AI has made building UI prototypes and flows really easy and… fast. But this speed introduces a practical bottleneck. Who ensure product and UX quality?

While you can prototype products in minutes, the last 10-15% product polish takes up a lot of time.

The next essential designer superpower is actually agentic audting, testing and fixing, as was recently demonstrated by a Bengaluru startup Kusho AI.

Instead of waiting for post-launch user complaints or manual QA cycles, forward-design teams are now using AI agents to actively stress-test and destroy their own work before it ships.

What if, instead of just handing off static Figma files, you put your interactive prototypes through an automated UX stress test?

Here is your Monday Morning Playbook to start breaking your own UX:

1. Record the critical path: Capture a key user journey - such as an UPI checkout or a complex subscription cancellation.
2. Put it to the AI agent: Ask Claude or Codex et al to simulate extreme user behaviors and hard to find edge cases (e.g., rapid double-clicking “submit”, mid-transaction network drops, or sudden page refreshes).
3. Classify your findings: Identify if the break is a system-level bug (Engineering) or a confusing visual loophole (UX).
4. Update design acceptance criteria: Feed these automated insights directly back into Figma before developer handoff.

By turning AI from a passive co-designer into an adversarial attacker, you protect your user journey before writing a single line of production code. Are you ready to let an AI agent break your prototype, or would you rather let your real users do it?

Sources & Citations

• Kusho AI Official Platform

• Reddit: I built a tool to Audit my Design

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9800+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #124 Results

👉🏻 Product: Google Fit

Context: Redesign the home screen to make it more informative and actionable

View Top Designs

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• Senior UX Designer at MakeMyTrip | Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

• UX Designer, Google Maps at Google | Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

View Design Jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Senior Product Manager at Microsoft | Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

• Product Manager at PhonePe | Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

View Product Jobs

⛏️ Tools & Resources

✅ For Your Learning & Productivity

• UXHack Eldorado - Get access to our repository of 50+ Case Studies on Notion, Figma, Zomato, Netflix etc. Read up 500+ Solutions submitted by PMs & Designers from Gojek, Disney+Hotstar, Meesho, JusPay and more

  

  Explore Now

When news broke that the Lok Sabha passed the Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, panic spread that the beloved free UPI era was over.

The government quickly clarified that everyday citizens won’t pay a paisa, but a nominal Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) is coming for high-value merchant payments Indian Express. Far from being a buzzkill, this is actually a massive catalyst for UX innovation.

For years, zero-fee UPI left banks and third-party apps with no direct way to monetize payments. This lack of incentive is why traditional banking apps lagged behind. In fact, SBI Chairman C.S. Setty recently admitted that the bank “missed the payments bus” Business Standard.

However, with the new MDR, SBI stands to gain a windfall of ₹3,000 crore annually Moneycontrol. With serious money on the line, banks will finally have the commercial incentive to ditch their clunky, painful interfaces and invest in sleek, modern payment UX.

For third-party giants like PhonePe, this monetization shift is a game-changer. Instead of bombarding users with aggressive cross-selling—shoving loans, insurance, and useless scratch cards down our throats just to keep the lights on—they can focus on clean, user-centric interfaces.

Here’s a quick look at UPI in numbers as it continues to flourish:

When a product has a sustainable business model, user experience becomes the differentiator rather than an afterthought. For product managers and designers, this structural shift means a heavy influx of innovation, product redesigns, and most importantly new job opportunities in the payment space.

Sometimes, the best thing that can happen to a design system is a sustainable business model.

Do you think a cleaner, ad-free payment interface is worth a nominal fee for merchants, or will this stifle digital adoption? Let us know!

Sources & Citations:

• Indian Express: UPI free for citizens, merchants may face ‘nominal’ fee

• Business Standard: We have definitely missed the payments bus, says SBI Chairman Setty

• Moneycontrol: SBI could earn a windfall of around Rs 3,000 crore from UPI MDR

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9800+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #122 Results

👉🏻 Product: Sarvam AI

Context: Redesign this screen to make it simpler and more intuitive.

View Top Designs

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• Senior Product Designer at Expedia Group | Gurugram

• Product Design Manager at Meesho | Bengaluru

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Product Manager - Web Trading at INDmoney | Gurugram

• Principal Product Manager at Atlassian | Bengaluru

View more Product jobs

⛏️ Tools & Resources

✅ For Your Learning & Productivity

• UXHack Eldorado - Get access to our repository of 50+ Case Studies on Notion, Figma, Zomato, Netflix etc. Read up 500+ Solutions submitted by PMs & Designers from Gojek, Disney+Hotstar, Meesho, JusPay and more

  

  Explore Now

Are you still spending hours in Figma, neatly refining a prototype only to have engineering tell you: “Sorry! We can’t build that flow”. We’ve been there!

The traditional design-to-development workflow is undergoing a massive paradigm shift. The tedious loop of Figma ➔ Debate ➔ Figma ➔ Code* is rapidly giving way to: *Prompt ➔ 10 Code Prototypes ➔ Refine ➔ Ship.

We are entering the era of agentic UI prototyping. Instead of static mockups, designers and PMs are using AI agents to turn natural language into high-fidelity, functional code instantly.

Anthropic’s Claude Code is leading this charge for UX prototyping. Even Apple has embraced this shift, showcasing how Xcode’s coding agents can prototype complex SwiftUI screens in real-time Xcode Prototyping.

By leveraging these agentic systems, you bypass the static canvas. You can prompt an AI agent to generate 5 distinct, interactive code prototypes, pick the best direction, and tweak the UI on the fly. Because the prototype is already built in real code, handoff friction entirely evaporates.

Here are just a few of the benefits:

• Explore faster: Generate multiple design directions in minutes instead of days.

• Test, don’t just review: Validate ideas with interactive prototypes instead of static mockups.

• Reduce handoff friction: Engineers work from real code rather than interpreting design files.

• Iterate quickly: Refine layouts, flows, and interactions through prompts instead of rebuilding screens.

• Catch issues early: Surface UX and technical constraints before development begins.

• Broaden ownership: PMs and designers can build and share interactive prototypes without waiting on engineering.

• Speed up product decisions: Compare alternatives, gather feedback, and converge on the best approach faster.

• Focus on the problem: Spend less time producing mockups and more time improving the user experience.

Have you leveraged agents for these workflows? What’s been the experience like? Or are you still unsure on how to get started? Tell us: we’d love to hear what’s in your mind

Also, here’s a simple example of how one can leverage agents for rapid prototyping. Although the example is in Xcode, the same applies to almost any AI agenct tool. They also show how to properly structure your prompts:

Sources & Citations

• Apple Developer - Create UI prototypes using agents in Xcode

• Anthropic - Using Claude Design for prototypes and UX

• Prototyping in Figma using Agents

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9800+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #120 Results

👉🏻 Product: IRCTC

Context: Redesign the screen to clearly communicate the order status and the next steps.

