Read Flow
How UX Collective turns a Medium pageview into an owned reader. The publication homepage does the work Medium's algorithm won't — a curated, human-picked front page that says 'this is what's worth your time in design today.' From there a reader drops into a tag archive, which is where the borrowed infrastructure shows through completely: the UXC masthead sits on top of Medium's stock archive UI, filters and timestamps and a metered-read wall included. The through-line the flow keeps pointing at is ownership. UXC controls the curation and the brand; Medium controls the account, the paywall, and — via the regwall that greets a reader a few pages deep — the moment of conversion. The read flow is really an argument for why the newsletter tab exists: it's the one place UXC can turn a Medium reader into its own.
The homepage — a curated front page on someone else's platform
The masthead is unmistakably UX Collective — the polar-bear mark, 'Stories for designers—thinkers and makers,' 617K followers, two editors — and everything around it is unmistakably Medium: the Medium wordmark, a search bar, 'Get app,' 'Write,' and the green 'Sign up' button that gives away whose house this really is. The value UXC adds sits in the middle band: a hand-picked front page of design essays (a Google researcher's field notes on Dubai hotel UX, a piece on Figma and AI training data, one on screens 'getting demoted') that reads as taste, not feed. That curation is the whole product — Medium supplies infinite content and an algorithm; UXC supplies an editor saying *these three, today.* Note the nav: 'Editor Picks,' 'About,' 'Publish a Story,' and — set apart on the right — 'Receive our Newsletter.' Three of those serve Medium's ecosystem; the fourth is the only door that leads somewhere UXC actually owns.