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What's inside: Human vulnerabilities, UX intro to AI, middle-range research, design storytelling, gradient map, rule of tincture, and more.
Newsletter • November 10, 2023 • 5 min read
Hey folks,
Here are the top 10 things I found worth sharing and your UX tip of the week.
UX tip of the week
Use From/To to design your product’s future state.
Jack Strachan wrote about a simple tool for designing the future that helps us not over-analyze what is but leap to what could be.
The From/To is a juxtaposed list based on Dunne & Ray’s A/B manifesto.
For best results:
Leverage existing research or conduct new research to capture whats best for the user and societal needs in the To (future state).
Revisit the risk assessment exercise and user decision-making equation tools if needed.
Top 10 things worth sharing this week
Jakob Nielsen and Kate Moran recently summarized how to get started with AI for UX after writing about how UX needs to urgently engage with AI and accelerate usability improvements to current AI tools. Related: AI as a UX assistant.
Two noteworthy visual updates: The design team at Slack released a new visual language. The design team at Meta redefined Facebook’s brand identity.
Emily Yorgey offered practical guidance for accounting for human vulnerabilities while balancing attention and intention with UX in the era of persuasive technology.
Judd Antin shared compelling thoughts about trading middle-range research with more macro- and micro- research in the UX research reckoning is here. "Middle-range research is a deadly combination of interesting to researchers and marginally useful for actual product and design work. Doing so much of it just doesn’t deliver enough business value."
Kevin Cantrell launched a new foundry of beautiful typefaces called Cantrell Type.
For Hiring Managers: Explore a fantastic hub of UX hiring templates and insights in UX Hiring 101 by Kristina Holysheva. For Jobseekers: Product Design Interview Guide.
If you want to nerd out on color, learn from Tess O’Connor about how the rule of tincture is applied to the web as heraldic link colors.
If stories are over 20x easier for people to remember than pure facts, explore this overview of storytelling with design by Kai Wong. See also: Storytelling with You and Storytelling for User Experience.
Matej Latin shared that the linear design process is why they decline 90% of portfolios. The reason? Design can start at any step in the process, it never ends, and when you complete a step it could send you to any other step (see the image in the post).
If you love gradients and Figma, then Gradient Map is a new tool you won’t want to miss.
Thanks for reading!
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Sincerely,
Gerren