View Top Solutions

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• UI UX Designer at Michelin | Pune

• Lead UX Designer at Salesforce | Bengaluru

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Product Manager at Warner Music Group | Bengaluru

• Associate Product Manager at Ralph Lauren | Bengaluru

View more Product jobs

⛏️ Tools & Resources

💼 Career Resources

• UXH CV Review - Get objective AI feedback tailored for Design & Product roles to land more interviews

  

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If you’ve been doom-scrolling lately, you probably saw the tech worker sentiment survey in Lenny’s Newsletter showing a workforce splitting in two: those amplified by AI, and those deeply shaken by it. Unsurprisingly, designers are among the most anxious about their professional identity.

But before you panic-apply for an MBA, look at the actual data. Figma’s State of the Designer 2026 and industry insights from David Pokorný on LinkedIn reveal that AI isn’t replacing designers—it’s replacing pixel-pushers.

A pixel-pusher is a designer who only focuses on how things look on the surface, rather than how they actually work.

The trend is clear: pure layout automation, and base screen creation is now standard. What generative UI lacks is what makes you an invaluable designer: Taste and real-world problem-solving. Taste isn’t magic; it’s built through curation, intense curiosity, and learning from failure.

If this existential question has been keeping you up, here is your playbook:

• Adopt, don’t avoid: Learn AI tools inside out. Understand their superpowers and their massive gaps.

• Never outsource your thinking: Use AI to generate 50 options (if you must), but remain the strategic curator.

• Double down on UX psychology: AI can’t map real human frustration or business strategy; you can.

• Build in public, showcase: Show your messy builds in public, get real feedback from real humans by posting across socials, communities (for starters you can drop you work in our AI focussed showcase group on Whatsapp)

Are you going to let AI shrink your role, or are you going to use it to amplify your impact?

P.S. Dealing with “Founder AI Psychosis”:
Lately, some founders have caught a bug—the delusion that a single prompt can replace a whole product design team. If your leadership is suffering from this, don’t rage-quit just yet.

First, have an honest chat. Visually show them the messy reality: where AI-generated UX breaks, the lack of edge-case handling, and its complete absence of user empathy. Try to educate them, but if they remain stubbornly blinded by the hype? It’s time to quietly polish your portfolio and explore other options.

Sources & Citations:

• Lenny’s Newsletter: How tech workers are feeling in 2026: a workforce splitting in two

• Figma State of the Designer 2026

• David Pokorný on LinkedIn: Will AI replace designers in 2026? The data says no

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9800+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #119 Results

👉🏻 Product: Airtel Xstream

Context: Redesign the home screen to make the app’s wide content selection easier to discover.

View Top Solutions

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• Lead Product Designer - Web at Physicswallah | Bengaluru

• Lead Designer at Zeta | Bengaluru

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Sr. Product Manager - AI Quality at Uber | Bengaluru

• Product Manager - Google Cloud at Google | Bengaluru

View more Product jobs

⛏️ Tools & Resources

💼 Career Resources

• UXH Portfolio Review - Get AI-Powered Feedback on Your Design Portfolio in minutes.

  

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Remember when prompting was just about typing increasingly desperate paragraphs to Claude?

Last October, Anthropic introduced Agent Skills - modular, filesystem-based “reusable expertise” that transforms general-purpose models into specialized powerhouses.

Instead of drowning Claude’s context window with a massive prompt every turn, skills use progressive disclosure. Claude only fetches the full instructions when it recognizes a task actually needs them.

For product designers and PMs, this is a massive paradigm shift. It means we can stop focusing on prompt engineering syntax and start encoding our design systems, brand guidelines, and UX heuristics. By creating a simple `.md` file, you are essentially building custom design plug-ins.

Whether you are designing for global enterprises, SaaS startups or fast-growing tech platforms, here are three repeat use cases you can automate today using agent skills from resources like Patterns.dev, skills.sh and AI UX Playground:

1. Frontend Design Skill: Instructing Claude to avoid generic fonts and apply distinct typographic pairings and tokenized color systems.
2. Figma-to-Code Translations: Pulling direct Figma variables and tokens into functional, interactive prototypes.
3. UX Copywriting & Audits: Running automated heuristic critiques or brand-voice copy generation across your UI.

Once a workflow runs successfully, have Claude package it as a skill using a “Skill Creator” agent to repeat it flawlessly. Want to see this in action? Check out this excellent explainer video on using Claude Skills as a designer.

Have you tried Agent Skills for product design? How has the experience been? Tell us, we’d love to know. Also drop by our Whatsapp discussion on this (join 2K+ other UXHackers, it’s free)

Btw the best part is that skills are interoperable: so dont need to have Claude only to use them

Sources & Citations:

• Anthropic Agent Skills Engineering Blog: Anthropic

• AI Skills Catalog: Patterns.dev

• UX Reference Tool: AI UX Playground

• Explainer: How to Use Claude Skills as a Designer (YouTube)

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9800+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #118 Results

👉🏻 Product: WhatsApp

Context: Improve the design of the subscription plan page, which highlights the various features.

View Top Solutions

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• Sr. Product Designer at HSBC | Pune

• Lead Product Designer at Freshworks | Bengaluru

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Product Manager - Growth at Meesho | Bengaluru

• Sr. AI Product Manager at IDFC FIRST Bank | Mumbai

View more Product jobs

⛏️ Tools & Resources

✅ For Your Learning & Productivity

• UXHack Eldorado - Get access to our repository of 50+ Case Studies on Notion, Figma, Zomato, Netflix etc. Read up 500+ Solutions submitted by PMs & Designers from Gojek, Disney+Hotstar, Meesho, JusPay and more

  

  Explore Now

Remember when people said Figma was losing its edge after the Adobe merger collapsed? Well, Config 2026 just proved that Figma isn’t just alive—it’s coming for Adobe’s lunch.

With the launch of Figma Motion last week, we finally have native, timeline-based animation, keyframes, and Dev Mode exports right inside our design files. For years, motion design in Figma was an absolute nightmare, forcing us into tedious workarounds or clunky third-party handoffs.

But let’s face it: modern design is no longer just static UI. Whether you are shipping features at Indian giants like Razorpay, optimizing checkout flows at Meesho, or building global SaaS products, motion is now the ultimate differentiator. It’s micro-interactions, spring physics, and dynamic transitions.

By natively integrating motion, Figma is drastically expanding its addressable market—directly threatening tools like Adobe After Effects and Lottie.

Early feedback has been incredibly positive, with the design community praising the fluid performance and time-saving features in early community reviews and YouTube crash courses.

