Spotify AI did not give you design instincts. It gave you a faster way to expose that you never had them. The prototype looks great. The thinking behind it is hollow. And everyone in the room can tell. The New Confidence Problem There is a specific kind of energy in product reviews right now...
Continue readingThe Next UX Boom Is Coming, But Not Like You Think
UX Strategy & Futures · May 2026 · 10 min read Spotify You are not behind on AI features. You are not behind on design systems, component libraries, or accessibility audits. You are behind on something far more fundamental, and by the time the rest of the industry catches up, the window for being...
Continue readingTwo UX designers walk into a ring. The one with AI wins.
Spotify This isn’t a prediction. It’s already happening. Same brief. Same deadline. Same client. One designer opens Figma and starts sketching wireframes from scratch. The other opens Figma, and also Claude, Midjourney, and a custom GPT trained on their design system. Three hours later, one has 4 screens. The other has 40, a full...
Continue readingLululemon Didn’t Lose a Market. It Lost a Religion.
And here’s exactly how I’d bring the congregation back. Spotify There is a very specific kind of corporate tragedy that doesn’t announce itself with a bang. It arrives quietly. In a spreadsheet. In a PowerPoint titled “Expanding Our Addressable Market.” In a board meeting where someone says the words “broader appeal” and nobody in...
Continue readingYou Are Not a Designer. You Are Ingredients in a Blender.
Or: How UX design is basically controlled chaos with a ‘smooth’ setting nobody uses. Spotify Nobody tells you this in bootcamp. Nobody stitches it on the onboarding welcome kit. But somewhere between your first stakeholder review and your fortieth “can we just make it pop more,” you realize the truth: UX design is not...
Continue readingDesigning for the Machine: When AI Agents Become the User
For most of my career, the user was clear. A person, on a screen, is trying to get something done. That assumption is starting to break. We are entering a phase where designers are no longer optimizing interfaces only for humans, but for AI agents that act on behalf of humans. And that changes...
Continue readingPick One and Build: Navigating the Explosion of AI Design Tools
Spotify If you’re waiting for the “right” AI design tool, you’re going to be waiting a long time. Over the past 18 months, we’ve gone from a handful of capable tools to an overwhelming ecosystem. Assistants embedded in design software, standalone generators, prompt-to-UI builders, research summarizers, code copilots, prototyping engines. Every week, something new...
Continue readingOne User, Right Now
Spotify The idea of a “target audience” is starting to break. For most of my career, everything in UX, product, and marketing was built around segments. Personas. Demographics. Behavioral groupings. We simplified the world into categories so we could design, build, and ship at scale. It worked. Until it didn’t. Because the reality is,...
Continue readingFrom Novelty to Delegate: The Shift to Agentic UX
Spotify For a while, generative AI felt like a novelty. We added chatbots. We added “generate” buttons. We showcased what the model could do. It was impressive. It demoed well. It created a sense of progress. But most of it sat on the edges of the product. Users could ask questions. Generate content. Explore...
Continue readingIn 2026, Shouldn’t Registration and Login Be Standard?
Spotify I’ve spent the past month in meetings debating registration and login flows. Multiple senior leaders. Strong opinions. Lots of discussion around “UX.”Where the fields go. What the buttons say. Whether we show or hide something. And the entire time, I kept thinking the same thing. Why are we still doing this? In 2026,...
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