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Duncan Stephen

Human-centred decisions

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Tag: Apple Macintosh

Article — 23 February 2026 — 3,133 words

Words and pictures in the history of user experience and the future of artificial intelligence

Society — Technology — User experience

ASCII art of the sparkles emoji, representing a text-based artificial intelligence interface

Modern artificial intelligence tools are largely rooted in text-based interactions. But the history of user experience, information and even humanity shows us that AI will have to go beyond text if it’s going to become relevant.

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Article — 11 August 2025 — 1,745 words

Life beyond the folder system

Digital — Information architecture — Technology — Web

On a dark background, a white folder and eight white files, progressively fading from left to right. At the right, a teal icon representing a graph is overlaid onto the final files

The folder metaphor is so intuitive to generations of computer users that they can struggle to think of any other way of using a computer. Yet for younger generations, the idea is completely alien.

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