We are Ana Kokic — a small collective of UX designers, cognitive scientists, and recovering tech optimists who met in 2017 over a shared frustration: the technology conversation had become either a sales pitch for the next shiny thing or a dry academic paper. We wanted a place where we could talk about the messy, human side of digital life without the jargon or the hype. So in 2018, we started publishing one personal essay per week, each one exploring a single ethical tension we’d encountered in our own work — from the loneliness baked into infinite scroll to the quiet violence of a “delightful” dark pattern. No news, no product reviews, just the stories that keep us up at night.
Our mission is to cover technology through a human-centered ethical lens, one essay at a time. We noticed that no other site was willing to sit in the uncomfortable space between “this product is useful” and “this product is manipulating me.” So we built it ourselves. Every piece we publish is written by someone who has designed, studied, or built the very systems they’re critiquing. We don’t pretend to have tidy answers. Instead, we ask questions like: What does it mean to design for attention when attention is a finite resource? How do we separate genuine personalization from surveillance? And when does efficiency become a form of coercion? We write for the people who care about these questions — UX designers, tech humanists, anyone who believes that software should serve human flourishing, not just engagement metrics.
If any of this resonates with you, we’d love to welcome you into the conversation. You can browse our past essays, share your own reflections, or simply linger in the quiet space between the lines. We’re not a platform — we’re a small group of friends who still believe that a single, honest essay can change how someone thinks about the technology they use every day. To reach us, please visit our Contact Us page. We’ll be listening.