There is a simple test for good user experience. Did it help someone accomplish something? Not delight. Not animation. Not visual polish. Help. Somewhere along the way the design industry drifted toward aesthetic performance. Interfaces became visually impressive, motion systems became elaborate, and design systems became works of internal craftsmanship. Yet many products became...
Continue readingThe Drive Thru Reinvented: A Coffee Shop That Runs on Pneumatic Tubes
Most drive-thru coffee experiences are predictable. You pull up. You wait in line. Someone leans out a window. A cup appears. You leave. Now imagine something completely different. You pull up to a small building that used to be a bank. Instead of a drive-thru window, there is a stainless steel tube terminal next...
Continue readingFlipping the Script on the Healthcare Check-In Process for Adults 65+
The first interaction a patient has with the healthcare system is not the doctor.It is the check-in experience. For patients over 65, that moment often sets the emotional tone for the entire visit. Unfortunately, most healthcare check-in systems were designed for administrative efficiency rather than human comprehension. Clipboards, kiosks, and fragmented patient portals create...
Continue readingHealthcare UX in 2026
Healthcare UX in 2026: Designing for AI, Accessibility, and Human Trust Spotify Healthcare is finally undergoing the digital transformation other industries experienced years ago. But unlike retail or banking, healthcare products cannot simply focus on convenience. They must support high-stakes decisions, vulnerable users, and extremely complex systems. In 2026, healthcare UX is defined by...
Continue readingWhen the Power Goes Out, UX Matters
Comparing the outage experience of PSEG and Verizon Fios We recently had a storm that took out both power and Verizon Fios. The frustrating part was how well PSEG communicated and how disjointed Verizon was. The app and web did not sync, call centers had no idea what was happening, and the automated line...
Continue readingLooking at UX Through the Lens of AI
How Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping the Experience Layer of Software User experience has always been about reducing friction between people and technology. Good UX removes confusion, simplifies decisions, and makes complex systems feel understandable. For decades, designers did this through layout, navigation, and interface design. We created buttons, menus, dashboards, and flows intended to...
Continue readingThe UX of Uber: A Product Everyone Uses That Still Needs a Redesign
Some of the most widely used apps in the world still contain surprisingly poor user experiences. Uber is one of them. The irony is that Uber solved one of the hardest UX problems in technology: requesting a ride in seconds. The core experience is brilliant. But as the product expanded into food delivery, reservations,...
Continue readingGenerative UI and the Rise of the Disposable Interface
Spotify For most of the history of software, the interface has been fixed. Designers created menus. Engineers implemented screens. Every user entered the same structure and navigated the same paths. The assumption behind nearly all software design has been that the interface should be predefined and persistent. That assumption is beginning to collapse. A...
Continue readingAI Agents: Why 2026 May Finally Be the Year They Matter
Spotify For the past two years, the technology industry has talked endlessly about AI agents. In 2025, the expectation was clear: agents would transform software. The reality was less dramatic. Most “agents” released in that period were little more than upgraded chatbots with a few automation hooks. Meanwhile, something else captured the spotlight. Generative...
Continue readingUX as an AI Model Differentiator
Spotify Why the next battleground for AI platforms isn’t raw intelligence — it’s how they feel to use. We are living through a moment of profound AI convergence. The underlying models — the transformers, the reasoning engines, the multimodal stacks — are rapidly reaching feature parity. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and a wave of...
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