Summary: To build useful and usable AI-powered systems, our understanding of users’ needs and our design judgement must be encoded into well-defined evaluation criteria. Design Decisions in Generative AI Systems Imagine asking a large language model a question like “How’s the weather today?” The response might include too much information (“it’s 72 degrees, and it… Continue reading The Core Skill of Design in the AI Era: Critique
Tag: cases
What’s an interactive element?
Two years ago, I wrote an article about the dialog element. I tested where focus goes when you open a modal dialog via the showModal() method. I tried different combinations of elements and attributes to see what happens because back in 2023, the behaviour was very inconsistent. In one of my tests, I put the… Continue reading What’s an interactive element?
Logo Design After AI: How Designers Create Powerful Brand Logos in 2026
AI tools have changed how logo design for brands begins—but not how it succeeds. Today, designers can generate logo concepts in seconds, explore styles instantly, and speed up the creative process. However, creating a logo that is clear, memorable, and meaningful still requires human thinking and strategy. Many people assume AI tools can replace graphic… Continue reading Logo Design After AI: How Designers Create Powerful Brand Logos in 2026
Less Chat, More Answer: Site AI Chatbots Need to Get to the Point
Summary: Users turn to site-specific chatbots for quick answers, not a conversation. Design responses that are direct, scannable, and easy to expand when needed. It’s easy to assume that a friendly, conversational AI chatbot might help build customer relationships or make a brand feel more approachable. However, the reality is that users who land on… Continue reading Less Chat, More Answer: Site AI Chatbots Need to Get to the Point
How to Upscale Images Without Losing Quality (Beginner Guide)
Image upscaling means making a small image bigger without making it look blurry. When you increase image size in a normal way, the picture often loses detail. It becomes soft or pixelated. This is where an image upscaler helps. It uses smart methods to add detail while increasing size. Many AI tools now use to… Continue reading How to Upscale Images Without Losing Quality (Beginner Guide)
AI Can Help with Survey Writing, But It Still Requires Human Expertise
Summary: AI can produce polished survey drafts quickly, but experienced human review is still needed to catch subtle survey-design flaws that weaken data quality. Generative AI chatbots are an appealing tool for UX researchers who are under pressure to quickly deploy surveys. When given a clear research objective and prompted to use survey-design best practices,… Continue reading AI Can Help with Survey Writing, But It Still Requires Human Expertise
Explainable AI in Chat Interfaces
Summary: Explanation text in AI chat interfaces is intended to help users understand AI outputs, but current practices fall short of that goal. As AI chat interfaces become more popular, users increasingly rely on AI outputs to make decisions. Without explanations, AI systems are black boxes. Explaining to people how an AI system has reached… Continue reading Explainable AI in Chat Interfaces
The horrors of designing for omniscience
[unable to retrieve full-text content] What happens when systems decide the human is ‘all-knowing’ Ever click a button and have a system misbehave with no warning, feedback, or a way to undo, only to feel the repercussions minutes or a few days later? This is what I’ve coined “Designing for Omniscience” (and the horrors thereof). It’s… Continue reading The horrors of designing for omniscience
Google AI Mode: Powerful Search, Poor Usability
Summary: Google’s new AI Mode provides a new way to search the web but is hampered by discoverability and navigation issues — especially for AI novices. What Is Google AI Mode? Google AI Mode is a new feature of the search engine that combines the breadth of a web search with the reasoning power of… Continue reading Google AI Mode: Powerful Search, Poor Usability
Conversational UX: Importance, Examples, Tips, and Challenges
Key takeaways 🔀 Conversational UX transforms design into a natural and intuitive conversation between the interface and the user. 🔎 Conversational UX is different from traditional UX mainly because it focuses on dialogue rather than navigation. 💁♀️ Conversational UX emerged from social habits and technological advancements, such as artificial intelligence and natural language processing. 🤖… Continue reading Conversational UX: Importance, Examples, Tips, and Challenges
Creating Design Specs for Development
Summary: Design specifications should provide all the relevant information needed to align the design and development teams. You work tirelessly on a new design project. It’s your masterpiece… until the dev team says it isn’t possible. Most designers have experienced this situation at some point in their careers. As frustrating as it may be, there… Continue reading Creating Design Specs for Development
How Design Identity in Medical Devices Builds Trust
Design identity shapes how patients and healthcare professionals perceive medical devices. Colors, shapes, technical aspects, and testing influence trust in high-stakes environments where reliability is paramount. A well-designed device signals safety and competence, while a poor design can raise doubts about quality. In healthcare, where decisions impact lives, the functional design of medical devices plays… Continue reading How Design Identity in Medical Devices Builds Trust
Learn How to Display WordPress Custom Field Data With Blocks — Speckyboy
