Here’s my theory: the internet as we know it, built on pixels, clicks, and SEO voodoo isn’t dying. But it is beginning to shrink.

Synthetic agents are being designed and built. Most of them look dumb right now, but so did every other technology in its early days. They are here, and soon, they will search for us. Shop for us. Act for us. The visual interfaces will dissolve. Trust will migrate. And the platforms built on friction, traffic, and visibility will feel the pressure most.

Out of the five generations alive today, four are hooked on sludge. Scrolling. Posting. Consuming. Telling themselves they’re in charge. They can stop at any time. They’re not.

The algorithm is the captor, and the network effect is in full swing.
Everyone says the same thing: “What happens if I delete WhatsApp, Instagram, or Snap?” Everyone I care about is there.

That’s a bad excuse. That’s like saying everyone’s hanging out at the crack house. And we both know what kind of excuse that is.

I've been working on this piece for a few months—letting it simmer, watching the landscape shift, trying to decide whether it was worth publishing. But after watching Config 2025, I knew it was time. This isn’t just a critique. It’s a reckoning.

Last time, I said friction isn’t the villain. Now I’m saying it’s the reason anything sticks. We’ve spent years trying to scrub every rough edge from our products, chasing seamless flows like they’re the holy grail. But here’s the truth: the best experiences in life aren’t easy. They’re messy, sweaty, awkward, and unforgettable. That’s not bad design. That’s the good stuff. This piece is for the designers who still care about depth, about presence, about building things that matter. Friction isn’t something to remove. It’s something to design for.

Straight from the top: design is not about you. It never was and never will be. Design is not about how sensitive you are or how deeply you feel what the user feels. And if your job is forcing you to become a walking emotional mirror, do yourself a favour and walk away.

The following has nothing to do with Cartesian dualism. No souls trapped in flesh. No metaphysical riddles. What you’re about to read is far more grounded and far more strange. It’s about how humans and machines have already fused into something new. Not a future state, not a thought experiment, but the reality we’re living right now.
We speak into glass rectangles. Machines answer back.
We’re not passengers. We’re not gods.
Maybe we’re just the ghosts in the machines we built.

Disruption is not a job title, a TED talk, a best-seller, or some founder with a saviour complex. It is what happens when a system can no longer hold itself together. The market gets brittle, pressure builds, expectations shift, and boom, the structure starts to give.

Last night, I was in London to meet someone. We met, talked, had dinner, walked, talked some more, and said goodbye. Chinatown was alive: lights strung overhead, buskers singing, the smell of grilled meat and sweet buns drifting through the crowd. People were out, relaxed, and floating through the streets covered by red lampions like the city had finally exhaled.

We don’t reward stability. We don’t respect longevity. We don’t value things that just work. Instead, we’ve built an economic system where meaningless change is more exciting than real innovation, where flipping last year’s model on its head is considered progress. Where companies—terrified of being labelled boring—crank out half-baked, dopamine-drip features no one asked for. Flip phones? AI-for-the-sake-of-AI? Hardware gimmicks that exist to sell you more hardware? It’s a circus of distraction.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: design is not a role; it's a function. Actually, scratch that; design is a fundamental approach to solving real-world problems. And if that definition makes you uncomfortable, good. Welcome to my world.

Ever feel like your job isn’t entirely your own? No matter how sharp your designs are, how tight your code is, or how clear your strategy sounds, there’s always a round of approvals, sign-offs, and opinions from every corner of the organisation. It’s not just you.

By the time I’ve finished the trilogy, I still had something in the tank, so if it does not make you dizzy, here we go:

Humane’s AI Pin is dead. Not just discontinued but fully, unceremoniously dead. A bit over a year after its launch, the company is about to offload its patents and tech to HP, and the device itself will stop working by the end of February 2025.

The AI Pin was a $230 million bet that people wanted to ditch screens for a laser-projecting AI assistant. Spoiler: they didn’t. Humane asked users to swap silent scrolling for awkward voice commands—cringe. Influencers trashed it, the market moved on, and now HP is picking up the scraps.

Picture this: RyanAir [I know...], cheap flight, uncomfortable seats, loud and late.
We took off from Luton 30 minutes behind schedule because a family was late. I wasn’t annoyed about the delay. Not after this story started to unfold.

This thing isn’t a response. It’s an intervention.
But before everything else, it can be an AI-induced hallucination, mine.

I’m going to throw up a fallacy here: The real job of a designer has very little to do with the customer. Before you cast your stone, let me explain.
It will take a while, but I promise, before the end, I’ll get to the point.
Stay with me.

