Building beauty in a world of digital ugliness

In a digital landscape cluttered with uninspiring products, Raiza Martin's insights on creating beautiful technology feel like a breath of fresh air. The former NotebookLM (now Huxe) designer doesn't just lament the current state of tech aesthetics—she offers a compelling vision for how we might escape it. At a time when AI interfaces are proliferating faster than thoughtful design principles, her call for intentional beauty feels both timely and necessary.

Key points from Raiza's perspective:

• The tech world is experiencing a "beauty recession" where products increasingly look alike, lack soul, and prioritize efficiency over delight. This homogenization results from risk-aversion and over-reliance on established patterns.

• Beauty in digital products is both subjective and objective – while personal taste varies, certain principles like coherence, intentionality, and connection to human needs create universally appealing experiences.

• Creating beautiful technology requires deliberate integration of aesthetics from the beginning, not treating it as a surface-level addition. This demands cross-functional collaboration between designers, engineers, and product managers.

The beauty imperative in business technology

The most compelling insight from Raiza's presentation is that beauty isn't merely decorative—it's functional. In business technology especially, we've accepted a false dichotomy between utility and aesthetics. The corporate world has long tolerated clunky interfaces and visually uninspiring tools under the misguided notion that "serious" technology doesn't need to be beautiful.

This matters tremendously because beauty drives engagement, retention, and ultimately, productivity. When business users interact with technology that respects their intelligence and delights their senses, they develop different relationships with these tools. Rather than seeing them as necessary evils, beautiful business technology becomes a partner in their work.

Consider the evolution of enterprise software over the past decade. Companies like Slack and Notion broke through by recognizing that workplace tools deserved the same design attention as consumer products. The result? Massive adoption and changed expectations across the enterprise landscape. When Slack launched, its playful interface and thoughtful interactions stood in stark contrast to the utilitarian communication tools that dominated corporate environments. Users didn't just tolerate Slack—they championed it, driving