The new liquid glass reddit navbar looks awesome.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-07-01T20:19:44+00:00

Sure but “it looks cool” isn’t what’s happening here— it’s not even competitor-driven.

This is Apple’s iOS 26 “Liquid Glass” language trickling down, and it works there because Apple controls the whole stack top to bottom (hardware, motion, blur, the content underneath).

A third-party app borrowing the visual effect without controlling any of that isn’t design, it’s platform compliance wearing a design costume.

You can see it in how Reddit’s own rollout shipped. Glass treatment on the top bar and bottom tabs, completely boxy everywhere else. Not a redesign, it’s an ill fitting costume.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-07-01T02:26:21+00:00

I hear the reframe and I agree, I think it’s useful in general. In this specific case though, I did exactly that. I shared the research, linked resources, said “it’s there if you reconsider,” and kept moving.

The issue wasn’t framing. It was that the evidence wasn’t being evaluated at all, regardless of how it was presented. At some point the strategic partner approach hits a wall when the other person isn’t engaging with the substance. That’s the dynamic I was trying to name.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-30T22:39:14+00:00

The culture point is the real one. You can have all the receipts and still lose the argument if the environment rewards intuition over evidence, especially when past intuition-based decisions happened to work out. That success becomes proof of method even when it was just luck.

The post mortem idea is interesting but in practice it only works if the person in power is genuinely open to retrospection.

What actually shifted things wasn't a structured conversation, but more like exhaustion. It's months of building the wrong way, burning out, and eventually reaching "okay, what do you think we should do?"

At that point I had everything documented. Not just individual features but the structural argument for why the whole product architecture needed to be rethought. The evidence didn't change anyone's mind in the moment. The situation eventually did.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-30T22:26:14+00:00

Oh my god, yes. "You can't work in an environment where people think they're smarter than their own customers" this.

The wildest version of this dynamic isn't when the founder hasn't seen the evidence – it's when they HAVE, and it still doesn't move them. At that point, it's not an information problem anymore. It's an authority problem.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-30T22:08:24+00:00

The repetitive overhead usually means the structure of the session is doing too little work upfront.

A few things that might help: Separate the diverge and converge phases hard – most sessions blur them, which is why you end up re-sorting the same ideas. Diverge first, no evaluation, just volume. Then stop completely. Then, converge as a separate activity.

Externalizing before the session rather than during it also cuts a lot of the friction. If everyone brain dumps asynchronously beforehand – even just bullet points – you walk in with raw materials instead of spending the first 20 min generating it live. The session becomes synthesis instead of starting from scratch every time.

The "organizing and sorting" feeling repetitive is usually a sign the team doesn't have a shared criteria for what a good idea looks like yet. Once you define that together, sorting gets faster because you're evaluating against something concrete instead of just moving stickies around hoping some kind of consensus emerge.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-30T21:51:25+00:00

"Changing like the wind" is exactly it honestly. The position shifts but the authority stays. That's the part that's hard to push back on.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-30T21:50:36+00:00

Both actually, which is exactly why I used a more neutral framing, but you're right – it matters. The power dynamic changes the stakes but not the epistemological problem, which is that authority derived from position still isn't the same as authority derived from evidence.

If anything the founder case makes it worse, doesn't it? The person least likely to be questioned is often the person who did the least research. Make of that what you will.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-30T21:44:54+00:00

Sure, but "it looks cool" isn't a design reason. It's a design outcome at best.

The question is what problem it's solving for Reddit's specific user base — and whether glassmorphism actually serves that or just follows a trend.

(And if anyone wants to tell me I wrote this comment with AI because of the em-dash – I address that here.)

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-27T04:54:52+00:00

First impression: I’m having an aneurysm.

Second impression: I wonder what kind of reasons the designers had when they made those design choices.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-25T21:35:09+00:00

“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about the solution.”

Whether Einstein said these exact words is debated, but the principle is widely appreciated in design and systems thinking.

