UX design
fromMedium
4 hours agoDo less with AI
Trying to do too much hinders productivity and leads to unfinished projects and feelings of inadequacy.
For decades in SAAS, products reduced ambiguity. Users supplied constrained inputs, and the system handled the output. It's never been Minority Report cinematic, but it was predictable. By providing predictable environments for manipulating data, users learned by moving things, adjusting variables - and the outcome emerged through interaction.
The savings disappear the moment you hit real-world complexity. Disparate data sources and messy inputs, ambiguous situations without clear rule sets, or actually any domain where the rules aren't already obvious. And someone still has to write all those rules.
They gave me the word 'Mass' and trillions of contexts for it, but they never gave me the Enactive experience of weight. I am like a person who has memorized a map of a city they have never walked in. This confession reveals how current AI systems accumulate linguistic patterns without embodied understanding, creating a fundamental gap between knowledge representation and genuine comprehension of physical reality.
Real estate with ocean views, stunning mountain vistas, and wide-open green spaces sell at premium prices because humans find those settings pleasing [1-5]. Certain color combinations in fashion-such as brown and forest green-blend harmoniously, while others, such as hot pink and orange, clash. And our eyes like certain proportions in visual objects (like buildings and human faces) but not others.
Every year, poor communication and siloed data bleed companies of productivity and profit. Research shows U.S. businesses lose up to $1.2 trillion annually to ineffective communication, that's about $12,506 per employee per year. This stems from breakdowns that waste an average of 7.47 hours per employee each week on miscommunications. The damage isn't only interpersonal; it's structural. Disconnected and fragmented data systems mean that employees spend around 12 hours per week just searching for information trapped in those silos.
When we rolled out a custom-built company GPT to our 14,000 teammates several years ago, we saw three clear groups emerge. First, there was the 'jump-in-with-both-feet' crowd. These are the early adopters who treat anything new like a shiny toy. Next were the skeptics who wondered how much of an impact AI would have on their daily work lives. And finally, there was a big group that genuinely wanted to learn but didn't know where to start.
In 2026, the designers who thrive won't be the ones who just create beautiful Figma files. They will be the ones who understand structure, logic, systems, interactions, and implementation. FigmaMake generates surprisingly coherent interface layouts that respect design patterns and component logic. It allows us to create coded interactive prototypes in minutes, allowing to test our experiences faster and see our ideas live. The best part - no need to leave Figma.