Thick or qualitative data (1) helps organizations and their AI-solutions make better decisions by including insights about the context, nuances and influences that leads to customers behaviors and decisions.Photo by G N: https://www.pexels.com/photo/australia-sydney-surf-beachlife-1695310/But thick data sounds expensive, difficult and complicated to collect anduse.It isnt.In fact collecting thick data means doing almost the same as we are already doing. Only asking different questions.First: What is thickdata?According to Gilbert Ryle (2) thick compared to thin datais:thin: includes surface-level observations ofbehaviorthick: adds context to suchbehaviorPut even simpler: thick data is what helps us answer why people are doing what they are doing while thin data only documents what has happened.In an oversimplification (below) we could say thick data is the yellow data on the left helping us understand what can influence people, while channel performance and sales data are thin data on the right documenting what people aredoing.Some organizations use product and sales data (purple) as proxies for human data (yellow). This can lead to a situation where an understanding of the customer gets replaced with a focus on the proxies becoming the goal in themselves.Why should we care about thickdata?AI-engines use both thin and thick data. The former is used to look for patterns and probabilities, while the latter helps the AI better understand context, nuance, culture, ritualsetc.According to a search on Perplexity (3): thick data significantly enhances AIs ability to understand and respond to complex human behaviors and motivations, leading to more nuanced, personalized, and effective performance across various applications.Ethnographer Tricia Wang (4) argues that over-reliance on thin data was part of Nokias downfall. Their own thick data was clearly suggesting that even low-income individuals would invest in smartphones, while Nokias quantitative data was telling it (what it wanted to hear), that the group would keep buying dumbphones.In hindsight its easy to see the fall of Nokia (dumb phones) and the rise of Android (Smartphones) in the Chinese market 20082012. Image by Big Fish Presentations and TriciaWang.How do we get thickdata?Thick data is readily available almost everywhere, especially online. We only need to ask forit.Which is kind of the problem: we dont. For no apparentreason?But the value is there, for anyone who wants it. Right in front ofus.These are just a few examples of questions weve answered by capturing thicker data about the customer:What job [need] are customers trying to solve which leads them tous?How do customers identify themselves?Are customers looking for products or insights? (Where are they in their job-map / journey)?What is the perspective / lens /context through which customers understand youroffer?What else influences customers decisionmaking?What language (terminology) do customers use?How do customers measuresuccess?Are we helping customers achieve thissuccess?This is how you get thick data online (one generalized approach):Collect assumptions by asking your team what has to be true? in relation to what you are trying to achieve (can be anything from strategy to creative concepts or execution).Choose the assumptions that you want to test and articulate them into a clear experimentation statement (if x happens then y) identifying where and how you will run the experiment including how to measure it and what success looks like(5).Create the experiment, run it, analyze andadjust.Now scale this from a novel to a system wideapproachWe talk about thin or quantitative data being at scale, but are we resigned to qualitative data having to be expensive, slow, complicated and not to scale? If so this is only because weve decided to think it likethis.We can ask any question and design any interaction to capture its answers. So why not scale up the thick data production? Breaking from the boring data everyone else has (which we collect and make sense of in the same way and with the same algorithms whats the fun in that?(6))Asking thick questions should be as natural as asking thin questions (e.g. open-rates and conversion funnels). Whynot?We need to establish new design or experience principles that put learning about our customers (not our channels) at the forefront, make available compliant learning modules and objects as part of our design and experience systems. And we need to create demand for them by having our teams ask for better questions, not betteranswers.This would produce a constant flow of thick data from across the ecosystem feeding into the AI models in real-time and atscale.Competitive advantageThin-questions are thinking inside a box inside a box. Why-questions are thicker, they help us understand the customer when they are with us and when they arenot.A box inside a box. Icons by thenounproject.Thin questions are conventional and conformative. They make us the same as everyone else. Everyone collects the same data, asking the same questions using the same algorithms.Thick questions are competitive advantage and the best question is whynot?Sources:(1). Pratibha Kumari J., What is Thick Data?, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-thick-data-pratibha-kumari-jha/(2). Wikipedia, Thick description, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thick_description(3). Search related to thick on Perplexity, https://www.perplexity.ai/search/in-general-terms-whoch-data-do-4myjkNOXSPWBSNYfyv8iyw#1(4). Tricia Wang, The human insights missing from big data, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk35J2u8KqY(5). Helge Tenn, Business experimentation, https://medium.com/everything-new-is-dangerous/business-experimentation-f5620919f209(6). Helge Tenn, Customer as Competitive Advantage, https://uxdesign.cc/customer-as-competitive-advantage-19a6ede62852How to close the customer-data-gap was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How to empower and protect your customers by considering not just Value, Usability, Viability and Feasibility, but also EthicsContinue reading on UX Collective

An open letter to my fellow creatives in a darkhour.Image source: Thomas Dekker,1625Seventeenth century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza makes a kind of ontological argument around the state of being that was both obvious and radical at the timeessentially, that which is made (everything) is divine by the fact that it is made. Its the type of statement that seems both obvious and puzzling when one takes a moment to think on it. Taking at face value that the divine is good, then that which is made, and hence the act of making, is also always a netgood.Context is important. The era which Spinoza was living was a fairly dangerous time. Spinozas Jewish grandparents faced brutal persecution at the hands of the Portuguese Inquisition. We often think of The Enlightenment as a period of robust intellectual growth in which the thinkers won the day, but thats not exactly true. In periods of new awakening many people, especially those in power, dont really like new ideas, it turns out. For every new idea, there were imprisonments, fines, banishments, and executions. At the same time of the Portuguese Inquisition, around the world we can clock the Yangzhou massacre, the atrocities of the first English Civil War, to say nothing of the knee-jerk reactions of most common people to the radical ideas forming at the time. The human story may look like an upward swing from far away, but there are a lot of very steep downward swoops along thepath.We may be in the middle of one now, a period of change and awakening. And like previous periods of same, there are so many things to be currently worried aboutpotential authoritarianism, genocide, religious fanaticism, climate change, uncontrolled AGI, unleashed nativismthat a period of change is handmaid with a period of struggle again. Weve made a queer mess of life, itseems.In uncomplicated times, it is easy to dismiss creativity as unserious. In the hardest times, its everything thereis.Creativity is risk. To do something different, or meaningful, or human, is messy. Creativity is accessing the part of the brain adjacent to emotions, and emotions are the opposite of rationality. It doesnt fit neatly into an ideal customer profile. You cant attach quarterly goals toit.I often talk about design on this blog, but the word design is kind of a stalking horse for me. By design, I mean creativity on a mass scale. I do not mean non-creative design, as so popularized by mercantile bozos in the modern era, a role akin to following the directions in a Lego booklet. For the past twenty years, creativity, art, and philosophical musing have gotten in the way of design (read: making money). We were told it was the era of Big Data. Let the data make decisions. It will not lead us astray. For ease of reference, lets call this the numbersgame.Heres a truth: the numbers game is intimately related to hard times. Any time the wrinkled tapestry of humanity has been put into the narrow strictures of a system, the system drives the humanity out of it, and all that is left is the system itself. It has happened time and time and time again. Hell, several middling movies were made about it. On a long enough timeline, systems applied to humans always end up proving their worth on the disruption of the ordinary human to demonstrate value. Im not exactly sure why every generation needs to learn this lesson on itsown.If youve made it this far, now here comes the part where I level with you and tell you the bad news: the Bad Guys are kind of winning right now. This iteration of the numbers game is wildly successful. If you are a young person reading this, you have my empathy, as you maybe only have a distant memory of time when all the most abysmally awful people were not continually rewarded with riches. By giving our internal thoughts and yearnings over to digital buckets, we commoditized the very weird and wild humanity that made us as a species so successful. Maybe the most appalling part is that, for at least a small period of time, we did it willingly. I was a part of that generation, and I admit it: I was wrong. I fucked up. I thought it would be like Star Trek. I dont know what what tosay.Now that the world is falling apart and everyone is out of a job, it might be time to take that dusty old creativity out of the box and look at itagain.There is a term of art in the business of making things called neutralization. In neutralization, you look at whoever is the leader of whatever youre trying to make, and you copy all the parts that work. It makes senseif youre going to beat them at their game, you want to make it as easy as possible for someone to switch to your thing. Give the people your competitors thing, plus something else (differentiation). This is the basic construct. So neutralization + differentiation = maybe a new thing people want.Maybe.Image Source: TelegurusThis