The Extended Designer spends less time making products, and more time making progress. The Extended Designer spends less time making products, and more time making progress. 2023 has been Generative AI’s breakout year, but that has been greeted by some fairly mixed responses, particularly from Designers. As the terrain we all live on reconfigures around… Continue reading The extended designer, and the design machine
Tag: great
15 Best New Fonts, September 2023
Fonts By Ben Moss 4 days ago Nothing upgrades your designs like selecting the right font. It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of using the same typeface over and over, so every month, we publish this roundup to freshen up your font menu. In this month’s edition, you’ll find plenty of sans-serifs… Continue reading 15 Best New Fonts, September 2023
Building a Core Accessibility Team: The Keys to the Kingdom
Have you noticed that in today’s digital age accessibility is not just a nice-to-have feature but a fundamental requirement for any product or service? Creating an inclusive user experience is not only ethically responsible but also just makes good business sense. Sustainability in this conquest can be successful or a disaster, depending on how you… Continue reading Building a Core Accessibility Team: The Keys to the Kingdom
Unveiling the experience wheel of true fortune
Our tendency to focus on negative experiences has prevented us from recognizing and seizing the opportunities of another loop. This is better known as the flywheel effect, and the key ingredient is how success can be replicated through a series of logical but effective steps until it links as a chain. (Image source: Neil Webb) Would… Continue reading Unveiling the experience wheel of true fortune
How you can create non-obvious UX research insights
6 tips to sidestep “we already knew it” feedback on a research report Image on https://www.nirandfar.com/hindsight-bias/ Every UX researcher wonders how they can create amazing insights that go beyond expectations and elicit a ‘wow!’ reaction from their audience. Despite conducting numerous rounds of interviews, sometimes our research reports can seem too plain and bland if they… Continue reading How you can create non-obvious UX research insights
WWDC 2023 Accessibility Goodies for Developers
This year, Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) was a big deal! Among the many announcements this year, Apple introduced the new Apple Vision Pro headset which has arguably and understandably stolen the show this year. Although Vision Pro may be the big talk of the town post-WWDC, there was also a myriad of exciting… Continue reading WWDC 2023 Accessibility Goodies for Developers
WCAG 2.2 Removes 4.1.1 Parsing and How axe-core is Impacted
Earlier this year, for the first time ever the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) proposed to remove a success criterion from WCAG 2. Success Criterion 4.1.1 Parsing ensures that pages written in markup languages like HTML and SVG are written in a way that allows browsers and assistive technologies to understand them consistently. Let’s take… Continue reading WCAG 2.2 Removes 4.1.1 Parsing and How axe-core is Impacted
Embracing change with system-driven design
To embrace change, you have to make it easy and cheap. System-driven design is one way to do just that. Waterfall, the double diamond, and other traditional ways of approaching the development of digital products rooted in the building perspective take for granted that it’s easier to make changes to designs than code. They operate under… Continue reading Embracing change with system-driven design
AI is about to kill creativity
AI has a massive disruptive quality on the creative sector. Is AI going to benefit us, or will it create a new dark age for innovation? The Aeolipile (left) and the Steam engine (right) on a section of Bosch’s masterpiece The Last Judgment (Wikimedia) In the early first century, the first steam engine was invented… Continue reading AI is about to kill creativity
5 Homepage Design Elements You Can Optimize for Better Conversions
Optimize These Homepage Design Elements To Boost Conversions This 2023 If people won’t just a book by its cover, they’re sure to judge a website. Products, services, or content might be great, but poorly designed homepages can be detrimental to conversions. Remember, your home page is likely the first thing new users are going to… Continue reading 5 Homepage Design Elements You Can Optimize for Better Conversions
Wikipedia redesign, UI spacing tips, copying TikTok’s UX, WE❤️NYC
Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers. In science fiction, one of the main indications that the characters are living in the high-tech future is an insanely smart, AI voice assistant. Star Trek’s Enterprise had the omnipresent Computer, and Tony Stark famously traded quips with JARVIS (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System) before the AI became… Continue reading Wikipedia redesign, UI spacing tips, copying TikTok’s UX, WE❤️NYC
Can technology generate serendipity?
Serendipity by design Ideas for applying serendipity principles in the digital world (I) An (un)expected discovery I love flea markets. Whenever I go there, I usually don’t look for anything specifically; I am just opening myself to chance, to discovery by luck. I suppose most of the people coming to this place do the same: they expect… Continue reading Can technology generate serendipity?
