The Feed & The Thread - September 30, 2026

We’re shifting from capturing attention to governing it, a move Aurélie Radom argues is necessary now that AI has made machine focus cheap and human attention the true scarce resource. This governance challenge extends to our tools and processes, from Will Schiavone’s findings on AI’s nuanced but fragmented coding of user responses to the practical headache of retiring static design assets that live on in local libraries. We explore how these shifts force us to rethink everything from organizational headcount to the statistical foundations of our research, asking whether we are truly building systems or just filling templates.

• Guppy Ahluwalia – Token times: Organizational practices in a resource-constrained environment. (Chicago Camps) — Teams must abandon headcount-heavy structures to build scalable, strategic processes in resource-constrained environments.
• ChatGPT vs Humans for Coding Open-Ended Responses, Three Years Later (Will Schiavone, PhD • Eva Sundberg, MPH • Jeff Sauro, PhD) — Newer AI models generate finer subcategories for coding responses, requiring new alignment methods to prevent data fragmentation.
• The economics of attention in the age of AI (Aurélie Radom) — AI makes machine attention cheap, forcing human attention to become the scarce resource that design must govern rather than capture.

• Fong test? (r/UXResearch) — The Fong test for Kano questionnaires is mathematically shaky because it assumes independent samples from the same people.
• How are UX teams using AI for ​​​​s​​​​t​​​​a​​​​k​​​​e​​​​h​​​​o​​​​l​​​​d​​​​e​​​​r​​​ presentations? (r/UserExperience) — disconnect insights from their source by prioritizing speed over data integrity.
• Why do people say to get experience before applying to a masters program? (r/hci) — The requirement for experience before a degree creates a catch-22 that raises questions about industry hiring barriers.
• How do you retire an icon once people have already downloaded the SVG? (r/DesignSystems) — Design systems face a governance gap where static copies of assets persist in local libraries even after source code is updated.

• How to de-slopify your designs — Maya Brennan
• My Glamorous Life: in Which I am a Target — L. Jeffrey Zeldman
• I Tested Claude Sonnet 5.5 for Web Design — Nick Babich

• Giving away UX books — r/UXResearch
• Are there people in Alabama who I can't talk to about UX/UI Research? — r/UXResearch
• "Why do people ignore new feedback or notifications when they're already overloaded with work". — r/UXResearch

About The Feed & The Thread

The Feed & The Thread is a daily summary of UX articles found in the industry and some light-touch updates from the UX Community found in online forums. It’s brief, and meant as a light-touch overview of what’s happening across UX.