90% of designers are unhirable?

Or why your cookie-cutter portfolio doesn’t cut it and how to fix it Image by Matej Latin (Author) Here’s the harsh truth: I’ve reviewed more than 1,000 portfolios in my design career so far, and I turned 90% of them down because of one thing — the linear design process. By “linear design process” I mean cookie-cutter case studies that… Continue reading 90% of designers are unhirable?

5 Hidden Risks of Your Inaccessible Website

Governments around the world mandate an accessible web experience for regulated industries, and you can be fined heavily for non-compliance. In the United States, the Department of Justice has the authority to seek civil penalties for a first violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) at $96,384 and up to $192,768 for each subsequent… Continue reading 5 Hidden Risks of Your Inaccessible Website

Crafting an effective design system strategy

How to build a strategy, not a roadmap A design system is a product. A product that solves concrete tasks: ensuring consistency reducing development time and much more Most often, the main reason to create a new product is that you want it to be different from the existing ones on the market. After all, why waste time… Continue reading Crafting an effective design system strategy

Google Maps: a refreshing turn in the right direction

Finally! Google Maps gets a much-needed makeover… and we’re here for it. Sometimes, a reroute is all it takes to rediscover the joy of the journey — Google Maps’ latest update is a testament to that. What’s New Since My Last Rant A few months back, I ripped into some serious user experience flaws in Google Maps. Google Maps: about that… Continue reading Google Maps: a refreshing turn in the right direction

Quantitative hiring in UX, designing for left-handed people, how to pitch UX research

Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers. “In November 2022, Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, began a tweet thread with “I’ve heard you loud and clear” in response to a customer backlash over the way they hid additional costs till the checkout page. “You feel like prices aren’t transparent…starting next month, you’ll be able to see… Continue reading Quantitative hiring in UX, designing for left-handed people, how to pitch UX research

Vanishing designers, guide to risky projects, UI transitions, AI in UX

Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers. “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,… Continue reading Vanishing designers, guide to risky projects, UI transitions, AI in UX

Risk tolerance: why some countries prefer more complex UIs

An analysis of Uncertainty Avoidance and Amazon’s website in various countries Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash What do Switzerland, the US, Sweden, the UK, and the Netherlands have in common? They are all rich, protestant, relatively cold countries where a big part of the population consists of (former) immigrants. They also form the top 5 of… Continue reading Risk tolerance: why some countries prefer more complex UIs

The Dangers of Deceptive Design Patterns (And How to Avoid Them)

UX By Louise North Today As web designers, our role in crafting user-friendly digital landscapes is critical. We are tasked with creating user experiences that make visitors feel comfortable and respected. This, in turn, creates benefits for our clients by improving repeat visits and achieves the site’s ultimate aims, whether that is sales revenue or… Continue reading The Dangers of Deceptive Design Patterns (And How to Avoid Them)

Ethical growth, AI authors, the mind of a type designer, UX research emails

Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers. “Growth hacks or so-called psychology tricks have a negative reputation. and it’s not a surprise. Think about the last time you stumbled upon such a “smart” hack — maybe when you were trying to unsubscribe from newsletters you didn’t mean to sign up for, or when booking a low-cost flight became… Continue reading Ethical growth, AI authors, the mind of a type designer, UX research emails

Amazon lawsuit, tips for UX leaders, beating AI, all new things Figma

Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers. The FTC has slapped Amazon with a lawsuit, accusing the company of duping millions of customers into signing up for its Prime subscription service through deceptive user interface designs. But the lawsuit goes even deeper. Amazon allegedly made canceling subscriptions an odyssey, with a purposefully complicated labyrinthine process designed… Continue reading Amazon lawsuit, tips for UX leaders, beating AI, all new things Figma

Invisible cities, infinite scroll UX, product tsunami, Framer AI

Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers. “We are still at the dawn of a new digital era: artificial intelligence, virtual worlds, augmented reality, and other technical and societal changes are reframing the world we live in. However, from a spatial design perspective, they have so far been lame and ordinary. Without the constraints in the physical… Continue reading Invisible cities, infinite scroll UX, product tsunami, Framer AI

Prototyping for Apple Vision Pro, baseline alignment in Figma, spatial computing

Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers. Google Glass emerged as a highly anticipated innovation with the potential to revolutionize our daily lives. Its sleek design, hands-free interface, and augmented reality (AR) capabilities promised a futuristic experience. However, despite its initial hype and grand vision, Google Glass ultimately failed to capture the consumer market and find… Continue reading Prototyping for Apple Vision Pro, baseline alignment in Figma, spatial computing

AI? Artificial Intelligence? Accessible Intelligence!

What We Can Look Forward To in the New AI World The Journey For the uninitiated, the concept of AI could seem new, but I can remember learning the term in the late 1980s when I took a course in LISP. LISP is a computer language originally developed over sixty years ago at MIT and… Continue reading AI? Artificial Intelligence? Accessible Intelligence!

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

Should you do UX Research yourself, or hire an agency?

The Pros and Cons of these two options — plus a third you might have ignored The number at the end of the agency’s proposal was over one million Euros. I was floored. A client of mine had sent me a proposal from the latest research consulting firm in the runnings to help them explore a new market. Of the… Continue reading Should you do UX Research yourself, or hire an agency?

A Beginner’s Guide to the Character Panel in Illustrator

In the following tutorial, you’ll learn everything you need to know about Adobe Illustrator’s Character panel. You can read this detailed written guide, and additionally, you can follow this new video from the Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel: What You’ll Learn in This Character Panel Illustrator Tutorial How to open the Character panel in Illustrator … Continue reading A Beginner’s Guide to the Character Panel in Illustrator

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

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

How to Make the Background Transparent in Photoshop

There are several different ways to make a background transparent in Photoshop. And when multiple different tools do the same thing, it can be a pain to figure out which to use and when. Follow along as we go through four of the easiest ways you can quickly remove a background in Photoshop.  In a… Continue reading How to Make the Background Transparent in Photoshop

8 Best Free and Open-Source JavaScript Image Editors

The internet is filled with countless images uploaded by users. This is especially true for social media websites—and it is very rare for people to post original unedited images anywhere. It is also common to need to post images with a specific size or format. While there are a lot of full-fledged image editing apps… Continue reading 8 Best Free and Open-Source JavaScript Image Editors

Does UX have an imposter problem?

8 reasons it might be them, not you. Illustrations throughout by Emma Clayton Eyes cast down, she whispered, “I feel like UX is a dance club that I can’t get a ticket into.” A heavy silence hung in the air. This, after two years working at one of the largest technology firms, in what most of us would consider… Continue reading Does UX have an imposter problem?

Best UX Research Repositories for 2022

* { box-sizing: border-box; } body {margin: 0;}*{box-sizing:border-box;}body{margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;} Trying to make sure your product, app, website, and/or designs meet the needs of your target audience is of course essential to success. These days, there are loads of tools to help you test your assumptions against your users to see which elements are working and which… Continue reading Best UX Research Repositories for 2022