We question whether our obsession with removing friction has inadvertently trapped users in an extractive attention economy, as Patrizia Bertini argues that optimizing for immediate experience often ignores cumulative societal harm. While we debate if natural language prompts are stripping away the intuitive weight of physical interfaces, our community threads reveal a field struggling to survive endless feedback loops and a market that demands rapid AI adaptation. Today, we explore if the smoothness we built is actually the problem and whether we can pivot fast enough to protect our mental energy in a collapsing industry.

About The Feed & The Thread

The Feed & The Thread is a daily summary of UX articles found in the industry and some light-touch updates from the UX Community found in online forums. It’s brief, and meant as a light-touch overview of what’s happening across UX.