Gemma Croad

AI is breaking the open web AI companies are consuming the open web while destroying the reasons people contribute to it

You write something useful, AI trains on it, six months later it gives someone your answer with zero attribution and zero traffic back. The open web ran on: create value, get found, benefit. AI runs on: create value, never get found again... medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Microsoft Inclusive Design Microsoft Inclusive Design is a practice that anyone who creates and manages products and services can use to build more inclusive experiences for everyone. Get the principles, guidebooks, workshop to...

Looks like Microsoft have just launched a new Inclusive Design website which has been built through co‑design with disabled and neurodivergent collaborators, the new experience focuses on adaptability, usability, and real‑world inclusion... 😍 inclusive.microsoft.design

The honesty problem in engineering Why the people around you have stopped telling you the truth

If you're leading a team or function: how do you know people are telling you the truth?

Not in theory. Not because you have an open-door policy.

In practice. In the actual moments when you propose something that won't work...

medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Sharing this because I think Buttered Crumpet is the best typeface name ever, and also because Wallace and Gromit are awesome.... 😊 jamieclarketype.com/case-study/w...

The Incredible Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button Radio buttons are built into web browsers. Why are we using a UI library that wraps another UI library that rebuilds radio buttons from scratch? Why does rendering a radio button require multiple depe...

Radio buttons are built into browsers. Why are we using a UI library that wraps another library to rebuild them? How did a native browser control become this complicated? 😢
paulmakeswebsites.com/writing/shad...

AI fatigue and the cost of keeping up Why the pace of AI change isn’t sustainable

Trying to keep up with AI is exhausting...

medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The technical leadership problem in engineering Why the people making your technical decisions are optimised for confidence, not competence

Why do we keep deferring to whoever sounds most certain in technical decisions? Why does admitting "I don't know" look like weakness instead of intellectual honesty? And what are we teaching every engineer who's watching this play out?

medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The Agile problem in engineering Why a methodology designed by one demographic doesn’t work for everyone

Seventeen men walk into a ski resort and write a manifesto about human-centred development. Twenty-five years later we're still blaming teams when it doesn't work. Still sending people on scrum master courses. Still pretending the problem is the people, not the framework.

medium.com/@gemma.croad...

CodePenChallenge: Cozy Winter ...

My creation for this weeks @codepen.io challenge, something that evokes a feeling of wintertime coziness.

There is nowhere I would rather be in the middle of Winter than curled up with a good book and a cup of tea...! 📖 🤎

codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...

CSS Wrapped 2025 Sculpt dynamic interfaces, stretch your imagination, and play with these 22 powerful new CSS features that landed in Chrome this year.

CSS Wrapped 2025 has dropped! 🥳

It’s the annual recap of all things CSS and Web UI that landed in Chrome over the last year. This year was massive, 22 new features made it into the browser to help us build beautiful and better UIs…. 🫶

chrome.dev/css-wrapped-...

I did spot that shirt in the front row of the live stream 😁

The impact of AI nobody’s counting What clicking ‘generate’ costs the planet

We don't talk about the fact that every time you ask ChatGPT to write a poem about your cat, you're contributing to a climate crisis we all claim to care about solving.

medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The technical interview problem in engineering Why we keep using a hiring process we know doesn’t work

Technical interviews filter for people who are good at technical interviews, not people who are good at engineering.

We all know this, but we keep doing it anyway.

medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Layoutit Terra - CSS Terrain Generator An interactive CSS terrain generator. Define a grid and generate your terrain!

This is very cool!!! It's a CSS terrain generator that leverages stacked grids and 3D transforms. Apparently inspired by Transport Tycoon, Sim City and other '90s isometrics classics, it's built with Vue and Nuxt 😍 terra.layoutit.com

CodePen Challenge: CSS Shape ...

A little bit of fun for this weeks @codepen.io challenge using CSS shape() and corner-shape, a random kaleidoscope generator... 🥰 💠

codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...

