Yesterday morning, in a standup, a developer suggested we could simplify a cluttered screen by removing the back button. “We can just rely on the browser back button,” he said.
I paused. Then I had to explain—again—why that’s a UX anti-pattern. Browser back is contextual, not navigational. It shows browser state, not app flow. It breaks consistency with the rest of our navigation patterns. It removes control from both the app and the user.
After I finished, someone asked me to elaborate. I found myself thinking aloud, articulating principles I’ve known for two decades.
Dancing with AI with foot firm on the ground!
We’re drowning in tools right now. MCP Servers and agents vibe coding away to ship interfaces n times faster, deisgn systems being built in days rather than months, the fine line between designers and coders completely getting blurred...
But the browser back button is still a terrible navigation pattern. It was true in 2005. It’s true in 2025. It’ll be true in 2045.
The trick here is to understand that fundamentals aren’t boring—they’re the foundation that lets everything else work. While we embrace the MCP servers and vibe-coding shifts, it becomes more important to stick to the basics than ever and address them in need!
A practitioner’s career
The more experience you gather, the MORE you explain fundamentals, the more you evangelise. Because you’re working with people who don’t have design backgrounds. Because the team changes but the principles don’t. Because new people join who haven’t internalized these patterns yet.
This becomes one of your core skill in design leadership: constant evangelism! There’s no escape from this. And honestly? There shouldn’t be.
Something to worry about...
Soon we’ll watch a new generation of designers emerge - “The Agentic” generation. They will grow up with MCP servers, agentic and AI design tools. They can generate beautiful interfaces in minutes. They prompt an AI, iterate on outputs, and ship polished designs without ever cracking open a usability textbook.
What happens when an entire generation of designers can execute beautifully but can’t articulate the reasoning behind their decisions?
So What Do We Do?
If you’re learning design right now, here’s my advice:
Don’t skip the fundamentals just because AI can generate designs.
Configure your agent to explain back to you the reasoning behind a pattern, setup your personal AI assistant to always be critical and never break-away from a human centered design framework, and try getting into the root of why some patterns always work, have fun recording a video sharing your thoughts on something interesting that you saw last time or about an app that you used last day.
Because five years from now, when you’re asked to defend a design decision, “The AI suggested it” won’t be enough.
Teach the why. Constantly. Relentlessly. Even when it feels tedious.
Staying Grounded While the World Moves Fast
Tools are temporary. Principles are permanent.
Every few years, there’s a new platform, a new framework, a new “revolution” in design. Web 2.0. Mobile-first. Responsive design. Design systems. Now AI. Each one matters. Each one changes how we work.
But the basics never change. Users still need to know where they are and where they can go. Navigation still needs to be consistent. Controls still need to be visible and predictable.
And now, more than ever, I see this as urgent work.
Because if we stop teaching fundamentals, we risk raising a generation of designers who can execute but can’t explain. Who can generate but can’t defend. Who can ship but can’t articulate.
We’re all in the same boat. The world keeps adding new tools, new frameworks, new complexity. Our job is to keep pointing back to what actually matters: the principles that make experiences work for humans.
The quality of answer you can aritculate years down the line to defend a decision you made to build a solution, depends on what we do today.
Good luck 👋🏼