Adobe is being smarter about AI video than I ever expected (3 minute read)
Adobe's MAX 2025 video updates mark a surprising shift toward practicality, focusing on real creator needs rather than flashy gimmicks. Premiere Mobile now integrates directly with YouTube Shorts, letting users edit and publish within YouTube, while new tools like AI Object Mask simplify editing, and a free mobile app lowers entry barriers. The moves suggest Adobe has learned from competitors like CapCut by reducing friction and targeting genuine pain points, though questions remain about pricing, feature rollout, and long-term YouTube dependence.
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Canva's New ‘Creative Operating System' is Actually a Marketing Workspace (3 minute read)
Canva launched new marketing and video-editing tools powered by a proprietary design-focused AI model, rebranding its Visual Suite as a "Creative Operating System"- a term that does not typically refer to a traditional operating system. The updates include a redesigned video editor, a new Canva Grow platform for managing ad campaigns, and an Email Design product for creating branded email campaigns without coding. All features are bundled into unified subscriptions, with no option to purchase individual tools selectively. Most AI capabilities require premium access.
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Instagram Users Can Now Use Meta AI Editing Tools Directly in IG Stories (2 minute read)
Meta is expanding its AI-powered editing tools to Instagram Stories, enabling users to add, remove, or change elements in photos and videos through text prompts accessible via the "Restyle" menu. The feature includes preset effects such as outfit alterations and style filters, although using it requires accepting Meta's AI Terms of Service, which permit the analysis of uploaded media and facial features. The rollout follows Meta's recent AI initiatives, including the "Write with Meta AI" comment assistant and the "Vibes" video feed, which helped boost the Meta AI app's daily active users to 2.7 million by mid-October.
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The horrors of designing for omniscience (7 minute read)
“Designing for Omniscience” means building systems that assume users are all-knowing, offering no warnings, feedback, or safeguards. This could lead to real-world harm when mistakes happen. From healthcare portals that silently fail payments to software granting interns unchecked access or financial tools lacking confirmation steps, these designs prioritize speed, legality, and efficiency over human error and protection. Systems should emphasize empathy, context, and shared responsibility to prevent catastrophic consequences.
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Why Immersive and Voice Interfaces are the Next UX Frontier (14 minute read)
Voice and immersive interfaces have evolved from novelty to necessity, driven by convenience, accessibility, and changing user expectations that favor natural, hands-free interactions over traditional screen-based methods. These technologies are already embedded across healthcare, automotive, retail, and home automation sectors, with hundreds of millions of devices in active use worldwide, demonstrating sticky user behaviors. Product teams should start small by prototyping voice or AR features for specific tasks, ensuring designs prioritize context-awareness, natural dialogue, graceful error handling, and multimodal fallback options while avoiding feature bloat.
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Bold.af: the Affinity rebrand blends personality and precision, relaunching with a bang (2 minute read)
Affinity has launched a full rebrand and product relaunch under Canva's ownership, aiming to balance connection with Canva while retaining its own creative independence. Led by Tom Carey and designed with Twist, the new identity, which features a lowercase serif “a” logo, a custom Affinity Serif typeface, and a tactile color palette accented with lime green, embraces playfulness and humanity. The tone is witty and approachable, reflecting its “for creatives, by creatives” ethos. The modular design system allows flexibility across audiences, positioning Affinity as Canva's refined yet expressive sibling in the design software world.
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When Execution Gets Easy, Taste Gets Harder (5 minute read)
As AI tools make design execution increasingly accessible to everyone, the traditional boundaries between designers and developers are dissolving—but this shift elevates rather than diminishes design's importance. The core value designers bring is now taste: the judgment to know what will resonate with users and businesses, which problems are worth solving, and why specific solutions will work in practice. This expanding role demands designers develop strategic conviction and fill a broader space that includes deep user understanding and business context, making it clear who truly contributes beyond mere execution speed.
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Creating Prototypes Constrained by the Medium Not Our Skills or Understanding (3 minute read)
Designers working in code may create limited prototypes not due to medium constraints, but because their technical skills restrict their imagination. While tools like Figma have their own learning curves and limitations, AI assistance can now help bridge this gap by enabling designers to prototype realistic interactions rapidly, which they understand conceptually but lack the coding speed to execute. The key challenge remains ensuring designers develop sufficient understanding of web fundamentals to ask AI the right questions, rather than having their creative vision constrained by technical capability gaps.
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