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THE NEED FOR L2 STANDARDS

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin believes the biggest user experience problem is that L2s don't have a “unified Ethereum” feeling.

NOTCOIN GROWTH DRIVES TELEGRAM ADOPTION

Notcoin, a blockchain game on TON, has quickly gained popularity on Telegram, onboarding over 30 million users and setting up TON-based crypto wallets.

WORLDCOIN TO CEASE HONG KONG OPERATIONS

Hong Kong has ordered Worldcoin to pause all operations in the region because of violations of local privacy regulations.

GARY GENSLER DENOUNCES FIT21

SEC Chair Gary Gensler has criticized the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), arguing that it would create regulatory gaps and reduce the oversight of crypto assets as securities, thus jeopardizing investor protection.

AUTODESK ACQUIRES AI VFX STARTUP, WONDER DYNAMICS

HERE'S WHY YOUR SPOTIFY LOOKS DIFFERENT TODAY

Spotify has introduced a new custom typeface called Spotify Mix. Created with foundry Dinamo Typefaces, the new font blends styles and unique details inspired by the history of audio-related typography, aiming to balance functionality and emotional appeal. The change will be gradually rolled out across Spotify's app, web player, and marketing materials.

XIAOMI CLONES CONTROVERSIAL APPLE CRUSH AD, WITH ONE MAJOR CHANGE

The Chinese smartphone maker, which has cloned everything from the iPad to Steve Jobs' trademark jeans and turtleneck shirts in the past, has now cloned the Crush ad. However, there's one crucial difference — it stops the press before it crushes anything.

DESIGN RESEARCH IS OVERRATED

Designers keep pushing for design research because they think that is how it should be done in all projects. However, for most projects, regular research is sufficient. Intensive research should only be conducted when a new product is being developed, when a crucial decision needs to be made, or when no knowledge source is available.

HOW TO DEVELOP MOTION DESIGN PRINCIPLES

This article emphasizes the importance of motion design in conveying brand personality and enhancing user experience. Webflow integrated motion seamlessly across its platform by creating consistent guidelines and iterating based on feedback. Building Webflow's motion design principles involved understanding the core message to convey, learning with the best in the industry, leaning on internal talent, designing with scalability in mind, and considering the context.

THE IMPROBABLE FUTURE OF TECH DESIGN

AI's potential in design isn't about replacing creatives - it can be a powerful tool in the creation process. "An Improbable Future" showcases unique AI-generated tech products that blend familiar and unseen elements that inspire new ideas. This post highlights how effective prompting can help generate innovative concepts and emphasizes the importance of intention in AI-driven design.

LEANDS FRAMEWORK (FIGMA RESOURCE)

LeanDS is a comprehensive framework designed to optimize design workflows. It provides templates and components that increase efficiency and consistency.

VISUAL DESIGN: GLOSSARY

Visual design requires knowledge and understanding of many jargon terms. This glossary is a reference when delving into visual and user interface design.

SHIP FEATURES USERS (REALLY) WANT

Insighto enables product teams to gather and prioritize user feedback by allowing users to submit and vote on feature requests, aligning development with real user needs.

UNDERSTANDING FIGMA BILLING WITH THE NEW PAYMENT STRUCTURE

Figma's new "Dev Mode" has had some significant pricing changes, affecting how designers and developers collaborate. The introduction of various seat types, Viewer, Viewer-Restricted, Full, and Dev Mode, has resulted in confusion and unexpected charges for users. This article details these changes, highlights dark UX patterns that complicate billing, and explores alternatives to manage costs effectively.

MOTHER DESIGN'S IDENTITY FOR NETFLIX COMEDY FESTIVAL IS UNIQUELY ANGELENO

Mother Design created a "self-vandalistic" system called Slap, Stick, featuring stickers with deadpan phrases for the 2024 The Netflix Is A Joke comedy festival. Inspired by LA's guerrilla sticker culture, the simple, self-aware design captures the essence of LA with humorous phrases like "You can't spell 'laugh' without 'LA' and 'ugh.'

ALL OF THE IPHONE 16 COLORS JUST LEAKED. HERE'S WHAT'S COMING

According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro are set to launch with new color options, replacing some existing ones. The Pro models will feature black, white (or silver), and gray color variations. The regular models might come in blue, pink, yellow, green, and black.

VITRA DESIGN MUSEUM'S ‘SCIENCE FICTION DESIGN' EXPLORES FURNITURE'S PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE VISIONS

The Vitra Design Museum's "Science Fiction Design" exhibition showcases over 100 futuristic furniture pieces from the Space Age to the Metaverse, including iconic designs from films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner.

