To make a design thrive, you should support it with strategies to make it even more robust and accepted. There should be a coexistence between a practical design that should be free of explanation (invisibility) and effective communication (notoriety) Like many designers, I’ve been practicing this mantra all my career: “Good design is invisible,” but… Continue reading Good UX is not enough without a proper communication plan
Tag: I’ve
Turning users into AI, UX personality test, modeling components in Figma
Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers. Modern products often have a large amount of user research data from different sources: user research interviews, intercom conversations, customer e-mails, surveys, customer reviews on various platforms, and whatnot. Making sense of all that data is a challenging task. A traditional way to do that is to maintain a… Continue reading Turning users into AI, UX personality test, modeling components in Figma
A radical opinion on ChatGPT
Churn out every idea and then burn it down. We need to talk about ChatGPT. Actually, not just ChatGPT but all AI-powered content development tools. Whether it’s text-to-image AIs, or those capable of generating conversational text, computer code, poetry, and more in response to prompts. Artificial Intelligence has been chipping at creatives for a while, and this… Continue reading A radical opinion on ChatGPT
Digital death, neurodesign, Notion AI, Figma automated UI builder
Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers. “We live in a hyper-connected world where things don’t seem to have happened unless you post about them. An emotion hardly seems validated until it’s been shared with others online. On average, we spend a quarter of our lives online. For people we never met in person, all they know… Continue reading Digital death, neurodesign, Notion AI, Figma automated UI builder
4g CO2 per email—really?
Disentangling a well-known “fact” about emails. There’s a lot of “received wisdom” kicking about on the internet — ideas and “facts” which are essentially presented without question on the basis of “ he said it, so it must be true”. This afflicts many fields, and sustainability is no exception. One common example is that “sending an email generates… Continue reading 4g CO2 per email—really?
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
Ask a UXR #2: introducing user research to an organization
On asking the existential questions about a UXR’s purpose, being a thought partner, and bringing questions, not just answers This is the second post in a bi-weekly UXR Q+A series. Submit your questions in the comments, or in this Google form, and it they may be answered in future posts. Follow “Ask a UXR” by subscribing… Continue reading Ask a UXR #2: introducing user research to an organization
WordPress Product Founders on What They’d Do Differently
Incredible as it sounds, WordPress was initially released back in 2003. And it has evolved quite a bit during that time. It has become a mature, if ever-changing, platform for building websites. Its massive theme and plugin ecosystem have also seen its share of changes. We’ve witnessed solo entrepreneurs launching products, nurturing their growth, and… Continue reading WordPress Product Founders on What They’d Do Differently
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
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
Make Smooth Transitions with Easing in Figma and After Effects
I love creating smooth transitions in Figma, both for concepts and final designs. But for extra finesse and control over easing types, you should export from Figma into Adobe After Effects and finish the job there—let me show you! Smooth(er) Transitions in Figma and Adobe After Effects Smooth transitions in apps and websites are where… Continue reading Make Smooth Transitions with Easing in Figma and After Effects
Why blockchain and Web 3 user interfaces will suck for a while
How Web 2.0 grumpiness + Web 3.0 hubris are contributing to terrible user experiences on the cutting edge of tech. Statler and Waldorf definitely aren’t interested in Web 3. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF62EGPppFU My point in a nutshell: Web 3 people are generally not interested in lessons from the past, and experienced tech people don’t need Web 3… Continue reading Why blockchain and Web 3 user interfaces will suck for a while
I neglected Duolingo for 20 days after signing up. Here’s every email they sent me.
About 3 weeks ago, I signed up to Duolingo intending to learn Swahili every day for about a month. Why? To learn something new, to make some progress with a language I’ve been casually interested in for some time, and to document to process from a UX perspective. What went wrong? Not to be dramatic,… Continue reading I neglected Duolingo for 20 days after signing up. Here’s every email they sent me.
What comes after customer-centricity?
