IC or Manager, laid off twice, prototyping with AI

“You are Jean-Claude Van Damme. You’re straddling two 18-wheelers careening through space while doing the splits. It’s very difficult, your groin hurts, and you could really use a strawberry Pop-tart…

Here’s the question that has brought on all the pain and Pop-tart cravings: “Do I continue the path of individual contributor or turn towards management?”

As designers, this is a decision that we all need to face eventually. As soon as we become competent in our craft, we start to realize that we can’t straddle the gap forever.”

The split decision: IC or manager? →

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Editor picks

• Laid off twice in a year → Riding the tech rollercoaster as a product manager.
• Customer as competitive advantage → Are we doing the same as our competitors expecting different results?
• Great products transcend the Usability vs. Utility debate → Your users want results, not compromises.

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

New book celebrates UK’s influential modernist graphic designers →

Make me?think

• We did all this discovery… now how do we decide? → “The more discovery they do, the more ideas they get. The ideas, the interviews, the stories, the pain points?—?they all start to pile up. That’s where the problem comes in. Now the PM has a giant portfolio of ideas. But the team can only build one thing at a time. How do they decide on the one thing to do next?”
• Are AI assistants making us worse programmers? → “In programming, high-level languages many times abstract the complexity away from you?—?something developers working with JavaScript, Python, Java, etc, know well. It seems clear that AI assistants introduce a new human-machine interface?—?natural language. Is that bad?”
• Don’t forget to localize your icons → “Localizing your app, web app, or website is more than just running all your text through Google Translate and hoping for the best. Creating effective, trustworthy communication with language communities means doing the work to make sure your content meets them where they are.”

Little gems this?week

Why is the Mac mini power button on the bottom? →

How Insight Timer monetizes 25M users →

How I used AI to design brand-aligned illustrations →

Tools and resources

• Text formatting experiences can be a trap → Improve a keyboard user’s experience with indentation.
• Reimagining prototyping with AI → Bringing creativity, speed, and efficiency to design validation.
• Test smart → Which automation strategy to choose for peace of mind?

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