may in fact lead to success, a kind of evolutionary feedback loop that creates a timeworn shape. So it is with nature, as well: a single form takes hold in a system, and evolution refines that form. But thats only true if the environment is static. When the environment changes, the traits rewarded change as well. This is the fundamental truth of evolution: traits are only as valuable as the environment which rewards them. Dinosaurs varied in all different shapes and approaches, and were a radically successful species. But when Chicxulub came knocking, the environment no long rewarded those massive calorie monsters anymore. The environment changed, and the new environment was one that rewarded small, scavenger mammals.The environment has again changed, and I say hello to my fellow rodent weirdos.Heres how I know artistic creativity is a powerful spell that those in power cant subvert easily: theres no fucking money init.If youre interested in learning about what a society values, look at what their education system focuses on. Here in America at least, the love with data and rote computation begins early. We require our students learn to take tests, to compete for spots in meritocratic schools, and finally, to fill the ranks of the upper-middle class set of strivers, who will beget their own little striver offspring. A student that has outre views or is unwilling to settle down to the task at hand at their desks is branded as trouble-maker, or worse. Theres a very simple reason for that: the educational system is by and large designed to reward conformist, data-driven thinking. Our factories and data centers demand bodies to operate the switches, because there is money to be made in the operation of switches.By happenstance, we find ourselves now at a time when the value of the human workerthe switch operatoris being challenged. We dont need to wait for AGI to threaten this base societal valuation: it is here now. As I outlined in a previous piece, the commodified creative is already a lost battle. Finding yourself in a digital creativity space these days is finding yourself asked to perform pattern-matching, and not much more. How to increase views. How to get more likes. Strategies for maximizing subscriber tiers. The miasma is filled with strategies to find a way to adapt to this era, and most of them are depressing and stupid. I propose an entirely different and mostly irrational alternative strategy: giving up and retreating to our humansroots.I think this current modality we are living in has reached the end state. I think the changes that will happen in the next ten years will be so radically contra to what you know now, that investing in anything that approaches your current life or understanding of the world will be useless. And in this moment, the fool of the class becomes the starstudent.The final disruption is of the system itself. And radical creative humanness is the sword we canwield.Roussot et Ferrier(1970)I am not going to insult you, reader, and propose that hard times cause good work: for every breakup or bubonic plague that makes a good sad song or Decameron, theres millions of other awful events that yield nothing but pain and misery. Instead, I suggest we flip the conceit on its head. For every wonderful piece of work, theres usually a seed of introspection that reveals a deepertruth.In dark times, the things that were fluff become the things that people need and hold on to, tightly. To paraphrase Tolstoy, everyones unhappiness is unique, but there are things that join us, and the the things that join us are the things that give people purposefaith, insight into their fellow humans, and strength to get on with the ordinary business of living. As a creative person, you are uniquely positioned to be doing thosethings.Suffering is a part of life, but suffering does not have to be the end state. Making something important to you is an expression of what is inside you. The form is immaterial, whether an app or poem. But the creation of something for an audience of one is so in opposition to what weve have been told is importantthe revenue, the likes, the audiencethat it feels radical in its lack of supervision.Indulge me in a mild thought experiment. Pretend, for a moment, you are the only person on the planet. No one will ever see your work. No compliments or awards will ever come. No critique or canceling will ever occur. You dont have to worry about approval from an app store, or going viral, or whether it gets picked up by Netflix. There is no audience, at all. What would youmake?If youre anything like me, so poisoned by the internet, to actually consider this is a little bit jarring. It is in this moment, you see how truly captured we are by the current numbers game. This is how the forces of darkness winthey convince you that what you make is only important in how it is related to what they want: more power, more money, more attention.But it is not so. You do not have to play their game, really. You may have to work their jobs, you may have to exist in their world, but you dont have to care what they think. Its not yourfault.This is what you must do: you must think and sit and consider what value you bring to the world. You are free, if youwant.Creativity is the only thing was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Weekly curated resources for designersthinkers andmakers.Having recently changed my day job, I have had a lot of contact with the tools and practices of hiring: the majority of the aforementioned, alongside the treatment of candidates, has been appalling.I cant claim to point to the ultimate cause, but the result is the dehumanization of candidates by analytical, AI and automated solutions that hiring managers turn to in order to deal with the unmanageable deluge of resumes from candidates who are themselves applying to jobs at scale and with the help ofAI.Why is hiring software so impersonal? By Oliver MeredithCoxEditor picksHow a team showed great UX was worth $100+ million annually The right UX metrics show game-changing value.By Jared M.SpoolThe root causes for the dev-design mismatch And why designers use an unconstrained canvas tool to design.By ErezReznikovHey Daddy, did you lose your job? How to handle being laid off as a designer.By FilipeNzongoThe UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about theirwork.How I designed a keyboard By Nazariy KondratiukMake methinkAgainst best practices I have come to believe that by and large best practices are doing more harm than good. Not necessarily because theyre bad advice as such, but because theyre mostly pounded by either 1) various types of zealots who abuse these kind of best practices as an argument from authority, or 2) inexperienced programmers who lack the ability to judge their applicability.Who will train tomorrows designers? Even before AI entered the chat, junior design positions were vanishing. A perfect storm of factors has been brewing with industry-wide hiring freezes, an abundance of bootcamp graduates flooding the market, and remote work both expanding the talent pool and making more hands-on mentorship logistically challenging.Maybe Bluesky has won When writing about Bluesky, Ive seen folks mention that its either federated or decentralized. Im here to tell you that its currently neither. This one really irks me because the service is getting the credit for work it hasntdone.Little gems thisweekTechs obsession with speed and how it can strip quality in Design By Chris RBeckerEmbracing play as the core of design By FaisalRisqWhy we need to have a change of HEART with UX metrics By DarrenYeoTools and resources8 excellent user research emails From Duolingo, Typeform, Notion, Monzo & more.By Rosie HoggmascallContent design practices for sustainable communication Taking small yet efficient steps toward strategic content management.By LisaVorobevaContinuous planning for UX teams Manage UX backlogs the Agile way.By RaquelPiquerasSupport the newsletterIf you find our content helpful, heres how you can supportus:Check out this weeks sponsor to support their worktooForward this email to a friend and invite them to subscribeSponsor aneditionImpersonal software, dev-design mismatch, embracing play in design was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A comic illustration of ripped fitness pals exercising because they love research so effing much. Credit:me.Its a powerful tool for organizational influence.Youre in your 30s. Youve gained a little weight. Youre not fat, but some of your clothes dont fit anymore. Its not that big of a deal, but youre starting to feel kind of old. You have a best friend whos the same age as you, but hes annoyingly fit, possessing the body of a greek god. He tells you that fitness is simple, that really all you need to do is know a handful of things and be consistent. You ignore him. But he keeps bringing it up. He offers to buy you a book if you promise youll read it. You promise, if only to shut his stupidmouth.But the book kind of makes sense. In fact, this whole fitness thing doesnt seem so hard after all. You try it. You loose 30lbs! You feel amazing!!!WHY DIDNT YOU LISTEN TO YOUR BEST FRIEND SOONER?!?You know how youve experience all this? Yea Me neither But my best friend Chasedoes.And his story is my story, but for user research.Always pickedlastI have led a design system team for the past three years. Throughout that time we have really struggled to make changes in our products. There are a multitude of reasons for that, some of which Ive covered here. Until very recently, we havent had an engineering team, so any kind of changes we wanted to make in our system were hamstrung by a lack of resources and shifting priorities.This is the true problem that design system designers often face. Nathan Curtis does an incredible job outlining it here in his article detailing the issues with a federated design system. Design systems dont bring in revenue. Were a shared service. We save money, we dont make it. We make internal tools that allow engineers, designers, and product managers to solve real, valuable problems for our users (instead of reinventing wheels). Our work makes theirs more efficient, effective, and waaaaaaaaaaay sexier.But we dont sell products.So, business leaders often give us the shaft. Product managers preferring to implement a new feature that will generate $5M in revenue than implement a few bug fixes that will save us $10M in accessibility fines.I get it. Money is good. Its a resource that we need to continue to make great work. But rolling rocks up hill is really hard, and I get really, really sad watching them roll backdown.I need another tool to affect more change in my organization.Research, my old friend, why did I ignore you for solong?As UX designers, one of the most valuable tools in our toolkit is the skill to validate our design decisions with user research. Its invaluable to making quality design decisions. And Im sorry to say (at least in my my