Summary: A useful AI assistant needs relevant personal context, the capability to use it, and an experience that helps users understand its limits. Apple may not need the smartest AI to make the most useful AI assistant. Smartphones already hold much of the context of our everyday lives: our messages, photos, contacts, our location, our schedule, our social media, and all the apps that we use thro

Summary: Claude power users rarely edit their context files and often can’t find them. Your AI agent is only as powerful as its context library. AI agents have made curating context as important as writing prompts. The agent can do the typing, but deciding what context to keep, where to put it, and when to update it is left entirely to the user — and even the experts are struggling. This is true f

Summary: Empathy maps help UX teams visualize user attitudes and behaviors, building a shared understanding of end users while highlighting gaps in existing user data. UX professionals advocate on users’ behalf. To do that effectively, they need to not only deeply understand users but also communicate this understanding clearly to colleagues and help prioritize users’ needs . Empathy maps, widely

Summary: AI makes building nearly free, so users grow agentic systems piecemeal into fragile messes they no longer understand. Building systems for working with AI agents is software engineering, whether or not the builder knows it. And increasingly the builders aren’t engineers: a growing crowd of vibe architects with little technical background are crafting complex systems that rely on large con

Summary: Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about how artificial intelligence works, and how users think about it. Let’s not pretend we all completely understand the inner workings of artificial intelligence models. Neither do your users. Thankfully, you don’t need to fully understand them to use them. The same has always been true of a computer

Summary: How people react to being told that AI helped create a piece of content varies with audience, context, the nature and degree of AI use. In 2024, the EU adopted a landmark AI law , which requires companies to disclose AI-generated content in particular cases; the transparency obligations started in August 2026. This change in disclosure policy surfaces a practical concern: telling users ab

Summary: Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about recommendations for designing AI products and features. Creating new AI-based features or integrating AI into existing products goes beyond simply adding an AI chatbot to your website. However, adding ✨AI✨ does not magically create value. In fact, in some cases, it’s a huge investment for a relat

Summary: AI-agent power users curate 3 kinds of context: global (across tasks), local (task-specific), and ambient (raw streams like email). Advanced AI users have AI agents execute complex and laborious tasks for them. But the leverage they can get largely depends on the context the AI has access to. Without the right context, AI agents can produce generic or problematic outputs that don’t reflec

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Summary: AI tools make it feasible to build fully interactive prototypes of complex interfaces so you can test them with users earlier in the design process. Complex interfaces like filters , dashboards , and conversational AI have many possible states and can be tedious to prototype by hand. Before AI tools were available, most teams would test a simple prototype that covered only a few happy pat

Summary: NN/G uses AI for clarity, formatting, and critique, but humans retain editorial judgment and responsibility for every article. In August 2026, the transparency provisions of the European Union’s 2024 AI Act took effect. The law includes disclosure requirements for certain types of AI-generated, public-interest text. Interestingly , the law specifically exempts content that “has undergone

Summary: Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about the best ways to use artificial intelligence for UX work. Should you use AI in your work? Yes. The question is no longer if it can be helpful, but when? And how? By most practical measures, AI doesn’t seem ready to take over UX work completely, but many organizations encourage their UX teams to f

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Take up to 5 in-depth training courses, teaching user experience best practices for successful design. Training focused on long-lasting skills for UX professionals. September 14 - September 25, 2026. See Full Schedule and Pricing

Summary: AI can help you organize research you’ve already collected, but it can’t create research evidence about the specific, messy experience of real users. Empathy mapping depends on real research, and real research takes time. When the workshop is on the calendar and the data isn’t there, reaching for an AI tool feels like a reasonable fix. Ask it to think like a frustrated user, and within se

Summary: AI lets teams build faster than UX can evaluate. UX can adapt by building shared judgment, accelerating evaluation, and guiding AI-generated designs. We are entering the custodial era of UX . In this era, AI makes it possible to generate content, prototype , vibe code , and build working features much faster than before. This newfound speed is valuable, but it also leads to UX debt when t

Take up to 5 in-depth training courses, teaching user experience best practices for successful design. Courses focused on long-lasting skills for UX professionals. November 9 - 13, 2026. See Full Schedule and Pricing

Summary: Plain-language definitions of the AI terms that come up in product and design work, from tokens and context windows to agents, evals, and prompt injection. AI conversations run on a lot of specialized language. Use this glossary to look up a term you have run into, or to build a working vocabulary before you need one. Definitions follow how the terms are used in AI products and UX work; v

Summary: When users didn’t know whether an image was AI-generated, the images we tested did not create any perception penalty compared to stock photos. AI tools can now generate polished website imagery quickly and at low cost, making them an increasingly practical option for design teams. But organizations may hesitate to use AI-generated images if they worry that users will see them as less trus

Summary: Psychological ownership can make you more effective, but you’ll struggle if it attaches to things you can’t control. Spot misplaced ownership and redirect it. Feeling a sense of ownership over your work seems like a necessary quality for any passionate design professional. Many organizations promote ownership cultures and encourage employees to solve problems proactively. Designers who fe