Fashionxmas :: Elegant Fashion Designs Looks: Frequent vs. infrequent designers

Frequent vs. infrequent designers — and more UX links this week

A weekly collection of UX links, brought to you by your friends at the UX Collective.

Frequent vs. infrequent designers — and the tools designed for them →

Frequent designers are people who routinely design for a certain platform (apps or websites or VR or chatbots or any other) and using a certain design tool (Sketch or Principle or Illustrator and so on).

They know that platform's conventions, best practices, references, dos and don'ts. They have learned that tool's shortcuts, have installed a series of plugins and extensions, and have developed agility and efficiency when operating that software.

But the problem with current design tools is that they focus too much on frequent designers.

On the I-have-29-Sketch-plugins-installed type of user.

Which can be a missed opportunity.

Continue reading

The people part of design systems →
A team rotation system that allowed Etsy to implement design system more broadly at the organization. By Magera Moon.

Rapid UX research at Google →
How do you ensure product teams get the insights they need quickly and effectively? By Heidi Sales.

Are you approaching prototyping all wrong? →
Paul Boag writes about using prototypes to paint a vision of a better experience, as opposed to being constrained by technology or stakeholders.

Science in the system: Fluent design and material →
Material science is a growing field defying the laws of physics. See how that has been applied to Microsoft's Fluent design system. By Mike Jacobs.

How to design emotional interfaces for boring apps →
Humans can't endure boredom for a long time, which is why products built for repetitive tasks so often get abandoned.

From the community

Principles on designing apps for young kids, by Rubens Cantuni
Creating design systems in the wild, by Sonja Sarah Porter
Stop calling these Dark Patterns — they're simply a**hole design, by Flavio Lamenza
An exploration on cryptocurrency payment UX process, by Samantha Shaibani
A hunt for the perfect date picker UI, by Kateryna Romanenchuk
Designing a new Windows shell — introducing "Fluid Desktop", by Michael West

News & ideas

The story of how a simple icon became a symbol of healing in the Youtube shooting case
While Zuckerberg's congress testimony wasn't super productive, it raised two paths on how to regulate Facebook
Every youtuber is now making "The Face" to grab attention to their video thumbnails
Here are four common types of leaders to inspire you
Gmail redesign leaks, and it looks very much the same (?)
A quick essay on how web apps are only getting better
Deletist: a person who deletes their data in the quest for anonymity, privacy and minimalism
In case you have time, here's a long-form essay (in two parts) on why buttons shouldn't have a hand cursor

Tools & resources

Museum of websites documents how famous internet companies have changed over time
React-spring: yet another animation library for React Native
MacOS UI library for Sketch, updated
Easle Instant claims to help you find graphic designers for your last-minute creative needs
What's my Starbucks name is a great resource if you're looking for unique names for your kids
Flowmagic is a tracking and management tool for freelancers
Sketch The Ripper rips a .sketch file and extracts the objects, not just shows an embedded preview

A year ago…

3 ways to improve your visual design skills →
I've noticed a trend after screening dozens of junior designer portfolios. Designers (mostly from bootcamps) were heavily focused on UX and evangelizing the Design Thinking mindset popularized by consultancies like IDEO. What lacked was the ability to breath life into designs, and portfolios fell flat in showcasing visual design fundamentals taught in art school. By Jules Cheung.