Independent notes by Joey Zhao
Notes on designing
and shipping products.
I don’t write “design matters.” I take apart a shipped interface, a fast-food chair, a failed AI generation — and show what I saw, what I traded off, and which conclusions still can’t be drawn.
AI-generated concept artIn the Age of AI, Designers Can’t Just Sell Screens
I put three real projects side by side: once AI can fill in the screens fast, designers still own the failure paths, the evidence boundaries, the business trade-offs, and what happens after launch.
Read the essay →Latest writing
No Clocks, No Windows: What Is a Casino’s Design Actually Computing?
Four retention tricks — the time vacuum, the ugly carpet, the near-miss, and chip demonetization — and which scary-sounding numbers I deleted this time around.
12 min read 02
Why Can’t You Leave IKEA?
One-way layout, showroom context, the peak-end rule — all real. But the “three times longer” and “40% higher value perception” claims? I re-checked them.
11 min read 03
Where Did the Apple Store’s Door Go?
Apple swapped the door for a glass wall and crushed threshold resistance to near zero. Taking apart its entrance, vitrine, and spatial gradient — and what to steal for digital products.
11 min read 04
What Is McDonald’s Seating Actually Optimizing For?
Using store photos from Hong Kong, Macau, Munich, and Budapest to test what the popular “hard chairs kick you out” story actually leaves out.
11 min read 05
One Brief, Eleven Platforms: How I Designed Finfold
A real build-in-public: why I deleted the fake data, dropped the chat box, and exposed model failures to the user directly.
12 min read 06
The Mirror in the Elevator Isn’t Mainly for Checking Your Face
Starting from an aging office tower in Shenzhen, I check four explanations one by one — waiting psychology, sense of space, rear-view safety, and reversing a wheelchair.
10 min read 07
A Portfolio Isn’t a Warehouse — It’s a Chain of Evidence for How You Think
Tearing apart my own Signals, UnifyUX, and Finfold projects: what counts as evidence, and what’s just dressing a project up to look like a win.
11 min read