From our Whatsapp community (join in if you haven’t already)

Is it perfect? Not yet. As a brand-new beta, there are plenty of rough edges. Designers on Reddit and the Figma Forum have already pointed out key usability gaps, reminding us of why motion design used to be a Figma nightmare.

But the “Figma is dead” narrative can officially be laid to rest. The real question is: Can Adobe respond, or will AE become a legacy tool for product designers?

What do you think—will you be ditching After Effects for your next UI animation?

Here is the detailed walkthrough video from Config on the launch:

Sources & Citations:
* Figma Motion Official
* Reddit: Thoughts on Figma Motion
* Kompozy Figma Reviews
* Figma Forum: Motion Usability Feedback
* Reddit: Why Figma was a Nightmare for Motion

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9800+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #117 Results

👉🏻 Product: Instagram

Context: Redesign this screen to help users find relevant content more quickly and easily.

View Top Solutions

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• Product Designer - Web at INDmoney | Bengaluru

• Sr Product Designer, Firefly Enterprise at Adobe | Noida

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Group Product Manager, Play Games Features at Google | Bengaluru

• Product Management — Associate Product Manager — Travel at One97 Communications Limited | Gurugram

View more Product jobs

⛏️ Tools & Resources

💼 Career Resources

• UXH CV Review - Get objective AI feedback tailored for Design & Product roles to land more interviews

  

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Have you noticed your favorite apps making weird, anti-user design choices lately? It’s not a bug - it’s “Pre-IPO Theatre.”

Take PhonePe’s inactivity fee, a quarterly charge levied on wallets dormant for 365 days. Squeezing inactive users to clean up dormant accounts and artificially inflate ARPU is a classic pre-valuation tactic. But does it build long-term trust?

Meanwhile, Razorpay is riding the AI wave with its new Agentic Dashboard, letting merchants “talk to their data” using AI. It sounds futuristic, but ask any designer: do busy merchants really want to type complex prompts to check simple payout records, or do they just want a clean, lightning-fast dashboard? Often, conversational UI is designed to impress VCs rather than solve actual user friction.

Even Jio Platforms is playing the vanity game, celebrating its entry into the global top 20 WIPO patent rankings for “AI-native networks.” Great for pitch slides, but does it translate to reliable daily network connectivity?

This isn’t just an Indian trend. Globally, the massive hype surrounding the SpaceX IPO has been fueled by narrative optimization and valuation hype. When builders design for investor slides instead of actual user flows, products lose their soul.

Are we designing for the people who use the product, or the people who fund the runway? How do we push back against Pre-IPO Theatre?

Sources & Citations

• PhonePe Inactivity Fee - Economic Times

• Razorpay Agentic Dashboard - Razorpay Blog

• Jio Platforms WIPO Patents - Telecom ET

• SpaceX IPO Analysis - IndMoney

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9800+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #116 Results

👉🏻 Product: Razorpay

Context: Reimagine this dashboard to better serve business owners while making meaningful use of AI capabilities.

View Top Solutions

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• UX Designer at ixigo | India

• Senior UX Designer at Amazon | India

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Product Manager at Tata 1mg | India

• Product Manager at Krafton India | Bengaluru

View more Product jobs

⛏️ Tools & Resources

💼 Career Resources

• UXH Portfolio Review - Get AI-Powered Feedback on Your Design Portfolio in minutes.

  

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  ---

Imagine building your entire product roadmap on the world’s most advanced AI model, only for it to vanish overnight. That nightmare became a reality when a US export-control directive forced Anthropic to abruptly disable Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 globally, just three days post-launch.

This sudden cutoff has reignited a fierce discussion on India’s Sovereign AI strategy. Tech leaders are sounding the alarm on the risk of relying entirely on foreign AI infrastructure. But let’s be real: products don’t get built over Twitter talks.

While grand visions of building a homegrown frontier LLM make for great social media engagement, the ground reality of execution is incredibly complex. Training foundation models from scratch requires astronomical compute power, deep capital, and highly specialized talent.

Just look at Ola’s Krutrim AI, whose consumer assistant Kruti recently went offline, highlighting the massive operational hurdles of maintaining stable models. Instead of chasing vanity metrics, should Indian teams focus on open-source foundations or specialized middleware?

Pragmatic players like Sarvam AI are showing the way by building voice-first models tailored for local context instead of competing on brute-force scale.

India has also just launched Varya, an open-source, government-backed AI video model that is 20 times cheaper than global rivals. It generates culturally accurate, high-definition Indian-themed videos in just 45 seconds using a highly efficient 4-step distillation process.

This is the kind of frugal, practical innovation that India thrives on.

For PMs and designers, this episode is a massive lesson in dependency mapping. If your core UX depends entirely on a third-party API that can be yanked away by a foreign regulator, you aren’t building a resilient product - you are building a house of cards.

How are you designing your UX to handle AI service fallbacks?

Sources & Citations:

• TechCrunch: Anthropic Safety Warnings Backfired

• Moneycontrol: US order fuels India’s sovereign AI debate

• Entrackr: Ola’s Krutrim assistant Kruti offline

• Krutrim AI Labs Official Website

• Sarvam AI Official Website

• Cheaper, faster, and culturally aware, Avataar’s video AI is built for India’s scale

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9900+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #116

👉🏻 Product: Razorpay

Context: Reimagine this dashboard to better serve business owners while making meaningful use of AI capabilities.

View Challenge

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• UI/UX Designer at Salesforce | Bengaluru

• UX Designer at Google | Bengaluru

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Group Product Manager at Harvey | Bengaluru

• Manager-Digital Product Management at American Express | Bengaluru

View more Product jobs

⛏️ Tools & Resources

✅For Your Learning & Productivity

• UXHack Eldorado - Get access to our repository of 50+ Case Studies on Notion, Figma, Zomato, Netflix etc. Read up 500+ Solutions submitted by PMs & Designers from Gojek, Disney+Hotstar, Meesho, JusPay and more

  

  Explore Now

How many times has design been declared ‘dead’ on X this year? According to a cheeky Figma post, the counter is already at 847 and counting. Every time a new generative tool or agentic AI drops, tech influencers scream that designers are obsolete.

But let us look at the actual data.

A recent Financial Times article highlights a bizarre paradox: agentic AI and coding assistants have triggered an absolute boom in mobile app releases, yet actual user downloads and retention remain completely flat, mirroring overall global mobile app trends.

Why? Because shipping code is no longer the bottleneck - building something people actually give a damn about is. When anyone can prompt a functional app into existence in 30 seconds, the market gets flooded with generic, low-effort junk.

These AI-generated products fail because they lack the core of what Figma reminds us design actually is: experience.

