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Design tokens and variables link names to specific values but differ in scope and purpose. While variables in programming can hold dynamic values and are specific to certain environments like CSS or Sass, design tokens represent design decisions applied consistently across platforms. This distinction ensures a uniform look and feel, with design tokens acting as a technology-agnostic source of truth, unlike tool-specific variables in Figma or Sketch.
While connecting with like-minded people can be beneficial, designers must maintain individual appreciation and avoid letting groupthink diminish personal enjoyment.
The World Games 2025 logo, designed by John Fairley and selected from 3,562 entries, captures Chengdu's essence with elements like the Chinese peony, panda, Chinese knot, arrows, and the world.
Poly Mono is a unique font made entirely of geometric shapes instead of letters designed for creative designs rather than spelling.
TikTok Symphony's new AI-powered ad suite offers tools for script writing and video production and automation features for matching brands with the right creative assets and audiences. With TikTok One, advertisers can connect with nearly two million creators and agencies. The new ad suite is a clear sign of how the company is fighting to stay competitive with Meta and Google, which are heavily investing in AI-enhanced ads.
Apple was recognized with a Black Pencil — the D&AD Awards' highest accolade — for its visionOS operating system, which powers the recently launched Vision Pro mixed-reality headset. According to Apple's head of design, the award is a testament to the tight integration and care the design studio and engineering teams at Apple have invested into crafting a truly magical experience.
Strava will add a dark mode for all users this summer, allowing them to match their phone settings or keep the app in the dark mode. Its upcoming ‘Athlete Intelligence' feature allows users to gain better insights into their training based on AI interpretation of their data. New night heat maps will help users find safer, well-trafficked routes for activities between sunset and sunrise.
Designers, artists, and businesses sometimes face a "creative cold start problem" that blocks their first step. To overcome this, focus on action over perfection, prototype, and experiment, use common patterns, seek balanced feedback, and align personal excitement with audience resonance.
Design systems built with proper affordances are the key to creating intuitive and versatile user interfaces. Designers can ensure that components are robust and flexible by clearly defining and implementing boundaries around their intended uses. Collaborating with product teams and applying data-informed design contributes to quantifying the impact of design decisions.
A facilitator helps others understand, collaborate, and create, fostering accessible interactions within a project. Instead of adopting an "expert" mindset, designers should support diverse community stakeholders, encouraging open communication, various perspectives, and shared understanding.
Design and publish websites without leaving Figma. figma.to.website supports features like Autolayout, Components, Interactions, Variables, and Animations. The plugin creates a high-performance website with fast loading speeds, optimized code, global CDN hosting, and automatic image optimizations for all devices.
Superdesigner's Patterns tool allows users to easily create and customize unique, high-quality design patterns for various projects.
Get insights into your product backlog effortlessly by letting users vote on ideas and requests.
Familiar design boosts productivity by allowing users to transfer their experience between similar products, while novel design helps differentiate from competitors and adds elements of surprise. Balancing novelty with familiarity, rooted in thorough user research and testing, is crucial to meet user needs and preferences.
Removing or adding keywords in AI image prompts leads to unpredictable changes, highlighting the current limitations in prompt adherence. Experiments with Midjourney showed that while general concepts were maintained, specifics often deviated based on the prompt's length and detail. Iterative attempts and multiple trials remain essential to achieving desired results in AI-generated images.
Building a design tribe can revolutionize your work environment by fostering a strong support system where team members implicitly understand and help each other. Teams can achieve greater collaboration and innovation by nurturing tribal leadership and progressing through the five tribal stages. Ultimately, creating a cohesive and supportive tribe can transform your UX team's culture and performance.
Investing in creativity involves consistent effort over time, leading to cumulative rewards and better skills.
Big Medium will host a free online event on June 13 at 12:00 pm ET to discuss how AI can supercharge the build and maintenance of design systems.
YouTuber Apple Demo has found an old iPod third-generation prototype containing an unreleased Tetris clone called Stacker along with other games like Block0 and Klondike, offering a unique glimpse into Apple's early game development efforts.
Canva, a popular online editing application, has launched an Enterprise tier for large corporations that features scalable cloud storage, advanced brand controls, and enterprise-level security. It also introduced a redesigned user interface, new Work Kits for different organizational departments, upgraded AI tools in Magic Studio, and new features like variable font support and a stroke width tool.
Celebrating its tenth anniversary, Material Design is marking a decade of transforming user interfaces with its bold, minimalist aesthetic and real-world physics. This retrospective explores Material's impact and evolution and the principles that have made it a cornerstone of modern digital design.
Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Watch 7 Ultra, which resembles the Apple Watch Ultra with its new square-shaped case and additional button, has leaked through renders by OnLeaks and Smartprix. Rumored features include a third button similar to Apple's Action Button, a new health sensor array, larger speaker grilles, and potentially more microphones for improved speakerphone clarity.
Decision trees are becoming invaluable for UI design. They offer a clear, structured approach to selecting the right components. This post dives into how companies like Doctolib, Workday, and Lyft use decision trees to streamline design decisions, enhance consistency, and improve collaboration.
Naming in design and development should be logical, short, meaningful, and not tied to visual properties. Resources like the Design Tokens Naming Playbook and tools like Intuit's flexible design token taxonomy, Adobe's Spectrum Design System for color naming, Component Gallery, and the Design Token Names Inventory help improve and standardize naming practices across different products.