organization, particularly on my team) we rarely use it. Weve had so many problems to solve rebuilding our Figma libraries, resolving design system requests, and telling engineering executives to stop making houses out of duct tape. User research was something that feature designers and our dedicated research team do, notus.I was a big ole idiot. Dont be likeme.This decision severely hampered our ability to make a serious impact into the products were trying to serve. But, luckily for us, despite our camels capacity to carry a metric ton of straw, its back finallybroke.A screenshot of an incredible custom Figma plugin that we developed to sync our icon library with GitHub. Its absolutely beautiful.A better iconlibraryOne of the primary products that we serve is the Webex App. Its a messaging and video chat tool. And, though on days when Im honest I miss Slack, Webex is actually pretty great! It has noise cancellation that is literally magic, something that I, a father of three tiny embodiments of pandemonium and chaos very much appreciate.We manage the icon library, and over the last year have develop some really amazing improvements. We collaborated with some web engineers to build a custom Figma plugin that allows us to sync our Figma component library with GitHub. There the raw SVGs are processed, optimized, and exported into a variety of formats used by various platform teams (Web, MacOS, iOS, Windows, and Android), all version controlled byNPM.I couldve sword I heard angels singing when we pushed our firsticon.Before this plugin was developed the entire process was manual. We might as well have carved our SVGs out of rocks (it would have gone faster). But after interviewing product and platform teams to understand their specific needs, we consolidated our icon system to a single pipeline where we could maintain consistency.Well Consistency for everything butA screenshot of the method that we used to export multicolored icons for the Windows platform. Multicolored icons are duplicated across dark and light themes. We had to use a completely separate methods for other platforms.Multi-colored iconsNinety-nine percent of our library were single colored icons. Developers and designers could apply our color tokens to those icons in order to change their colors. However, there were a handful of icons in our library that contained twocolors.These icons were very problematic for us. They couldnt use color tokens, and needed to be built in very different ways depending on the platform consuming them. Their usage of color also violated our icon color system, which made them illegible and confusing.But they had been in our product for a longtimeWe informed our product teams that they would either need to move to single colored icons or support their own multicolored icon library. That worked for most teams, but notall.ConflictOne of our product teams where the multicolored icons were used heavily pushed back. They said that their users were familiar with the icons and that moving to single colors would create a disruptive experience. We argued that, not only would it be easier for us to support, but it would make the icons far more legible and accessible.No one budged aninch.A screenshot of how the Webex App currently uses multicolored icons in its messaging interface.A screenshot of our proposal for single coloredicons.Research to therescue!Before Cisco, I used to work at a company called Blackboard (now Anthology). It was my first UX job, and thanks to my team leader, I received an education in user research (thank you so much Kelsey!). I was on a team exploring ideas for a new data and analytics tool that Blackboard wanted to create. We performed a tremendous amount of qualitative research via contextual inquiries and user interviews, as well as quantitative research with concept testing and surveys. It was an awesome opportunity, performing the research necessary to build a new product from the groundup.And it gave me all the tools I should have needed to do research well. Yet, despite the depth of my knowledge, for years I had neglected to seriously implement it into my work here atCisco.A screenshot comparing the multicolored Mute Icon with the single colored MuteIcon.A hugemistake.When we started getting pushback from that product team, a switch finally flipped. We reached out to our research team to see if we could create a small usability test to validate (or invalidate) our design decisions. They didnt have capacity to run it themselves, but helped us get set up with our tools and provided someadvice.After building a small proposal, we shared it with the product team, and looped in the lead designer on the research project. We wanted their feedback to make sure that the test we built wasnt biased towards our goals. We created a simple A/B test asking question about icon clarity, scanability, and user preference between the twodesigns.A screenshot comparing the multicolored Video Icon with the single colored Video Icon. Which one do you think is on? Can youtell?Despite testing users who were very familiar with Webex, the results were conclusive.A screenshot of four pie charts detailing the results of our research: Mute Button 4 participants prefer multicolored 6 prefer single-colored icons, Video Button 2 participants prefer multicolored 8 prefer single-colored icons, Record Button 1 participants prefer multicolored 9 prefer single-colored icons, Overall 3 participants prefer multicolored 7 prefer single-colored icons.We synthesized the results and shared them with designs and the PM from the product team. Surprisingly, no pushback. The PM was sold, a Jira ticket was put on the backlog, and very suddenly, a problem that had plagued us for months was nomore.ConclusionOne of our key skills as UX designers is the implementation of user research to validate design decision making. Dont be like me. Dont ignore the health of your UX practice. Do more research. Its a powerful tool that can influence your organization in the right direction.Honestly, after this project I felt like we were playing GoldenEye, and I just picked up the golden gun. What was this powerful weapon that my team was now wielding? Why werent we using it from the very beginning?!?Currently, my entire team and I are undergoing a user research training course. I swear to you that we will only use our power for good (and world domination)!An illustration of the author waving. Credit:Me.Hey yall! Im Trip Carroll, a design leader at Cisco and aspiring cartoonist.I write and publish a new article on design, leadership, and software development every other Monday. You can see more of my work on my website, check out my drawings on Instagram, or subscribe to my newsletter on Substack.Lets make workgreat!Never skip research day was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We need to deliver UX research assets to the business, not store them in a repositoryWhen I entered the field of user experience research in 2021, research repositories were top of mind. As a former librarian (and ethnographer), I had found my niche! Research teams were having trouble finding past research within their organizations, which led to repeated studies and duplicated efforts. I was happy to see that the solution was a library, or repository.The rise of the UX research repositoryTools like Airtable, Confluence and Sharepoint were often customized for use as repositories. And beginning around 2015, repository tools like EnjoyHQ, Condens, and Dovetail came onto the market. These tools were not just research librariesthey helped UX teams track their research studies, analyze their insights, and organize their outputs. Already, the repository had multiple functions beyond simply storing research.As time went on, UX research repositories became impossible to define. Everyones repository looked different, and had different purposes and functionalitiesindeed the term repository had gone through the process of semantic diffusion (when a term is coined with a specific definition, but its meaning weakens as its usage widens). Teams started calling their repositories insights hubs and research libraries in an effort to be more focused and descriptive.The problem was that these tools didnt effectively address a larger, looming problem: UX research was sorely underutilized for product development decisions. While repository tools did help researchers organize their assets, decision-makers like product managers, designers and executives were unlikely search a UX research repository for answers to their product development questions. Poor adoption became a huge reason why repositories failed. In a survey of 400 UX professionals, Nielsen Norman found that over 50% of research repositories had fair or poor adoption rates. If a repository isnt used by an organization, its business value is prettylow.UX research produces businessassetsSince 2022, UX has been in a state of extreme flux and UX practitioners are at a crossroads. The looming problem about research visibility I mentioned above? Its now front-and-center. Thought leaders like Jake Burghardt are diving into the problem spacehe writes, even as tech organizations tout their use of data in decision making, much of their essential research languishes in low-engagement archives, failing to drive whatsnext.Clearly, we need to re-think our consideration of the research repository, as it exists today. We need strategy and tooling that supports the delivery of UX research assets to decision makers. The repository tools we have today typically dont achieve thisgoal.So how do we achieve the goal of successful delivery of UX research to product decision makers? First, we need to start talking about UX research assets as business assets, not simply deliverables. Lets take a closer look at two tangible assets that UX research produces: customer journey maps and personas.Personas and customer journey maps areassetsPersonas are a powerful tool to focus design and development efforts on the users of a product or service. Rather than using a set of statistics to describe a user segment, user researchers create a fictional person who embodies the behavior and motivations of a usersegment.As Aurora Harley explains in her article for Nielsen Norman, personas can act as guides when working with outside agencies on things like participant recruitment and customer journey mapping (see below). As time goes on, personas can be refined using analytics toolsmaking them living documents that have ongoing value to the business.The value of personas extends far beyond design and development. The business benefits of well-crafted personas include an improved product-market fit, more targeted and effective marketing efforts, increased user satisfaction, and ultimatelysignificant competitive advantage.Image source: https://www.productmarketingalliance.com/your-guide-to-personas/A customer journey map is a visual representation of the process a customer goes through to accomplish a goal. The map