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Only when the design fails does it draw attention to itself; when it succeeds, it’s invisible.

John D. Berry

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Liquid Glass

I watched the Apple WWDC keynote last week. My first impression was that they were way overselling the new visual design direction. Yes, it looks very nice, and the effects that they are pulling off are pretty cool, and the attention to detail is quintessential Apple. The computational stretching of the font to adjust the clock display based on the photo appealed to my inner typography geek. It’s all graphic design goodness, but it still felt like they were pushing fashion over function.

Of course, fashion is important.

Remember back in 2001 when Mac OS X was first introduced? It was jaw-dropping. Computers just couldn’t use translucency, gradients, and shadows like that. Icons and UI components had always been rather cartoonish. The ability to render such high-quality visuals directly in the OS resulted in much more realistic looking images, from folders to buttons. This trend reached its zenith six years later when the iPhone was introduced, and skeuomorphic interfaces were the sign of the times.

Of course, every fashion has its equal and opposite reaction. UI designers eventually revolted against skeuomorphism, pushing the pendulum far in the other direction. Flat Design became the in style during the early 2010s, thanks largely to Microsoft’s Metro design language. Soon after, Google’s Material Design language showed that there is still a place for strategic application of drop shadows, and we began seeing a more balanced approach—skeuomorphism was gone, but depth and shading brought back the useful, tactile qualities of the physical world to make the digital world easier to understand.

Liquid Glass is just another evolution in this fashion journey. It looks like it will usher in a lot of elegant microinteractions. I think it will freshen up our interactive surfaces and give us moments of delight, until we get used to it, and it just becomes the everyday, expected experience. And then we’ll see what’s next. That’s the way fashion works.

That said, you won’t see me changing all of my icons to crystal. Icons work because they visually differentiate themselves from the background and each other. Don’t overdo it.

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Designing with AI: Day 2

The second day of the conference kicked off with a talk about paper. No, really! In “Feels Like Paper!”: Interfacing AI through Paper, Lukas Moro posed the problem that interfaces are over-reliant on visual and auditory senses and suggested that we can augment our senses with AI. He proceeded to show us a series of experiments in which he would write or mark up a piece of paper and use that as input through computer vision followed by projected output. For example, highlight a portion of text and speak a comment out loud. The AI then highlights the same text and adds the comment in a corresponding digital document. I imagined a resurgence in paper prototyping with a sketch-to-code dev process.

Ian Johnson demonstrated his tool, Latent Scope, which applies AI to survey analysis, allowing you to find structure in unstructured data. The application runs on a local machine, so there’s a chance I could get a waiver to try it out at Boeing.

Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred of Big Medium shared their explorations of Sentient Scenes and Radically Adaptive Experiences. In other words, what intelligent interfaces can we create beyond chat? This example in particular reminded me of the project Chris Pacione assigned in his Visual Interface Design course at CMU. Each student had a phrase like “click me,” “pull me,” or “don’t touch me” that they had to communicate with a 100x100 pixel square. I really appreciated their concluding statement: “This is not a technical challenge. This is a challenge of imagination.”

In the closing talk, Matt Webb showed us an AI clock that tells the time by writing a new poem every minute. He admitted that it sometimes fibs about the time to get a good rhyme. He also shared a smart home simulation in which an autonomous robot navigates four rooms by remotely turning the lights on and off so that it can fulfill a request to find the dog.

The conference gave me a lot to think about and a lot to share with my teams. It certainly was refreshing to once again feel challenged and inspired. There are certainly reasons to be concerned about AI and the future of design, but I’m on the side of cautious optimism. Let’s dream into existence the future we want.

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Dolly Sods Rocks

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When you are stuck, walk away from the computer and draw. It will teach you how to see.

Gerard Huerta

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Designing with AI: Day 1

Today, I attended Rosenfeld Media’s “Designing with AI” conference. This is the first conference I’ve attended since Interaction 23 in Zurich, and while I much prefer an in-person conference, it was good to be engaged in scholarly discourse about the current state and future of design once again.

The theme for day 1 was “Using AI in UX with Impact.”

With the constant influx of new AI models and tools, it can be hard to distinguish hype from true value. Learn from experienced design practitioners where AI has delivered on its promises, where it hasn’t, and the processes they’re using to leverage AI to its full potential.

Ovetta Sampson got us fired up with her talk on Managing the Human Engagement Risks of AI. She characterized AI as a “souped-up mad lib” in which it’s AI’s job to fill in the blanks. We drank from the fire hose as she hit us with testing methods, frameworks, and guardrails to protect against biases and ensure that generative AI, which has no moral code, behaves itself. She advocated for mindfulness: “Mindful AI is designed with human behavior in mind and the limitations of machines, as well as the collective human values and aspirations as a goal.”

Erika Flowers followed, reminding us that designing for AI is still about designing for the needs of people. We still need to understand what people want to do. Then we can figure out what AI can do to help. She advocated for strategic thinking and safe experimentation. “We didn’t get to the moon on Apollo 1; we got there on Apollo 11.”

Patrick Boehler, a journalist, explained the importance of assigning confidence levels to our research sources and the power of a centralized research repository. Aras Bilgen described AI using the analogy of the introduction of plastic as a material. It completely changed the way products were designed, but there were many unseen consequences.

The day wrapped with a panel comprised of Bria Alexander, Brittany Hobbs, and Chris Noessel. They covered topics such as AI replacing human jobs, de-skilling risks, the danger of focusing too much on efficiency, and governmental regulation. Noessel tied a bow around it by impressing upon us that everyone who is a designer is now a lifelong learner. I think that has been the case since I joined the profession, if not before, but AI is certainly a blatant and somewhat scary reminder of the fact.

