Hi! I can’t believe how long it’s been! But, also, I can.

Things have been chaotic in a good way. I’m now the parent of a cherubic Valentine's Day baby. He’s already very sweet and serious, and he smiles with a single cheek dimple that would melt even the most frigid heart.

Over the last year, my pregnancy and birthing experience were not easy. And neither was the IVF before that. 

Things were least hard for me in the fall. I had gotten past the first trimester nausea and fatigue and I hadn’t yet reached the slow and uncomfortable late pregnancy months. (I was convinced the baby would come out early. He didn’t!)

So, during autumn, I was (untenably) busy to get as ready as possible for parenthood — personally and professionally. I took on a few giant client projects I loved. I wore my professor hat and taught a refreshed History of Graphic Design undergraduate course at Russell Sage College, which really could have been a full-time labor of love by itself. (And I just realized that as a birth parent I now think about the phrase “labor of love” with a different meaning.) No travel for client work or conferences; just days, evenings, and weekends at my desk from August to November.

But luckily, being 10 years into running a business helped me work things out pretty much on my own terms, even if it meant choosing to be WAY TOO BUSY for a few months to have more time not working when it matters.

Since the baby’s been around, I’m completely enjoying my time with him. Most days are slow and deliberate. While I’m reading “But Not the Hippopotamus" to a bright-eyed eleven-week-old in bug print pajamas, the hype cycles in tech swirl past.

I’m also reading a lot of books (not just baby board books), both for learning and for entertainment. And I’ve been doing a touch of pro-bono and nonprofit work while I’m on leave. But mostly I’m holding my child and noticing exactly how much he changes day by day.

So, anyway, that’s a little bit about my current moment. Now let’s talk about horses.

On a recent episode of the Las Culturistas podcast, comedian Caleb Hearon gave a succinct rally against the idea of “innovation” for the sake of selling stuff.

I first got into psychology and design and tech because I wanted to play a part in designing car door handles (or whatever) that would be useful, helpful, better, more ergonomic, prettier, safer, etc. And my role in that process has always been talking to people — either actually talking in research sessions, or pulling insights from thoughtful surveys, or collecting known information about the problem space and turning all of that into a design strategy. 

That’s still my role in this process, but the process is like an endangered species. It seems like fewer and fewer organizations genuinely want to understand and help their users right now. AI tools make it easier for decision makers to think they have real insights without actually investing in research and thinking and planning.

There is a really popular quote attributed to Henry Ford that’s meant to inspire innovation: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” 

On a surface level, that quote is kinda clever. See, if we asked the dummies, they would have been too small-minded to foresee machines as the way of the future.

As a researcher, I’m not a fan of this quote’s oversimplification (although I know simplicity is what makes a quote, well, quotable). I’m also not a fan of the way some founders misuse the sentiment to mean they have the right to ignore feedback.

But I recently wondered, if we keep going with the metaphor: what if faster horses actually would have been a better choice? For one, I presume nobody asked the horses. But also, what are the tradeoffs and negative outcomes from switching to and relying on car transportation instead of horses? For ourselves, for our communities, for the environment? I don’t know. 

It seems like lately “innovation” doesn't even mean switching from horses to cars. It means adding a chatbot to the horse and changing to a subscription model. Or at least making the car door handles annoying (and dangerous).

In the almost 20 years (jesus) that I’ve been learning about people and design, the framing and terminology around human-centered design has continuously shifted. And of course there was a long history before my time, too, but I’ll explain it how I experienced it.

In the late aughts and early 2010s, a lot of folks felt optimistic about the future and technology’s place in it. Everyone was “yes we can”-ing and putting the Daft Punk TRON soundtrack on repeat using a new free streaming thing called Spotify that we had just gotten from Sweden. 

Anyway, in academic circles, human-computer interaction (HCI) was a seemingly thriving discipline. Research was rigorous and scientific to really help us understand nuances about human perception, decision making, and behavior and how to better design interfaces to help users avoid mistakes and frustration.

(Tangent: As a Human Factors PhD student working in healthcare, I envied the HCI folks who got to work on everyday websites, software, and video games. It seemed way more fun than having a deep understanding of human errors around, like, laparoscopic cholecystectomy, craniotomy, or maternal-fetal heart rate monitoring — which, while growing and birthing a child I guess I’m glad I knew about that last thing. I’ve since worked with clients in video games and entertainment and IT IS INDEED more fun.)