is based on a scenario and features a narrative of the actions of the customer, including their mindset and emotions. The map will also include actionable insights, and opportunities for improvement. Good journey maps are based on customer research, not simply putting oneself in a customers shoes. Customer journey maps can be used to align teams on customer experiencerather than each team relying on their own siloed data. When teams are aligned, real decision-making can takeplace.Dave Seaton, founder of Seaton CX, creates customer journey maps that ladder up to the business goals of his clients. When we deliver the journey map, stakeholders are going to be able to make better business decisions. Whether its, do I focus my efforts on this product feature? Or fixing this product or integrating with some other partner in the ecosystem? The customer journey map provides that insight so the client can make better business decisions and achieve those goals (pc, 11.18.2024).An example of a B2B customer journey map from BrightVesselSuccessful journey maps and personas are products of user research with clear business benefits. Without them, businesses who create products and services for customers are essentially flying blindor at the very least, experiencing a lot of customerchurn.From repository to deliveryplatformAs I pointed out above, it is an unfortunately common occurrence that UX research teams spend time and effort setting up a research repository, only to find that stakeholders dont engage with it. The result is that repository tools can inadvertently silo UX research.This is worth repeating: unless 1) all stakeholders and decision makers have access to the repository and 2) they fully adopt it, the tool has not achieved the goal of increasing the visibility and usage of UX research.While UX research is certainly presented and shared by the teams who produce it, this singular method of delivery is not enough. Stakeholders may be enthusiastic about research findings at a read-out, but that enthusiasm is quickly buried by the mountain of other responsibilities and information in their day-to-day. So how do we ensure that UX business assets stay top ofmind?Understand your stakeholdersSet up yourstrategyFor tooling, think beyond the usualsuspectsThe first step is to understand the stakeholders. What are their priorities? How do they work? What tools do they use on a daily basis? Erika Hall writes about interviewing stakeholders in Chapter 4 of her book Just Enough Research. Talking to stakeholders not only gives you a window into their day-to-dayyou can better understand where research sits on their list of organizational priorities.With this information in hand, create a strategy in which research insights (and assets) are delivered to stakeholdersthey should never have to go hunting forthem.If you use tooling, it should be second nature to use and present information clearly and concisely, so that users find answers to their questions quickly and easily. A traditional research repository may not fit the bill in this case. Perhaps what we really need right now is a research delivery platforma truly self-service library, tailored to what our stakeholders are searching for.Beyond the research repository was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The traumatic shift to proportional measurements systems in digital designContinue reading on UX Collective

If a brand is more important than the product, then is the experience more important than the brand? If the products are similar, what makes themunique?What does the user or customer find importantThe brand, the product, or the experience? Image by theauthor.The never-ending debate on whether a brand is more important than the product often boils down to what drives product success: emotional connection or functional quality. However, most of the time, this is not an either-or question as businesses ideally need both to work harmoniously. User experience and service design influence the overall product experience, impacting the products success and companyimage.An excellent user experience might not be able to save a poor product, but can a stellar brand keep a poor product afloat? Conversely, can a negative brand image make a great product obsolete?Place, people, and thepastX (Twitter) has been making headlines recently and is witnessing a mass user exodus. 115000 users from the US alone have left the platform since the beginning of November 2024, discussing alternatives such as BlueSky, Threads, and Mastodon. Between November 5 and 15, the usage of the Bluesky app grew by 519% for US-based users. Many users cite bots, AI training models, advertisements, negative interactions, and politics as their main reasons for fleeing or reducing the number of posts on X. Is this due to the product or the brand? Will it likely face a similar fate to MySpace orGoogle+?Reeds Law states that the value of a social network depends on how well it can facilitate the formation of groups and not how well they facilitate connections between individuals. If users can define their own interactions and form groups among shared interests, it can provide a personalized experience. If this is possible on all platforms, what makes a person chooseone?Logos of Threads, X and Mastodon.X, Threads, and Mastodon generally offer a similar text-based social media product, but do they offer something new to the user? If not tied to innovation or market demand, will the branding, business decisions, or product experience drive or reduce engagement on these platforms?Emotional grounding means establishing a connection to a place, people, or past with a product. This connection will likely be even more important in the future, not only for food-related products but also for digital products and services.Results after searching for NBA-related content on X and Threats. The two products work, look, and feel rather similar. Image by theauthor.The faces of the products weuseMany digital products today have a person attached to the brand, such as Elon Musk on X, Steve Jobs/Tim Cook on Apple, Bill Gates on Microsoft, and Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook. These leaders impact the brand and product image, which can affect the adoption and engagement with the product. Figma, Adobe, LinkedIn, and Vimeo do not have a celebrity-like person attached to them. Do the celebrity CEOs of X, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook fall under celebrity endorsement strategy or CEO branding?There is this inherent tension in advertising between these ideas that celebrities are there to bolster and endorse the product, yet they are also known to take attention away from the product.Elizabeth (Zab) Johnson, Wharton Neuroscience InitiativeCEO branding and celebrity endorsement can help a company connect with consumers and build or destroy customer confidence. Confidence comes from the ability to persuade, which is based on evolution and biology about following the lead of a high-status individual. Besides marketing and advertising, how can customers feel confident about a good product from a startup or a company without celebrity CEOs? Does the product or the experience rule over the brand afterall?Image by Felix Mittermeier onPexels.Bill Gates predicted that Content is King in 1996. Is it still true in 2024 andbeyond?In 1996, Bill Gates wrote Content is King in an essay about how the Internet and distribution of information and entertainment (content) would become a business opportunity for companies of allsizes.The way we engage and what we consider as content has changed over the years. It is common today to follow companies and strangers on the Internet for content related or unrelated to the product or person. Something unheard of two decades ago. The means to consume content and the type of content shared also vary by the products weuse.Users browse Reddit to discover content, not because of their branding, but because the usability of the product and content interaction makes it a unique and enjoyable experience. Comments on why users enjoy Reddit over other social media platforms highlight the desire to stay anonymous, discover interesting content, and engage with people sharing similar interests who are not necessarily within their immediate social circle. This brings an interesting question: Is the content king or the queen? Queen refers to the most valuable piece in chess, which alone might have a hard time surviving against a fleet from the opponent.Reddit r/nba. Screenshot by theauthor.The people come to your site because of the content you provide. This is still a solid statement, although what if the content can be retrieved from multiple sources, such as feeds or TLDR apps? Content exclusivity was more common 20 years ago. In todays digital age, there are multiple products and means that can provide the same or similar content, so how will the consumer make a decision? The product experience might triumph over the brand afterall.Fear of missingoutThe dot-com bubble from the late 1990s saw the rise of many online products and services, driven by the increased global adoption of the Internet and personal computing. Companies without viable business plans jumped aboard with endless IPOs, resulting in a burst in2000.In 2012, my washing machine had AI written on the surface, but what was the AI? Sensors counting the level of water are not necessarily AI, right? Perhaps it was more about marketing and branding.Is the current direction with AI-enhanced products looking at repeating the characteristics of the dot-com craze? We witness a plethora of new products utilizing AI come about, but are we reaching a point where the market is starting to become saturated with AI-based solutions? Is it AI for FOMOs (Fear Of Missing Out) sake, AI for brandings sake, or AI for improving the product and experience?Image prompted by the author via Adobe Firefly Image3.Building products and solvingproblemsCiting the infamous quote attributed to Henry Ford: If I would have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. Do customers know what they want? When analyzing insights, does the UX researcher know how to read between the lines to make assumptions about what the user mayneed?Henry Fords quote provides quite a good reflection on how solving user problems can result in innovation.Why did Segways electronic scooter fail, but lightweight electric scooters thrive? Both products were re-thinking short-distance transportation, but Segway was about technological innovation, and the latter about value innovation. The Segway was loaded with technology and had a hefty price tag of $5,000, all the while being big and heavy, generally too big to use on sidewalks or bring up to offices. On the contrary, reducing the amount of technology and rethinking how the users would use such a product took off 95% of the price, making the product lighter and more compact to charge and movearound.Technological innovation doesnt