Design is not about drawing pretty buttons; it is about human psychology, problem definition, and crafting an intuitive journey that triggers retention. As the cost of creation drops to zero, the value of curation, taste, and user empathy skyrockets.

AI can generate 10,000 layouts, but it takes a human designer to figure out which one is worth building. We have officially transitioned from the ‘pixel-pushing’ era to the ‘era of taste.’

So, is design dead? Far from it.

Are you using AI to skip wireframing and focus purely on user experience, or is the flood of generic AI products making you rethink your design stack?

PS: Figma is actually riding this anti-wave. It’s released a limited edition cap with the phrase: ‘Design is Dead’. Cheeky.

Sources & Citations:

• Figma Post

• Financial Times Article

• Reddit: vibe coding: lots of mediocre new apps with few users

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9900+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #115 Results

👉🏻 Product: Dr Lal PathLabs

Context: Improve this screen, which displays a catalogue of individual tests and health packages across categories such as Allergy, Diabetes, Fever, and more.

View Top Designs

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• UX Design II-SUPPORT SERVICES-CTO Head at Kotak Mahindra Bank | Bengaluru

• Software Engineer II - UX Designer at JPMorganChase | Bengaluru

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Operations Manager (Product) at Revolut | India

• Product Manager at Oracle | Hyderabad

View more Product jobs

⛏️ Tools & Resources

💼 Career Resources

• UXH CV Review - Get objective AI feedback tailored for Design & Product roles to land more interviews

  

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What happens when a 19-year-old hacks your nationwide exam platform? You land a massive PR nightmare.

Ethical hacker Nisarga Adhikary recently exposed severe security vulnerabilities in CBSE’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) portal in a detailed blog post, finding hardcoded passwords and easily bypassed OTPs.

While CBSE rushed to deploy government cybersecurity teams to patch the leaks, as reported by LiveMint, the root cause isn’t just bad code - it’s archaic UX.

CBSE’s internal portals are notoriously painful to navigate. When software is frustrating, training older teachers to evaluate millions of digital exam sheets becomes an uphill battle.

To bypass this usability friction, developers often take lazy shortcuts - like client-side validation - just to make things “work quickly,” compromising security by design.

Ironically, the Indian government already has a cure: UX4G, a unified design system by NeGD and MeitY built to bring consistent, secure, and accessible UI to public digital services. Had CBSE built its systems on top of UX4G, standard security protocols and usability guidelines would have been baked in by default, preventing freshman-level development oversights.

How can we convince slow-moving public institutions to adopt modern design systems like UX4G before an external hack forces their hand?

Sources & Citations:

• BBC: CBSE OSM Controversy

• Nisarga’s Blog: Hacking CBSE

• LiveMint: CBSE OnMark Portal Vulnerability

• UX4G Official Portal

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9900+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #114 Results

👉🏻 Product: Google

Context: Improve this home screen design to better reflect the changes Google has made to the search experience.

View Top Solutions

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• Lead UX Designer at Morningstar | Mumbai

• Senior UX Designer at Google | Hyderabad

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Senior AI Product Manager at LeadSquared | Bengaluru

• Senior Product Manager at Microsoft | India

View more Product jobs

⛏️ Tools & Resources

💼 Career Resources

• UXH Portfolio Review - Get AI-Powered Feedback on Your Design Portfolio in minutes.

  

  Review Your Portfolio For Free

Remember when AI design meant typing “make a SaaS dashboard” into a sidebar chatbot, only to copy-paste messy, unusable pixels?

Figma is trying to change that. With the newly announced Figma Canvas AI Agent, AI is attempting to graduate from a backseat advisor to a co-designer sitting right beside you on the canvas.

But let’s hold the hype train for a second - it’s only just launched in limited beta.

According to the Figma Blog, the vision is massive. Instead of static outputs, you can theoretically summon parallel agents to handle grunt work:

• one churning out layout variations,

• another converting screens to dark mode,

• or bulk-renaming messy variables.

Crucially, Figma promises the agent will read your active design system directly to avoid generic, hallucinated UI.

On paper, it’s a designer’s dream. In practice? The reality of “agentic UI” is bound to be a bit messy.

If your files are currently a graveyard of untamed layers and unlinked components, this AI will likely just magnify your mess at 10x speed. Teams will need to transition to ultra-rigid, tokenized design systems so the agent actually knows what to grab. Even for developers, integrations like the new Figma MCP Server suggest a seamless canvas-to-code bridge, but we all know how translation layers behave in the wild.

The beta waitlist is open, and while “multiplayer AI” sounds futuristic, we are still in the absolute earliest days of this transition.

Will these agents actually make us 10x more productive, or are we just beta-testing tools that will overcomplicate our design systems? Are you signing up, or waiting for the dust to settle?

Check out the demo/launch video on Youtube: Interestingly most of the comments are not positive. Designers feel this is less for them, and more for PMs

Sources & Citations

• Figma Blog: The Figma Agent

• Figma Agents Beta Waitlist

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9900+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #113 Results

👉🏻 Product: Skyscanner

Context: Simplify this screen to reduce cognitive load, especially for first time users.

View Top Solutions

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• UX Researcher, Games at Google | Bengaluru

• Lead UX Designer at Glance | Bengaluru

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Product Design Manager at Amazon | India

• Associate Product Manager at Navi | Bengaluru

View more Product jobs

⛏️ Tools & Resources

✅ For Your Learning & Productivity

• UXHack Eldorado - Get access to our repository of 50+ Case Studies on Notion, Figma, Zomato, Netflix etc. Read up 500+ Solutions submitted by PMs & Designers from Gojek, Disney+Hotstar, Meesho, JusPay and more

  

  Explore Now

Stop typing. Start pointing. For over fifty years, your mouse cursor has been a silent observer, doing little more than clicking ‘Accept Cookies.’ But Google DeepMind’s AI Pointer is about to kill the ‘AI detour’- that annoying dance where you leave your app to copy-paste text into a chatbot.

Powered by Gemini, this research shifts the focus from verbose text prompts to deictic language: the ability to understand ‘this’ and ‘that’ based on where you point. Point at a complex table and say ‘Summarize this,’ and the AI just knows.

For the Indian tech ecosystem, this is a massive UX unlock. Imagine a Meesho seller or a Zomato restaurant partner navigating a complex data dashboard. Instead of wrestling with tech jargon, they can point at a fulfillment error and ask, ‘How do I fix this?’ in their native tongue. It bridges the digital literacy gap by replacing ‘prompt engineering’ with natural human gestures. As we enter the ‘Agentic UX’ era, the challenge for designers shifts.

We aren’t just building click-targets; we are building ‘pointable’ entities that an AI agent can perceive. If your interface becomes a canvas for an AI to ‘see’ and ‘act’ upon, how does your layout change? Are you still designing for human clicks, or for AI eyes?

