July 20, 2026

Issue 597

The hard things about design
Why design carries costs that engineering and product management mostly avoid.

No, People Don’t Want More AI In Their Life
Most people don’t want more AI — at least not in the way most AI leaders envision it.

Adding a Feature Isn’t the Same as Improving Your Product
A feature belongs when it extends an existing user workflow, not when it introduces a new one.

Why Human-Led Research Still Matters in the Age of AI
Even if AI matches researcher-output quality, human-led research will remain essential — the team learning from observing users can’t be outsourced.

Design systems need evals
You’ve taught agents your design system. You still don’t know whether they’re following it.

NameThatUI
The visual dictionary of UI.

Jason Yuan – Designing 99 No’s for a single Yes
A deep dive into the mind of Jason Yuan where he gives a behind-the-scenes of his multi-year journey designing Hivemind.

Megan Yap
Megan is studying Computer Science and Linguistics at Cornell and interning at Google.

AI Didn’t Take Your Job. Someone Using AI Did
The person who learned to use it is—and the gap between them is widening faster than most people realize.

“While great art makes you wonder, great design makes things clear.”
— John Maeda