Custom fields are among WordPress’s most powerful features. They allow us to customize the front and back end of a website, and there are all manner of creative uses for them. Everything from displaying niche content to changing page layouts based on field values is possible. Traditionally, using custom fields meant navigating obstacles. They require… Continue reading Learn How to Display WordPress Custom Field Data With Blocks — Speckyboy
Prompt Suggestions
Summary: System-generated suggestions for AI prompts must be contextually relevant, personalized, and specific to the task and the user’s level of experience. Prompt suggestions are a common design element in AI-chat features, but users often ignore them, especially when they’re not in the right place or don’t feel useful. Done well, though, prompt suggestions can… Continue reading Prompt Suggestions
Convenience vs. Probability Sampling in UX Research
Summary: Convenience sampling is quick and cost-effective for UX research, but probability sampling is better when you need representative and generalizable data. When conducting UX research, choosing the right sampling method can ensure that your findings are both useful and reliable. Most UX practitioners use a sampling method called convenience sampling: recruiting participants based on… Continue reading Convenience vs. Probability Sampling in UX Research
Alt Text: Not Always Needed
Summary: Write alt text that communicates an image’s purpose without repeating page content. Focus on meaning rather than visual description. Alt text (or alternative text) is metadata intended to help screen-reader users understand what an image is depicting. Most guidance for writing alt text describes how to make individual web-based images accessible and understandable for… Continue reading Alt Text: Not Always Needed
Axe Reports 2.0: Make better data-driven accessibility decisions at scale
Successful digital accessibility programs run on great data. Without it, you can’t report on your progress or drive the right conversations around accessibility improvements with your stakeholders. That’s where axe Reports comes in. Available in the axe Platform, axe Reports is Deque’s enterprise-ready tool designed to help your organization track progress, pinpoint risks, and quickly… Continue reading Axe Reports 2.0: Make better data-driven accessibility decisions at scale
Top 10 UX Design Agencies to Work With – July 2024
While in-house UX consultants, UI/UX designers, and user researchers continue to gain popularity, some businesses continue to opt for the expertise of specialized UX design firms. Here, we listed user experience consultancies and full-service UI UX design agencies from the US to Europe, with a brief description of each to help you decide. If you… Continue reading Top 10 UX Design Agencies to Work With – July 2024
Feedback: The Foundation of the Designer Communication Toolset
Reality hits as soon as you cut into a piece of wood. First, you might blame the quality of the wood. After countless trials and errors, you slowly begin to realize that using a Ryoba requires practice, patience, and technique. Based on my experience and after a series of internal mentoring at UX studio, I… Continue reading Feedback: The Foundation of the Designer Communication Toolset
Best AI Design Tools: Insights & Tips From 50+ Tools
Impact of AI in design When it comes to design, AI has great creative capacity, given its text generation and text-to-image capabilities. Seeing some photorealistic images generated by AI, we cannot help but wonder what this means for us as designers. Some of the questions that were on our minds: How can we use this… Continue reading Best AI Design Tools: Insights & Tips From 50+ Tools
How to Tackle Prompting Challenges with AI Writing Tools
With the rise of readily available generative AI tools, it is now possible to create large bodies of text in a matter of seconds. However, crafting the right prompts to achieve the desired output can be challenging. In this article, we will examine the complexities of prompting and how AI writing tools can simplify the… Continue reading How to Tackle Prompting Challenges with AI Writing Tools
The power of beauty in communicating complex ideas
Can we defend pursuing beauty when communicating science or innovation? When creating visuals to explain complex ideas, cutting edge innovations or new scientific research we often focus on the images’ ability to carry information. But data visualization, infographics or even schematics have a hidden power we rarely discuss: beauty. Obviously not all images are beautiful. As… Continue reading The power of beauty in communicating complex ideas
Why UI designers should understand Flexbox and CSS Grid
CSS for UI Designer Or bye bye, 12-column grid layout Most designers are familiar with responsive design, a column-based layout approach with fixed breakpoints to cover all screen sizes. However, we can move beyond the rigid structure with modern CSS layouts, crafting flexible and dynamic designs that seamlessly adjust to different screen sizes. Designers and developers having different… Continue reading Why UI designers should understand Flexbox and CSS Grid
Distinguishing between ARIA and native HTML attributes
As a developer, you want to create more inclusive and accessible digital experiences for your users. Great! It’s possible, however, that you might be feeling a bit confused or overwhelmed by the element attributes that can affect the usability for users of assistive technology. ARIA (or WAI-ARIA, Web Accessibility Initiative-Accessible Rich Internet Applications) defines some… Continue reading Distinguishing between ARIA and native HTML attributes