Gianluca Brugnoli

I Went All-In on AI. The MIT Study Is Right. My all-in AI experiment cost me my confidence

"Initial metrics look great. You ship faster. You feel productive. Then three months later, you realize nobody actually understands what you’ve built."

leadershiplighthouse.substack.com/p/i-went-all...

No one wants to buy Roomba maker iRobot anymore When news broke that Roomba-maker iRobot was reportedly having trouble finding a buyer, the company's stock tumbled 30 percent.

iRobot has been in trouble for a few years, they have struggled to innovate and fallen behind the competition. The company has been hoping for an Amazon acquisition that has been stopped the antitrust regulators.

mashable.com/article/room...

Dark patterns: the danger of coercive user experience design A handpicked article read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist

UX can be weponised against the user.

www.economist.com/podcasts/202...

Many have claimed that AI will make UX design obsolete and useless.

And yet, even with the most advanced AI technology, we are still here because a good UX is crucial to unlock the AI value for the users.

Design turns technology in experiences for the people. You need design to drive adoption.

How Progress Ends Shortlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year AwardHow 1,000 years of global history show why technological and economic progress is often followed by stagnation and even...

We tend to believe that progress is continuous and inevitable, but it’s not.

Progress can end, bringing long periods of stagnation instead of continuous growth, when the balance between innovation and social adaptation is lost. Acceleration has a social cost.

press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

The End of Thinking The rise of AI's "thinking" machines is not the problem. The decline of thinking people is.

Do not let stories on the rise of “thinking machines” distract you from the real cognitive challenge of our time.
The decline of thinking people.

www.derekthompson.org/p/the-end-of...

Why designers abandoned their dreams of changing the world Design was once seen as a tool to improve lives — but as modernism has become marketing, that sense of social purpose has drifted away

Design was once understood as a tool to improve lives. To some extent it did. We are still living in a world the modernists made, albeit not the one they imagined.

Interesting and provocative post, in which the Design of the latest 30 years doesn't seem to exist.

www.ft.com/content/e637...

Google Cloud’s Cuts And The Bigger Story: Why UXR Roles Are Disappearing UXR is being cut across Big Tech. Not because it is useless, but because leaders cannot see dollars or risk avoided. The old pod model is giving way to centralized teams and vendors. If research canno...

Google laid off over 100 design employees within its cloud unit. The most impacted are junior roles within the “Quantitative User Experience Research” and “Platform and Service Experience” teams. Can companies innovate without learning from their users?

www.thevoiceofuser.com/google-cloud...

AI Is Redefining the Concept of a Programming Language's Popularity Python reigns supreme again, but is AI changing the game for programming languages? Find out how coding is transforming.

An interesting question in this IEEE article. If writing code is now primarily about telling some coding agent what code to write and scolding it when it gets things wrong, is tracking programming language popularity even meaningful?

In reality, the most popular programming language is now English

Gen-AI is making PowerPoint presentations even more tedious and useless, just because now it's too easy to fill slides with AI generated pointless visual garbage.

AirPods Live Translation Blocked for EU Users With EU Apple Accounts Apple's new Live Translation feature for AirPods will be off-limits to millions of European users when it arrives next week, with strict EU...

Apple’s Live Translation feature for AirPods will not be available in the EU given privacy (GDPR) and AI (AI Act) regulations.

This continues the trend of Apple providing fewer features in the EU due to regulations. Previously Apple Intelligence & Screen Sharing were made unavailable due to the DMA

WHAT Does A Product Manager Actually Do? (My Attempt To Map All The Things!)

Many UX professionals are moving to PM positions while they progress in thier carreer path to strategic roles.

Interesting (long) post that tries to define this hybrid strategic UX - PM role using UX language and tools.

stephenanderson.medium.com/what-does-a-...

Google’s position is now that the open web
Is thriving but open web ads are in rapid decline… because of course all the attention and money leaving a platform is irrelevant to its health lol

Apple having its designers with accents do design voiceovers is a very intentional choice here

Firefox launches ‘shake to summarize’ on iPhones Shake that iPhone.

Firefox launches ‘shake to summarize’ on iPhones

BYD predicts car brand clearout in China as Beijing cracks down on discounting About 100 automakers need to be ‘pushed out’, says world’s largest electric-vehicle producer

Chinese automakers are undoubtedly the most innovative and are revolutionizing the automotive industry on a global scale.

However, this drive for innovation comes at a price: like tech start-ups, many of them are now struggling to survive and will fail.

www.ft.com/content/90a8...

Why Designers Hate PowerPoint (and How to Fix It) PowerPoint is a staple for collaboration but often a source of frustration for designers. This article explores why and offers practical strategies, from building systematic design elements and templa...

