UCD Surf

Find what matters in the design archive

UCD Coach

Practice brief · UCD methods

AI can speed up critique, but it can't replace judgement

Published 28 August 2026 · Source dated 1 December 2025

Used for: Alpha assumption; Stakeholder brief; Portfolio proof; Tool experiment; Method refresh. Practice brief for the gate you are in — not an industry digest dump.

Hype check: Adoption. Teams are using this — still check the source date (1 December 2025).

Saves the claim and source date (1 December 2025) on this device. No account.

Design teams are starting to use AI for a quick first-pass usability review, but human judgement is still doing the real evaluation work. Treat AI critique as a starting point, not a verdict.

Feeding a screen to an AI tool and asking 'what's wrong with this?' is becoming a common first step before a proper review. It's decent at catching obvious stuff — low contrast, inconsistent spacing, missing labels. What it's not good at: understanding your actual users, business constraints, or the trade-offs behind a design decision. That's still on you. This is **adoption** of AI as a supporting tool in an established method (heuristic evaluation), not a replacement for it. For juniors still building critique muscles, this is worth being deliberate about — lean on AI for the obvious catches, but don't skip doing your own pass. That's how you build the judgement that AI can't fake.

Coach

run an AI tool over one of your own screens asking it to flag usability issues, then do your own heuristic pass separately. Compare the two lists and see what the AI missed.

Source: smashingmagazine.com ·

Pair with UCD Coach

Coach is the forward habit — today's five, every morning. Surf is the rearward workbench on the same briefing corpus. Today's five is not restaged here.

Open today's five on UCD Coach

Daily email stays on Coach. Surf has no subscribe form.

More practice briefs on the same topic — not today's five from UCD Coach.