Sources & Citations:

• Shaping the future of AI interaction by reimagining the mouse pointer - Google DeepMind

• Google DeepMind Reimagines Mouse Pointer with AI-Powered Context Understanding - The Rift

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9900+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #112 Results

👉🏻 Product: Notion

Context: Improve the in-app search experience.

View Top Solutions

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• UX Design Manager, Amazon Music Design at Amazon | Bengaluru

• UX Designer at Google | Hyderabad

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Senior Product Manager at MongoDB | Gurugram

• Lead Product Manager at Mastercard | Pune

View more Product jobs

⛏️ Tools & Resources

💼Career Resources

• UXH CV Review - Get objective AI feedback tailored for Design & Product roles to land more interviews

  

  Review Your CV For Free

Markdown was supposed to be the final boss of documentation - clean, portable, and AI-friendly. But as models evolve, our favorite syntax is hitting a ceiling.

Thariq Shihipar from the Claude Code team at Anthropic recently sparked a massive debate by claiming he’s ditching Markdown for HTML. His argument? The “Unreasonable Effectiveness of HTML” for AI agents.

Markdown is a lightweight, easy-to-read, and easy-to-write plain text formatting syntax created in 2004 by John Gruber. It allows users to create formatted text -such as bolding, headers, and lists- using simple symbols, which are then converted into structured HTML for web display

As AI outputs shift from simple snippets to complex product specs, the ‘wall of text’ in Markdown is becoming a cognitive nightmare. For creators and builder, scanning a 200-line Markdown file is a productivity killer.

HTML, however, allows AI to generate interactive artifacts - think color-coded diffs, tabs for different user flows, and inline SVG diagrams that actually render. We are shifting from being ‘manual writers’ to ‘digital directors,’ and HTML provides the visual density we need to review AI-generated work in seconds.

While critics point to higher token costs and version control issues, the UX wins are hard to ignore. If an agent can give you a mini-dashboard instead of a bulleted list, wouldn’t you take it?

The future of AI interaction might not be a chat bubble, but a fully rendered interface delivered in real-time. Are we ready to trade token efficiency for better information design, or is HTML just too ‘bloated’ for a text-based future?

Sources & Citations:

• Thariq Shihipar (@trq212) on X: Original Post on HTML Effectiveness

• Simon Willison’s Weblog: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of HTML for AI

• What is markdown?

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9900+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #111 Results

👉🏻 Product: IDFC First Bank

Simplify this screen to reduce cognitive load and prioritise elements that matter to a user.

View Top Solutions

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• UX Designer at Zensar Technologies | Pune

• UX Visual Designer at London Stock Exchange Group | India

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Product Manager at Jobgether | India

• Product Manager at JPMorganChase | Hyderabad

View more Product jobs

⛏️ Tools & Resources

💼Career Resources

• UXH Portfolio Review - Get AI-Powered Feedback on Your Design Portfolio in minutes.

  

  Review Your Portfolio For Free

Nagpur and Delhi aren’t just hot; they’re melting. As the India Air Cooler Market hits record highs, the UX of our favorite apps is shifting from ‘speed at any cost’ to ‘safety at all costs.’ We are witnessing the birth of ‘Heatwave UX.’

Zomato recently sparked a massive debate by asking customers to avoid ordering during peak afternoon heat to protect delivery partners. This is a fascinating pivot in UX ethics - deliberately adding friction to the user journey to prioritize human welfare.

Meanwhile, platforms like Swiggy and Zepto are integrating real-time weather alerts and rest-point locators for their fleets. The interface is no longer just about tracking a package; it’s about acknowledging the physical reality of the person carrying it.

Designing for 50°C means moving beyond aesthetic dark modes. It requires dynamic UI that triggers ‘Empathy Prompts’ - reminding users to offer a glass of water or justifying longer delivery times through heat-impact transparency.

The challenge for PMs and designer: How do you balance the business need for GMV with the ethical need for partner safety when the mercury hits 50°C? Is it time for a mandatory ‘Climate Surcharge’ that goes 100% to the partner?

How should apps handle the ethics of surge pricing when ordering is a luxury but delivering is a survival risk?

Sources and Citations

• Gig workers struggle in Delhi heat - The Hindu

• Zomato’s Rest Stations - Zomato Blog

• Swiggy and Zomato Heatwave Initiatives - Outlook Business

• Zomato’s Cooling Vests - NewsMobile

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9500+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #109 Results

👉🏻 Product: Youtube

Context: Improve YT Music subscription screen to better communicate the benefits of upgrading. Consider adding better nudges, tags, to encourage users to purchase a plan.

View Winners

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• UX Designer at Expedia Group | Gurgaon

• Lead UX Writer at Airbnb | Remote

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Associate Product Manager at NielsenIQ | Chennai

• Associate Director, Product Management at Housing.com | Gurugram

View more Product jobs

⛏️ Tools & Resources

✅For Your Learning & Productivity

• UXHack Eldorado - Get access to our repository of 50+ Case Studies on Notion, Figma, Zomato, Netflix etc. Read up 500+ Solutions submitted by PMs & Designers from Gojek, Disney+Hotstar, Meesho, JusPay and more

  

  Explore Now

• Our top Mixology reads of the year,

• The most engaging UXHack challenges,

• What we launched in 2025, and

• A short note on what we’re building for launch in early 2026

🏆 Top Reads of 2025 (Most Viewed)

Based on views across all Mixology editions published in 2025, here are the Top 5 most-read posts:

Interestingly 4 of the top 5 are based on AI and the other one on Financial Fraud at a Startup

1. Microsoft: Dragon NaturallySpeaking: A Dragon, some Momentum and a GenAI extension | Mixology 53

2. Vibe Designing: We talk about vibe... designing, Boat’s design and earphones | Mixology 66

3. Gen AI: Hype, Bubble or a Shift: We talk about AI, AI and AI | Mixology 52

4. Blusmart: Risk hai par Ishq nahi hai :A ‘Blu’ scam, Whatsapp Communities and we spot Tigers | Mixology 57

5. Google is Cooking: Google’s Mojo, Zerodha’s Calendar and Running | Mixology 63

🧠 Top UXHack Challenges of 2025

Based on engagement, here are the Top 3 UXHack challenges from 2025:

1. District: Improve Zomato District Design
   District was an acquisition (from Paytm) so there was a lot interest in it (new?) design. Most viewed challenge of the year!
   