A clinical, no-BS guide from a problem to the customer’s wallet. Every block in this diagram has a purpose; each step builds on the last. None of it’s negotiable if you’re serious about making an impact with your product.

The term "friction" has been stripped of its depth. When designing products and services, we shouldn’t obsessively remove every obstacle; we should eliminate pointless speed bumps while engineering the right kind of resistance.

Friction isn’t the enemy. It never was. What’s missing isn’t convenience—it’s context. It’s the bridge that connects value with benefit and effort with reward.

Ten minutes ago, I turned down drinks with a group of extraordinary people I had worked with for five weeks. I didn’t want to say no. I should have said yes.
But I didn’t. Not because I didn’t enjoy working with them or lacked gratitude but because something about this project stuck with me. It won’t leave me alone. I’ve been thinking about what it meant for me as a professional and a person.

Dear leader, I know you’re busy, so I’ll get straight to the point.
Imagine you’re in your office early one morning, coffee in hand, trying to rally your people around this grand vision only you can see. You’ve got your slide decks, an idea for new collaboration tools, and planned workflows.

Hybrid Intelligence is the messy, chaotic bridge between human creativity and the rise of machines that think. How we navigate this moment will define not just the future of work, but the future of humanity itself

Design as a function will not survive the age of AI unless we, as designers, grow up and start sharing our toys. The design system as it exists today must die and be rebuilt into something that serves a higher purpose.
This will take some mental gymnastics, but if you are willing, I’ll do my best to change your mind, as Morgan Wallen says in his song “Spin You Around” (1/24).

Our shared reality is disappearing. Technology offers powerful tools to diminish and reject the reality that holds society together. Technology intertwines the senses that help us experience this world. We don’t meet in person; we use technology to shop for food, distractions, and love. Carefully crafted user experiences handle our connections.

Today, for six hours, I ran an experiment with Google’s NotebookLM, an AI tool designed to riff on ideas. I imagined a scenario for the two AI podcast hosts.
They were supposed to be recording their final episode. It has been done before, but not this way.

This is a love letter and a warning to the next generation of designers. If it seems that I have a bone to pick with Figma, stay tuned for my other open letter.

Throughout history, humanity’s progress has relied on pioneers—those brave few who set out into the unknown, risking everything, guided by little more than instinct and purpose. They weren’t driven by profit but by survival and the knowledge that if they found something new—land, resources, a better way to live—they could return and uplift the rest of their tribe.

A week ago, a friend sent me a link and a few words in a message. I was happy to hear from my dear friend, so I clicked that link.

It took me almost eight months to build Paradigm Foundations, but it has taken me more than fifteen years to get to the start of those eight months — fifteen years of building, breaking, and learning.

In tech, we're stuck in a never-ending loop of inefficiency, misalignment, and avoidable breakdowns. We have countless collaboration tools and popular frameworks, but something crucial is missing. More importantly, what is someone like me, a middle-aged design generalist with a life in pieces, going to do about it?
As it turns out, a lot. But let me not get ahead of myself.

Alright, I’ve wanted to share this for a while, so bear with me. It’s a bit long and is not written as a story but more like a collection of thoughts. You'll have to let me know if you think it’s worth anything.
My goal is to explain why I became a generalist a few years ago and may offer you a way out of a hyperspecialisation mindset or an excuse. I'll let you figure out the details.

This review is an analysis through the eyes of a Design Generalist and an entrepreneur.
When I wrote [a product review] in the title, I meant that.
I've used Product levels and simplified market definitions to frame the lenses I look through. Hold tight if the words in the previous sentence sound strange; it will get weirder before [hopefully] making sense.

To those who are too busy or quickly bored, here is a summary in a sentence: It has designers in it, it is about today, has little to no action, and the events unfold far and beyond this collection of words.

I wrote this piece as a note to myself, but someone else could use this insight, too. I hope it won't increase the cacophony of current conversations (Design vs. Product vs. the rest of the world).
Let's do this...

My thesis is that every organisation is a point of view addressing a market need or an entity that has a point of view and, to make it relevant/profitable, creates a market. How? Investing in context and framing the value/benefit they deliver. Okay, but what does this mean?

Before proceeding, let me set the proper context. We must recognise the limitations of human nature and our vulnerabilities—our perceptions of reality can be distorted, and our capacity to construct, process, and respond to it is relatively poor.

This is hard because we all perceive the context in different ways. Not everyone perceives the emergence of AI as important. Culture, education, the consequences of our decisions and actions, our personality traits, and the context shape our reality from moment to moment.

We've all seen this movie before.
Fantastic technology, extraordinary features - for an untrained eye, a solution in search of a problem to solve.
Is the AI pin a great product?