Welcome

A lot of hype and noise is pressing us to extend the cowboy, wild-west phase of the software industry’s expansion. We should set that aside, and take ourselves seriously as a mature industry. Build a web application that works on a playstation portable on a 3G connection - if you do, it will work for all your users, and it will still work 30 years from now.

It’s the accessibility step you don't skip because the deadline is tight. The AI output you stop and verify instead of waving through. The conversation with leadership where you say "this isn't ready" and mean it. The harm you reduce. It looks like documenting what you see, internally and externally, so the work has receipts. Writing the case study, the blog post, the talk. Putting language to the practice so others can defend it too. We are the practitioners. The judgment is ours. The choices are ours.

Many of us don't have the luxury of experimenting freely. Shipping low-quality or unstable outputs doesn't just affect the product — it affects our credibility, our teams, and sometimes our jobs. Using AI without verification isn't just a design or engineering risk. It's a professional one. When the screen reader test fails on the AI-generated component, AI isn't in the meeting. When laws are broken, AI isn't named as defendant. When a user gets harmed by AI making up sources, AI isn't the one who apologizes. When AI fails, we pay the price. That's the part of the "use AI or else" equation that doesn't make it into the pitch: the accountability has to land somewhere. It lands with us.

Friction is the work One thing about designing that I didn't fully appreciate earlier in my career: the act of making something is how you figure out what it is. It’s the process of taking role, look and feel, and implementation questions and finding answers until you integrate it together into one cohesive solution.

Gen AI can be used as a sketch, as long as you know what you're using it as and you understand its limits, costs, and impacts. The risk is letting it convince you the work is accurate, complete, or unbiased. Models only know averages. And no human is average. Design is the edges. It's the human reasoning, strategy, empathy, and collaboration required to think within and beyond our own lived experiences. AI cannot replace that.

Uber did not give you low prices because they are generous. They gave you low prices to collect your data, improve their product, and ultimately to clear the field of any competition. The cheap fare was the bait, and we all fell for it. The AI business model looks suspiciously Uber shaped

I think it’s so important to write. Even if you feel like you have nothing to say. You do have things to say!