The great intermission of design
What's inside: AI agents, emergent design process, UX+DataSci, skill matrixes, macOS collaboration, a/b test efficacy, gain/loss framing, and more.
Newsletter • September 1, 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
Block out this 30 minute must-read by Suff-Syed aptly titled The End of Design
“We’re headed into a future far more complex than ever before. Which is why, the Design we know today, shackled in post-its, rooted in mind-numbing frameworks, embodying a superficial seat at the table, has to come to an end.”
After you read this article, look at #1 and #2 below about AI agents and Emergent Design Process.
Do the combination of these articles start to spark some new UX possibilities for you?
Top 10 things worth sharing this week
Would you experiement with using an AI Agent to compliment your work? Martina Sartor shared thoughts about a few notable ones: AgentGPT, MindOS, 4149.ai, AutoGPT.
“[The key design skill] is about being so keenly situationally aware of what unknowns are in front of you so you can pick out what tools or design activities target them precisely.” Eduardo Hernandez shared about how design should be emergent instead of prescriptive process in the death of the double diamond. Related: Ryan Singer has a project example of applied emergent process.
Publish your Figma design system library into a documented website instantly with Figmayo. Worth a comparison with ZeroHeight, Knapsack, and Storybook.
Bahar Salehi made a solid case for why UX and Data Science teams need to work together. “UX researchers can help to understand how much the decisions made by machines are acceptable to end users, how much trust users have in the AI and what their concerns are with respect to privacy, bias and explainability.”
On UX skill matrixes: NNG wrote about UX skill mapping and offers a digital sheet template. Rohan Irvine and Dessy Chongarova built UX Research skills matrixes. Christopher Nguyen created a UX Career Ladder as part of the UX Manager Playbook.
Multi is allowing early access for multiplayer collaboration for macOS. This could be big for paired design and development. (h/t Karim Naguib)
Focus on high contrast tests for the greatest impact. This is evident from Luke Wroblewski’s Why Don’t A/B Tests Add Up and a new research paper that shows that the top 2% of tests were responsible for 75% of the gains at Bing.
Sam Burger shared a recap of the content-led guidance of Indeed UX in the creation of new design principles.
Jeff Gothelf asked ‘What's the least amount of work you need to do to learn the next most important thing?’ in Lean UX and this User Defenders podcast. Here’s the thing. If teams use this framing, they need to focus on what’s most important to the customer over the business, and examine customers’ needs agnostic of the business’s offerings. This will likely not be the ‘least’ amount of work.
Interesting thoughts on using the Gain and Loss Framing in messaging by J.D. Meier. “You have to work twice as hard to see the upside. Bad tends to stick and propagate itself.”
Thanks for reading!
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Sincerely,
Gerren