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The updated Amazon Alexa app is now more streamlined and tailored to smart home control. Its redesign focused on putting smart home controls front and center, offering clear organization, customizable shortcuts for smart devices, and a more user-friendly interface. It also introduces a map view feature for controlling devices within your home.
Google Drive updated its home page with personalized file and folder lists based on user preferences, improving accessibility to frequently used items. The new layout introduces a Home tab that prioritizes frequently accessed content and two new chips allow users to switch between suggested files and folders quickly.
Nike is taking legal action against Skiman, a ski apparel brand in Colorado, over its logo, which Nike claims is "confusingly similar" to its iconic Jordan Jumpman logo. Skiman's founder, Stephen Fucik, designed the logo to represent a skiing trick, but Nike has sent cease-and-desist letters and asked them to cancel their trademark.
Cookie Popups are often intentionally poorly designed and incorporate dark design patterns, sometimes allowing for the breach of user privacy. They prioritize the “Accept” button, don’t allow the “Decline” option, and some require up to 5 clicks to decline them fully and are written in website-specific wordy language.
Deceptive patterns, designs that force the user to take an action not in their best interest, are prolific on the web because they are phenomenally effective at boosting conversions. It’s up to designers to out deceptive patterns when proposed or implemented and seek fairer, more ethical ways of helping businesses and users achieve their goals.
Adopting a design system by product teams is one of its most challenging production stages. This research highlights the metrics to consider when measuring the adoption of design systems, from component usage to cost reduction. It also includes the best tools for tracking progress.
Animotion lets you create CSS animations visually by dragging, resizing, rotating, clipping, and more. It has a keyframes editor, a collection of ready-to-use animations, and 29 built-in eases.
Noya combines wireframes with a design system to generate high-fidelity designs in real-time.
Useberry can be integrated easily with most popular design tools to utilize various user testing methods - recruit your own testers or choose from an extensive pool of vetted and verified testers.
This year’s Spotify Wrapped looks more fluid and free-flowing and features a range of eclectic shapes, colors, and styles. It lacks the symmetry and sense of precision of last year’s identity. This was an intentional move by the design team and it was born out of a desire to reflect the “chaotic” atmosphere of 2023.
Openness to feedback is an important skill to develop. It involves timing, setting a sufficient context, presenting iteration work and alternatives, and suggestions for validating success.
The Web Accessibility Annotation Kit is a fantastic resource for designers working toward more inclusive products. The CVS Health Inclusive Design team shares what they learned during the process, including the research, accessibility principles observed, the criteria for usability testing, and more.
Creating images with AI generators such as Dall-E and Midjourney takes some time. Stability AI's SDXL Turbo model solves this problem with a new distillation technology that enables single-step image generation with unprecedented quality, reducing the number of steps from 50 to 1.
COLE combines AI models, including fine-tuned versions of Meta’s Llama2-13B, DeepFloyd IF, LLaVA1.5-13B, GPT-4V, and the open-source graphics renderer Skia. It was developed by 12 researchers at Microsoft Research Asia and Peking University. It allows those without graphic design training or expertise to generate high-quality designs on par with trained professionals.