necessarily correlate to having a user-friendly product. If Segway was originally produced by Mercedes-Benz, would the brand presence have impacted its adoption? In this case, the product experience rules over thebrand.Youve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology. You cant start with the technology and try to figure out where youre going to try to sell itSteve Jobs, WWDC1997Is AI helping to solve a problem, or is it utilized towards technological innovation to create something new? Both, yet if a user cant use it to their advantage, is it part of a brand experience, technological innovation, or a product experience?Working together in harmony. Image prompted by the author via Adobe Firefly Image3.Video killed the radiostarWill AI take over the designers or developers jobs? Maybe not take over, but change and enhance. The introduction of development frameworks and content-management systems for example didnt take over jobs, but it allowed more people to access the technology and build products faster. Technological innovation also creates new jobs and opportunities. Besides prompt engineering, AI will likely generate new jobs aswell.AI can draft a complete design system in seconds. Similarly, WordPress or Webflow can create a site in a few steps. However, the use cases and demands still vary greatly. Ive often heard the following: We dont want the site to look like Wordpress, even if it is built on Wordpress. This translates into We dont want the site to look like all the other sites. Are we experiencing a similar situation with the current UI design landscape?In recent years, many digital products look, work, and feel the same. Familiarity makes it easy for the user to understand the product after all and re-inventing the wheel can be costly. This is also where branding has a chance to come into play. Branding is more than just colors and art direction.The results for searching NBA on Threads, LinkedIn, Youtube, Line, and Spotify. Can you spot the similarities? Image by theauthor.I used to have a Honda Civic Hatchback 88 and then a Volkswagen Polo 96, while they are a bit different in look and feel, the usability and iconography were still pretty much the same. You operate different cars by pushing the pedals and moving the stick-shift around. Familiar icons make it easy to switch between car models and brands, is it the same with different digital products?In comparison, I had to learn how to operate a lift truck when working in a factory, and while the appearance was similar, there was no familiar wheel, but a handle you had to turn around with one hand. It took a little time to get used to the change, but afterward, it was easy. When Objectives are different, the experience changes aswell.Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mindWalterLandorConsumer-facing apps may look, feel, and work the same, but a hospital medical application can be a different experience. The goals and context are different, but in most cases, we are most familiar with the apps that we have easy access to. When a hospital decides on an application or system to use across its facility, will the brand, the product, or the user experience contribute to decision-making?Website visitor statistics are now mostly private. Image by theauthor.The visual design we apply reflects oureraThroughout history, art and design have gone through different movements that shaped the look and feel of that time. The Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) movement in the 1890s aimed to break out from the historical styles into a modernized movement for total works of the arts, which was driven by the use of organic or geometric forms, harmony, and natural forms inspired by nature, rejecting excessive ornaments or Victorian-era decorative styles.If todays arts love the machine, technology, and organization, if they aspire to precision and reject anything vague and dreamy, this implies an instinctive repudiation of chaos and a longing to find the form appropriate to our times. - Oskar SchlemmerThe Bauhaus movement was initiated around 1919 and is infamous for the approach that the function of an object should dictate its form, and re-uniting art and industrial design. Similarly, De Stijl in 1917 focused on simplicity and primary colors. These movements rejected the ideas of decorative styling, paving the way for more functional crafts.The form should follow function used to be the main idea to break away from the decorative output, but the practitioners themselves started to revert to the decorative styles.Branding initially started as a way to depict ownership, then evolved into a way to be recognized in the sea of options. Looks, style, and personality have become more important, and branding is not only for companies looking at marketing their products but also personal branding has risen due to the impact of the Internet. Brands also represent values, which can impact if a customer engages with a brand or aproduct.Jaguar logo 2024. Image by Jaguar MediaCentre.Logos and visual identities are elements of branding, which have also changed visually throughout history. Jaguar recently revised their logo to better communicate a step into the electronic vehicle industry. This rebrand has prompted mixed feelings online, but logos also change with visual styles of different eras and industries, as seen with the evolution of the Jaguar Logo from 1922 to2024.Have it yourwayWill AI drive the future of product design by tailoring experiences to meet the needs and wants of the user, including the design and layout of interface elements and content strategy? This could include anything from font sizes to colors to content length and more. A blank canvas or content cards that will be populated byAI?Are brands and products becoming like sports teams? Are the products we use a statement of what brands we support or not, or do we use them to solve problems?Hypothetically, if Mark Zuckerberg were to acquire and become the CEO of Figma, would it impact the way you perceive Figma, or whether you use Figma ornot?Change is driven by business needs and changing consumer habits. Can AI assist in understanding the needs of users? The visual style and actions depict the standards and preferences of our time. Will we revert from minimalist design to more decorative design for the sake of being different, or wanting to elevate the product and brand experience?What is important? The brand, the product or the experience?References and furtherreadingPeople are fleeing Elon Musks X in Droves. What is Happening on Threads andBlueskyPeople are Fleeing Elon Musks X for Threads, and Bluesky. Welcome to the Era of Social Media FragmentationX Sees Largest User Exodus Since Elon MuskTakeoverBluesky Tops 20M Users, Narrowing Gap with Instagram ThreadsMySpaceWhat Went Wrong: The Site was a Massive Spaghetti-Ball MessWhy Facebook Beat MySpace, and Why MySpaces Revised Strategy Will LikelyFailFive Reasons Why Google+DiedThe Marketing Psychology Behind Celebrity EndorsementsCEO Branding Strategies for 2023 andBeyondWhy We Buy Products Connected to Place, People, andPastContent Is KingOriginal Bill Gates Essay & How It AppliesTodayWhy Do You Prefer Reddit Over Other SocialMedias?The Late 1990s Dot-Com Bubble Implodes in2000The Psychology Behind FOMO (Fear of MissingOut)Segway Case Study: Avoiding the Fate of ElectricScooterPrompt EngineeringArt NouveauMovementBauhaus MovementThe Bauhaus, 1919-1933De StijlOskar SchlemmerHistory ofBrandingFearless. Exuberant. Compelling. This is Jaguar, ReimaginedEvolution of the JaguarLogoSociety drives how we build products, create brands, and design experiences was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How Mondrian can save your wallet. And save you,too.Black Friday. Do you need anything? You (probably) dont.What if we could hack Amazon's homepage for a day and transform it into a place of harmony and spirituality instead of a loud market square youll throw your moneyat?A few years ago, an artist named Piet Mondrian proposed that underneath the texture of nature, there is a foundational structure of rectangles, lines, and primary colorsa place of beauty whose rhythm brings us closer to thetruth.Thats something, right?Piet Mondrian, Tableau I, 1921, oil on canvas, 96,5 x 60,5 cm, 2013 Mondrian. Ludwig Museum, Cologne. Picture taken byme.What is that other thing that is built with lines and rectangles? Theweb.Rectangles filled with text and images, rectangles with rounded corners we want people to click on (aka buttons).What if the truth has always been lying underneath all our interfaces?I was in front of a Mondrian in Cologne last week. I finally got it. The truth lies underneath all web pages, including Amazons homepage.Lets see if I can redesign Amazons homepage to demonstrate mypoint.First, get a home page screenshot and draw the basic structure.BTW Amazon, Pump up the joy?Second, lets start adding color, bringing in some grey (very present in Mondrians artworks), and rotating the UI in portrait (vertical) mode to move away from the usual browser view for asec.It's pretty ugly still, but well getthere.Now, Im merging the rectangles and starting to add some rhythm. The lines and the rectangles must open up to extend our UI to a potentially unlimited, infinitespace.How well will the Amazon homepage overlap with the underlying structure we identify? I got something likethis:Only some adjustments are left to ensure the content gently fits our spiritual grid. There itis:Of course, some functionalities will be missing. The search bar will not have space, so itll have to go, and most noticeably, all the Shop now calls to action will begone.With a browser frame, you can now enjoy the beauty of a shop where nothing can be shopped. This is the underlying foundation beneath all ourUIs.That was Mondrians Black Fridaymiracle.If Friday is blackadd red, yellow, and blue was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Putting AI towork.Miro Vs Figjam credit: BrutallyhonestOver the past year, the battle between Miro and FigJam has gotten a new layer of intrigue: AI. Both platforms have introduced AI assistants designed to make workshopping faster, easier, and more creative.But as someone who spends half their week running workshops and brainstorming sessions, I had one burning question: are these AI features actually useful, or are they just shiny distractions?So, I did what any good product manager would doI spent way too much time testing them. Heres the breakdown of what Ilearned.The setup: what these AI assistants claim todoMiro AI: Miros assistant promises to help with summarizing sticky notes, generating ideas, and even automatically organizing content. Its like the digital equivalent of that one colleague who loves turning chaos intoorder.FigJam AI: FigJam leans into being your brainstorming buddy. Think ideation prompts, group clustering suggestions, and contextual tips to help you keep momentum during yoursession.On paper, they sound