UX design welcomed diverse backgrounds from 2000 to 2010. The 2010-2020 period saw high demand and the rise of boot camps, while 2020-2023 emphasized specialization and portfolios. Since 2023, many designers have left the field, but UX design potential remains vast. There's a need to support designers, emphasize seniority, and integrate essential skills into university curricula.
Visiwig Pattern Generator is a web-based tool for customizing vector patterns. The outputs can be downloaded as SVG files or copied as code.
This Figma file offers Tailwind CSS primitives for colors, dimensions, and typography and tailored JSON files and resources for effective collaboration with engineers.
Teranoptia, a whimsical typeface without letters inspired by medieval art, allows users to create imaginative chimeric creatures and decorative borders by simply typing. It's free to use, distribute, and modify.
Design systems and style guides differ - design systems offer a comprehensive set of standards for scalable design, while style guides provide specific design principles and visual references. Design systems, which include reusable components and patterns, require ongoing maintenance and serve as a "parent" to style guides and pattern libraries, ensuring consistency and reducing redundancy in large organizations.
Google unveiled exciting upgrades to its accessibility tools in celebration of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, including AI-powered enhancements to Android's Lookout for better object identification and a new text-free mode for the Look to Speak app. Project Gameface now lets users control a cursor with facial gestures on Android, while Google Maps and sound notifications received notable improvements for greater inclusivity.
Building an effective prompt library involves selecting the right AI tools, defining what "good" means to you, aligning language with your brand's principles, and testing prompt components to ensure consistency. Defining specific keywords, testing for biases, and keeping libraries updated are essential. This approach helps create high-quality, reusable prompts that support cohesive and accurate AI-generated content.
Using card design, you can present diverse forms of content in an organized, digestible format, providing a great user experience and making your interface intuitive, responsive, and easy to use.
This exploration of Canva's user activation process showcases the company's intuitive onboarding procedure, demonstrating how it quickly engages users and teaches them what matters most when getting started with the app.
OpenAI and Google recently showcased the future of multimodal AI and AI-powered chatbots with smart glasses that combine video, audio, and text inputs for real-time interactions, signaling a new paradigm shift in AI wearables.
Chameleon, Meta's new multimodal model, integrates text, images, and code into a unified token space. This allows it to seamlessly reason over and generate interleaved image and text sequences without needing modality-specific components. Designed to achieve state-of-the-art performance, Chameleon outperforms many competitors in tasks like visual question answering and image captioning.
Apple announced a new version of its online education store, which has a design similar to the main Apple online store introduced in 2021. The new webpage highlights all the Apple products that students can get at a discount.
The Unicode Consortium has previewed seven fresh emojis in iOS 18, including a sleepy face, fingerprint, and leafless tree. These additions, set to hit the iPhone later this year or early 2025, provide a creative playground for Apple designers.
Emotions are crucial to user experience and should take precedence over user counts. Storytelling should drive action by focusing on individual struggles and specific details. Businesses should prioritize emotions in product development, as they are essential to decision-making.
Sonos' recent app redesign has caused an uproar due to missing features and disrupted user experiences. CEO Patrick Spence defends the changes, citing greater personalization and improved performance. Sonos is working to address bugs and restore user trust. Its challenges and responses offer insights into app development and user interface evolution.
Mural combines design thinking and Agile methodologies, enabling teams to visualize ideas, prioritize tasks, and align strategies effectively. The process enhances collaboration through visual tools, anonymous voting, and customizable templates, making it easier to manage complex projects and gather client feedback in real time.
The Free Brutalist Shape Elements Mega Pack features 500+ fully editable vector elements ideal for eye-catching designs, including brutalist shapes, sparks, wavy lines, and wireframes.
Explore innovative web design without the constraints of traditional grids using flexible layouts that adapt to content variations and responsive design principles.
Design your dream home with AI. Upload a photo of your space, select style preferences, and receive stunning renders and product recommendations in under a minute.
When crafting a resume, prioritize a clear layout and concise content and avoid jargon and filler achievements. A strong portfolio should showcase real client projects with great design and clear project stories using animations, interactive prototypes, and large images to stand out.
Airbnb is enhancing web accessibility by using WCAG 1.4.4 Resize Text (Level AA) and adopting rem units for consistent font scaling, which benefits people with low vision. While browser zoom scales all content and has limitations on mobile devices, font scaling tailored to users' needs offers a better solution for mobile web accessibility.
The future of user interface design is evolving with AI, AR, and VR technologies, presenting new interaction models and ethical considerations for UX designers. Key trends and challenges underscore the need for adaptability and continuous learning to stay ahead in this dynamic field.
As AI-driven digital art becomes more prevalent, the value of handmade art is rising due to its authenticity, uniqueness, and personal touch.
Barcelona-based animation studio Niceshit partnered with BBDO for Penguin Random House and Meta to create "Reel Page Turner," a campaign of animated reels encouraging people to discover stories beyond book covers.
Julie Mehretu's BMW M Hybrid V8 Art Car blends her painting "Everywhen" with the car's design, creating a dynamic, performative artwork that symbolizes movement and speed.