36 Best Wide Fonts (Extra Wide & Extended Fonts)
Wide fonts take up a great deal of horizontal space and are a great choice when working with short text. When you’re in the market for the best wide font, head to Envato Elements. For one low monthly fee, this subscription-based marketplace offers tons of fonts, logos, graphic templates, add-ons, and more. 36 Best Wide Fonts… Continue reading 36 Best Wide Fonts (Extra Wide & Extended Fonts)
10 Best WordPress Portfolio and Gallery Plugins of 2023
Are you looking to showcase your work in a creative and beautiful way? WordPress portfolio and gallery plugins are exactly what you need. Add a stunning gallery to your WordPress website to display your work, your latest blog posts, and more. Portfolio and gallery plugins give you the flexibility and power to display your content… Continue reading 10 Best WordPress Portfolio and Gallery Plugins of 2023
How does your team measure UX quality?
This year on my team, we had a moment where we realized that our UX quality was slipping. It started with a few surprising feedback tickets, then we noticed some patterns in our dovetail user research sessions, then got some rather harsh NPS scores, until finally we realized we needed to quantify our UX quality… Continue reading How does your team measure UX quality?
The Ultimate Guide to Typography
Are you interested in typography? This complete course covers everything from typography history to the difference between typefaces and fonts, typeface classification, how to choose a font, and more! Watch the Ultimate Guide to Typography Course What You’ll Learn What is the history of typography? What is the difference between a typeface and a… Continue reading The Ultimate Guide to Typography
How playing improvised music can train the ability to synthesize in design
Improv form #1. Drawing by Alexander Pryshyvalka (Instagram) My experience with Minsk Improvisers Orchestra I was always certain that only those who are trained in understanding musical notation and playing music instrument, are allowed to create music — only these special kinds of people are eligible to be called musicians. I’m not one of this special kind… Continue reading How playing improvised music can train the ability to synthesize in design
Personas should be living and breathing
Too often, designers create a persona at the start of a project, then put it up on a wall like a graduation picture and simply leave it there to be looked at and referenced occasionally…pulling out interesting stories when the situation demands. But your persona should be alive. It should live, grow, evolve and adapt.… Continue reading Personas should be living and breathing
AI is going to change UX research forever
The rise of AI will impact everyone. But in what way can UX designers use AI to their benefit? And how do we design AI systems? AI will revolutionize every sector, but unexpectedly UX research might suffer a huge impact. Photo by me. The rise of AI is creating a lot of buzz in almost every modern… Continue reading AI is going to change UX research forever
How To Make Your Designs Scannable (And Why You Should)
Jakob Nielsen’s How Users Read on the Web is 25 years old this week, and one glance at an eye-tracking study will tell you its key observations are still relevant today. Simply put, users don’t read a web page; they scan it for individual words and sentences. A typical pattern shown in eye-tracking reports is that… Continue reading How To Make Your Designs Scannable (And Why You Should)
Systems and Operations in the Design Profession
Systems and operations in the design profession Photo by Deva Darshan on Unsplash I always loved conceptualizing and visualizing processes. As a product designer, I ended up working with a design team, doing user flows, user testing, design sprints, etc. As I was growing as a designer, I did more facilitation, customer journeys, created big conference… Continue reading Systems and Operations in the Design Profession
The Benefits of Drone Videos for Businesses
Are you looking for a way to generate high-quality, low-cost video content for your next marketing campaign? One of the most popular new options is drone video. Drones are not just for the military and mischievous teens. They’re also used to shoot engaging video footage for film, TV, and advertising. Drones offer a clear advantage… Continue reading The Benefits of Drone Videos for Businesses
The big picture and the small designer
The importance of understanding and designing for a connected world I was on my train commute home and heard the familiar “tickets please”. Opposite me sat an elderly lady, with a printed paper in her hand, readily awaiting the train conductor to check it. When the train conductor glanced at the lady’s paper, she only said,… Continue reading The big picture and the small designer
Measuring Empathy for Accessibility
After my previous blog on the Two Pillars of Accessibility, I was asked on LinkedIn from a peer in the accessibility field how a program could measure and report the empathy pillar of an accessibility program i.e. how much does your company care about accessibility. Measuring the impact of accessibility is relatively easy — you can track… Continue reading Measuring Empathy for Accessibility