like theyll save time and make workshops feel seamless. But how do they work in real scenarios?The Tests: Putting AI toworkI ran three tests with each platform to compare their AI assistants inaction.1. Generating ideas:I used the prompt: Suggest ideas for a new team-building activity.Miro delivered 15 sticky notes with team-building activity suggestions. While the breadth was decent (think art workshop, charity volunteer day, and escape rooms), it felt like a brainstorming session you could get from a quick Googlesearch.Miro gave me 15 sticky notes with what felt like randomideasCurious to test the depth, I gave it a follow-up prompt:Deep dive into the escape room challenge.The response? Miro provided a generic list of things to consider, like theme, venue options, and team size. While somewhat useful, it didnt add much value beyond surface-level suggestions.When nudged to give me more details about a specific one, Miro gave me another 15 sticky notes with themes to explore the escape room challengeFigJams TakeFigJam took a slightly different route. Instead of listing a variety of activities, it structured a potential workshop, including an ice-breaker, collaborative challenges, and a reflection session. While this approach felt more actionable, it leaned heavily on process rather than creative ideation.Figjam game a workshop structure with three sections, an icebreaker, a challenge and a feedbacksectionTo match Miros test, I gave FigJam the same follow-up prompt:Focus on the escape room challenge.FigJam responded with a mind map that broke down the activity into key elements: Theme ideas (e.g., haunted house, pirate adventure) Puzzles (e.g., logic games, physical challenges) Team dynamics (e.g., roles, communication tips) Time constraints (e.g., countdown, pressure) Room elements (e.g., props, lighting)This additional layer of detail made FigJams response feel more tailored and creative, with practical suggestions that extended beyond just the initialidea.Figjam when prompted to give me more details on the escape room challenge broke things down into atreeKey takeaways Miro excels in generating a variety of ideas but struggles to go deeper without additional input. FigJam shines in creating a structured framework and offers more detailed follow-ups, particularly for planning activities like the escape room challenge.In this round, FigJams ability to add meaningful depth and organise the information gave it the edgeespecially for teams that want to move quickly from ideas to execution.2. Organizing content:I tested both Miro and FigJam by dropping 20 sticky notes into each board and asking their AI to organize them into clusters.Miro easily clustered the words intogroupsMiro handled this effortlessly, grouping the words into meaningful categories with ease. The user experience was straightforwardsimple to navigateand the results were spoton.Miro clustered the words in an accuratewayFigJam, on the other hand, struggled. While the UX was equally intuitive (you select items and use a dropdown to cluster), the output was far less reliable. For instance, it categorized my cat as furniture and my breakfast banana as acolor!Figjam AI did not manage to cluster simple words under meaningful categories when Miro did iteasilyAs a bonus, I decided to push Miro further by testing it with a more challenging list of words. Once again, it performed impressively, grouping the words into accurate and meaningful clusters without muchtrouble.Miros output when given a harder list of words was pretty accurate.For comparison, I fed the same list of words to ChatGPT to see how it would cluster them. Here's theresult:Heres a possible grouping for the challenging list:Natural Elements: Quartz, Ash, Seaweed, Lichen, Maple, Dandelion, ThornAnimals: Wolf, Penguin, Salmon, Scorpion, BatTools: Shovel, Wheelbarrow, Pulley, Wrench,GrinderGuidance/Reflection: Compass, Mirror,LanternThese groupings reflect different overarching themes like nature, animals, tools, and abstract or symbolic items. However, some words like Ash or Lantern could fit multiple groups depending on context, making it less straightforward.Overall, Miro clearly outshines FigJam in clustering accuracy and reliability.3. Summarizing key takeaways:Finally, I created a deliberately chaotic mock brainstorming session to simulate the typical messiness of workshop outputsfragmented ideas, incomplete thoughts, and scattered priorities. The session was split into two sections: one for ideation (10 sticky notes) and another for next steps (10 sticky notes). I then asked each AI assistant to summarize the workshop.Miro did a pretty good job at transtorming the chaos of the workshop into a cleardocumentMiro excelled at making sense of the chaos, transforming the output into a clear and structured document. It effectively grouped the ideation section into relevant sub-themes and organized the next steps, making the summary practical and easy touse.FigJam, on the other hand, struggled to separate ideation from next steps, which made the summary harder to follow. While the addition of emojis was a fun touch, the lack of clear differentiation made the output lesshelpful.The output from Figjam was not very helpful as it didnt differentiate ideation from nextstepsOnce again, Miro came out ahead, providing a well-organized and actionable summary that effectively categorized the workshops keypoints.4. Approaches to AI: pragmatic vs.playfulThe contrast between Miro and FigJams AI assistants ultimately reflects their different problem-solving philosophies:Miro: Pragmatic and utilitarian. Miros AI is built for teams that value order and efficiency. Its a dependable assistant for summarizing, organizing, and handling chaotic inputs with precision. Perfect for corporate workshops, project managers, or structured strategy sessions where clarity is non-negotiable.FigJam: Playful and creative. FigJams AI brings a more dynamic, brainstorming-friendly vibe to the table. Its strength lies in generating ideas, structuring frameworks, and offering fun, collaborative momentsideal for design teams, startups, or anyone looking to inject personality into their workshops.5. The verdict: which one should youUse?It all comes down to the type of workshops you run and the outcomes youneed.Choose Miro AI ifYou need structured outputs and actionable insights. Its your go-to for managing messy ideas, summarizing key takeaways, and delivering clarity in a fast-paced environment.Choose FigJam AI ifYou prioritize creativity and enjoy a more interactive experience. FigJams AI thrives in ideation sessions and adds a touch of playfulness to your workflow, even if it occasionally stumbles with structure.Final thoughts: AI in whiteboardsgame-changer or justhype?Both Miro and FigJam are integrating AI in ways that speed up mundane tasks and enhance collaboration, but theyre far from perfect. A notable limitation I found is the inability to refine outputs or give specific feedback to the AI assistant. Without the flexibility to go back and forth, their potential is sometimes undercut by rigidity.Still, these tools push the boundaries of how we collaborate, and its exciting to imagine how theyll evolve to better anticipate userneeds.For now, I find myself using bothMiro when I need precision and FigJam when I want creativity. What about you? Have you tried their AI assistants yet? Which one do you think works best for yourteam?.Here are some topics/websites I recommend goingthroughIf you want to go further, I cant recommend enoughreading:How UX can be a key differentiator forAIDesign as Thought: AI and the Future ofDesignAny more? Whatve I missed. Let me know in thecommentsFollow on LinkedIn & Medium for more deep divesMiro vs. FigJam: how their AI assistants stack up was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A consistent and accurate Core Palette is not enough for a consistent and accurate interface.In my previous article Creating a consistent color palette for your interface, I discussed creating a consistent color palette. This palette includes all the colors to be used in your interface. Lets call it the CorePalette.However, a consistent and accurate Core Palette is not enough for a consistent and accurate interface. We need a layer of rules about how to use these colors in the interface: which specific color to use for primary and secondary text, for input borders,etc.Lets introduce the Semantic Layer. The Semantic Layer is a list of rules for how to use colors from the Core Palette.So..The Core Layer shows all the available colors, while the Semantic Layer defines how to usethem.Im sure that most of you have seen really complex semantic palettes. They specify color tokens for each design system component, such as button-background, button-text, button-icon, etc. I have also tried this approach before, but now I can say that it is excessive and tootricky.Such a system is difficult to build and even harder to use. It can be a third layer under the simple semantic layer if you really need this level of detail. However, dont proceed with this complexity unless you are certain that it is necessary.The simple semantic layer Im showing will work in most interfaces.There are 5 main groups of the semantictokens:Textcolors for titles, paragraphs, captions, links, labels, button titles andetcFillcolors for button containers, icons, checkboxes, toggles andetcStrokecolors for input borders, dividers, banners borders andetcLayercolors for page backgounds, popup backgrounds, overlays andetcEffectcolors for shadows and touch feedbacksAt Aloha, we decided to skip Strokes and Effects for now. For Strokes, we chose to use colors from the Fills palette to simplify our system. Later, Ill discuss the pros and cons of this decision. We dont need special colors for Effects because we use standard effects from the Android and iOS libraries.TokensIn each semantic palette, there are a few semantic tokens. For example: text-primary, text-secondary, text-brand-primary, and text-on-accent.In Figma, we have two separate files for the Core Palette and the Semantic Palette. We use variables to manage color tokens. Tokens from the Semantic Palette refer to tokens from the CorePalette.ThemesA very valuable benefit of using the Semantic Layer is interface theming. A well-organized Semantic Layer allows you to easily manage light and dark modes, as well as color themes. At Aloha, we have 5 color themes, each available in both light and darkmodes.For each semantic token there are associated colors in each color scheme and mode. At Aloha, we only redefine brand tokens, but if needed, the entire semantic palette can be redefined for eachmode.Figma variables make it simple to manage and use color modes. You can set up your palettes in different modes and switch themes for your interface with just oneclick.A few tips for a good darkmodeDont simple invert the colors light dark or dark light, think about each particular case.The dark theme should have more depth. Surfaces that are