Are we adapting AI to humans, or humans to AI? Why we’re bending ourselves to fit the machine instead of the other way around

We tell ourselves we're optimising. Making things more efficient, more scalable. But what we're actually doing is quietly redesigning human work to fit AI's limitations one "optimisation" at a time.

medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The productivity problem in engineering Why measuring productivity makes everyone less productive

Measuring productivity makes everyone less productive. We optimise for what gets counted, and the work becomes producing metrics.

medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Why AI is a people problem, not a technical problem We keep looking for problems to fit our AI solutions into, then wondering why nobody uses what we build

When you start with "we need to use AI" and work backwards to find problems, you're not solving technical challenges. You're avoiding uncomfortable conversations about what you're actually trying to accomplish.

The hard part isn't building AI, it's knowing when not to.

medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Why talking to AI might be making us lonelier How AI conversations are replacing human connection without us noticing

We're practising how to talk to something that never challenges us, never misunderstands us, never requires us to deal with messy human communication.

The more we practice that, the worse we get at the real thing.

medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Are we too quick to trust the output of AI? Why the most convincing AI outputs might be the most dangerous

AI uses more confident language when it's making things up than when it's actually right.

We're dealing with pattern-matching systems that don't know when they don't know something.

medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Drawing explaining the JS execution model and event loop

💥 did a small drawing explaining the JS execution model including the event loop. I hope it’s helpful to folks. Debugging is always easier when the underlying implementations are understood.

CodePen Challenge: Color Wheel A bit of a nod to the vintage style colour wheels I used to love as a child, and still do....

I created this vintage colour theory poster for this weeks @codepen.io challenge! It's a loving tribute to those beautiful scientific colour wheel prints I was obsessed with as a child (and honestly still am)... 🥰 🌈

codepen.io/GemmaCroad/p...

The culture fit problem in engineering Why the person who doesn’t quite fit is exactly what your team needs

"Culture fit" in tech hiring often means "doesn't make us uncomfortable by questioning how we do things."

But what if the person who doesn't quite fit is exactly what your team needs?

medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The promotion problem in engineering Why technical excellence doesn’t automatically make someone a good leader, and what happens when we pretend it does

There's something bothering me about engineering promotions. We assume good coders automatically make good leaders. Spoiler: it doesn't work that way.

medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Why AI slop matters more than you think How generated content is drowning out human voices online

Searched for banana bread recipes lately?

You'll find "The Ultimate Guide to Perfect Banana Bread: 15 Amazing Variations" written by a system that can't actually taste, touch, or try anything.

This is AI slop. And it's breaking how we learn from each other.

medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The History of Themeable User Interfaces A full-ish history of user interfaces that can be themed to meet the opportunities and constraints of the time

This is a bit of a stroll down memory lane bradfrost.com/blog/post/th...

Why engineering isn’t just coding (and AI won’t change that) Why business leaders misunderstand what engineers actually do, and how that impacts AI adoption

“Why do we need all these engineers when AI can just… write the code for us?”

Because engineering is mostly not coding. It's figuring out what you're actually trying to build and why.

medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The human spark and why we shouldn’t outsource our creativity Creativity is at the heart of what it means to be human, yet many in the tech industry are trying to convince us to outsource that spark to…

The tech industry promises AI will free us up for more creative work. But what happens when we outsource creativity itself? I’m curious to hear your thoughts, especially if you work in a creative field. How are you thinking about this balance? medium.com/@gemma.croad...

The Future of Design Systems: Shipping Intelligence Rather Than Code Are traditional design systems becoming AI constraint systems? Maybe the real value isn’t in pre-built components anymore, maybe it’s in…

How is your organisation thinking about the intersection of design systems and AI? I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and I'd love to chat if this is the space you're working in 🙂 medium.com/@gemma.croad...

Thought for the afternoon: Are traditional design systems becoming AI constraint systems? Potentially the real value isn't in pre-built components anymore, maybe it's in the systematic knowledge about how things should work together? 🤔