Unicorn Club Newsletter Archive
Explore every past Unicorn Club issue. Weekly writeups on digital product decisions, interface details, trade-offs, and useful product work.
-
🦄 Design systems need proof now
When AI designs, the system must explain why.
-
🦄 Here’s how to avoid AI slop in your product
Take what your current UI is doing and give it a new job, don’t just replace it
-
😡 Your streaming UI stole my scroll
Plus design-system ownership, stale research panels, and the tiny defaults that make AI chats annoying.
-
🦄 14 years of responsive image pain, fixed
Plus mouth coding, AI-approved PRs, and voice AI beyond the demo.
-
🦄 Prototype to learn, build when it matters
Plus why friction is only half the conversion story.
-
🦄 You’re shipping vague buttons
The real blockers are trust, voice, and judgment. Not the quality of your outputs.
-
🦄 Craft skill won't make you influential. Neither will AI.
The real blockers are trust, voice, and judgment. Not the quality of your outputs.
-
🦄 4.7% more subscriptions from one checkout change
Site search is taxing users for your vocabulary, not theirs. Plus: genUI vs vibe coding.
-
🦄 The part of UI design anime figured out first
Check the emotional beat before writing error or confirmation copy. Plus: messy docs as a feature, and CSS random(), folded corners, anchored...
-
🧐 Fast code isn't the bottleneck anymore. Judgment is.
Service architecture before the UI, why AI won't fix your team, and what to write down before you ship.
-
⚖️ Design decisions need 5x more justification
Plus: a browser test that flags broken HTML for free, and two lines to write before any A/B test
-
🔶 CSS shapes have been a hack. This fixes it.
border-shape rewrites the box geometry: focus rings, shadows, and outlines all follow the new shape automatically.
-
🛠️ 200 Figma variables. Two seconds.
Plus: the enforcement layer design systems are missing, and a metric for research that actually ships.
-
🫣 The hidden danger of shipping fast
Features done, yet no-one knows they exist.
-
🔇 You’re breaking screen readers
Animated type can be read as fragments and ARIA fixes don’t reliably work.
-
🦄 Staging said “yes”. User tickets said no...
The missing step between “approved” and “shipped”: indicator + rollback note.
-
🦄 Users aren’t stuck, your errors are
Steal the diagnostics template: What happened, why, what to do, escalation line.
-
🏎️ Speed is cheap. Trust gaps cost months
Intent cards to pick the right AI surface, plus a one-page audit and risk-based QA.
-
🦄 Stop shipping “friendly” AI copy
Use our AI copy red-flags checklist, plus make limits and boundaries explicit.
-
🦄 A 45-minute jam to rescue one risky screen
Co-design an error state with options, then log Changed, Why, Watch in the doc.
-
🦄 Explainable AI is (often) misleading in chat UX
If users can’t spot limits or fake citations, your UI quietly amplifies errors.
-
🦄 Green checks ≠ good - Prevent costly UI mistakes
UI success cues don’t always mean success. See how one icon led thousands into a costly trap.
-
🦄 Build Trust with Visual Systems, Not Flash
See how team audit checklists and monotone palettes drive product quality.
-
🦄 Are Your UIs Too Flat for 2026?
Audit overlooked affordances, solve sticky CSS headaches, and prevent research breakage this week.
-
🦄 Make Better Design Calls - Fidelity, Trade-Offs & Impact
Move between hi/lo-fi, shape team decisions, and prove your work’s value.
What makes good digital products work.
A weekly read on the decisions, details, and trade-offs behind better product work.