Big Ideas
Resources
I collect ideas that stick around, the kind that refuse to leave your brain even when you’re working on something else. Some are obvious. Others are obscure enough that I’m still not sure who else has noticed them. The bet is that all of them solve a real problem the way I want problems solved: with directness and a little bit of craft.
A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design
An exceptionally furious, clarifying argument that our glass rectangles waste the human hand and body. Read it before you call anything intuitive.
As We May Think
The 1945 essay that dreamed the associative, augmenting machine we are finally building. Every AI copilot pitch is a footnote to it.
Folk Interfaces
I love how Maggie connects how everyday users reappropriate software to build their own custom, improvised workflows. It provides crucial inspiration for designing interfaces that are malleable rather than rigid.
How Do Committees Invent?
The origin of Conway’s Law: your product’s seams mirror your org chart. Design leadership is org design.
Local-First Software
Seven principles for software that keeps working when the network or the vendor does not. The backbone of designing for repair and real ownership. Long-term thinking that isn’t user-hostile.
Magic Ink
Reframes most software as information design, not interaction design — the corrective for every time you are tempted to add another button.
The Agentic UI Landscape, A Primer (Updated)
A conceptually grounding discussion of the patterns emerging as software starts acting on our behalf.
The Dark Forest and Generative AI
An examination of the “dead web” theory and how an explosion of synthetic content changes human trust. It challenges designers to think deeply about how we prove and verify human identity inside software.
The Looking Glass
I haven’t met Julie, but she’s a design leader who has been thinking in public about management, judgment, and scale for years. The closest thing to a mentorship newsletter.
The Rise of “Worse Is Better”
Gabriel argues why the simpler, often uglier thing wins adoption. Essential humility for anyone who wants to ship the right design instead of Dribbble porn.
We Don’t Sell Saddles Here
Stewart’s legendary Slack memo is a masterful lesson in framing software not by its mechanical features, but by the profound change in human capability it enables. I shared this with our executive team recently. Technology is shifting beneath our feet, and this piece serves as an inspiring reminder to stop designing mere software utilities and start designing the path to entirely new ways of working together.
Why Chatbots Are Not the Future
The sharpest critique of the blank text box as an AI interface, with real ideas for giving models affordances and handles. Core reading for agent UX.