User research exists, in large part, because exposure to other humans who aren’t like us is what prevents us from being monsters. Being insulated from someone else’s reality makes it far easier to exploit or harm them for profit. Research “automation” is insulation.

A chicken self portrait Frida Kahlo style

He will be a beautiful butterfly

Don’t forget trash pandas

Rupert’s look 🤌🏻

Raccoons and rats, however, will find you attractive

This might be an improvement on reality…

I first read that in grad school & all I could think of was how much I could get done with 8 more hours!

Multiple times a day, even

Right. To the extent that tools help us think, great.

Good resource, thanks for sharing that. The most common question used to be: can I just count things & plug it into a spreadsheet? These days it’s: can I throw my notes at the LLM & have it find the patterns for me?

I think I know which one you’re talking about and yeah, distressing

People keep wanting to believe that some kind of technology can substitute for making real human connections

OK now you have me imagining a Werner Herzog film on UX 🍿

The @merriam-webster.com thread from 2 days ago was an oddly satisfying collection of these

*sigh*

Did exactly this with a group of professional friends over a dozen years ago. It’s become a treasured annual tradition!