Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers. “What do we even mean by web3? We have NFTs (non-fungible tokens), cryptocurrencies, the metaverse, blockchain and DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations). It’s not just one thing we don’t understand. It’s a lot of things we don’t understand. What’s in? What’s out? And how do all of these pieces fit… Continue reading Accessibility week, low-tech UI, how to ask for a promotion, dark mode
Category: Design
Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.
10 design practices combine in life-centred design
An introduction to 10 design practices that work together to make human-centred design more sustainable, regenerative, and fair Today’s linear consumer system of ‘take, make, and throw-away’ is immensely inefficient and wasteful, devastating to the environment, and a major contributor to climate change. Unfortunately, decades of human-centred design have contributed significantly to today’s wicked problems… Continue reading 10 design practices combine in life-centred design
Resizing images for the Web
Using Python to create image collections for different screen resolutions. Continue reading on UX Collective »
Web3 has a user experience problem
We can’t change the world if nobody understands what we’re talking about “Welcome to Web3. A world filled with unicorns, long acronyms, market-moving memes, and slang that changes quicker than a well-executed rug pull.” – The Web3 Glossary, Unstoppable Domains Whether you’re excited by the potential or mostly indifferent, it has become increasingly difficult to… Continue reading Web3 has a user experience problem
Why we need design sociology
“Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever… Continue reading on UX Collective »
The UX behind subscriptions
Different types of subscription models and the strategy behind them The idea of subscriptions has been around for a while, before the digital era we live in today it could have been subscribing to a magazine, by filling out a paper form and posting that off in the mail. There is nothing new with the… Continue reading The UX behind subscriptions
It takes a village to raise 5-year-old designers
Some of us are both designers and parents. Some of us may have designers as parents. Some of us may even be designers creating products for children. Nevertheless, all of us were once children. Being a child may be a distant memory, to an extent we forget what it is like to be a kid.… Continue reading It takes a village to raise 5-year-old designers
Life-centred design
A snapshot of the emerging framework that expands human-centred design to consider all peoples, all sentients, and all planet. Life centred design is an emerging design approach that expands human centred design to also include consideration of sustainable, environmental, and social implications. It connects micro-level design (UX, product engineering, etc.) to global goals by increasing… Continue reading Life-centred design
UI & UX micro-tips: Volume fourteen
A collection of handy tips to help improve your designs instantly Continue reading on UX Collective »
Why moving from pixels to people is never a straight line
Moving from managing pixels to managing people isn’t a straightforward decision. Many of us underestimate the change in pace, scope and challenges that come with a design management or leadership position. Here are some tips for those who find themselves at that proverbial fork in the road, unsure whether to go right or left. https://unsplash.com/@madebyjens… Continue reading Why moving from pixels to people is never a straight line
Design flaws in everyday things: Use-by and sell-by dates
Grocery shopping involves a lot of decisions and reading a lot of information. We consume nutrition labels, prices, different units of… Continue reading on UX Collective »
A product design process for the real world
The product design playbook I use to break down and execute on design projects. At the start of 2021, Dialpad’s core product was a business phone platform. We supported several use cases, but making and receiving phone calls over the internet was our bread and butter. By the end of the year, however, we acquired… Continue reading A product design process for the real world
You can learn a lot from a chicken: Color 101
How one little hen’s fascination with color led to an amazing discovery Continue reading on UX Collective »
The treachery of interfaces
As UX/UI designers, we tend to associate interfaces with experience. Some of these deliverables, particularly from tech companies, are pure digital play. Customers spend a significant amount of time scrolling through social media, looking for information with the shortest number of steps, or completing a repeated transaction, such as an online payment. You could thus… Continue reading The treachery of interfaces
Learning to design “About Us” pages can teach you how to establish trust and credibility
Three factors that help persuade your users that your organization is worth engaging with Continue reading on UX Collective »
Figma vs Sketch: are you still figuring it out?
Design Tools You aren’t the only one! These 7 resources will help you evaluate whether Figma is right for your team. Photo by Kyle Hanson on Unsplash Transitioning to Figma may seem like a pretty simple decision — at least for an individual. But when the decision impacts an entire organization, there is a lot… Continue reading Figma vs Sketch: are you still figuring it out?
New UX pattern? Meet the Drill-In
New UX Pattern Proposal — Inspired by a real-live compliance crisis in a big data financial platform Continue reading on UX Collective »
The coffeeshop mobile UX battle: Starbucks x Peet’s
That Starbucks is a coffee shop powerhouse everybody knows. Living in California though, there are many options when searching for your daily caffeine dose. One of those options is Berkeley-based Peet’s Coffee, a west-coast-focused chain with over 200 stores, most of them in the Golden State. If there’s no comparison in terms of company size… Continue reading The coffeeshop mobile UX battle: Starbucks x Peet’s
Co-creating has drastically improved my designs
How co-design has drastically improved my work Users, engineers, product managers… I’m not the only one designing things around here I find defining a problem challenging. Ideally, at the start of a project all the metrics and objectives form a crystal clear statement. But working with high ambiguity in the platform space, I often start with a… Continue reading Co-creating has drastically improved my designs
I am a product designer that became an engineering manager overnight
Can “not having the answers” actually be your greatest asset? I was building the plane while it was flying. It wasn’t always pretty, but we didn’t crash. I was in over my head. Big time. Standing in front of Packback’s engineering team, I tried to look semi-composed while I explained that our Head of Engineering… Continue reading I am a product designer that became an engineering manager overnight
How to increase the UX maturity of Scrum teams
Investing in the UX skills of a Scrum Team delivers a huge return. Learn how. In this article you will learn: Why enabling Scrum Teams with UX Design capabilities is important. Why introducing UX capabilities to Scrum team is frequently hard. What is the job of an UX Leader in a product development organization. How to use… Continue reading How to increase the UX maturity of Scrum teams
The Barry Lyndon poster is a design classic, not designed by Saul Bass
The very mention of Barry Lyndon will either elicit a groan you get from an over stimulated teenager forced to trudge through economics class or silent reverence in a middle-aged man who bought the Criterion Collection edition, and delicately wipes it down every month. It is Kubrick’s overlooked masterpiece, sandwiched between the higher profile A… Continue reading The Barry Lyndon poster is a design classic, not designed by Saul Bass
The humanity of Blockchain, Wordle UX, web3 painpoints, free UI loaders
Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers. “In Agile, discovery is assumed. At a minimum, you need a rough spec and some goals to get started. But is the spec validated against business goals or user needs? Is this the best solution? If so, when does that discovery work happen? Not during Agile development.” Is Agile… Continue reading The humanity of Blockchain, Wordle UX, web3 painpoints, free UI loaders
11 steps to keep Figma clean
We all probably already know how it is to receive a project from someone else. Not everyone works the same way, it’s what makes our field so varied. We need to spend some time focusing on adapting. In this article, I will go over 11 steps that may help you and your teammates in organizing… Continue reading 11 steps to keep Figma clean