Why the AI panic feels true
And why the people selling the panic usually have something to sell you next.
Balint’s Newsletter
Every Thursday, I share product design insights. Get my free guide, "The Psychology Behind Design" when you subscribe 🎁
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Latest posts
The portfolio question
If AI can generate beautiful case studies, what actually proves you’re a good designer in 2026?
Something with computers
Eight years into your career, this is still your job title at family dinners.
When you become your own client
Building your own product gives you complete freedom. Then you discover how much structure other people were quietly giving you.
The standard you set when no one's watching
The gap between acceptable and memorable usually lives in the moments you could have skipped.
AI gave designers more leverage
Most of us used it on the wrong things.
Figma just shipped an AI agent. Now what?
The tool every designer uses got an agent that can generate screens, apply design systems, and iterate on your canvas.
Why agency matters more than any skill on your resume
The people who shape the next decade won't be the most skilled, they'll be the ones who see something broken and just go fix it.
Your app isn't sticky because you designed tasks, not mastery
Most products are built to help users complete tasks, but the ones people love are built to help users get better at something.
The generalist trap
Companies want one designer who can research, write, code, analyze data, and present to leadership. That used to be a team of five. Now it's you.
Stop designing before you understand the problem
Most design work starts too early. The best work starts with questions.
The soft parts of design
The skills that actually get you promoted have nothing to do with Figma.
Why stakeholders keep changing their minds
They probably never fully decided in the first place and that's a problem you can fix before it starts.
If it's easy to read, people believe it
The psychological shortcut your brain uses to decide what's trustworthy, and how it changes everything about the way you should design.
Your skills don’t have an expiration date
The people screaming loudest about skill obsolescence are the ones who never built real skills in the first place.
The harder you push, the faster they leave
Why the most persuasive products are the ones that let you say no.
The next five years of product design
Five questions that will shape what it means to be a designer through 2030.
The last screen your user sees matters more than every screen before it
How endings shape everything users remember about your product.
The best design decision I made this year was doing less
What helped me step away from the screen and do better work because of it.
When friction is a feature
Why making things harder can make them better