Be a cultivator of ideas because you are more likely to achieve design excellence when you include ideas from a diverse group of people. Field Of Sunflowers by Matthew T Rader One of the UX Designer‘s primary roles is to not generate all the ideas but to cultivate ideas from the various stakeholders in a project. Early… Continue reading Be a cultivator of ideas to achieve trust, buy-in, and design excellence
Category: UX
UX principles for AI art tools like DALL·E
Setting a course for better image-generation tools. A composite image made with DALL·E, using the prompt: ‘1980s illustration of a face with a visible brain that’s exploding in shapes and colours’ For the past year, I’ve been experimenting with several AI art image generating systems: VQGAN+CLIP and Diffusion notebooks on Google Colab, Midjourney, a text-based… Continue reading UX principles for AI art tools like DALL·E
5 annoying UX mistakes in iPad apps
A guide for building great iPad apps — because over-stretched iPhone apps don’t count. Continue reading on UX Collective »
4 killer examples of personalized UX
Image by Mo on Unsplash. A key component to creating excellent User Experiences is personalized content. You have been — either consciously or unconsciously — a part of hundreds of personalization experiments. Every time you log in to Netflix to watch some series or scroll down TikTok while going to work. UX design plays a… Continue reading 4 killer examples of personalized UX
Choosing the right mindset to design complex applications
How to prepare your mental game to tackle user experience for complex products. Continue reading on UX Collective »
A guide to getting UX Research internships — the story of a smile
I will start my internship in a company I like in a few days. It brings a deep smile to my face. However, this article is about the difficult moments behind this smile — moments when I lost my confidence and felt upset, hopeless, and insufficient. In the past few months, I had a lot… Continue reading A guide to getting UX Research internships — the story of a smile
How to kick off strategic research if you are NOT Spotify?
First steps of strategic product research at Glovo by UXR & Data ✏️ Illustrations credits to Ivan Mesaroš / Available on Blush From Spotify, all the way to Microsoft, Booking.com and many more, the leveraging of multidisciplinary teams to conduct product research seems THE WAY to achieve more actionable, comprehensive insights providing a higher likelihood of making… Continue reading How to kick off strategic research if you are NOT Spotify?
Rapid Personas: a play for your UX Playbook
Sketches of people in action poses, by Uday Gajendar It’s hard to write any article about personas — the design artifact people love to hate — without a string of caveats. But, here I am, writing about personas with no caveats. Let’s do it. With the Rapid Personas play I’m trying to address a couple… Continue reading Rapid Personas: a play for your UX Playbook
Super-helpful tips when working with Figma component properties
Handy tips to improve your understanding of Component Props Continue reading on UX Collective »
Exploring interstitial spaces
Embracing the serendipitous as design process Book interior page spread Relinquishing control Dictionary.com defines serendipity as “an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident”. My first acquaintance with serendipity as an element immersed within a design process was at a talk delivered by a photographer who would daily “put himself in the way of the… Continue reading Exploring interstitial spaces
When brown becomes a shade of orange in data visualization
Using the color Brown to create sequential and diverging color schemes. Continue reading on UX Collective »
What is a Design System? A simple guide to get started
A design system is a library of guidelines and reusable components that should establish the consistency of the product experience. The goal of a design system is to create a single source of truth, that is visible and maintainable by the team. Perhaps not all teams need a design system. However, from my personal experience,… Continue reading What is a Design System? A simple guide to get started
Let me be stupid — Creating experiences that are effortless
Let me be stupid — Creating experiences that are effortless While browsing Reddit the other day I stumbled upon this thread.The question asked was simple: ‘Do you ever wish you were a little more intelligent?’ I clicked on the thread expecting answers to range from ‘Duh’ to ‘HELL YES’, but I was extremely surprised when I saw… Continue reading Let me be stupid — Creating experiences that are effortless
Evolving animal personas as design tools with interspecies design
How learnings from interspecies design make non-human personas more effective in protecting and engaging animals Photo by redcharlie on Unsplash Just like user personas, non-human personas represent key stakeholders in design—the animals and environments impacted by human creations. With only a few years in design conversation, however, non-human personas are still very much developing. How… Continue reading Evolving animal personas as design tools with interspecies design
Stealing like an artist — design heuristics in creative ideation
Stealing like an artist — design heuristics in creative ideation Mental shortcuts and cognitive frameworks aren’t only useful in everyday judgments and problem-solving. When faced with creative challenges, we can also tap into our “design brain” to channel previously encountered ideas into our own work. At their core, design heuristics are the combination, exploration, or transformation of often already… Continue reading Stealing like an artist — design heuristics in creative ideation
The vanishing designer, Prototyper for Figma, understanding service models
Look around us. Every business is an app and every app feels the same, because every designer has the same resume, follows the same process, graduates from the same program, uses the same tool, scrolls the same Dribbble feed, reads the same Medium articles, expects the same career outcome, lives in the same ideology bubble.… Continue reading The vanishing designer, Prototyper for Figma, understanding service models
I’m not a robot (but, are you?)
The case for authenticating humans, reclaiming our identities, and defending against the coming swarm of bots. It’s 2022 and we are living in the opening scene of a dystopian Black Mirror episode. The line between what is real and what is fake has already blurred. The line between who is real and who is fake is now… Continue reading I’m not a robot (but, are you?)
Designing against complexity
The first line of defense to solve a complex problem is to avoid complexity all together Designers struggle to deal with complexity. Designers have a bias; they look at every problem as one that could be solved by studying the user. Tools like personas, empathy mapping, or journey mapping do little to uncover the systemic… Continue reading Designing against complexity
How to make decentralized apps (dApps) more user-friendly
I feel for Celsius, Three Arrows, Babel Finance and whoever the next floater happens to be. Continue reading on UX Collective »
If your user research feels incomplete, try talking with your customer support team
They’re probably more than aware of where users are struggling Photo by Olha Ruskykh: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-wearing-headset-while-working-at-the-office-7504886/ Customer Support can be one of the most significant untapped resources for user feedback if you know what questions to ask them. I learned this when I couldn’t interview users for a product I was designing. I was designing an… Continue reading If your user research feels incomplete, try talking with your customer support team
Design systems; the great connector
Like a backwards prism, design systems focus the energy of many teams into a single beam. They spread efficiency and consistency, but they also shape culture and hone brand expression. They’re about bringing it all together, across disciplines, to form alignment and a cohesive outcome. What’s the big deal about design systems, anyways? You might have heard… Continue reading Design systems; the great connector
You can learn a lot from a chicken: Line 201
ART | DESIGN | CREATIVITY | MOTORCYCLE | DIGITAL ART Yeah, we’re skipping the 100 level classes ’cause that’s just how we roll “A is for Amelia” Design and Photo by the Author You know, Amelia has my whole heart even though I suspect she herself has a heart like a biker chick. She hopes… Continue reading You can learn a lot from a chicken: Line 201
Gestalt psicology for dataviz
Understanding why specific data visualization techniques work better than others may not be so simple. Visual Pattern — Credits: Omar Flores on Unsplash We easily perceive a design that catches our attention, or elements that are out of place, but then we hardly know how to identify and evaluate them accurately, almost as if their effect acts at the… Continue reading Gestalt psicology for dataviz
Thoughts on modernism, brutalism, and a number of other outdated “isms”
When hollowed-out ideologies produce failed outcomes. Collage detail from book — the Modernist conception of space A Spatial Triad For French sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre, space is a social product that is collectively shaped through the triad of conception, perception, and experience. The idea central to his book The Production of Space posits that… Continue reading Thoughts on modernism, brutalism, and a number of other outdated “isms”