Medium

Dan Maccarone

3.1K followers

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UX Collective

Dan Maccarone

May 24, 2025

We built UX. We broke UX. And now we have to fix it!

We didn’t just lose our influence. We gave it away. UX professionals need to stop accepting silence, reclaim our seat at the table, and…

A broken “UX” sign, rusted and hanging by a thread — a metaphor for an industry once powerful, now neglected but not beyond repair.

Pinned

Dan Maccarone

Nov 18, 2024

Depth Over Breadth: The Strategic Power of Fractional Leadership

Exploring the unique value and strategic impact of fractional leadership in today’s dynamic business landscape.

$The fractional leader is an integrated part of the team, there to collaborated with eveveryone.$

Pinned

Dan Maccarone

Jul 1, 2024

Generation (U)X: Bridging the Past to Secure AI’s Future

By leveraging our dynamic digital past, GenX can help navigate AI’s ethical and user experience challenges, fostering a collaborative and…

Generation (U)X: Bridging the Past to Secure AI’s Future

UX Collective

Dan Maccarone

2d ago

The AI mind tax that afflicts those who use AI best

AI was supposed to make work easier, but for the people who use it most, it just became a different kind of work, and a whole lot of…

An overhead photo of many different-colored cables tangling together and converging into a single central point on a plain surface.

UX Collective

Dan Maccarone

Nov 4

In a world of panic, calm and certainty win

While panic around what AI means for our industry is the reflex right now, calm is a decision. The calm that comes from knowing what you…

A single still figure seen from behind while the surrounding scene blurs with motion, suggesting one calm person in the middle of chaos, in warm, muted light.

UX Collective

Dan Maccarone

Oct 28

The AI reckoning in UX was 20 years in the making

Everyone thinks AI is coming for design. The truth is uglier and older. The field has done this to itself twice before, and it’s about to…

A layered, aged archival collage showing three overlapping eras of the design profession stacked like sediment, faded late-1990s office textures at the bottom, mid-2010s training-era textures in the middle, and present-day screen textures at the top, in muted sepia and newsprint tones.

UX Collective

Dan Maccarone

Oct 21

A founder with a tool is not a founder with a clue

AI lets a solo founder produce a product, but it can’t help them understand whether that product is actually good…yet.

A dense, busy illustrated scene of a startup convention hall packed with hundreds of nearly identical founders in matching hoodies, all grinning and holding up laptops, trophies, and “launched” banners, with one calm person hidden in the crowd quietly studying their own screen.

UX Collective

Dan Maccarone

Oct 14

Nobody wants your AI app

The people buying AI are blunt about the fact that the future is intelligence that disappears into existing platforms. Everyone wants it…

A photograph of a real network operations center: rows of staffed workstations facing large wall-mounted monitors displaying system dashboards.A black-and-white archival photograph of 1920s telephone switchboard operators, women seated in a row at a wall of plug-and-cord switchboards, connecting calls by hand.

UX Collective

Dan Maccarone

Oct 7

What the AI era owes you

No one is going to save your career from AI. That’s the most useful thing anyone can tell you about your job, and the sooner you believe…

A period engraving of a weaver working at a large wooden hand loom in a workshop, operating it by hand.

UX Collective

Dan Maccarone

Sep 30

We built UX. We broke UX. And now we have to fix it!

We didn’t just lose our influence. We gave it away. UX professionals need to stop accepting silence, reclaim our seat at the table, and…

Depth Over Breadth: The Strategic Power of Fractional Leadership

Exploring the unique value and strategic impact of fractional leadership in today’s dynamic business landscape.

Generation (U)X: Bridging the Past to Secure AI’s Future

By leveraging our dynamic digital past, GenX can help navigate AI’s ethical and user experience challenges, fostering a collaborative and…

The AI mind tax that afflicts those who use AI best

AI was supposed to make work easier, but for the people who use it most, it just became a different kind of work, and a whole lot of…

In a world of panic, calm and certainty win

While panic around what AI means for our industry is the reflex right now, calm is a decision. The calm that comes from knowing what you…

The AI reckoning in UX was 20 years in the making

Everyone thinks AI is coming for design. The truth is uglier and older. The field has done this to itself twice before, and it’s about to…

A founder with a tool is not a founder with a clue

AI lets a solo founder produce a product, but it can’t help them understand whether that product is actually good…yet.

Nobody wants your AI app

The people buying AI are blunt about the fact that the future is intelligence that disappears into existing platforms. Everyone wants it…

What the AI era owes you

No one is going to save your career from AI. That’s the most useful thing anyone can tell you about your job, and the sooner you believe…

What the Bible got wrong about AI

The oldest book didn’t predict AI, but the comforts it promises, a maker who cares, a mind you can trust, a life that means something, an…

Dan Maccarone