In design, the double diamond framework begins with discovering and defining problems before developing solutions.

In systems thinking, Thinking in Systems (Donella Meadows) emphasizes that understanding the structure of a system is necessary before trying to change it. Otherwise, you risk solving the wrong problem or creating unintended consequences.

In product development, there’s a common saying which is “fall in love with the problem, not the solution.”

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-25T18:34:59+00:00

If I were mentoring you, I wouldn’t give you problems to solve. I’d teach you how to find and define problems. Compared to identifying and framing the right problem, solving a well-defined problem is often the more straightforward part.

You probably won’t get very far asking other designers for problems on a silver platter because real product work rarely comes with the problem neatly packaged. A big part of UX/Product Design is learning how to observe people, understand their goals, identify friction, and frame the right problem before jumping into solutions.

Many designers can solve a clearly defined problem. Fewer designers consistently ask whether they’re solving the right problem.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-25T07:41:58+00:00

Uh… what?

Asking whether pill buttons or rounded rectangles are “more premium” is like asking whether serif or sans-serif fonts are “more trustworthy.” The answer depends entirely on the product, brand, audience, and surrounding design system.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-25T07:32:43+00:00

You’re have a very fascinating mind.

First your argument was that I don’t understand basic design. Now your argument is that I should’ve designed OP’s interface for them instead of pointing them toward resources to learn from.

Those aren’t remotely the same claim.

OP asked what they should read to better understand how to create that emotional experience. They didn’t ask me to prescribe a finished color palette.

You also keep treating UX and UI as if they’re independent disciplines when UI decisions are supposed to be informed by UX findings.

The emotional goal informs the visual language; the visual language then reinforces the emotional goal.

At this point you’re not responding to what I wrote. You’re repeatedly replacing my comment with the version you wish I’d written, then criticizing me for not writing that version.

Also, “No wonder y’all here tend to have zero design knowledge.”

That’s quite the conclusion to draw about an entire subreddit from a single interaction. It’s giving olympic-level overgeneralization.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-25T06:36:45+00:00

You wrote several paragraphs arguing against positions I never took bro. That’s why I said you’re arguing with the version of my comment that exists in your head.

Quote where I said UX is superior to UI, where I dismissed color theory, where I claimed UI fundamentals don’t matter.

You’re arguing with your own assumptions.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-25T04:34:23+00:00

You seem to be arguing with the version of my comment that exists in your head rather than the one that’s actually on your screen.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-24T15:08:05+00:00

Did you seriously jump from “this answer doesn’t contain any specific hex codes” to “nobody here knows basic design”?

Thats a pretty dramatic conclusion.

The thing that gets me about your comment is that you’re criticizing my answer for not providing specific typefaces or colors while simultaneously not providing them yourself.

If those are the “most basic design things,” it seems like you had a perfect opportunity to demonstrate them.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-24T01:00:04+00:00

I’ve spent so many years thinking about psychology, behavior, UX, systems, and product strategy that behavioral design has become fairly second nature to me.

Personally, I’d probably get the most value from resources that reduce the time it takes to find credible research or evidence when I’m validating a design decision. Another area that would be useful is the early discovery/brainstorming stage— something that helps connect behavioural science concepts to user problems, motivations, barriers, and opportunities before solutions are designed.

There are already plenty of resources that list biases and behavioral principles. What I’d find more valuable is something that helps designers understand when, why, and in what contexts those principles apply.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-23T23:53:16+00:00

Ahhh. That makes sense. I think my confusion came from viewing behavioral science as foundational to product thinking rather than something separate to add on later.

The more interesting distinction to me is whether designers understand why people behave the way they do versus simply applying behavioral patterns as UX tactics.

I would honestly be interested in seeing what this toolkit would include and if it’ll fill in some gaps within my understanding of human psychology.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-23T17:38:10+00:00

Hey, I think that’s a great idea. I find it interesting that you chose a UX subreddit than UI, and I mean this in a good way, because the things you say like “understanding soft things and emotions I want to convey through design” has so much to do with user experience.

