The 80-Year History of AI
Humans have been dreaming of thinking machines for more than 2,700 years, but real work on building them started in 1943 with the first neural networks. Progress during the following 80 years was slow, with many disappointments and “AI Winters,” but advances built up over time as compute scaled. Themes seen during this long history persist to this day.
UX Roundup: Moby Dick | AI Broadens Use Compared to Search | Dashboard Visualization | Tacit Knowledge | Design Engineer Fellowship
New music video based on Moby-Dick | AI expands users’ tasks compared with traditional search, but provides narrower information results | AI dashboard visualizations help therapists spot trends hidden in session notes | How to elicit tacit knowledge to build AI workflows | A16Z awarding fellowships to design engineers
The 10 Usability Heuristics in Infographics
Condensed presentation of Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics in infographics that explain what each heuristic means and show design patterns that support the heuristics as well as anti-patterns that undermine usability by violating the heuristics.
UX Roundup: User Research Game | AI Photo Recommendations | AI Helps TA | Teaching Metacognition | AI Shorts | 100 TW Compute | Happy Horse
User researchers as role-playing game classes | AI posture recommendation feature in Huawei Pura 90 phones | AI helps teaching assistants provide better feedback to students | AI as a metacognitive coach | Recommending an entertaining short AI film | SpaceX’s plan for 100 TW orbital compute | New Chinese video model Happy Horse from Alibaba
Deprivation Studies: Take the Product Away to Reveal What Users Truly Need
Standard usability testing uncovers interface flaws, but deprivation studies reveal if a product should exist at all. By intentionally forcing users to abstain from software, we expose hidden dependencies, useless ghost features, and duct-tape workarounds, providing empirical data to ruthlessly declutter bloated interfaces and maximize true utility.
UX Roundup: Claude Design | AI Does User Testing | AI Use Crosses 50% | GPT-Images-2 | GPT 5.5 | DeepSeek 4
Claude Design | AI Does User Testing | AI Use Crosses 50% | GPT-Images-2 | GPT 5.5 | DeepSeek 4 Summary: Claude Design should be used differently than canvas-based design tools | AI conducts user testing and can now see what’s happening on the screen | For the first time, more than 50% of employed Americans use AI at work | OpenAI recaptures leadership in AI image generation with new, highly accurate model | Two upgraded AI models, GPT 5.5 and DeepSeek 4