1. Is my blue your blue?

This colour game shows where you perceive blue ends and green begins.

2. Do I belong in tech anymore?

I encountered each of these scenarios over the past few years, and each one left me wondering: do I raise an issue about AI here? Do I ask my coworker to disable their note-taking tool, or do I allow them to record me? (Where does the data go? Who is reading it? Do we retain knowledge in the same way without manual note-taking?) Do I voice concerns over unread code entering the codebase, and the consequences of that pattern for institutional knowledge-building? Do I ask others on the design team to delay prototyping until later in the design process? Is it already too late to ask? Has the team already shipped the code, already designed the feature, already moved onto the next task? If someone requests my review on a pull request that was clearly vibe coded, do I review the code and write comments as usual, or send it back to them for self-review? Would initiating these discussions result in interpersonal stress? Should I just let things slide? Would I become known as a “difficult” coworker for pushing back on AI use? Does any of it really matter? Does anyone really care?

3. Conventional comments

“Conventional Comments is a standard for formatting comments of any kind of review/feedback process.”

4. The people do not yearn for automation

Something I’ve appreciated about The Verge(cast) over the last year or so is their scepticism of AI and the received wisdom around it. They’ll try the tools, but also poke at some of the more uncomfortable questions around it.

This solo Decode episode from Nilay Patel is great, and pulls together some interesting threads:

It feels like someone just needs to say this clearly, so I’m just going to do it. AI doesn’t have a marketing problem. People experience these tools every single day! ChatGPT has 900 million weekly users, trending to a billion, and everyone has seen AI Overviews in Google Search and massive amounts of slop on their feeds.

You can’t advertise people out of reacting to their own experiences. This is a fundamental disconnect between how tech people with software brains see the world and how regular people are living their lives.

5. 5x5 Pixel font for tiny screens

Two things I like about this:

1. Use of a seemingly ridiculous creative constraint to produce a complete typeface
2. The site detects adblockers and shows a message if it doesn’t detect one, encouraging the reader to install one

What am I up to?

• The next design process interview is coming soon (actually! I know this status has remained unchanged for a couple of weeks, but the transcription is underway...)
• My next available Unoffice Hour slot is 27 May
• I have limited availability for new projects from June.

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Until next time,

Dave

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