Getting Kinetic
NO. 03 · AUGUST 18, 2026
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Hi— I spent an hour and a half with Patrick this morning talking about AI. Not what it does for us—what it lets us put in front of a client in week one, and whether the things we’ve always put in front of them still make sense. Fair warning: this isn’t really about AI. |
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A TENSION
Wireframes only exist(ed?) because look and feel was expensive.
For as long as I’ve been doing this, the answer to “how do we keep everyone from falling in love with the wrong idea?” was wireframes. Low fidelity, fast to change. That was true, but the reason underneath it was economic. Look and feel took time, and time cost real money, so you didn’t spend it until the flow was settled. That reason is gone. Slick look and feel is as easy as typing “make the look and feel more slick.” So do wireframes still have a place? I argue no, because your stakeholders no longer have to visualize something they can’t see. Use these tools to build full experiences that genuinely disagree with each other and ask the room to pick a side. One warning: make them disagree in an obvious, exaggerated way, so everyone can see the difference in strategy. |
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FROM THE WORK
All three are possible. All three can’t be the center of attention.
We’re in the middle of this right now with a technology education initiative deciding how to spend public funds on a new brochure site. Or is it a lightweight learning management system? Or a grant-supporting asset? The easy version is helping them land on a look, then dropping in the content they give us. The useful version is helping them say out loud why the thing exists. Speed was inevitable. It has never been the interesting part. The question we’re actually working on: what are they looking at while they decide. And how can AI help us build that? |
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PUT IT TO WORK
What is the room looking at while it decides?
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Told you it wasn’t really about AI. I’d love to know what you think of the email. Still too long? — JD and the Simple Focus gang |
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