UX design
fromMedium
5 hours agoThe invisible layer of UX most designers ignore
Designers must prioritize screen reader compatibility to ensure accessibility, as users rely on spoken content rather than visual elements.
To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul. The concept I stick to - my core principle - is simple: I write in plain English, and only when I actually have something to say.
When we rolled out a custom-built company GPT to our 14,000 teammates several years ago, we saw three clear groups emerge. First, there was the 'jump-in-with-both-feet' crowd. These are the early adopters who treat anything new like a shiny toy. Next were the skeptics who wondered how much of an impact AI would have on their daily work lives. And finally, there was a big group that genuinely wanted to learn but didn't know where to start.
Instructions I created. Instructions I am continuing to hone - instructions that required me to study my own old essays, identifying what I do when I write. The sentence rhythms. The way I move between timescales. The zooming in and out from concept to detail. The instructions tell Claude how I would like ideas composed. I pull together concepts and experiences from my lived expertise to formulate a point of view - in this case, on this new AI technology.
Her payment form wasn't connecting to the payment processor, and every attempt ended in an error message that made no sense. I understood her frustration. As a founder myself, I was acutely aware of the pain of trying to run a business and feeling like nothing was going your way. When I dug into her form, I found the problem a few minutes later: a mismatch between test mode and live credentials.
They meet whatever half-formed idea they already associate with the category, and that idea ends up doing a lot more work than the product itself. Someone hears "AI tool for business" and immediately imagines Hollywood robots or their boss replacing half the team. Someone hears "blockchain platform," and their mind jumps to a chart going straight down. A buyer sees a proptech product and wonders whether it'll complicate an already stressful process.
At some point, every UX learner realizes that having a portfolio isn't the same as having a convincing portfolio. You may have screens, wireframes, and prototypes. You may even have multiple projects. But when your work is reviewed, the feedback feels vague. "Tell me more about your process." "Why did you make this decision?" "What was the impact?" That's because a strong UX case study isn't a gallery of designs. It's an argument.
AI is disrupting more than the software industry, and is doing so at a breakneck speed. Not long ago, designers were deep in Figma variables and pixel-perfect mockups. Now, tools like v0, Lovable, and Cursor are enabling instant, vibe-based prototyping that makes old methods feel almost quaint. What's coming into sharper focus isn't fidelity, it's foresight. Part of the work of Product Design today is conceptual: sensing trends, building future-proof systems, and thinking years ahead.
You just finished a design project. And it was a mess. Timelines constantly shifted. Stakeholders disagreed, going back and forth. You made calls without enough data to support them. Maybe the final design wasn't what you wanted. Now comes the hard part: thinking about how you're going to talk about it in your portfolio or case study. Most designers have one basic instinct in this scenario: clean it up. Tell the story as if there was no conflict, no missteps, and a smooth experience.
The question dropped into the Slack channel before the user research summary. Before the problem was clearly defined. Before anyone asked if users actually needed this feature. Your product manager already generated three interface options in ChatGPT. Now they're asking which one to build. Not whether to build. Not why to build. Which. And when you slow the conversation down to ask those questions, you're about to discover that strategic thinking now reads as bottleneck behavior.