems are drift, numbers nobody can trace, and a model that agrees too easily.

Now that AI can build almost anything, designers are calling taste the moat. Taste that isn't tied to a where-to-play and how-to-win choice sets the designer apart, not the business.

A panel of synthetic CFOs matched my conversations with real CFOs because a design team built it from fifteen real ones. Synthetic users work when someone talked to real people first, and all research has a shelf life.

Design thinking lost its teeth in business because people like me made the method the point. Drucker named the point in 1954: a business exists to create a customer. A confession, and an upgrade for designers and the executives who fund them.

AI makes screens and prototypes cheap to build, so the scarce skill on a product team is choosing what deserves to exist. That choice belongs to design leadership.

Early hallucinations spent the trust professionals had in AI tools. We earned it back by splitting the work between the model and plain calculation, and showing people where one ends and the other begins.

My first blog post, in 2002, asked why we were rushing to use Flash. The questions I ask about AI products today are the same ones, and I still get them wrong.

The design work in AI products moved from screens to sequences, prompts, and output contracts. It's still UX, and it still starts with where people actually are.

Why the UX community's obsession with user delight is killing business value.

Physical and digital customer experiences express an organization's values. Integrity means showing the same care, accessibility, and attention to detail in both.

I frame design in three modes: Encounter, Explore, and Evolve. Five connected activities turn fresh perspectives into ideas, prototypes, and learning.

Have you ever wondered why some products are so hard to use? This story might explain that very reason—plus a powerful tip to fix the problem.

Whether you're giving or getting a design critique, this mindset and method will help you get more value out of the critique process.