2. Blusmart: Improve booking screen
   This challenge came out BEFORE Blusmart went bust! So clearly a lot of people liked it already

3. Atomberg: Improve warranty registration form
   Likely got a lot of traction given it a D2C Indian brand AND the Atomberg’s founder liked our post on this challenge
   

These challenges best represent what UXHack is about: real problems, diverse solutions, and learning by doing

Interestingly all 3 are (or atleast 2 are, 1 was) Indian brands and products: Contrary to our thinking and maybe bias that designers like working on globally known products more

🚀 What We Launched at UXHack in 2025

Here’s a quick roundup of everything we shipped this year across the platform and community.

🖥️ Website & Platform

• Feedback on Submission using Gen AI: Get feedback on your submission if you entered or explore feedback using one sample submission.

• Portfolio Review: Get AI-Powered Feedback on Your Design Portfolio.

• CV Review: Instantly Boost Your CV with AI.

• New UXH Dashboard: A new UXHack platform with simpler login, a unified dashboard, and improved profiles and more coming soon (early Beta)

📱Videos

Though limited (only 4), we will be posting a lot more in 2026. The workflows are all set…

UXH Demodays: a new series where Nishith and Akshay walkthrough products, features, tools they have build recently for themselves, UXH Community and client

Weekend Hackathon Discussion: A new format for two challenges, but you can check the whole playlist, covering almost 25-30 products

While here do follow us on Instagram for short form content, which you will see more of soon.

🌎 Community

We also launched a small sister community focussed on GenAI called AIXchange on Whatsapp. You can join in here

🔮 What We’re Building Towards in 2026

As we head into 2026, our focus is on going deeper, not just more.

Some of the things we’re actively building and exploring:

• Showcase: Top UXHack designers present how they created their winning submissions

• GenAI Hackathons: Short challenges focussed on solving creative use cases with prompts

• UXHack Memberships: deeper access, learning resources, feedback, and community value

More details soon but the intent stays the same: help Product & UX folks learn faster, build better, and grow together.

❤️ Closing Note

It’s been quite a year, 2025! And it’s been fun documenting it and sharing it with you. Thank you so much for reading Mixology.

As always, we’ll see you very soon in the next edition, next year!

Wish you a splendid 2026… This is Pushpanjali, Nishith and Akshay, signing off for 2025! 🎉🥳

Adios!
Team UXHack

Major online platforms now say that they are ‘dark pattern’ free. Is it really so… we take a look

🌏 Product & Design News:

Dark Patters are Gone, Apparently

Over the last few weeks, 26 major platforms from e-commerce to quick commerce told the CCPA they’re now dark-pattern free.

It sounds like progress.

But the filings reveal something else:

Compliance today is based on self-declaration, not verification.

Self-Certified Clean, But… How?

There was:

• no standard audit checklist

• no required format

• no minimum evidence

• no third-party validation

So every company defined its own process and passed its own audit.

This verbiage alone tells the story, many statements are short, vague or purely declarative rather than demonstrative.

Quick check: What are dark patterns? These are deceptive patterns in UI and UX, intentionally placed to mislead, trick or deceive users.

The term was coined by Harry Brignull on 28 July 2010. He registered the site darkpatterns.org (now rename Deceptive Patterns)

Reality Check: Users Still See Dark Patterns

A LocalCircles study found ~97% of platforms still deploy at least one dark pattern - hidden charges, timers, forced add-ons, drip pricing and more.

So while filings say “clean,” user experience says “not quite.”

The Bigger Issue: A Regulatory Loophole

Only 18 of the 26 declarations are public, and none include methodology or proof.

Without mandatory transparency or independent testing, regulation risks becoming symbolic, not protective.

The Bottom Line

A “dark-pattern free” badge shouldn’t be a marketing line, it should be measurable, reviewable, and verifiable.

Right now, it’s mostly a promise.

And until the system demands proof over paperwork, compliance will continue to look better on PDFs than it does in practice.

🗞 Related 👉

• CCPA Publishes Dark Pattern Self-Audits Of 18 E-Commerce And Quick Commerce Platforms

• Dark Patterns and weak remedies: Why the CCPA Advisory falls short

• What The Dark Pattern Filings That CCPA Got Reveal About Gaps in India’s Consumer-Protection Framework

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9500+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #94 Results

👉🏻 Product: Google Classroom

Context: Improve this screen to make it easier for students to locate their to-do lists, action items, and important information from their respective classrooms.

View Featured Designs

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• Associate Director – UX Design at Incedo Inc. | Gurugram

• Product Designer at Global Matrix Solution | Meerut

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Product Experience Specialist at GlobalLogic | Noida

• Director - Product Management at Spyne | Gurugram

View more Product jobs

We also recently launched a Social Job feed. Check it out here

⛏️ UXH Demodays

In this episode of Demodays, we take a look at how we leverage GenAI to handle large volumes of Figma comments and then organise them. Tools used: Cursor, Llama, Groq and ofcourse Figma

View full episode

🖥️ From Founders’ Desk:

Akshay Discovers a new Co-working Space: IKEA

I know: IKEA is NOT a coworking space. But when I went to the one in Navi Mumbai I saw something totally different. The place was mostly empty, being mid-week, but a section of the ‘restaurant’ was buzzing.

With food lovers? Nope. With people working on their laptops. And then I figured this may be the best Co-working space one can have.

Coffee, unlimited, comes in at Rs 90. Ambience is great, no one disturbs you. Washrooms are super clean, as expected. It’s very safe and there is lots and lots and lots of space.

So, for all likes and purposes, this was like a co-working space/coffee shop. Also, given its proximity to the local station, getting there is not a hassle either.

Just wish IKEA had free Wifi, but that’s ok

PS: the shots were taking at night, once everyone left, just before closing

And that is it for this the 80th Edition of Mixology!

Hejda, as they would say. Until next time….

We have been busy at UXHack with video shoots, AI use cases and upcoming launches. But equally, with trying out the latest Google AI model: Gemini 3

We take a look at what it means for designers and PMs…

🌏 Product & Design News:

Google is now Serving

A few months ago, in “Google Is Cooking,” we said Google was quietly building the foundations of an AI-first creation platform. With Gemini 3, that picture is much clearer.

What’s new?

Google launched Gemini 3 Pro, calling it their “most intelligent model yet,” with big jumps in reasoning, multimodality and agentic workflows.

Two things stand out for design/product folks:

Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image): studio-quality image generation + editing, accurate text, multi-image referencing; basically instant mockups, posters, UI visuals, brand assets.

Antigravity: Google’s new “agent-first” IDE where Gemini agents plan, write, test and run code across editor + terminal + browser. Natural language becomes the new syntax.

Google’s broader pitch: “vibe-coding”, where an app, interface or asset can be created from a description, not a canvas or IDE.

Why should designers/product teams care?

• Creation becomes faster: screens, visuals, prototypes generated in minutes.

