iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Es gibt ein neues Gutachten, das der AfD Verfassungsfeindlichkeit nachweist. Ein Verbotsverfahren ist realistisch, aber nur die Politik kann es beantragen. Schreibt euren Abgeordneten, oder Unterzeichnet die Petionenen dass ihr es wollt. Geht in fünf Minuten! 👇🏻💪🏻 afd-verbot.jetzt/de

afd-verbot.jetzt

AfD Verbot Jetzt!

Menschenwürde verteidigen und Demokratie schützen. Organisierten extremen Rechten den Boden entziehen. AfD verbieten

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

»Any problem caused by an #LLM can be solved by an #LLM« thinking about this a lot. After leaving the problem framing phase with constraints, user needs, and success criteria it mostly comes back to them. And the premise that the first try will be not good. Iteration will it make better.

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

»usability is no longer the bar — trust is.« despite missing the question of trustworthiness of the system the articles focus on friction needs to e a standers onboarding designing this systems. uxdesign.cc/the-trust-la...

uxdesign.cc

The trust-latency gap: why the future of UX is intentionally slower

How strategic friction became the most valuable skill in product design

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

»We cannot repair the service relationship by getting really good at the tool made for rejecting service relationships.« if the relationship is broken, no tool will fix it.The core question for me, »how is the relationship with design? Are you part of the strategy?« @spavel.bsky.social

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

There is a lot of noise anf fluff around #AI and Design. To get some data and insights I created a short survey. I will share the results with the design community If you are leadinging design teams, please take 5 min to share you thoughts! tally.so/r/0QEyXP #DesignLeadership #AIAdoption #UXDesign

tally.so

AI & Design Teams: What's actually changing?

Made with Tally, the simplest way to create forms.

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

One of the articles which really spoke to my feelings, about tech instruments as catalyst to our current events. The new luxury seem a to be, pause and reflect. »Should this exist«? benn.substack.com/p/gas-town?p...

benn.substack.com

Gas town

The agents are everywhere.

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

»[…]Because at the end of the day, there is nothing intuitive about user interfaces. The word is, instead, a shorthand for “familiar”: I have seen this before, I recognize how it works, I can reuse lessons I learned in the past.« Great summary of the discussion. @spavel.bsky.social #ux #product

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

»Because LLMs cannot do this; they cannot even help you do this, because the doing of the work is how that shared mental model comes into being to begin with.« the hardest part to create, to preserve together with a momentum of learning. Dies so fast. @spavel.bsky.social #ux #product

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

»It is easier to design the feature in isolation than to investigate what context it will appear in. It is easier to smear GenAI over everything than it is to figure out whether the bottleneck users face is even technological in nature.« Nothing to add. @spavel.bsky.social . #product #ai

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Enjoy @johncutle.fish view on the different layers of the #customerproblem. I experienced most challenging layer 1 to 3. Which mostly got in conflicting entanglement between people: Company vs. Department vs. Users. It’s rarely as easy as »Go talk to customers, and figure out what the problem is!«

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

»No amount of outputs will help maintain unbroken intent all the way through to delivery.« @spavel.bsky.social Let's repeat this together. #ux #productdevelpoment

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

»Collaboration is contextual: Sometimes it's high collaboration. Sometimes transactional.« one of the things @johncutle.fish shared yesterday some of the findings and best practices from his #product work with dotwork.com understanding companies, their #operationmodel and how to map and improve it.

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 13/09/2025

Had a great dinner with other #design #ux leaders before the Hatch Conference in #Berlin. We found ourselves talking about the same things: power structures, motivation of teams, and how titles rarely reflect the real work. It was a good reminder of how valuable an empathetic network of peers can be

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 13/09/2025

After working with many product companies and its many shapes and now reading Diana Wright's »Thinking in Systems« hits different:

Page of the book, highlighted:
"In the end, it seems that mastery has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly, letting go and dancing with the system."

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Every time I read about companies new approach to infurse #Ai into their product, I think about: »There's no AI strategy without a data strategy« — #Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman.

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

»The value of research doesn’t come from elevating people who are already shouting. It comes from finding the people who are not being heard, and adding their voices to the conversation.« uxdesign.cc/nikes-25b-bl... Contextualisation is the hardest part. Taking the time to look closer.

uxdesign.cc

Nike’s $25B blunder shows us the limits of “data-driven”

The illusion of data as “objective” conceals that it rarely shows you the whole picture. Making decisions based on the easiest data to…

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

@spavel.bsky.social Enjoying your newsletter. One question: We have to train people what is good and how quality looks like? Since the fast way is undermining the slow learning, help enable critical thinking? #productpicnic #design #auraux #ai

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

»[...]main driver of the scaling is not the technology. It’s the permission structure created by AI mandates — setting a lower bar for quality is inextricable from AI adoption, especially when the managers driving it set “adopt AI” as the objective rather than as [...] something of real value.«

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

#Design rarely works only where it’s visible. The real work happens in the spaces between teams and decisions, where questions, direction, and trust take shape. This fascinated and challenged me over the years. Timing, context are key here. That's why it will be the topic of my upcoming essay.

