Hey Reader,

A lot of what I've been reading lately and hearing in my mentoring calls – keeps circling back to the same idea: AI has made producing the work easy, but having a point of view about it hasn't gotten any easier. Direction is still on you. The links this issue all land somewhere in that space.
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​In today's email:

• Direction is the job now: Three reads this issue all landing in the same place: your opinions are what make the output good. AI doesn't change that. If anything, it raises the stakes.
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• Tools for AI-native products: Two open-source resources worth bookmarking if you're building or designing with AI.

Can AI design better UX? I tried it on my own product In my newest video, I redesign a real screen from Interview Prep Pal using Mobbin MCP and Claude Code. The screen felt flat, so instead of starting from a blank prompt, I looked at how real products handle feedback, suggestions, and critique — then used those references to explore a stronger direction. Watch the video

Design gems of the week

• ​When good work isn't what earns you influence - I'm speaking at The Future of Design Summit on August 26 about why strong work doesn't always speak for itself. I'll be breaking down how to connect design decisions to outcomes, handle pushback, and use language that helps stakeholders understand the value of your work.
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• ​The Project We Walked Away From (Baseline): A design systems consultancy walked away from a signed engagement after discovery turned up no executive sponsor, no staffing, and no real path to adoption. A thoughtful read on the difference between a messy-but-promising project and one that simply isn't set up to succeed
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• ​How Product Designers Should Use AI Without Losing Direction: A post-Config chat with Catt Small (Staff Product Designer at Dropbox) on treating AI as a force multiplier – most useful when you're converging, not diverging.
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• ​Death to the recurring 1:1 (Lauren Loprete): A design leader makes the case against fixed weekly 1:1s because they train people to wait. Her fix: open calendar slots designers can grab same day, with career conversations kept separate and quarterly.
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• ​UI SFX: An open-source UI sound library of interface sound effects for web, mobile, SaaS, education, media and games. A solid starting point if you've been meaning to add a sound layer to your product.
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• ​Thinking Orbs: An open-source animated thinking-orb component for AI interfaces, with states like Solving, Listening, Weaving, and Shaping.

A MESSAGE FROM FRAMER The pages you build last, then never come back to Every site has pages that get built last and never revisited. A confirmation page, a thank-you screen, the page someone sees right after they sign up. Framer Agents works inside your Framer site, so you can point it at that page and let it handle the first pass while you keep an eye on the details. You still decide what actually ships. ​​→ ​Try Framer 3.0 with Agents​

How to win your next design review

A designer I mentored recently — I’ll call her E — was working at an ecommerce company and responsible for redesigning the product page.

She’d landed on a placement for the “Add to Cart” button based on how users actually scrolled and scanned on that page and was feeling confident when she walked into her design review.

After giving her rationale, the PM pushed back, won, and the review moved on.

Her rationale wasn't wrong, she was just arguing it in the wrong currency.

E made a UX case — “this is what users expect” — in a room where her stakeholders were thinking in business impact.

She hadn't translated her rationale into something her PM could objectively assess.

The next time it came up, E stuck to her design decision but instead changed the framing. Now her rationale touched on things stakeholders cared more about, like the cost of getting it wrong and potential business impact. Same recommendation. Completely different conversation.

I see a version of this constantly: pushback in design reviews is almost never actually a rationale problem. It’s a framing problem.

Here’s what it looks like in practice:

1. Translate your rationale into the currency of your stakeholders

Every stakeholder in that room assesses success differently — a PM by completion rate, an eng lead by scope, an exec by risk. Your design rationale doesn’t need to change; but the language you use to deliver it might.

Before the review, ask: what does this specific person weigh decisions against? Then make your case in those terms, not just yours.

2. Frame the decision early

Before you share anything visual, say what decision you’re asking people to make. Not “here’s what I’ve been working on” — that invites everyone to react to pixels. Instead: “I need us to decide between two approaches to onboarding, and here’s the tradeoff.”

You’re not showing work. You’re asking for a decision. Say that out loud.

3. Pre-sell the people whose opinion carries weight

If you know someone on the team is more likely to push back, have that conversation with them before the review. Not to get their sign-off but to hear their concern while there’s still room to change something.

If you save it for the review, instead of getting feedback, you're getting reactions.

4. Bring crisp questions

“What do you think?” gets you vague reactions and casts doubt on your conviction. “I’m not sure the tradeoff between X and Y is right — what am I missing?” gets you actual signal, because you’ve told people exactly where you’re uncertain and given them somewhere specific to push.

Vague questions get vague answers.

5. Let the room see your reasoning, not just your output

While I usually recommend only showing your strongest recommendation, there are times when it can help to show throw away work – versions you rejected and why.

It does two things: it pro-actively fields off the “did you consider X” questions, and it shows people you’re making judgment calls, not just producing screens.

None of this is about being more persuasive in your reviews or changing your rationale. It’s about doing the work that makes the room mostly a formality — because the people who needed convincing already had the chance to be, and the people making the call already know what they’re deciding.

Have a topic you'd like me to write about? Reply to this email and let me know! I read every reply.