Last week I told you the next thing you would see from me was the accessibility build. It is not here. I am not going to dress that up.
A while ago I was invited to talk to MOB, a community of mothers who run their own businesses. I said yes the way you say yes to something far away, then dwelled on it for weeks until it stopped being a talk and became the thing I do all day, written down for the first time.
Thirty minutes. Twenty-four slides. No code.
What I built first
Two skills, and part of a third.
One writes the brief: who it is for, what it has to do, the constraint I will not move on. One runs the brand foundations, vision, values, tone of voice, the creative opponent, the visual metaphor. It interviews me. It does not decide for me. The third is a colour system, not finished, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
All of it in one Project, so every new chat starts already knowing the business.
Three pages, same brief
One: brief only. Output: Cream background, dark text, one accent, a typeface you have already seen twice this week. Nothing wrong with it. Nothing in it mine.
Two: brief plus brand foundations, plus a moodboard I had actually sorted. Layout in one pile, typography in another, colour, photo style, screens. It finally says something you could disagree with.
Three: all of that, plus a design system, a sitemap, an app flow, my own portrait with live text over it, and me at every stage saying which reference to take what from.
Basic, good, great. The third one is not a better prompt. It is a hundred small decisions, said out loud. Great can still be better, and I am parking it here as one workshop’s result.
The tools moved
I built my own site with these roughly two months ago. Preparing this I ran the same brief through ChatGPT, Nano Banana, UX Pilot and Lovable, and the ground had shifted. Lovable gives me the best design output of the four for UX now. UX Pilot is close enough to call it even.
Whatever you decided about these tools in the spring, go and check it again.
What actually happened
I worked until nearly six in the morning and was as prepared as I have ever been for thirty minutes of anything.
Then I ran it from the playground, late, with my daughter on my lap, because Thursdays are her mums group and I was not taking that away from her. I have stopped treating that as a compromise. I can hold a room and hold a toddler in the same half hour, and I am not going to apologise for either one being visible.
The demo did not help. Slow responses, a research task still eating usage in the background, a drop to a smaller model halfway through. Run the heavy research the night before, and check your usage before you share your screen.
Then I had a normal afternoon and did not replay it once. A year ago that would have cost me a week.
This week's move
Take a page you already have, or one you keep meaning to make. Write the brief before you open the builder: who it is for, what it has to do, and the one constraint you will not move on.
Then give the same builder that brief twice. Once bare. Once with your foundations attached, and a moodboard you have actually sorted.
Read the second one properly. It should hold at least one thing that could only have come from you. A sentence, a proportion, a colour you had to argue for.
If you cannot find that thing, whose taste is the page wearing?
Alexandra
Need an accessible website, or an audit of the one you have? See the accessibility services I offer.