PowerPoint is definitely one of the worst Microsoft software products, on many levels. Nowadays, there are much better alternatives. It needs a complete redesign, with a new logic and user experience. It's amazing we are still here, forced to work with it in 2025.
uxmag.com/articles/why...

Why a Skinny iPhone Is the Start of a Radical Change for Apple Commentary: Even if you're not craving a thinner iPhone, this rumored model is the gateway to a foldable iPhone — or perhaps something more unique.

I really wonder what user problem a thinner iPhone solves.

I understand that Apple is preparing for a foldable phone. However, I am not sure that a 0.3 mm difference between 5.81 to 5.5 can have a significant impact on the user experience.

www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/...

LukeW | Chat is: the Future or a Terrible UI As the proliferation of AI-powered chat interfaces in software continues, people increasingly take one of two sides. Chat is the future of all UI or chat is a t...

Reports about the death of UI in the AI age are greatly exaggerated.

After the initial AI shock, experts agree that a chatbot is a poor UI, especially for complex tasks.

To thrive, AI needs a GUI properly designed for the specific task. We still have a job to do.

lukew.com/ff/entry.asp...

Why “Systems Thinking” Isn’t Enough Anymore Why “Why You Need Systems Thinking Now” misses the deeper challenge facing leaders, boards, and organizations and tries to solve these challenges with 20th century thinking.

Traditional strategy assumes stability: analyze the system, map competitive forces, set a long-term direction.

In reality, complex adaptive systems make foresight What’s needed is strategic adaptability.

prairieoyster24.substack.com/p/why-system...

Why You Need Systems Thinking Now Traditional innovation approaches—breakthrough and design thinking—often ignore the complex ripple effects they produce in interconnected systems. In a world facing multifaceted challenges like climat...

The more complex the ecosystem around the problem, the more likely it is that the solution will impose economic and social costs.

Must read article about the importance of system thinking frameworks.

hbr.org/2025/09/why-...?

In Defence of Enshittification Every designer has felt it: that pang of frustration when you’re asked to make a product worse. Maybe it’s hiding a feature behind a…

medium.com/the-design-c...

Microsoft open-sources its 6502 version of BASIC from 1976 Developers can now experiment freely with code from 1976

Microsoft open-sources its 6502 version of BASIC from 1976. Microsoft’s 6502 BASIC ran on the same CPU that powered the Apple II, Commodore 8-bit series, NES, and Atari 2600. Details here 👇 www.theverge.com/news/771120/...

YouTube video by Made by Google A Design Refresh That Looks Fresh | September ‘25 Pixel Drop

With the new Android UI style, Google is trying hard to appeal to younger consumers and compel iPhone users to switch.

The smartphone market is now mature and saturated. Companies are striving to retain their existing customers or convince others to switch.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPG0...

Trump to tap Airbnb co-founder Gebbia to improve government websites, sources say U.S. President Donald Trump will appoint Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia to spearhead the new National Design Studio that will seek to make digital services at federal agencies more efficient, two officials familiar with the plan said.

Trump signed an executive order to create a National Design Studio (NDS) aimed at improving the “usability and aesthetics” of federal digital services, led by a chief design officer.

Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia is reportedly lined up for the position.

www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

The newest Pixels put generative AI right inside the camera Truly, what is a photo?

What is a photo? With the new Pixel 10, Google uses generative AI not only for retouching but also to create new, perfect photos from blurred or poor shots.

www.theverge.com/hands-on/761...

ChatGPT is pushing people towards mania, psychosis and death As the head of Microsoft warns against the consequences of people thinking AI is conscious, Anthony Cuthbertson reports on the record numbers of people are turning to AI chatbots for therapy and the d...

AI bots are increasingly used for psychological support, but are dangerous as they tend to agree with users, even if it’s wrong or harmful.

“ChatGPT is likely now to be the most widely used mental health tool in the world. Not by design, but by demand.”

www.independent.co.uk/tech/chatgpt...

MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing There’s a stark difference in success rates between companies that purchase AI tools from vendors and those that build them internally.

According to a MIT survey, 95% of enterprise pilot programmes to implement AI stall or fail.

The key issue is not the technology but tools implementation, processes, and workflows integration within the org. AI will start a new wave of transformation programmes.

fortune.com/2025/08/18/m...

Apple Plots Expansion Into AI Robots, Home Security and Smart Displays Apple Inc. is plotting its artificial intelligence comeback with an ambitious slate of new devices, including robots, a lifelike version of Siri, a smart speaker with a display and home-security camer...

Apple seems to be betting big on the smart home experience, with a new series of smart home devices and a new operating system now called "Charismatic."

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The latest JD Power study, reports a notable improvement in charging reliability in the US, despite lower overall satisfaction. The EV experience is progressively improving as the market is maturing.
www.jdpower.com/business/pre...