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Tastes Like Fascism

Tonight, I should be writing about Apple’s WWDC announcements. Instead, I feel the need to point out that the President of the United States just broke the law to send the National Guard to deal with the situation that he himself created by ordering ICE to arrest people working at Home Depot. The predictable riots that resulted are now giving him the excuse to send in the Marines.

Republicans need to wake up. This is not going to end the way they want it to.

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Dolly Sods Rocks

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Car Customer Journey

My daughter Genevieve graduated from college two weeks ago. She still has to complete an internship to officially receive her diploma and certification as a music therapist. The unpaid internship starts in August and is considered part of her curriculum, so we have to pay tuition. To be clear, the school did not provide the internship—she had to get that on her own. That’s all to say that she has to start working on location, but she can’t afford a car.

My wife and I decided to help her out there. Last week, I took her car shopping, and she decided on a Kia Seltos. The dealer was able to find the trim level and color she wanted, and she was able to pick it up today: her birthday.

The only incentive they offered was for veterans. My father-in-law is a veteran, and he wanted to help by paying for the car and letting us pay him back interest free, rather than taking out a loan. So, we arranged for him to drive up from Maryland today to do that. He would have to be listed as co-owner, but we would get a $500 discount. So far, so good.

Genevieve is still on my insurance policy as a driver, and I assumed we could just add her car to my insurance, as she can’t afford to pay for auto insurance yet either. That assumption was incorrect. I learned yesterday that the dealer couldn’t sell us the car unless she was a policy holder, and she couldn’t be made a policy holder of my insurance, because she no longer resides with me. So, we quickly got her own insurance policy set up. I paid for it, but it’s her policy. Problem solved.

While my father-in-law was driving up from Maryland today, we learned that the dealer wouldn’t accept a personal check from out of state. He would need a cashier’s check. That would require him to drive three hours round trip to visit a branch of his bank in Morgantown, WV. Rather than do that, he wrote a check to my son-in-law, who was able to deposit it at his local bank. They put a five-day hold on the check, so he then wrote a check dated after the other check would clear to the dealership. They accepted that, but had to add him as an owner of the car, rather than my father-in-law, so we didn’t get the veteran’s discount.

In the end, my daughter has her car, but it was an awful customer experience, and I’m sure our salesperson was frustrated by the whole process. This would make a terrible mess of a journey map.

I’m sure there are many legal reasons for our troubles, but did it really have to be that difficult?

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Change Management

About a month ago, I explained here that my part of The Boeing Company is being sold. A lot of people have asked how I feel about it. It’s a mixed bag of emotions.

On one side, it’s an exciting opportunity. It’s difficult to function as a software development organization inside of a massive manufacturing organization. There is so much bureaucracy, policy, and practice focused on the safety and security necessary for building airplanes. Getting out from under that is appealing. I’m hopeful that it is going to be easier for us to do user research—easier to speak to our users. I’m expecting we’ll have less restrictions on the software we are able to use to do our work.

On the other side, there are a lot of people that I’ve developed long and meaningful relationships with. There are people I’ve worked with almost 25 years. There are people I’ve hired and managed. Slowly, but surely, I’m being disconnected from them. There are also a lot of benefits to being part of a company like Boeing, and I don’t know yet what benefits I’ll have with the new company.

I’m naturally an optimist. I’m trending optimistic about the situation I’m in, but there are days that I just feel tired. Change management is hard work, and I’ve been deeply engaged in it going on nine months now. There’s no end in sight.

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Don’t design for everyone. It’s impossible. All you end up doing is designing something that makes everyone unhappy.

Leisa Reichelt

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Not So Smart

I got excited when I saw the new Smart #5. It’s a stylish, electric, mid-size, crossover SUV. I love the look, especially the BRABUS edition. It has good range and quick charging. It’s releasing this fall in the UK. I would definitely consider it a contender for my next car, except that on further digging, I discovered they have no plans to bring it to the US.

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Cattail

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The Curse of Jack

If you’re an automobile manufacturer, you don’t want me buying your car. If I like your car enough to buy it, it won’t last more than 10 years on the market.

Chrysler’s PT Cruiser was introduced in the year 2000, and I ordered one before they were available to test drive. I loved that car. It was stylish, yet functional, and very affordable. Its popularity peaked in 2006, and sales declined rapidly afterwards. They stopped production in 2010.

In 2009, Nissan brought the Cube to the U.S. market, and I purchased the first Krom trim level in the Pittsburgh area. I loved that car. It was quirky, yet functional, and very affordable. It never sold particularly well—the Kia Soul ate its lunch—and Nissan discontinued sales in the North American market at the end of 2014, though they continued production for Japan until 2019.

The i3 was BMW’s first dedicated electric vehicle, launched in 2013. I wasn’t looking for a car at that time, and I wouldn’t have been able to afford a BMW. However, in 2018, I was ready to trade in the Cube, and the new model of the i3 caught my eye. I love that car. It’s uniquely sporty, yet functional, and… well, it's the most expensive car I've ever owned, but I got a really good deal on it, and I save a lot on gas and maintenance. However, the car was never a mass-market success, and BMW shifted their strategy to larger, more mainstream EV models. They discontinued the i3 in 2022.

Within the next year or so, I’ll be buying a new car. Y’all better watch out.

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Socrates said, “Know thyself.” I say, “Know thy users.” And guess what? They don’t think like you do.

Joshua Brewer

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I Passed Parenthood

On Saturday, May 24th, 2025, the younger of my two daughters graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in music therapy from Shenandoah University. I couldn’t be more proud of the people my daughter’s have become. I know there’s still more parenting to be done, but this feels like the appropriate time to declare success.

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Mushroom Medallion