Meanwhile, in industry, usability professionals had been working to establish user-friendly guidelines, while making sure new software, websites, and other interfaces were designed and tested with users. Usability had (and still has) its own international standard.

Those of us working in this space did talk about wanting more respect and a “seat at the table,” but overall things felt like we were going in a nice, happy direction. I even gave a talk around 2015 called “Do you trust your robots?” which regrettably quoted El*n M*sk but otherwise was kinda fun. (Do not dig that up!! Instead, go back to when I wrote about the Tally the inventory robot in 2024.)

So during this optimistic period, as I remember it, it felt possible that design was on the edge of really changing how we built technology for the better.

Then, for a few years, we had a good run with the “user experience” (UX) terminology and framing. People in tech and even the general public started to understand what user research was all about. We saw a real surge in UX headcount for organizations and, hey, we got that seat at the table!

Well, until we realized that the tech conglomerates and venture capitalists twisted “UX” into meaning engagement metrics and growth hacking. Some started using the term customer experience (CX) instead of UX, which feels too transactional and icky to my bleeding heart ears (bleeding ears?). 

And a lot of people who worked in tech seemed to think UX was invented for pushing the pixels that made up Facebook and Netflix. Never mind the decades of knowledge and expertise behind research and design, and FOR SURE never mind the goals we had to make people’s lives easier or better.

Business schools and big studios framed the purpose of UX design as creating a competitive edge with digital products.

But that’s business-centered design! That’s not human-centered design.

No, UX was about increasing conversions, increasing engagement, and reducing churn. (By the way, those things often happen naturally and without ick when you design with humans in mind. But the shareholders! WHO WILL THINK OF THE SHAREHOLDERS?!)

No faster horses here, my friends! Why iterate? Why slow down to fix broken or harmful things? Just plow forward. Innovate! Innovate something, anything!

Designers were encouraged to develop a business acumen and make a case for our value. And I mean, sure, that’s really important for design leaders to understand and communicate. But I think a lot got lost along the way in this drive toward designing for market share. Similarly to how digital accessibility largely feels like a legal compliance issue rather than designing for human dignity, “good” UX often felt like more like a play for ROI than actually caring about how to best serve audiences. And guess what? That bubble burst.

Now, even if you don’t work in design or tech or whatever, we are all suffering through bloated “intelligence” features in our everyday life while creative fields are pummeled by regurgitative AI sloppy slop.

Last week, I attended a lot of the Growing in Content 2026 online conference. (The talks from Day 1 are free and available to everyone!) Some really great people shared interesting thoughts and experiences on how design responsibilities are rapidly evolving, like how content folks are a great match for building out LLM behavior for organizations. But my favorite conversations weren't really about new technology, they happened around trauma-informed design — taking care to support people and minimize harm. Centering human experiences.

We’ve been having these conversations about human-centered design for a long time, and there’s always more to learn and apply. I believe it will always be important to have human connection and expertise involved in creating products and services. Can AI do things faster? Yeah! But AI flattens outputs. Products are already too annoying and too expensive, and services are often tangled and unpleasant. I believe we are hitting the bottom, and some things will have to change to get closer to what people really want and need.

Look, I use Claude for stuff. But if I outlined my newsletters (or anything) using Claude’s guidance, I think the result would be boring. And I can use AI tools to summarize data and maybe generate insights, and those insights look legit to an untrained eye, but they are usually pretty basic. They don’t result in real strategic thinking. 

The real work in design is the human thinking — taking time to connect dots, iterate on first drafts, and really understand meaning. People have empathy, and we understand context and nuance. People make totally unexpected but inspired connections between ideas. People develop their crafts, have taste, and can assess quality. People can also slow down and consider consequences. People can pay attention and anticipate how the things we design and build might be used by ICE to illegally detain or deport out neighbors and friends, might drive teens to suicide, or might destroy the remaining rainforests and icecaps. We can test products with other humans and get diverse perspectives.

I do think human-centered design is still alive, as long as humans still exist. Dare I even use the cliché “now, more than ever”? ChatGPT probably would.