• Your value shifts: less pixel-pushing, more flows, systems, brand, insight

• More people can now produce “design-like” output, so differentiation matters

• Rapid prototyping: It’s way easier, and faster to create prototypes, concepts, before going all in

But quality still needs humans: accessibility, UX logic, brand identity aren’t automated.

The real impact

Gemini 3 is probably one of the most significant moments for AI, this year, after DeepSeek, and the markets reflect that.

Post its launch, Google’s valuation jumped, pushing its Co-Founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, to the top 3 amongst richest people in the world (on back of holding Google stocks)

More importantly:

• Nvidia released a note saying something to the tune of: yes, we see you Google and your TPUs/chips, and we are still the best (very odd post)

• Sam Altman at Open AI declared code red, as ChatGPT MAUs started dropping, with a corresponding in Gemini, post launch

Read more 👉

5 things to try with Gemini 3 Pro

Google launches Gemini 3 with new coding app

🗞More news

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9500+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #91 Results

👉🏻 Product: Scripbox

Context: Improve this screen to make it more intuitive for a user to understand different types of financial strategies, forecasted gains, and more.

Checkout Top Solutions

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• Senior UI UX Designer at BigStep Technologies | Gurugram

• Senior UI UX Designer at Salesforce| Hyderabad

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Director of Product at Quess Corp Limited | Bengaluru

• Product Manager at Lowes | Bengaluru

View more Product jobs

We also recently launched a Social Job feed. Check it out here

⛏️ Tools & Resources

💼Career Resources

• UXH CV Review - Get objective AI feedback tailored for Design & Product roles to land more interviews

  

  Review Your CV For Free

🖥️ From Founders’ Desk:

Nishith and Akshay present Demodays

So last week, Nishith and me started a new series called UXH Demodays. This will be a series where each of us will showcase things we are building for UXHack community, clients and hobby projects, especially leveraging AI

The first was on automating accounting at UXHack and leveraging Gen AI (Claude) for it.

Do check out the video and let us know what you think!

And with that we come to the end of this edition of Mixology!

Have you tried out the latest Gemini model? What’s your experience been like? We love to hear: do drop in your thoughts on our AI Focussed community AIXchange

PS: If you are a Jio user, besides the student offer, you can also get access to Gemini Pro for free with your monthly recharge. Neat!

One can’t help feel a little happy about the story, especially given Groww (and Zerodha) have caused true disruption, with product thinking. We take a look…

🌏 Product & Design News:

In the last few weeks, the Groww IPO brought the brokerage world back into the spotlight: This isn’t just a fintech listing. It’s a UX-story.

Groww, backed by Billionbrains, listed at ₹100 and closed Day 1 at ~₹129 (+29%).

As of June 2025, it has ~12.6 million active clients and roughly 26% share of active accounts among major brokers.

Meanwhile, Zerodha now holds ~11% of all retail + HNI equity wealth in India. Yes, about ₹1 of every ₹10.

So how did two relatively young players crack a market long dominated by legacy giants?

Sure, timing helped. COVID pulling first-time investors in, SEBI simplifying onboarding (digital KYC).

But the real catalyst was a mindset shift:
Make investing so simple that even a nervous first-timer from a Tier-2 town feels confident opening their first demat.

Groww did this with clean flows, intuitive design, low-friction KYC and a mobile-first worldview.

Zerodha did it with transparent pricing, no-nonsense UI and an education ecosystem (Varsity).

Two approaches, same outcome: remove friction, unlock adoption.

Now with Groww’s strong IPO debut, the market is validating something UX folks have said for years:
You can disrupt legacy industries not with discounts or noise, but with clear, thoughtful product design.

If you want to understand the mindset behind this disruption, this conversation with Groww's co-founder, Lalit Keshre, is a great watch.

It breaks down why they built the product the way they did and how simplicity became their competitive moat:

Will this wave sustain? SEBI’s F&O tightening is already cooling activity across brokers.

And monetisation remains a challenge for newer platforms. But that doesn’t take away the core lesson:

If you build for clarity, trust and simplicity, you can move an entire industry.

🗞Related

• Groww IPO: Most users, less income than Zerodha

• Nithin Kamath highlights fintech crossover in Groww IPO

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9500+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #89 Results

👉🏻 Product: Groww

Context: Improve the visual design of this screen to make it look more appealing to investors, rather than simply showing text.

View Top Solutions

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• Product Designer at SMC Group | New Delhi

• UI UX Designer at e-Careers | Maharashtra

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Technical Product Manager at Agoda | Bengaluru

• Senior Product Manager at Google | Bengaluru

View more Product jobs

We also recently launched a Social Job feed. Check it out here

⛏️ Tools & Resources

✅For Your Learning & Productivity

• UXHack Eldorado - Get access to our repository of 50+ Case Studies on Notion, Figma, Zomato, Netflix etc. Read up 500+ Solutions submitted by PMs & Designers from Gojek, Disney+Hotstar, Meesho, JusPay and more

  

  Explore Now

🖥️ From Founders’ Desk:

Akshay’s love for the… Ashes

I love Test cricket and India’s recent performances have left me, as a cricket fan, rather disappointed. So much so that I’ve stopped watching cricket now.

But the Ashes is a series that I have followed since I was a kid, and truth be told, nothing in cricket comes close.

Ashes ki kuch baat hi alag hai: be it the grounds, the coverage, the commentary or just the general game. It’s full paisa vasool.

So I’ll be tuning in to see if Ben Stokes and Bazball can trump the Aussies. Should be.. a lot of fun.

And that is it! Btw, did you apply AND get Groww shares?

If yes, well congrats! If not… It’s ok, Groww is up only 70% since listing 😄

Wish you a great weekend ahead. Cheers!

PS: We’ve started posting short clips from our discussion videos. Do check them out on Instagram or Youtube and tell us what you make of them

Zoho recently made waves, for both the right and wrong reasons, and that is the focus of this week’s newsletter.

🌏 Product & Design News:

India’s Digital Sovereignty Moment

In the past few weeks, India’s home-grown tech stack has suddenly found itself in the spotlight.
Why? A mix of government endorsements, shifting geopolitics, and a renewed “Made in India” momentum.

Let’s break it down.

Zoho, the powerful SaaS giant is now being talked about beyond enterprise circles. Its privacy-first browser Ulaa and messaging app Arattai have seen renewed attention, thanks to a wave of endorsements from Indian ministers.

Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal tweeted, “Nothing beats the feeling of using a #Swadeshi product. So proud to be on @Arattai…”

IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw followed, announcing he’s “moving to Zoho” for documents and presentations.

And Home Minister Amit Shah went a step further switching his email to Zoho Mail.

That’s a lot of traction and the timing isn’t random.

Why the sudden push?

The United States announced tariffs of up to 50 percent on several imported goods from India, signaling rising trade friction.

