Hello again dear readers. My family and I returned from traipsing around Central Europe last Sunday. Of course, my designer’s mind never turns off so I came back with a lot of observations.

In London, we stayed at the rock ‘n‘ roll-themed Cumberland Hotel, which used to be the Hard Rock Hotel. With eight floors and around 900 guest rooms, they have what’s called a Destination Dispatch System for their elevators, er, lifts. The system works differently than normal elevators. Instead of floor buttons inside each car, passengers select their destination on a screen outside the elevator bank. The screen then tells the passenger which car to get into. Theoretically, this optimizes car use by grouping together passengers going to the same floors.

In my half-century of living on this planet, I’ve only experienced this type of elevator system one other time: in an office building in California. These systems aren’t super-new, having been invented in 1961 and really put into practice in the 1990s by Schindler. They’re not very prevalent either, likely low single-digits in terms of install base. But apparently, they’re becoming more popular in new construction, especially residential and business high-rises. 

I won’t argue the pros and cons of actually moving people among floors. In my opinion, it was a huge bottleneck, especially in the mornings around checkout time. Instead, I want to chat about its usability.

When we checked into the hotel, the bellman showed us how to use the system. You had to tap your room key at a reader above the floor selection screen, tap your destination, wait for the car letter—A through F—and then wait for that car. The designated car only flashed on the screen for about two or three seconds, so you had to pay attention. Once inside the elevator car, there were no buttons save for the alarm and call buttons for emergency use. A screen displayed the different floors the car was going to stop on.

In our four-day stay at the hotel, I can count spotting at least five instances of confused hotel guests and I had to show two parties how to use the system. The perplexed passengers stood around in the lobby unsure if they’re about to get into the right elevator. Some people even got into cars and were hoping the car got them to the right place—literally going up and down until the doors opened to the right floor. Others came into the elevator cars looking for buttons, not seeing them, and then exiting. 

I’m all for using new patterns to improve efficiency, but I think installing these elevators in a hotel was a mistake. For high-rise condos or an office building, I think it’s OK because users will learn after a couple of days. But in a transient setting like a hotel, the percentage of baffled users is way too high for my tolerance.

And that can be said of UX patterns in software design. Novel interface patterns were the rage in the 1990s and 2000s, especially on marketing websites where designers loved to flex their creativity. As the industry matured, however, we’ve come to understand that reinventing the wheel is not always a good idea. 

Similar to the destination dispatch elevator system, we have to weigh the pros and cons when creating something “innovative” for our apps. While we might want to invent a whole new pattern to pick dates, for example, we better be sure it doesn’t hinder task completion, especially if our audience is mostly first-time users, like my hotel example.

I have found that a lot of young designers, especially those coming out of bootcamps, think they need to solve already-solved problems. They often end up inventing something unfamiliar and thus less effective, or reinventing something that already exists. The antidote for this is to look for common patterns already out there that accomplish the same thing.

In other words, use the techniques that great artists and designers have always used: look with your eyes.

Beyond Provocative: How One AI Company’s Ad Campaign Betrays Humanity

Speaking of London, I saw this advertisement while riding the London Underground: “Humans Were the Beta Test” from Artisan, the AI startup behind those "Stop Hiring Humans" billboards.

My initial reaction? Disgust.

I’m very much pro-AI and very much pro-human. But calling humanity a beta test is simply tone-deaf and nihilistic. It’s betting on the end of our species.

Yeah, yeah—it’s just advertising. Artisan’s CEO says their shock campaign drove $2M in new revenue and a 197% increase in brand searches. The attention worked, I guess. But at what cost?

There’s a difference between provocative marketing that sparks conversation and messaging that celebrates human obsolescence. Fashion brand Benetton’s campaigns showed three hearts (organs) labeled “White,” “Black,” and “Yellow”—that invites dialogue about racial coexistence. This? This just dismisses human worth entirely.

The logical conclusion of calling humans a “beta test” is that we’re meant to be superseded. That’s not augmentation—that’s replacement.

I’ve done plenty of B2B campaigns. Shock isn’t a tactic I'd recommend when you're essentially promoting the death of the human race.

The best AI companies position their technology as empowering human workers. Not replacing them entirely.

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The two kinds of people in the world—and why it matters for leadership. Leadership isn’t a binary between empathy and efficiency—it’s about integrating both. This Fast Company piece explores why the most effective leaders invest in people, embrace both hard-nosed decisions and compassion, and leverage technology and systems thinking to drive progress. Worth a read for anyone rethinking what it means to lead in times of rapid change.

My First America. (Gift Article) What can a multigenerational family saga tell us about the American experiment? In this reflective essay, Carlos Lozada revisits John Jakes’s epic Kent series—5,000 pages spanning revolution, ambition, and moral reckoning—and finds that the questions posed decades ago are as urgent for America’s 250th as they were at the bicentennial. Read on for a nuanced meditation on history, ideals, and the price of belonging.

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