EVERYONE'S STILL TALKING ABOUT THAT OUTRAGEOUS PEPSI LOGO DESIGN DOCUMENT

Pepsi's 2008 rebranding included a hilariously over-the-top design document that compares the logo to the Mona Lisa and explores concepts like the "Pepsi universe."

AGATHE BRAY-BOURRET'S ILLUSTRATIONS ARE “FILLED WITH CLUMSY NONCHALANT, SOFT CHARACTERS”

Agathe Bray-Bourret is a French illustrator who creates whimsical, humorous fantasy characters and worlds using watercolors and gouache, avoiding contour lines and rigid perspective.

CONTENT MARKETING REPORT: INSIGHTS FROM TALKING TO 400+ GTM PROS

Content is misunderstood, undervalued, and siloed. This report aims to address the discrepancy between content marketing's perception and reality. It covers content marketing as a function, who needs to be involved in content creation, and what success looks like for today's content marketers.

THE 10 FORCES SHAPING COMMERCE

Trends in commerce are the product of both technological change and behavioral change. This author identifies 10 shifts in the commerce space, from search behavior to physical overstocks. The wellness industry is massive (and growing) in the U.S., and there's an outsized emphasis on wellness among younger consumers. AI's impact on commerce will go beyond AI-generated ad copy – we'll soon have AI-generated products too. Creator and social commerce are seeing a lot of innovation, but the open question remains how best to monetize it.

GOOGLE SEARCH'S NEW AI OVERVIEWS WILL SOON HAVE ADS

Google announced plans to test search and shopping ads in the AI summaries. Ads will appear within the AI Overview in a section labeled as ‘sponsored' when they're relevant to both the query and the information in the AI Overview. AI Overview will draw on ads from advertisers' existing campaigns. This means they can neither completely opt out of the experiment nor have to adapt the settings and designs of their ads to appear in the feature.

HOW AN OPTIMIZED PRICING PAGE INCREASED PAID TRIALS BY 43%

VectorVest, a stock portfolio management system, found from research that users were skeptical of starting a trial despite the social proof elements on the pricing page. The company tested a variant of the pricing page that changed the trial offer headline, answered common objections around hidden fees and terms, reformatted the pricing table to connect the trial price to each plan, softened the call-to-action to “Select Plan”, and added a callout above the highest-value plan. This resulted in a 43% increase in paid trials, demonstrating the value of learning from real customers.

GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR EMAIL SIGN-UP FORMS

Optimizing sign-up forms results in more email subscribers, which leads to better analytics, deeper brand building, and higher-value customers. Start by ensuring you have sufficient tracking on your forms to allow you to properly analyze drop-off points and run tests. Look for opportunities to remove or adjust thought-consuming qualities on the form, such as social media icons, which can create a distraction. Get ahead of user anxiety by letting users know upfront how often you'll be contacting them and with what sort of content. The article contains additional tips around error messages, reciprocity, and social proof.

11 EMAIL POP-UP BEST PRACTICES

The average conversion rate on a pop-up is 3.8%. Pop-ups with an image get 4.96%. Results fluctuate based on trigger type, number of fields, images, and device type. When designing an email pop-up experience, ensure the pop-up window adheres to accessibility standards and is easy to close for everyone. Depending on your brand and objectives, keep fields to a minimum. One field converts better (4.3%) than multiple fields (2.6-3.5%). Fly-outs or slide-ins are also good options for mobile where space is limited. Test these pop-ups based on where someone's thumb sits beside their mobile screen.

A 2-MINUTE MASTERCLASS ON PRODUCT-LED GROWTH

Product-led growth (PLG) is growing in popularity. Used by software companies such as AirTable and Loom, PLG is a growth model where product usage drives customer acquisition, retention, and expansion. Self-service, freemium, and value-based pricing are tools for PLG, not PLG itself. Under a traditional model, marketing and sales push users to product and customer success, but under PLG the four orgs are much more intertwined.

7 MUST-READ SEO QUOTES ABOUT DRIVING REVENUE GROWTH

This article compiles advice from seven SEO leaders on how to leverage SEO for revenue growth. It features strategies like growth modeling for keyword ROI, “Pain Point SEO” for targeting high-intent keywords, and the approach to creating promotable content. The article also highlights the importance of a user-friendly blog design to guide users through the buying journey, the benefits of integrating SEO with paid acquisition data, and the crucial role of middle-of-funnel content in capturing and converting demand.

AMAZON'S MARKETING STRATEGY: CASE STUDY

This in-depth case study analyzes Amazon's marketing strategy. It highlights the company's customer-centric approaches like personalized recommendations, seamless returns, and excellent customer service. It also discusses how innovation through AI and machine learning enabled inventory management and voice-controlled assistants like Alexa. The case study shares recommendations on how marketers can replicate the strategies.

‘ENGAGEMENT BAITING': IS LINKEDIN POSTING GETTING TOO PERSONAL?

Personal storytelling is growing on LinkedIn, with users increasingly posting about their personal lives to engage their professional networks. While this approach can create more meaningful connections, it has also led to concerns about professionalism and “engagement baiting.” Experts advise focusing on authentic, value-driven content that aligns with professional growth to build your brand on the platform.

SHOULD YOU ADVERTISE AGAINST COMPETITORS?

Attacking competitors can give you an aggressive vibe that may not be in your brand voice, and taking on smaller competitors can validate their place.

THE STRATEGY SECRET OF HALO TOP

How Halo Top, the ice cream brand, used context shifting (ie. fitness snacking) to differentiate from competitors.

13 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT AI OVERVIEWS

As it's still too early to measure AI Overviews' true impact, this post summarizes 13 things to take note of.

SPEEDING UP FILE LOAD TIMES, ONE PAGE AT A TIME

Figma improved the load times of large and complex files by dynamically loading content as needed instead of all at once. It used its existing dependency framework, QueryGraph, to track and load read and write dependencies across pages. The Figma team implemented a shadow mode for validating dependencies and making sure data stayed consistent across unloaded pages.

REACT 19 LETS YOU WRITE IMPOSSIBLE COMPONENTS

React 19 has features like Server Components and Server Actions, which optimize performance and simplify data handling by shifting more logic to the server. Server Actions make API endpoint creation and form handling easier by automatically managing pending UI states, error handling, and optimistic UI updates.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE MISSING PERIOD

A client using custom document templates for customer communication experienced a recurring issue where periods would disappear from emails sent to specific customers. The bug was traced back to an SMTP client implementation that incorrectly handled lines starting with a period. A similar problem showed up later when a different team failed to patch the bug, resulting in some customers receiving incorrect billing information in their emails.

S3 IS SHOWING ITS AGE

S3, Amazon's object storage service, is missing features like compare-and-swap (CAS), multi-region buckets, and object appends. S3 Express One Zone, S3's faster alternative, lacks many standard S3 features and has high storage costs. As S3 continues to not have these modern features, developers will have to either build workarounds or move on to an S3 alternative.

THINGS YOU SHOULD NEVER DO AS A SOFTWARE ENGINEER

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NEOSYNC

Neosync is an open-source way to anonymize PII, generate synthetic data, and sync environments for a better developer experience. Developers can safely test code against production data, reproduce prod bugs locally, and fix broken staging environments.

LEGEND-STATE 3.0 ALPHA

Legend-State is a state library for JavaScript and React/React Native applications. 3.0 Alpha now has an offline-first, error-resilient sync system. It comes with new persistence and sync plugins for Supabase and TanStack Query.

JIRA.JS

Jira.js is a Node and browser module that allows developers to interact with the Jira Cloud API, Jira Agile Cloud API, and Jira ServiceDesk Cloud API.

HOW I MADE GOOGLE'S “WEB” VIEW MY DEFAULT SEARCH

Google recently added a "Web" filter that provides a simplified search results page similar to what Google looked like a decade ago, without the added information and ads. This feature is currently hidden under the "More" menu, but users can access it directly by adding "udm=14" to the search URL or customizing their browser's search settings.

SYSTEMATICALLY IMPROVING YOUR RAG

To improve your RAG system, create synthetic questions and answers to evaluate precision and recall, then combine full-text and vector search for the best retrieval. RAG systems should have user feedback mechanisms to gather system performance data.

REACT CONF 2024 RECAP

React Conf 2024's announcements include the React 19 RC release, React Native's New Architecture Beta, and the open-source React Compiler, with community members also sharing projects like React Router v7.

YOU CAN NO LONGER LOG OUT OF X/TWITTER (REDDIT POST)

X/Twitter automatically logs you in even when you log out because your session information is retrieved from twitter.com when you visit x.com.

NAVIGATING THE JAVASCRIPT FRAMEWORK ECOSYSTEM (42 MINUTE VIDEO)

Google Chrome has published a talk that provides a comprehensive overview of the latest trends, updates, and best practices in popular frameworks like Angular, React, Vue, and rising JS frameworks like Svelte and SolidJS.

ARE PEOPLE USING CONTAINER QUERIES?

Container queries, a new CSS feature, have had a slower adoption than expected, possibly due to technical concerns.

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