closer to you should belighter.In contrast to the light theme, separators and borders in the dark theme should be lighter than the background.FillFill colors are used forthebackgrounds of buttons, tags, banners, etc. Fill colors are not used for page backgrounds, bottom sheets, or popup backgrounds.fill oficonsfill of checkboxes, radio buttons, toggle switch andetcDont forget about elements on dark or colorful backgrounds. It is a very, very important token. Adding just one fill-on-accent token is enough to cover mostcases.TextObviously, Text colors are used for text. We use them for titles, paragraphs, links, labels, button titles andothers.But the colors seem very similar to Fill. Why do we need an additional semantic group? The thing is that texts are thiner then the icons or interface controls. Therefore they look lighter even when they have absolutely samecolor.If we want to maintain the ability to manage text colors separately and adjust them slightly, we need separate tokens forthem.LayerLayers are the simplest yet trickiest aspect. There are few tokens and only 23 colors, but the structure of these tokens is very important, especially in darkmode.We should imagine our interface in the 3D prospect and decide how many layers we shouldhave.At Aloha, we have 3 floors and 1 overlay. In light mode, the floors use just 2 colors, but in dark mode, the interface looksdeeper.StrokeIn the Stroke section, we have colors for element borders and dividers. You might need brand colors, positive and negative colors, as well as a couple of light greycolors.Yes, the Stroke palette looks very very similar to the Fillpalette.Join Fill andStroke?In most cases, you will find all the necessary colors for your strokes in the Fill palette. It seems redundant to create another palette with exactly the same colors. At Aloha we decided to use Fill palette for both: fills andstrokes.But sometimes, you might want the same color used in light mode to behave differently for fill and stroke in darkmode.So, on one hand, it is easier to use the same palette for fills and strokes. You dont have to think about which palette to apply. But from the other perspective, two palettes give you more flexibility and more clarity about how to use specificcolors.Static colorsWe have talked about semantic tokens, which can be used in different color themes. Each token has a specific function in the interface. But what if there are colors that are the same in both light and dark modes? Usually, these are shades of black andwhite.For these colors, we should have a separate palette. Lets call it the Static Palette. Add colors that are not affected by the color mode. Each static token also refers to colors from the CorePalette.To summarize Having a streamlined Semantic Layer allows you to expand the color palette for your interface as much as you like while maintaining a clear and accurate structure.Creating a consistent color palette for your interfaceCreating accessible color palettes for humaneyesA Guide to Variables inFigmaDark Mode UI ConversionThe semantic interface palette is simple was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Is Jaguars logo a bold embrace of chic modernism or a minimalist misstep, and what does its transformation say about the soul of brandingContinue reading on UX Collective

Shazam has mastered the art of instant song recognition, creating a UX that feels magical with just one tap. Discover how Shazams design taps into our curiosity and love for quick answers, giving users that satisfying moment of discovery right when they need itmost.Source: Simply Life by HoneyMadisonWeve all been there. Sitting in a public place, a song begins to play. The melody feels oddly familiar, tugging at your memory, but you just cant put a name to it. The frustration buildsyou need to know the title.Now.Enter, Shazam. You reach for your phone, tap a button, and Shazam delivers the answer in seconds. This almost effortless act of identifying a song feels like sorcery, but its not. Its the result of meticulous UX design, where the technology is invisible and the experience is seamless. From its minimalist interface to its lightning-fast recognition, Shazam satisfies our innate curiosity and need for instant gratification. Lets dive into the psychology and design principles behind this beloved app, and uncover what makes it a UX masterpiece.Shazams Core UX PrinciplesBy prioritising simplicity, speed, and accessibility, Shazam ensures that every user interaction is frictionless and rewarding. These principles form the foundation of a UX design that feels intuitive, reliable, and above allmagical.SimplicityAt its core, Shazam embodies the principles of less is more. The apps design is strikingly minimalistic, with a single central button that dominates the interface. Unlike other apps cluttered with features and menus, Shazam makes identifying a song as easy as pressing a button. This one-tap approach eliminates any ambiguity about what the user needs to do. This simplicity is not just aesthetic, its functional. By focusing on this one primary action, Shazam reduces cognitive load and ensures users can instantly understand how to use the app quickly, without instructions and onboarding.Shazam app main screen, with the Tap to Shazam feature as the key focus of the interface.SpeedIn todays ever-evolving digital world, speed is central to a satisfying user experience, based on our human desire for instant gratification. Users dont just want answers, they want them fast. Shazams ability to deliver song results in a matter of seconds is a testament to its technical efficiency and design optimisation. Delays could break the magic of the moment, so the apps speed is critical to itssuccess.AccessibilityShazam goes beyond being a standalone app. Throughout the years, it has integrated into a wide range of platforms, from iOS and Android to voice assistants like Siri and Alexa. Shazam also incorporates accessibility features like voice commands (e.g., Hey Siri, Shazam this song). This accessibility ensures users can access Shazams functionality wherever they are, whether its through their phone, smartwatch, or even directly through music streaming apps. The clear and intuitive design is visually friendly, using large touch targets and high contrast to accommodate users with various visual impairments.Sync to Spotify popup, enabling seamless integration and easy access for later retrieval.Travelling without data and having a Shazam moment? No worries. Shazams offline mode demonstrates a thoughtful approach, allowing users to save songs to identify later, even when they dont have an internet connection. Users also can be notified of the identified song, once they become connected again. This feature ensures that no moment of curiosity goes unsatisfied, regardless of connectivity. Dont forget, the devil works hard but Shazam works hardereven in the background.The call to action changes when the device is offline, highlighting the functionality.Designing for instant gratificationHumans are hardwired to seek instant gratification: a psychological phenomenon where we prioritise immediate rewards over delayed ones. In a world where patience is scarce and convenience and speed are paramount, Shazam thrives by leveraging this innate desire. The app transforms the process of identifying a song into a moment of discovery and delight, with its design fueling that satisfying aha! moment with both speed and elegance. When we experience immediate rewards, the brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter that creates feelings of pleasure and reinforces behaviours that lead to those rewards. In this case, the act of usingShazam.One-tap interactionThis one-button, one-tap design isnt just intuitiveits empowering. By stripping away complexity, Shazam enables users to feel in control of the process while requiring minimal effort. The result? Instant engagement and satisfaction.By removing barriers like navigating menus or dealing with complex settings, Shazam ensures users can act on their impulses immediately. The design also plays into choice overload theory, which shows that too many options can cause decision paralysis. Shazams focused interface eliminates unnecessary decisions, making the act of identifying a song almost reflexive. In UX design, mitigating choice overload involves simplifying user journeys, often using strategies like progressive disclosurerevealing information or options incrementally. This approach reduces cognitive load, enabling users to focus on fewer choices at a time, leading to more satisfying decision-making experiences.Real-time feedback: anticipation anddelightWhen users tap the Shazam button, theyre met with dynamic feedback: sound wave animations and a listening status. This immediate response is crucial because it reassures users that their action is being processed, reducing anxiety about whether the app isworking.This leans into a theory of learning known as operant conditioning, which states that behaviour that is followed by pleasant consequences such as rewards, is more likely to be repeated. The brief waiting period between the moment of curiosity and the aha! moment builds anticipation, making the final result even more satisfying.Shazams design also leverages the emotional journey of anticipation and resolution. The listening animation creates suspense, while the accurate identification delivers a delightful moment. This mirrors what psychologists call the peak-end rule, where people judge an experience largely based on its most intense moment (the aha! moment) and the ending (seeing the result). Shazam carefully crafts both moments to leave a lasting positive impression.Cured curiosityThe act of resolving uncertainty and curiosity triggers a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. In this case: what the hell is that song? Shazam takes this a step further by enriching the reward. Instead of just providing a song title, it offers additional context like artist details, lyrics, music video and streaming links. This layered reward system enhances overall satisfaction, encouraging users to stay engaged with the applonger.A triumphant Shazam moment, revealing the song info and opening up a world of musical exploration.Personalisation for buildingloyaltyOne of Shazams most effective tools for retaining users is its History feature, recently renamed to My Music. This functionality allows users to revisit past identifications, transforming Shazam from a single-use app into a personal music archive. By enabling users to explore and remember their discoveries, the feature provides both practical and psychological benefits.Revisiting past discoveriesThe My Music feature acts as a digital record of every song a user identifies. This is especially valuable for music lovers who might forget a track they heard in passing or want to compile a playlist of their finds. When users review their history, it reinforces their connection to the identified