Prompt as self-portrait, De-slopifying your designs, The strategic designer

Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.

“Every prompt is a confession. Before the model returns a word, the box has read me back: the clarity of my thinking, the range of my references, the questions I didn’t think to ask. I think I am describing a task, while in reality I am describing myself, my aspirations, the place I work, the assumptions my team has, the knowledge my organization did or didn’t bother to write down.”

Prompting as self-portrait →
By Caio Braga

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Editor picks

• The economics of attention in the age of AI →
  When machines pay attention, what deserves ours?
  By Aurélie Radom
• The next larger context →
  Designing beyond the UI, the product, and the prompt.
  By Chris R Becker
• Intelligent accessibility →
  What if accessibility could adapt to you?
  By Dulanjala Aluthge

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

On losing the ability to see anything whole →
By Pedro A. Brêtas

Make me think

• AI is a boring technology →
  “Electricity did not arrive boring. It became boring over decades, through standardization and public investment and regulation and a great deal of argument about who should own the wires and who was owed service.”
• The default is not a design decision →
  “The second was the tool. Figma didn’t invent the sameness, but it made copying frictionless, and cheap imitation spreads in a way expensive imitation never could.”
• The age of the soft skill →
  “The worst thing you can do in 2026 is take a question somebody asked you, paste it into an AI, and paste the answer back. It is the laziest move available, it’s annoying, and it wastes everybody’s time, because I can do that. I have the same tools you do.”

Cool finds

Bringing emoji into the next era of expression →

Is your app ready for iPhone Duo? →

The four tiers of tab importance →

Careers & more

• How to de-slopify your designs →
  Tips for anyone who vibecodes.
  By Maya Brennan
• Design’s consensus was AI’s first casualty →
  The same evidence about AI is being read two opposite ways.
  By Anamol Rajbhandari
• The strategic designer →
  Navigating the Jevons paradox in the AI age.
  By Daniel Ruston

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Prompt as self-portrait, De-slopifying your designs, The strategic designer was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.