The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
Missed a few newsletters last year? Start here
Missed a few newsletters last year? Start here.By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, Before we jump into new ideas for the year ahead, we wanted to pause for a moment. If your inbox was anything like ours last year, thereβs a good chance you missed a few newsletters. So instead of sending another new idea right away, we put together a curated catch-up, a handful of pieces from 2025 that capture the questions we kept returning to. If you only read a few things from us last year, these are a good place to start. π§ Judgment, Ambiguity & Decision-MakingFor the moments when frameworks helpβ¦ until they donβt.
These pieces all circle the same tension: π£ Influence, Buy-In & Holding the RoomFor when your work makes senseβ¦ but doesnβt land.
Less about persuasion tactics, more about understanding why people resist, and how to respond without simply pushing harder. π Practice, Tools & How Work Actually Gets DoneFor cutting through hype and focusing on leverage.
Practical explorations of how design practice is shifting, and where old mental models still hold (or quietly break). βοΈ Craft, Critique & Everyday Design WorkFor the unglamorous moments that shape real outcomes.
Small shifts in how we show work, give feedback, and move forward, especially when time and attention are limited. If one of these caught your eye, you can find all newsletters here ββ And if you feel like replying: That signal quietly shapes what we write next. β β It's almost time for the 9th cohort of Defining UX Strategy (Live) happening from Feb. 16 to Mar. 20th, 2026! Get an overview of UX strategy in this 45-minute talk.
β β β
β β β β Until next week!
|
The Fountain Institute
The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
When Speed Stops Being the Bottleneck by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, Quick question: What happens when the thing that used to take 12 weeks now takes 4 days? I've been watching this play out across the industry, and it's wild. Lots of companies aren't sharing their new speeds, but a few are: Code and Theory (an agency that works with Microsoft and Amazon) is building dashboards in 40 minutes that used to take a week. They report cutting time-to-prototype by 75%. Coinbase reports a 2-5x increase...
What Can't AI Do in Design in 2026 By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, If you work in design, your feeds are probably saying the same two things on repeat: Hereβs everything AI can do for you, and Hereβs why you should be terrified. Most of that conversation focuses on tools and job titles: βWill designers be replaced?β βWhich roles are safe?β It makes for good headlines, but itβs not how the work actually changes in real life. A few months ago, walking to my studio listening to a Planet Money...
Does the Double Diamond make sense for AI-enabled teams? by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, For twenty years, the Double Diamond has been our north star. Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver. It's elegant. It's teachable. It's in every junior's UX case study. And it made senseβ¦when it was created. All that upfront research made economic sense when coding was the most expensive part of the process. Better to get it right before handoff because it's expensive for engineering to make changes later. But...