Around the same time, new visa-extension rules were introduced that could impact Indian professionals working in the U.S.

Together, these developments have renewed focus on India’s drive for digital self-reliance and stronger home-grown technology ecosystems.

The Real Question: Can National Pride Drive Daily Adoption?

Being “swadeshi” makes headlines. But keeping users: that’s a whole different game.

What’s working:

• Privacy pitch: Ulaa’s tracker-free browsing feels refreshing.

• Network hope: Arattai saw a 100× surge in downloads after the ministerial push, even Anand Mahindra tweeted he “downloaded Arattai with pride.”

• Ecosystem edge: With tools like Zoho Mail, Books, and WorkDrive already trusted by Indian SMEs, expanding to consumer apps feels natural.
  

What’s tricky:

• Habit inertia: WhatsApp, Chrome, Maps are deeply entrenched.

• UX & innovation: Nationalism can attract, but UX retains.

• Scale: Messaging apps depend on network effects, browsers and maps don’t, giving Ulaa and Mappls (from MapmyIndia) a better fighting chance.

Our Take

We’re genuinely rooting for India’s tech independence and we use these tools ourselves. Fun fact, we’ve used Zoho Mail from day one, without any issues. That’s 7+ years now.

But let’s be clear: sovereignty isn’t a substitute for usability or retention.

If these products can match global standards in experience, performance, and trust, then the “Made in India” tag would be something to be truly proud of.

End Notes

This original post was created a few weeks back: since then Arattai has pretty much become an after thought for users: falling from top of the charts on Playstore, to outside the top 100.

That said, the space for a browser and office tools is pretty solid ground, and we hope Zoho focuses on these, given this early push.

We even did a weekend challenge on Zoho’s Ulaa, asking designers to reimagine its new-tab screen, making it more engaging for users accustomed to Chrome or Edge.

The goal was simple: show how good UX can turn a “Made in India” product into a “Preferred by India” one.

PS: We came across a wonderful post from Dharmesh Ba on how central Whatsapp is to Indians, especially small businesses. Kind of makes it really, really tough to go up against it now. Yes: Network effects!

👉🏻PS: Have an interesting read to recommend to 9500+ readers? You can also recommend your own article/video/case study. Tell us here.

Recommend an Interesting Read

📅 Events @ UXHack:

Weekend Hackathon #88 Results

👉🏻 Product: Gullak

Context: Improve the screen to make it more intuitive, so that the user sees the benefits of staying invested.

View Top Solutions

💼 Featured Jobs:

Design Jobs 🎨

• Senior UI UX Designer at AKQA | Mumbai

• Junior UI/UX Designer at IndiaInternets | Noida

View more Design jobs

Product Jobs 🅿️

• Head of Product at Infogain | Bengaluru

• Product Marketing Manager at Vivo India | Gurugram

View more Product jobs

We also recently launched a Social Job feed. Check it out here

⛏️ Tools & Resources

💼Career Resources

• UXH Portfolio Review - Get AI-Powered Feedback on Your Design Portfolio in minutes.

  

  Review Your Portfolio For Free

🖥️ From Founders’ Desk:

Nishith’s recommendation for dealing with polluted air: Gur(Jaggery)

I try to balance both allopathy and natural remedies. Not blindly trusting either, just staying aware of what works for my body.

This week’s recommendation is something simple: Gur (Jaggery in English).

Got this tip from both my father and father-in-law. They both worked in mechanical fields, exposed to harmful chemicals daily. Both independently told me the same thing - make it a habit to eat some Gur every day to reduce the impact of air pollution.

What’s interesting is how many ads you see for Chyawanprash and multivitamins for pollution, but nobody’s really built a brand around packaged Gur for this purpose. Feels like there’s space for a good D2C brand offering all-natural jaggery.

I personally try to avoid processed sugar anyway, so this added benefit of Gur is a bonus. There are many other benefits, too. You can read more here: https://drbelalbinasaf.com/blog/jaggery-benefits-for-lungs/

Were you aware of this? If not, try adding it to your diet and let me know how it goes.

Disclaimer: Do your own research before making any dietary changes.

And that is that for this week’s Mixology!
Thank you for tuning in.

Oh btw we’ve crossed 9.5K subscribers! Yes this banner here👇 shall be updated… next week. See you then!

Hope you had a great Diwali and festive season. There is a LOT happening in the Design and Product world, and it is undoubtedly being led by AI… and its adoption.

If OpenAI were to have its way, what we design for could fundamentally change..

PS: I doubt it will, but let’s take a look.

🌏 Product & Design News:

So... Are We About to Design for ChatGPT?

Recently, OpenAI quietly flipped a switch.

ChatGPT can now run apps inside itself - from Canva to Zillow, turning your chat window into something closer to an operating system.

No extra tabs, no switching windows. You just type what you want, and the app appears inside the chat.

Neat, right? Or a bit… unsettling?

Because this means, the “app” isn’t an app. It’s just a conversation.

In this OpenAI Universe: Designers won’t be crafting screens anymore, they’ll be crafting moments inside a chat.

Think about it:

How do you make an interface that shows up only when summoned, adapts to context, and still feels cohesive?

This is new territory for sure

ChatGPT is becoming less of a tool and more of a canvas, one that blends talk, action, and design.

Will it work? Maybe, nobody knows.

OpenAI has tried this before (remember plugins and GPTs?). But this time, it’s native, sleek, and has 800 million users ready to test it. What matters more though is if developers and companies truly adopt it.

If it sticks, we might not design apps anymore.

We’ll design experiences that live inside conversation.

👉 Related

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Weekend Hackathon #86 Results

👉🏻 Product: Flipkart

Context: Improve the design of this highlighted section so as to make it simpler for the user, while retaining all the options available in terms of offers, EMIs, exchange etc.

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• UI Designer at Appsoleut Games | Gurugram

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🖥️ From Founders’ Desk:

Akshay takes in a bit of the New Marine Drive, Mumbai 🌅

For long, Mumbai hardly had any ‘places to visit’ a la say Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkatta. There was Gateway and Marine Drive that topped that short list.

But recently, Mumbai has added what is called the New Marine Drive, or Coastal Road Promenade. This is a walkway and cycling track that has been opened right next to the flashy new Coastal Road.

The sights and ‘feels’ here are… amazing. Yes, the place suffers from heat and humidity as there are NO trees or cover. But I’m hoping, this will change.

This has all the makings of a ‘Must Visit in Mumbai’ tag.

PS: If you want to visit, do so early morning, before 8/9 or late evening, when things are cool, crowd is less. And don’t rely only on Google Maps: it’s quite close from the Metro

And that is all folks, we’ll see you in the next edition… shortly

Bye!