Cursor handed me a good idea and I killed it anyway. In episode five, I take inventory of what’s actually still mine: judgment, taste, time, and the space to ask if it’s good for people. Then I get to the part I didn’t want to say out loud. |
If judgment is what’s left of the design job, how much of the work is actually still yours?
A couple of weeks ago, my AI agent had a genuinely good idea.
I killed it anyway.
But first, check out this week's sponsor:
Saying no to a good idea might be the most designer thing I did all month.
We were designing a mobile multi-select, and Cursor put a fixed action bar right by your thumb. Smart pattern. I liked it.
Then it tried to do the same thing on desktop.
​There was just one problem.
We already had an established pattern for tables with selected rows. Users had learned it. Other teams built against that pattern.
But the underlying insight was right. I’d watched real users in session replays lose track of actions in long tables. So the idea didn’t go in the trash. It went to the design system, where every table in the product can benefit.
The agent didn’t know any of that. It had never watched a session replay of our customers.
Knowing which good idea fits, and where the good part of a wrong answer should live, is still the job.
In episode five of What Survives, I take inventory of what’s actually still mine:
⇢ Judgment
⇢ Taste, and the influence to make it matter
⇢ The hours I get back while work runs in the background
⇢ The space to ask whether the work is good for people
And then I get to the part I didn’t want to say out loud.
Don't miss it.
SPONSOR
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You describe what you want, the agent builds it, and it comes out fine. But it’s also pretty generic: the same onboarding, the same card layout you've seen a hundred times, because the model has never actually seen good work. It's just guessing. Mobbin fixes that. Their MCP server connects over 600,000 shipped app screens straight into Cursor or Claude, so you can explore real patterns before you build instead of course-correcting later.
My whole team uses it, and it's saved us a ton of time. Visit mobbin.com/beyondux for 20% off Mobbin Pro, and go see what good looks like before you start.
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You iterated, pivoted, circle-backed, and made it out of Q4 (barely).
You’ve earned a Merit-ish Badge!
Choose from four sets:
​• Soft Skills, Sharp Tongue
• Cult of Figma Initiation
• Pixel Pusher Survivor Kit
• Field Notes & Frayed Nerves
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They don't teach this stuff in school
Learn the things they left off the syllabus.
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Also available at these fine retailers
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