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

»When you create something new, you're destroying something old. That's the price of creation in progress. The real problem with extreme creative ambition is that no matter how high you climb, it will never feel like enough.« #Creativity #creativeprocess youtu.be/0xWQMbEEQ-A...

youtu.be

Why Creative Success Destroys People

YouTube video by Design Theory

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Experience gehört nicht an den Rand. Sondern dorthin, wo Entscheidungen fallen. Ich war zu Gast bei Pixel + Profit – über Verantwortung, UX und warum Strukturen entscheidend sind. #UX #Leadership #ExperienceDesign open.spotify.com/episode/2uTJ...

open.spotify.com

#12 "UX gehört ins Leadership - als strategische Stimme des Unternehmens" mit Thomas Otto

Pixels + Profit · Episode

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

I am working on an essay about #crosscollaboration and #design role in it. Re-visiting some books and articles. From my own experience, the work is highly satisfying, and can create great impact. But also has its downsides with coordination and over communication. What's your take? #ux

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

»Those products won because they made powerful, highly technical tools accessible through thoughtful design. The biggest barrier to mass #AI adoption is not capability or intelligence; we have those in spades. It's #UX.« thenanyu.com/ux.html?utm_...

thenanyu.com

AI adoption is a UX problem

We have plenty of intelligence. The problem is making it usable

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

»How can we use #AI to support creative and #criticalthinking, to provoke, to surprise, to even create nonsense? Which other roles, which other metaphors can we use to open new paradigms for designing through and with AI?« aid-lab.hfg-gmuend.de/articles/rec...

aid-lab.hfg-gmuend.de

Reclaiming the Process – Thoughts on the Role of Designers in the Age of AI | AI+D Lab

This article shares some thoughts in preparation for the re shape 2025 conference.

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

»#AI can generate a thousand user personas in minutes. But it can’t replicate the intuitive understanding of how behavioral patterns actually affect #experience design, or how tiny shifts in service touchpoints change how customers feel about a brand.« medium.com/@relei-app/w...

medium.com

Why Design Leaders Who Obsess Over Craft Are Actually Being Strategic

A contrarian take on the craft vs. strategy debate that’s dividing design leadership

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

We don’t click buttons. We interact with decisions. Recommendations. Filters. Flags. Design is no longer just surface work. It’s about shaping the #algorithmic systems that shape us. medium.com/@thomasotto_...

medium.com

Behind the Interface, Before the Output

Designing algorithmic systems where decisions are made, not just shown

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

Formulating a new essay around #genAI and its influence on #design in organizations. Collecting some examples, where you can see a product or service falling apart. Where you can see the gaps in alignment and the experience coming alive. Any hints and examples would be great!

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

I am fascinated of structures, dynamics that form context and situations. Understanding them, identify dependencies. This is why I enjoy @johncutle.fish articles and essays. They shift the angle and do not forget the human in the center of it all.

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

»If you don’t consume, you can’t synthesise. And if you can’t synthesise, you’ll never know where to spend your attention.« In the current »New Internet« felling with #ai I think it's less about consumption and more consideration. I am careful with my time, my brainpower and what I let occupy me.

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

»In contrast, there are design choices today that cost lives and cause great damage to communities, places and people. We often recognise these choices more as business models, especially in the world of tech and #AI, but they are by #design.« benholliday.com/2025/06/16/d...

benholliday.com

Design is care (and sensing carelessness)

Why design is care, and how the experiences we shape and deliver will be defined by how people sense that care in the future.

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

In a recent article, I explore, a bit more, what designing behaviour with #algorithms and the system around means in the work of the #ux and #design teams I worked with. thomas-otto.net/thoughts/des...

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

Exploring the limits of current #LLM, is something that fascinates me. Especially when long-chain-of-thought scenarios happening. To a point where I can sense the quality is going down and memory loss is happening. #apple #ai machinelearning.apple.com/research/ill...

machinelearning.apple.com

The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity

Recent generations of frontier language models have introduced Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) that generate detailed thinking processes…

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 11/06/2024

Watching videos of the past narratives of #data and #bigata and which big promises they made and non of the #impact they could not deliver and the risks which they ignored. Similar to data which now is stored in tremendous amount, fueling the new narrative. Will #Ai be different?

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 14/05/2024

»[...]boundary objects are envisioned as inclusive and shared spaces, either physical or virtual, that are activated through interactions. These interactions may be enabled by individuals or communities [...]« #design #interaction designwanted.com/boundary-obj...

designwanted.com

Boundary objects enhance design perspectives and insights

What are boundary objects? The term "boundary" often links to notions of peripheries, constraints, clustering, and limitations..

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 21/03/2024

»All organisations aspire to be “#data-driven”. Data promises to make decision making evidence-based. But as business shifts to digital contexts, particular types of data become more abundant and legible than others.« #goodread #data www.stripepartners.com/viewpoint/go...

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 20/02/2024

[2/2] »To answer the first, we must define what we believe to be meaningful. To answer the second, we must define a time boundary for these beliefs.« #data #design #sensemaking @JulieZhuo

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 20/02/2024

[1/2] »The reason #data can never deliver certainty is because it can never escape two subjective human decisions: 1. What do we measure? 2. Over what time frame do we measure?« @JulieZhuo

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 24/01/2024

»After all, the success behind #GPT-4 (and even GPT-3) had as much (if not more) to do with their investments in their #data as their algorithmic research.« #goodread Why Data Quality Is More Important Than Ever in an AI-Driven World dataproducts.substack.com/p/why-data-q...

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Thomas Otto @thotto.bsky.social · 23/01/2024

»On November 30, 2022, ChatGPT came out, Silicon Valley lost its mind, and the tech world’s simmering interest in #generativeAI became an immediate obsession.« #data

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