Somehow "democratizing user research" never means establishing rigor around methodology and interpretation, and always means giving product managers license to go off and do stupid shit without consulting anyone who might tell them not to

#UX #UXDesign #tech #softwaredevelopment

Software is inert without a human user, even though modern-day "agentic" apps are doing their best to squeeze human agency out of the loop. The focus on the tech and not how it is used has intensified an old phenomenon: interpassivity.

The vision tech has been pushing (software that "uses itself") has created a synthetic replacement for human agency. It is harder and harder to care, and that is by design.

productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/th…

#AI #LLM #tech #software #UX #UXdesign

The newest term in the AI lexicon is "interpassivity"

The industry is reorienting around software that uses itself. But giving ourselves permission to lean back and relax merely indulges an old and toxic tendency.

^{Pavel Samsonov (The Product Picnic)}

Your company is a MACHINE for turning MEETINGS into REPORTS. Too bad no one reads those reports.

You also have dashboards, which one might skim before doing what they were gonna do anyway.

Tech orgs have all the data in the world, but have lost the ability to read it, understand it, or act on it.

productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/th…

#UXDesign #tech #software

The illiterate organization

Even the most actionable insight will never be acted upon when coherence has broken down.

^{Pavel Samsonov (The Product Picnic)}

Tools like Claude Design have an assumption baked into them: that "productivity" is fungible, and more "productivity" of artifacts leads to more value.

But if anything, the problem is that there are too MANY artifacts — and decision-making within your company begins to take on a "garbage can" model.

The solution for designers is to step out of clock time work, and think on calendar time.

productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/cl…

#UX #UXDesign #AI #LLM #tech #softwaredevelopment #design

Claude Design is a "clock time" solution for a "calendar time" problem

Orgs are betting that they can substitute sense-making with faster artifact delivery. Users are paying the price.

^{Pavel Samsonov (The Product Picnic)}