Read this and get ready for it. For many years now, I’ve been fascinated by the timeline shown below and pondering what lies beyond the Age of the Customer. These days, I’ve got a pretty good idea about what’s next. The Age of the Customer timeline. Source: Forrester Research First, let’s unpack this timeline and understand how… Continue reading What comes after customer-centricity?
How to Conform to WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) in Email
* { box-sizing: border-box; } body {margin: 0;}*{box-sizing:border-box;}body{margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;} WCAG (the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) make the web a more accessible place for everyone. They’re written for web content, not email content, but as the two have a lot in common, conforming to WCAG lays a good foundation for applying accessibility to email. So, how do… Continue reading How to Conform to WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) in Email
How to Build a Responsive Slider With Swiper.js
* { box-sizing: border-box; } body {margin: 0;}*{box-sizing:border-box;}body{margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;} Have you ever built an advanced slider for a project? If so, you might have taken advantage of any one of a number of JavaScript carousels. In the past, I’ve covered two of them: slick and Owl. Today, I’ll introduce another well-known one: Swiper. Ready to learn… Continue reading How to Build a Responsive Slider With Swiper.js
How to survive a design career and avoid burnout (Part 2)
[unable to retrieve full-text content] Hi, people in the UX Design and Product world. This post is the second in a series I’m writing, based on conversations I’ve had with Product and Experience Designers and leaders in the field, who prosper despite working in some really harsh environments. And when I say “harsh”, I’m talking… Continue reading How to survive a design career and avoid burnout (Part 2)
Design lessons from the National Football League (NFL)
[unable to retrieve full-text content] While growing up in Western PA, like most kids, I grew up loving and playing football and becoming a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. As NFL devotees, we endured a surreal 2020 football season with the pandemic from empty stands replaced by cardboard fans to injury reports containing COVID19 infections. Yet, with… Continue reading Design lessons from the National Football League (NFL)
Is It Time to Reset HTML?
HTML is one of the foundational building blocks of the Web. But just as web design best practices and techniques change over time, so does the code we use. As HTML evolves, some of its older markup has been deprecated while other parts have been repurposed. Does that create more problems for us, though? Would… Continue reading Is It Time to Reset HTML?
A Comprehensive Guide to Flexbox Alignment
Alignment is probably the most confusing aspect of flexbox. The flexbox layout module has a handful of alignment properties that behave differently under different circumstances, and when using them you might not necessarily understand what is happening or why. However, if you know what to pay attention to, alignment is less complicated than it first… Continue reading A Comprehensive Guide to Flexbox Alignment
How to Preserve the Menu State on Page Load (Using Local Storage)
What You’ll Be Creating In this tutorial, we’ll create a simple static site with Tailwind CSS and then learn how to preserve its menu state on page load. The first time we visit the site, the menu will be hidden. However, as soon as we open it and close the browser, we’ll use local storage… Continue reading How to Preserve the Menu State on Page Load (Using Local Storage)
The role of Reflection in the design process
[unable to retrieve full-text content] The often-overlooked last step. In product design, when we release a feature into the wild, we can expect a degree of objectivity in the feedback we get. We can tell if our designs are helping or hurting based on the feedback and metrics after we ship. Getting my hands on these metrics… Continue reading The role of Reflection in the design process
7 Skills You Need To Thrive As A Web Designer In 2021
Web design is an ever-evolving field. Those of us that have been in the industry a long time (i.e., six months plus) have seen the launch of more products, the establishment of more ideas, and the promise of more growth than most industries see over a whole career. While the tools we use, the terminology… Continue reading 7 Skills You Need To Thrive As A Web Designer In 2021
How to build tech that does things differently
[unable to retrieve full-text content] Data ethics principles and processes are useful, but they are often of limited use when it comes to addressing the social and environmental harms of the data economy. This post is about using creative R&D to build data technologies that embed a different set of values from the ground up,… Continue reading How to build tech that does things differently