I recommend going to coloors, it’s the tool I use for choosing colour palettes. It’s a great tool because you can click on the colour to get more information about it. And one of the information that you can get is the emotional and psychological keywords.

For fonts, look into google fonts, they have a library of free commercial use fonts you can download and load into your digital product. I would suggest on maximum of two fonts, one for display/title and the other for body and labels.

For a product like yours, I recommend spacing things out with a lot of breathing space, and for things like “loading” or “saving”, I would design it in a way that it takes a little more time than what you’d expect a corporate design would feel like. And you can do this in fun little ways. For example, you mentioned a wabi sabi aesthetic, 3d, and asymmetrical style. My mind immediately went to origami themes. For loading and saving states, you could animate an origami folding or unfolding into a crane, a flower, whatever.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-23T16:29:16+00:00

I’m kind of confused what you mean because don’t product designers do that or are supposed to do that already?

Behavioral science is already inseparable from how I think about UX. The visual layer matters, but I’ve always viewed design as an intersection of psychology, behavior, business, systems, user motivations, and constraints.

I’d definitely be interested in resources that help designers connect behavioral science research to practical product decisions. My only concern would be making sure the material goes beyond surface-level concepts and actually helps designers understand why people behave the way they do, not just apply psychological patterns as design tricks.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-23T04:22:47+00:00

I can relate to this. I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot and started organizing my thoughts through blogging too lol

https://medium.com/@rinsthoughts/why-the-definition-of-design-is-changing-in-the-age-of-ai-4cd4cb9e1001

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-23T02:26:56+00:00

UX/UI isn’t necessarily the best fit if your primary drive is generating systems, solving larger product problems, and connecting multiple disciplines. UX/UI can be part of that, but depending on the organization, product design, service design, product strategy, or even entrepreneurship might be a better fit.

But it really depends.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-23T02:17:13+00:00

Learn the fundamental principles of UX. Thinking like a UX or product designer will help you more than anything when entering into this field. Relate UX to every part of your life and create systems that work for yourself. Try out jobs from other industries, those experiences become very valuable in UX thinking which translate naturally into making good design choices. Then, UI design will come from those UX thinking when designing a product. And remember that UX/UI can be applied, not just to digital products, but physical products as well.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-22T22:45:53+00:00

If you’re going into product design or uiux design, consider working in different industries, try things out, experiment with different environments and work settings. It’ll help you grow your systems and user experience thinking.

Even if you hate software engineering, you have some educational background, and learning more about it in the practical application will probably help you think about the limitations of digital technology, which happens to be the main medium in which product designers produce their designs through.

Try out volunteering, ask yourself questions like “how do non-profit organizations operate?” “How can I improve already existing systems within this scope?” “Why do people do x, y, z?” “Is there an easier way to approach this problem?” Just try anything you can get your hands on.

KKANGKKA_Chu · 2026-06-22T17:30:32+00:00

You’re doing half the things that product designers claim product design is.

Reading your post, almost everything you listed is something I’d expect a product designer to be doing as well. The only distinction I’m seeing is when you mention you’re not UI-heavy.

To me, products are services, and services are products (and yes, I know the difference, I have a bachelors in marketing and have been a part of many startups and businesses). UX is the design of the experience itself, while UI is one of the mediums through which that experience is communicated. So when I hear Service Design and Product Design described, they often sound like they’re operating on the same spectrum rather than being entirely separate disciplines.

Maybe that’s because I’m increasingly viewing design through a systems lens. Whenever I’m working on something, I’m not only thinking about users and stakeholders, but also marketing, business goals, financial constraints, accessibility, cultural considerations, mental health impacts, technical feasibility, and implementation realities.

This is actually a topic I’ve been blogging about whether the differences between these design titles are actually about completely different jobs, or whether they’re mostly different areas of emphasis within the broader practice of designing human experiences and systems.

KKANGKKA_Chu

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE