A sweeping annual look at where UX is heading, from deceptive patterns to the ethics of growth design.
The UX Collective's annual trends report examines how the discipline is shifting, covering deceptive patterns, the rise of product design over UX, ethical tensions under capitalism, and the cost of collaboration tools like Figma. It blends critique with real examples to map where the field stands and where it's fracturing.
Connects architectural history to design systems in a genuinely fresh way worth sitting with.
The piece draws on architecture to argue that a style's most lasting output isn't the artifacts it produces but the perceptual categories it installs in people over time. Applied to design systems and visual culture, it reframes how designers should think about influence, precedent, and the long tail of aesthetic decisions.
A sharp argument for why taste is atrophying in design and what that actually costs us.
The article argues that taste — widely cited as essential — is the one skill designers are actively deprioritizing in favor of speed and process. Using a real product decision to avoid humanizing an AI interface, the author makes a case for deliberate, considered aesthetic judgment as a professional discipline, not a personal luxury.
Real portfolios from design managers, directors, and VPs with annotations on what makes them work.
Leadership Folios is a curated collection of portfolios from UX managers, directors, VPs, founders, and executives. Each entry includes notes explaining why it works at that level of seniority — a practical reference for designers thinking about moving into leadership roles.
How Intuit built a token naming system that scales across Mailchimp, QuickBooks, and TurboTax.
Nate Baldwin from Intuit walks through how the team developed a flexible design token taxonomy that works across multiple products with very different brand identities. The system goes beyond simple theming to serve as a foundational layer for products like Mailchimp, QuickBooks, TurboTax, and Mint — a real-world case study in naming things that actually scale.
A framework for designing across difference without assuming you know what users want or need.
The article introduces "in/tension modeling," a design approach that maps how different stakeholders tolerate or resist a given solution. It draws on behavioral science (capability, opportunity, and motivation) to argue that assuming user behavior leads to harmful outcomes, while understanding it removes barriers. Design, the author argues, should bridge differences rather than reinforce them.
A thoughtful argument for why safe, forgettable design is its own kind of failure.
Using the framework of Vitruvius — firmness, commodity, delight — the piece argues that functional and stable aren't enough: design must also invite and move people. It draws parallels between architecture and product design to make the case that aesthetic ambition is not a luxury but a core requirement.
A solid, practical refresher on empathy mapping before you get lost in solutions.
NN/g walks through how to construct and use empathy maps as a synthesis tool in the Define stage of design thinking. It covers the four quadrants (Says, Thinks, Does, Feels), when to use them, and how they connect to user need statements and downstream design decisions. Grounded in research practice rather than theory.
What if interfaces adapted to your context in real time, not just your disability?
The piece argues accessibility should be situational and dynamic, not static. It walks through scenarios where the same user needs different accommodations depending on context — bright sunlight, a broken arm, fatigue — and proposes design principles for interfaces that respond to shifting conditions rather than fixed user profiles.
A forensic look at what separates brands that endure from those that fade fast.
Using Bulb and other case studies, the article examines the design, language, and brand decisions that build lasting loyalty. It argues that distinctive voice and visual consistency compound over time, while surface-level polish without substance fades quickly. Specific campaign choices and UX decisions are analyzed as evidence.
A sharp look at how existing elements in a scene can solve problems never assigned to them.
The piece explores service design through an everyday observation: sometimes the best solution to a problem is already present, just not recognized as such. It draws on real-world examples to argue that good design often means noticing what's already working and letting it do more, rather than introducing something new.
Automation is eating junior UX tasks. Here's what the field must do to protect craft learning.
The piece examines how AI automation is eliminating the entry-level tasks that have historically been how junior designers develop core UX craft. It argues the field needs deliberate structural responses — mentorship, studio models, or redesigned workflows — to ensure skill transmission doesn't break down entirely.
A thoughtful provocation: what does design mean when the interface itself disappears?
The article argues that truly great design transcends the interface, the product, and even the software itself — a system succeeds when it becomes invisible by genuinely fitting human needs in context. It pushes designers to think at a larger unit of analysis than screens or flows.
Jeremy Keith on why seamless design is a trap, and seams are actually worth keeping.
Jeremy Keith reflects on Mark Weiser's original vision of ubiquitous computing, noting that Weiser never called for seamlessness — he warned against it. The post argues that visible seams in systems create legibility and control for users, pushing back against the current trend of frictionless, ambient AI everywhere.
A game developer turns his personal site into a playable world — craft and personality in equal measure.
Paul Bakaus, a veteran game developer, describes building an interactive boss fight experience into his personal website. He draws on sprite animation principles from game engines to shape how visitors emotionally relate to him. The piece is a thoughtful case study on using interaction design to express identity rather than just display credentials.
LukeW on why designers obsess over tools when the real job is delivering outcomes.
Luke Wroblewski argues that designers get distracted by tool mastery at the expense of what actually matters: the outcomes their work produces. The piece reframes how practitioners should think about their role and measure success, pushing back against process-for-its-own-sake culture.
Challenges the assumption that the strongest individual résumé makes the strongest team hire.
The article argues that design leadership routinely optimizes for individual credentials over team composition, leading to homogeneous, less innovative teams. It examines how expertise distribution, cognitive diversity, and complementary skill sets often matter more than hiring the most credentialed candidate on paper.
A reframe that might change how you approach your next site: design as argument, not billboard.
The author argues that the most compelling websites work like essays — they have a point of view, build an argument, and try to convince you of something. Rather than defaulting to carousels and hero images, designers can borrow from essayists to create sites with narrative momentum and genuine personality.
Wearables want to measure your stress — here's how shaky the science actually is.
The article examines how wearable devices are attempting to quantify stress beyond basic biometrics like heart rate, exploring the physiological signals involved and the significant challenges in turning messy, context-dependent human experience into a clean data point. It raises important questions for designers building health-tracking products about the gap between measurement and meaning.
A thoughtful look at how interaction patterns layer up from physical gestures to interface conventions.
The piece breaks down the material reality of screens and the interaction vocabulary built on top of them, tracing how gestures like sliders evolved through multiple iterations. It's a meditation on how interaction designers inherit and adapt physical metaphors, and what that means for the craft of designing touch interfaces.
Research-backed look at how office floor plans shape meeting culture and team decisions.
The piece translates behavioral science research into practical design thinking, examining how physical workspace layouts influence meeting outcomes and organizational flexibility. It connects environmental psychology findings to actionable insights about how space design nudges behavior in ways leadership rarely accounts for.
InVision's midnight shutdown is a wake-up call about design tool dependency and file ownership.
When InVision shut down on New Year's Eve 2024, everything users had stored there was permanently deleted. The article examines what that means for designers who trust cloud tools with their work, and raises questions about portability, ownership, and the risks of building on platforms you don't control.
A still-sharp critique of dull corporate web writing and why words matter as much as visuals.
The article argues that most corporate websites fail not because of bad design but because of lifeless, generic writing. It makes the case that good web copy requires intentional craft, clarity, and understanding of the reader, and that designers who ignore words undermine their own visual work.
A practical, battle-tested playbook for standing up a design system fast without cutting corners.
The article walks through a structured 90-day plan for launching a design system, covering stakeholder discovery, auditing existing unofficial systems, and identifying which teams have the most urgent needs. It provides specific questions to ask and tactics to prioritize, making it actionable for practitioners starting from scratch or rebuilding.
A grounded, honest take on how designers actually grow into accessibility practice over time.
Hope Turner argues that accessibility expertise is built incrementally, not acquired all at once, and that the barrier of feeling unqualified keeps many designers from starting. The piece encourages practitioners to begin with small, consistent steps rather than waiting until they feel fully ready.
A practical framework for judging whether your design system actually serves the product, not just the team.
Nick Babich argues that a design system's effectiveness should be measured by how well it helps achieve the product's core purpose. He examines the qualities that distinguish coherent, goal-aligned systems from those that produce confusing designs, offering criteria product teams can use to audit and improve their own systems.
A sharp critique of why PWA install UX is broken and who should fix it.
Jeremy Keith argues that the poor discoverability of web app installation (buried 5 levels deep behind a share icon) is a fundamental browser UX failure, not a developer problem. He contrasts it with bookmarking, which has decades of front-and-center convention behind it, and makes the case that browsers need to surface a proper install prompt rather than leaving developers to write browser-specific workarounds.
A practitioner reflects on why cultural literacy matters as much as design craft.
London-based product designer Joshua Leigh argues that strong design work draws on broad cultural references beyond the design canon. The piece makes the case that designers who engage with art, film, and history produce richer, more resonant work than those who only consume design content.
A nostalgic but sharp look at how App Store badge design quietly faded away.
The article traces the decline of the once-ubiquitous
A sharp observation on how web platform features mature from JS hacks into native primitives.
Jeremy Keith links to Ben Francis's piece tracing the familiar web development cycle: hacky workarounds get legitimized over time by CSS and HTML standards. The framing is applied to how web app installation should work, arguing that the platform should absorb what JavaScript currently patches. A concise, historically grounded argument for progressive platform design.