76 Open Research Questions in AI Usability
AI is the biggest change to UX design in 60 years, yet we know embarrassingly little about how people actually use it. Here are 76 open research questions, organized into 7 lists sized for everyone from high school students to the big AI labs. Students who complete a research challenge gain the two qualities employers now screen for: agency and demonstrated AI experience.
Satisficing: Users Pick the First Good-Enough Option, Not the Best One
Users don’t choose the best option; they choose the first satisfactory one, and then they stop looking. This behavior, called satisficing, decides which link gets clicked, which default survives, and which of your features nobody ever sees. Design so that the first plausible option is also the correct option, and the lazy click becomes the right click.
UX Roundup: Design Guidelines Changing for AI | AI Anxiety | Toggle Switches | Erdős Problems | Glanceable Monitoring
Design guidelines held steady for 30 years but are shifting with AI | Users who are anxious about AI use it more, not less | A toggle is a light switch, not a form field | What are the Erdős problems and why are they relevant for AI? | An ambient monitoring interface with glanceable feedback on agent progress cut errors in hal
Hedonic Adaptation: The Same Design Scores Lower Every Year
Users adapt to good design the way lottery winners adapt to wealth: the thrill fades and the baseline resets. Hold a design constant, and its satisfaction ratings will sag year after year as expectations rise; my rule of thumb is a drift of 2–5% annually. Budget continuous improvement just to stay level, and spend it on killing recurring irritations before adding sparkle.
UX Roundup: Web Design for AI Agents | AI Assistants Beat Brand Websites | Ship, Learn, Iterate | AI as Business Strategist | AI-Assisted Creativity for Children | Infinite Canvas | Scott McCloud
Agent-ready web design lifts AI task success | Shoppers now pick AI assistants over brand websites, 41% to 38% | Learn from reality: build and iterate | AI getting better at business strategy, but still not good enough to run your company | AI raised the floor but lowered the ceiling in children’s storytelling | Infinite canvas as a UI space for organizing and collaborating on unstructured information | My Hero: Scott McCloud, comic book artist and theorist | AI animates clas
10 GUI Design Elements Build Every User Interface
Almost every screen you design is assembled from 10 basic interaction elements: buttons, forms, menus, links, dialog boxes, alerts, icons, checkboxes and radio buttons, tabs, and search. Each is decades old but still misused daily. This article defines the GUI design alphabet, traces its history, and distills 86 evidence-based design guidelines, plus bonus coverage of windows and the pointer.