Gregg Bernstein (he/him)

ah the famous fable, the tortoise and the hare, about a genius hare that easily outmatches the naive hopeless tortoise.

bsky.app/profile/greg...

All of this happened with basically no help from elected officials of the opposition party. This was entirely the people.

@johnhollinger.bsky.social there was a Hawks game years ago where weather severely impacted attendance. There was a story that the crowd was so sparse you could clearly hear someone courtside yell, "We got next!" Was that your story?

A quote from a Fast Company story about Joe Gebbia: "Gebbia says his unwillingness to engage in the politics of design is in service of design itself. “I think that at the end of the day, our focus is just [to] make the best user experience,” he says."

Design is the rendering of intent. A slick gov website that serves no one, shares misinformation, and is not accessible is not a user experience. It's propaganda and UX cosplay. www.fastcompany.com/91458973/chi...

A scene from an AI-generated video of an older gentleman in a suit and fedora performing music in a club backed by a band of instrument-playing robots.

Oh, you weren't kidding. No thank you for sending me on a journey that resulted in watching… whatever this is.

I really love the positioning of automation as insulation—thank you!

User researchers already document findings at a faster velocity than orgs can act on them. It strains credulity that tech leaders are clamoring for even more yet worse AI-generated findings.

My new blog post, "The only winning move is not to play."
gregg.io/the-only-win...

New from my blog: The only winning move is not to play https://gregg.io/the-only-winning-move
"Let’s not debase ourselves as user researchers further"

By this point creators know who they are aligning with by using that platform and they either don't care or are complicit.

Life And Limb

Fugazi is never the wrong answer.

open.spotify.com/track/6p7f0M...

Maybe I'm out of step, but I don't think it's great when most of the sponsors of a major user research conference are selling products that replace user researchers with AI.

LOL nope!

Whoa I grew up there! My parents still live there! 🤯

“Try [name of pet + kids birthdays].”

Wait what happened to the password manager I set up for you last year?

“Oh yeah. I don’t use it.”

I get it. Password managers and biometrics and 2FA are friction, even for those who understand the need. For aging adults I think it’s perhaps unreasonable.

“I don’t have a password - it’s my thumb” is a phrase I hear way too often when I try to help my parents with their accounts.

Biometric login adds such a degree of difficulty in assisting aging adults, especially from afar.

Same here

I don't want to be recorded by facial recognition glasses.

I also don't want people to think I'm recording them because I wear Ray-Bans that look like the Meta privacy nightmare specs.

About time for new frames. 👓

Tied with @tedleo.bsky.social with only a drum machine at Brownies NYC. Tour de force.

Mike Watt being backed up by Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl, and Pat Smear.

A picture of text on americabydesign.gov that says "To update today's government to be an Apple Store like experience: beautifully designed, great user experience, run on modern software."

The tight kerning made me read this as "modem software," and tbh that's probably a best case scenario.

Putting aside for a moment that the entire notion of user research is predicated on studying humans being, the doorknob phenomenon is very real, highly illuminating, and *impossible for any AI to replicate.*

Bad Religion’s 1992 song “Generator” is an early warning of AI’s rise to ubiquity, with prescient lyrics about text and photographs being subsumed under a generative layer. In this essay I will-

Every Silicon Valley innovation in the consumer space has been "what if this software was my mom" which explains why ChatGPT's primary use is as a therapist, relationship substitute for lonely boys, and "personal operating system" to organize their life

Eyes Wide Shut. Packed opening night in NYC. Masked party scene.

“May I have the password, please?”

Audience member immediately yells “BULLSHIT” and the whole place explodes with laughter.

There are ~17k Starbucks stores in US (which is 2x the number of coworking spaces).

Really want to improve "collaboration, problem-solving, and culture-building?" I can think of 17k places where this will be way more impactful than an office.

This is (still) a great idea. And the same goes for Medium.com: if you are a local journalist and need a place to share your work, reach out if I can help you get started.

I am serious about supporting local journalism. If you want to report the stories, I will get you set up technically.

And I will keep you online.

HMU.

PS>Any hosting partners wanna step up? How about one shared account for the first three new local publications?

(Traffic will be small at first)

New from my blog: In praise of redundant publishing practices https://gregg.io/in-praise-of-redundancy
"Publish for both your audience and your future self"