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Everything we see in this world that is not made by nature is designed. However, that doesn’t mean designers should or can take the lead role. As design work becomes less siloed, the ability to speak the language of other disciplines becomes critical, as does being willing to step into cross-functional territory and become a link between people.
Several patent applications have been filed by Apple since 2015 that describe a smart ring. The last one suggests it's not just about fingers.
Samsung's Galaxy S24 Ultra will feature a flattened screen design, sharper screen edges, and a titanium finish. According to the company, its upcoming devices will use its Gauss model to generate AI on-device. Recent leaks suggest the S24 devices will support over a dozen languages and translate messaging apps in real time.
Google is updating the tablet Gmail app by introducing a left-aligned navigation rail, replacing the bottom bar elements. This update also relocates the compose button and hamburger menu to the sidebar, providing a clearer view of the email list.
Flat design became a thing. We saw an overnight shift in the interface design approach when Apple introduced iOS 7 in 2013. Notable design projects like Reddit’s new branding, macOS’s new icons, new Airbnb designs, and Shopify's updated design system are the latest moves away from fully flat designs.
Whether it’s user research, strategy, or product and service design, if you trust random AI tools without intention, your output will be as tasteful as overcooked spaghetti at a fake Italian restaurant. Designers should use generative AI tools to support and enhance their UX skills, not replace them.
While emojis help break down cultural and linguistic barriers, they can also hurt the user experience. These symbols can make accessing and understanding web content harder for screen reader users, people with cognitive and vestibular disabilities, visitors of multilingual websites, and many other use cases. From not overusing emojis to considering the need for localization, this article provides best practices for adopting emojis.
The UI Game presents two UI mockups and the player must select the more appropriate design. If the player chooses the correct option, their streak will increase.
This handy Figma plugin dynamically generates seamless tiled noise, textures, patterns, gradients, and more.
Drag and drop to generate stunning product shoots in seconds.
Designers who stick to a static job description and stay within the artificial boundaries of one job function will reach their limits quickly. There are three ways for designers to grow: growing within design, broadening their focus, and building bigger things.
The average recruiter looks at a curriculum vitae for six seconds. Considering the short window of opportunity, a compelling portfolio offers an alternative for gaining more attention. Despite this, most designers fail to capitalize on some low-hanging fruits when showcasing their work.
While effective at boosting conversions, deceptive patterns lead users to take action outside their best interests. Their use is unethical and legally problematic. You can avoid them by understanding how they manifest and identifying these patterns in your designs.
Cookie banners are essential for user safety. They should be designed in a consistent and empathetic manner. An analysis of 48 cookie pop-ups found that most lacked UX accessibility and empathy for the user, with inconsistent designs, misleading wording, biased button designs, and ambiguous "Decline" options.
Unconscious biases affect perception, action, and decision-making. They can influence various activities, including designing, user research, and deciding what to build.
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.
Reddit's fresh identity was created by New York studio Pentagram. Pentagram agreed early on to point back to four values: inherently eclectic, positively different, delightfully absurd, and genuinely candid. It took the existing 2D Snoo icon and rendered it in 3D and customized Reddit Sans, one of the company's proprietary typefaces, turning the rounded counter forms of its lowercase letters into bubbles as a nod to Reddit's interface.
Cocreator, a new text-to-image generator embedded within Windows 11, has been officially launched by Microsoft. Powered by OpenAI's DALL-E 3 model, the new feature lets users enter a description of something and choose between three generated images.
Ten-year-old Apple enthusiast Teddy from the UK has initiated a petition urging Apple to redesign the "nerd face" glasses emoji, citing that its protruding front teeth are offensive to people wearing glasses. Teddy has designed an alternative "genius emoji" without exaggerated teeth, hoping to promote a more positive representation of glasses wearers.
Most designers start as tactical designers, align themselves with the product or the engineering team, and work without a vision. Designers should instead become strategic by understanding and impacting the product vision, helping frame problems, visualizing potential solutions, and learning to persuade high-ranking people.
The change in Google’s app icons in 2020 is a notorious and baffling example of consistency going too far. Consistency is an important but sometimes over-rated tool. It’s key to maintaining a coherent experience - but develop an eye to know when to break from it.
Seventy-two percent of business leaders would like to adopt AI within three years. Funding for AI-powered startups continues to rise. Design professionals need to stay up to date with AI technology, understand its benefits and risks, choose when to apply AI in customer experiences, improve idea generation, and find ways to build trust with users when data is a sensitive issue.
HeadshotPro is an online tool that creates cute avatars from photos. Powered by DALL-E 3, it can analyze photos, describe them in words, and generate new images from scratch.
The Include plugin provides an easier way for designers to spec and for developers to understand what is required.
Spectral.js is a tool for finding color steps based on the Kubelka-Munk theory, a proven scientific model that simulates how light interacts with paint to produce lifelike color mixing.
Designers often need to conduct more research or pick the right methodology. To do this, they should identify the desired shift in user behavior or business metric, craft research based on research questions, and use data triangulation to make well-informed decisions.
The perception of speed is more important than actual speed. Various factors can influence performance user expectations, including emotional state, age, and culture. As time is highly subjective, we need principles to help us understand what "fast" is and how to deliver it.
Ambiguous letter shapes pose a barrier to specific audiences, making it difficult for them to consume information. A new feature from Stark identifies problematic letterforms and glyphs in typefaces.
Understanding that your audience is more distracted than you assume helps you create a focused, persuasive message.
Disney’s 12 principles of animation might be some of the most influential tenets in design history.
It may seem simple, but 3D printing objects with multiple colors can be challenging since most printers can only handle one filament at a time. Co Print ChromaSet features a modular upgrade that allows almost any 3D printer to handle multiple filaments simultaneously.
Google Drive's new streamlined homepage makes it easier and faster for users to find files that matter most. The homepage will now present personalized file and folder suggestions based on machine-learning algorithms, filter chips to narrow down searches, and a more modern design in line with Google Material Design 3.
Samsung's Android 14 update, One UI 6, contains a significant visual overhaul of emojis, making them more modern and user-friendly. The update replaces the dated and less intuitive emojis with more recognizable and aesthetically pleasing designs, improving usability with better contrast and larger details.
AI is rapidly transforming web design, with the latest innovation being a tool that converts screenshots into functional HTML and CSS. This tool, called Screenshot-to-Code, utilizes GPT-4 Vision and DALL-E 3 to generate code and images. While some see its potential for revolutionizing web design, others express concerns about job displacement and potential misuse.
Cookie permissions must follow the law and balance, respecting user privacy and being user-friendly. Designers should make the cookie options clear and available immediately, avoid using deceptive UI patterns, use plain language, use bullet points to describe each cookie, minimize the size of cookie overlays, and only use one overlay at a time.