Closed-ended questions measure only within the categories you supply, whereas open questions let users reveal what those categories missed. AI now conducts interviews, codes every verbatim, and counts how many respondents raised each theme, so you can finally afford to analyze every open answer.

Taste stops being a unique human advantage | This Thursday is World Usability Day | AI speeds up old work and unlocks new work | What to do while waiting for AI agents | If users can’t read it, it doesn’t exist | AI teammates cut the labor cost per ad by a third

Decision maps beat transcripts for overseeing long-running AI agents | Emphasis is a zero-sum game | Humans set goals for AI agents, but the agents heavily influence execution methods | Not everything should be a standalone app | Feedback on students’ AI use curbs answer-grabbing better than penalties

Users judge every new design against mental templates assembled from thousands of old ones. Familiar controls put that training to work for you, so interfaces should look like what they are and behave like what they resemble. I explain which expectations to honor, and when an improvement is worth the relearning, through 7 principles from psychology and design: Jakob’s Law, mental models and schemata, least astonishment, representativeness, signifiers, mere exposure, and the M

AI can’t simulate human research participants yet, but it can help interviewers practice before meeting real users | AI answers can drain users’ cognitive budgets through several kinds of complexity | Let users type distant dates | Simplifying the NASA-TLX instrument for measuring task load |

Personalized AI doubles its odds of changing your mind | Real users reveal what synthetic users miss | AI summaries can bias users even when full information is available | Agentic video production cuts human oversight but raises costs | Missing feedback makes users doubt their actions | Consumers show little loyalty to AI services | Voice AI practice helps students speak up in class | Silence improves interviews | Master–detail split views halve navigation work

Marking mechanisms are the cheapest usability win on the web: a tap turns a fleeting encounter into a durable, refindable object. But marking serves three distinct jobs (evaluate, curate, retrieve) that designers keep mashing into a single overloaded button. Use a heart for likes, a star for favorites, and a flag for bookmarks. Marks travel a 3-stage journey (keep, manage, exploit), so plan for collections that grow into the thousands.

The flow state & UX | AI has reshaped creative jobs, and 70% of creatives now use it | The cost of AI drops 13× per year | Every extra option adds thinking time | Design the human–AI team as one unit | Proactive AI must time interruptions carefully | Satisfaction depends on expectations | Carousels are an experience lottery