Notices by Pavel A. Samsonov (pavelasamsonov@mastodon.social)

2016: Figma auto-saves your work.

2026: Figma auto-steals your work.

Figma admins, take a look at the setting that Figma silently opted your entire team into, and think about whether the labor of your designers should be handed away for free, just so Figma can turn around and pitch AI powered layout creation to product managers.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UXDesign/comments/1pzoqsc/psa_for_figma_admins_this_ai_setting_is_quietly/

#ux #uxdesign #figma

#AI is old news. Innovators must ask themselves: in 2026, how can I supercharge my productivity by incorporating labubus into my process?

"Speak proper English!" is one of the silliest things one could say.

Proper *English*? Of all languages? Come on.

@skinnylatte drop the @

pet peeve: why is it HTTPS, but SFTP? Put the S either at the front or at the back.

Too many people thinking about "AI threats" as "threats from #AI agency" (which is science fiction) and not "threats from human agency used to productize an #LLM in evil ways" which is in the news every day.

Robert's Rules of Order:

A Robert may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

A Robert must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

A Robert must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Annual reminder that a black cat crossing your path is good luck actually, because it signifies that you got to see a cat

#cats #cat

The problem with "you can just do things" is that other people can also just do things. You can get into an arms race of just doing things, or learn how to build shared intent.

One of those approaches is masculine and exciting. The other one actually works.

Guess which one AI-powered design & development tools encourage?

https://productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/the-social-lives-of-ideas

#UXDesign #tech #SoftwareDevelopment #productManagement

Thanks to @RuthMalan @fasterandworse @cwodtke @jarango @eaton @brownorama and everyone else not yet on Fedi for the writing and ideas that made it into this week's issue of the Product Picnic!

Big tech is laying off user researchers in droves, because it believes that coercing its customers is more profitable than silly things like "making good products people want to buy."

But now the FAFO pendulum is coming around, with Amazon's $2.5B dark pattern settlement and #a11y lawsuits galore.

#UX #UserResearch #tech #software

https://productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/ux-so-bad-that-it-s-illegal

The product triad is obsolete. The ideal software development team actually has four members:

#tech #agile #softwaredevelopment #programming

@skinnylatte Ooh where?

The co-founder of landlord app Airbnb is now Chief Design Officer of the USA. And the UX commentariat cheers, because the vibes of a "seat at the table" play better than the reality: the same government that appointed Joe Gebbia has just demolished 18F, an actual design studio that did actual UX work for the USA, rather than meaningless posturing.

This is not the first time UX has made this bargain: have a seat at the table, only if you can pledge to do nothing with it.

https://productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/the-aesthetics-of-success-come-at-the-cost-of-failure

Is your super cool UX really better than just emailing a spreadsheet back and forth?

Before you answer, think about what "better" means to whom. #uxdesign

Users hate #AI. So tech made it mandatory. Even if you don't personally use it, it pollutes what you read and how systems make decisions. The computer's hallucinated word is final.

And it steals your data to do it.

Your tools are constructing you as a subject of surveillance — the #UX is making it seem normal to expose every facet of your life to companies with complete disregard for your privacy.

This is NOT normal. It's deeply weird. But it's becoming unavoidable.

https://productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/the-ai-age-is-the-age-of-no-consent-7559

@skinnylatte He did a video where they try "every burger" and conclude that the best burger in the world is American because it tastes the most like an American burger

#AI is a marketing term; before we discuss "AI is fake" vs "AI is real" we need to unfold what we *mean* by AI.

For example, "artificial general intelligence" is fake and can't hurt you. Layoffs excused by "AI efficiency" are real and can hurt you.

Linkedin discourse is fake - but it CAN hurt you.

Today is the day before I write my weekly newsletter, so of course Brave chooses today to roll out an update that obliterates all of my open tabs by combining "redundant" "inactive" ones. And then automatically opts every user into this feature.

I had a few Mastodon tabs open, now they are just one tab that points to mastodon.social.

So, uhh...anyone write anything good on #Product / #UX topics that they want me to feature this week? 😅

#productmanagement #userresearch #uxdesign

lmao. lol