tracks, helping them remember new music they might want to explore further. By storing these musical moments, Shazam gives users a reason to return to the app, building loyalty overtime.Accessing the My Music feature labelled by date, with the ability to explore and sort by musical characteristics.You can even sort these moments by artist, mood, genre, decade and more. Even more moments to returnto!Memory and nostalgiaThis feature also taps into powerful psychological drivers: memory and nostalgia. Music is deeply tied to personal experiences, often evoking vivid memories and emotions. Revisiting old songs or moments tied to a discovery can evoke a pleasant sense of nostalgia, enhancing user satisfaction and encouraging repeat usage. By providing almost what functions as a musical diary, Shazam allows users to relive specific moments associated with songs theyve identified. This emotional connection fosters a sense of attachment to theapp.CurationA more recent evolution is around curation, giving users personalised music recommendations. By leveraging users Shazam history, the app creates tailored playlists that reflect individual tastes, bridging the gap between music identification and ongoing music discovery. This allows users to move seamlessly from identifying a song they love to exploring similar tracks within the app or integrated platforms like Spotify or AppleMusic.A Shazam-curated playlist linked to Spotify, based on my most recent Shazam. A nod to the Spotify radiofeature?This taps into the growing demand for personalised experiences in digital products. Shazam uses the data it collects from user interactions to offer curated playlists, turning music discovery into a continuous journey rather than a single-use interaction.Concerts and liveeventsAs seen in the My Music screen, lies a new feature: concerts. It is designed to enhance user engagement by connecting music discovery to live experiences. This feature provides personalised recommendations for nearby concerts, using a users Shazam history and location data. Powered by Bandsintown, it offers insights into tour dates and shows tailored to individual preferences.The new concerts feature in Shazam, connecting sponataneous discovery with liveevents.Beyond just concert discovery, Shazam integrates features like saving events, setting reminders for upcoming performances, and accessing exclusive content. Users can view set lists, behind-the-scenes videos, tour photos, and download artist-themed wallpapers or watch faces. This transforms Shazam into more than a song-recognition toolit becomes a bridge to real-world music experiences. This addition reflects Shazams broader mission to deepen user engagement by creating a holistic music ecosystem that combines digital convenience with live event immersion.Satisfying impulses: A habit-forming experienceBy consistently delivering quick rewards, Shazam fosters a habit loop. According to the Hook habit formation model, every habit consists of a trigger, action, reward, and investment. The concept was introduced to describe how digital products can retain customers by getting them to form habits, through developing an emotional association with the product. For Shazam, the loop lookslike:Trigger: Hearing a song you want to identify.Action: Tapping the Shazambutton.Reward: Getting the songsdetails.Investment: Saving identified songs to revisitlater.This cycle strengthens over time, turning Shazam into the go-to app for music discovery. By addressing our need for instant gratification and crafting an emotionally resonant experience, the app transforms a simple tool into something that feels intuitive, rewarding, and even addictive.The takeawaysShazams enduring success is a testament to its thoughtfully designed user experience. For UX designers, researchers and product teams alike, the app offers valuable lessons on how to create intuitive, engaging, and habit-forming digital products. Here are the key takeaways:Prioritise simplicity to reduce cognitive load: Sometimes less is more. Shazams minimalist interface demonstrates the power of a single clear call to action. By focusing on one core functionsong identificationthe app eliminates unnecessary complexity, reducing cognitive load and making the experience intuitive for users of all tech skilllevels.Leverage the power of instant gratification: Shazam capitalises on our innate desire for quick results. From dynamic feedback during processing to near-instant song identification, the app satisfies user curiosity and delivers a dopamine-fueled reward.Design for anticipation and delight: The suspense created during the listening phase and the joy of the aha! moment are emotional drivers that enhance user satisfaction. Incorporating subtle, anticipatory feedback into your products design can make interactions more engaging and memorable.Create features that build loyalty: Shazams My Music history feature and curated playlists are examples of how personalisation deepens user engagement. By giving users a way to revisit and organise their discoveries, Shazam becomes more than a single-use app. Consider how your product can provide long-term value, turning one-time interactions into ongoing relationships.Integrate seamlessly across ecosystems: Shazams integration with various platforms and voice assistants allows it to extend its functionality, creating a seamless user experience across multiple touchpoints. Overall, this enhances not only convenience and usability but also accessibility for those with impairments.Solve real-world problems thoughtfullyFeatures like offline mode and concert recommendations address user pain points while expanding the apps value proposition. Focus on understanding and solving your audiences unique needs, even in situations where they face constraints like lack of connectivity.Sources: Present bias: how instant gratification impacts your long-term goals The Psychology of Instant Gratification: How to Rewire Your Brain for Long-Term Happiness Why do we have a harder time choosing when we have moreoptions? Psychological Triggers in UX/UI Design: Navigating Biases andBehavior Operant Conditioning: What It Is, How It Works, andExamples What Is the PeakEnd Rule? How to Use ItSmartly The Hook Model: Retain Users by Creating Habit-Forming ProductsHow Shazams UX delivers instant gratification was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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A journey of design, beyond solving a complexproblem.Noguchis art installation on his journey to find the design of public playgroundWhen you think about playing, what comes to mind? Is it fun? Liveliness? Engaging with video games, laughing while playing a board game, or simply swinging in apark?Play associated with non-serious activities that no immediate benefit (Bateson, 2014), in contrast to the challenges of complexity face up during the process of design. But the interesting partis:What if design itself is a form ofplay?What if the process of solving problems is like an ongoing puzzle game, with rules, chance, and exploration?We cannot view design as merely an activity for crafting things to look nice, drawing fancy images on a platform, or even generating AI-based pictures and writing more prompts to make them more beautiful. Design is not that easy. While the goal of design is to produce the best output, the journey to get there is a long and exhausting path to unfold effective and meaningful solutions.This writing tries to understand the connection between design as a problem-solving activity, which evolves into a disentangled activity to navigate problems, play and playfulness as a way to make the design journey more pleasurable, turning challenges into discovery opportunities instead of getting trapped in frustration.The evolution of design from crafting into liberal art of technologyFirst, we need to understand why design problems seem to become increasingly complex day by day. I get inspiration from Richard Buchanan (1992) for the term design as a new liberal art of technological culture. In the traditional sense, liberal art means a revolutionary transformation. Design began with fulfilling functional needs such as creating an artifact, painting, or propaganda poster (Buchanan, 1992). As society and culture evolved, so did design, it became a segmented profession, gaining exposure from technical and research knowledge, becoming a liberal art of technology. This means that design, as a creative skill, engages with technology, social culture, and human values, emphasizing the importance of design in shaping how we interact with technology and the environment.Therefore, the fact that design roles are shaping society does not merely focus on aesthetics but also requires the ability to think holistically and integrate various knowledge areas. Design forms both an art and a science of putting things together. One of the main challenges designers face, impacted by this evolution, is to enhance their individual abilities to see the big picture from the social variables while also shifting to the details to connect patterns and comfortably staying in uncertainty to understand a wicked situation.Design problem as a complexproblemStad, the art installation in Groningen from Frans and Hansje Hazewinkel-Loos, aimed at visualizing the complex city information using a playful installation.Can you imagine facing environmental issues such as food waste or wildfire? If these problems are too vague, consider the challenges when a brand designer needs to expand their product to a completely new and different target market, or an UX designer needs to create a persuasive design to increase productsales.Isnt it complex when they need to consider the cultural context of society, face fluctuating requirements, explore solutions while considering tight budgets, and connect psychological theory with hopes that their hypothesis leads to a successful outcome?Design problem as a wicked problemthe time of many problems occur, increasing complexity, rapid changes from the environment, and involving trans-disciplinary knowledge.Rebecca Price (2019), In Pursuit of Design-Led Transition.Design problems have transformed into complex, wicked problems, or maybe they always were before we realized itarticulated as conditions that lack clarity and definitive solutions, meaning there is no stopping rule that says the problem has been solved. Instead, it is necessary to continuously rethink and adapt to updated conditions. Designers need to navigate these conditions themselves, applying an iterative process, which makes exploration not as easy as it seems, it can lead to feelings of frustration, overwhelm, andanxiety.The star puzzle from Sherlock Holmess game, ruled to collect and connect all stars. Design activities seem similar: connecting the information and creating connections before choosing the final solution.The nature of design activities can be defined as two major phases: problem definitionan analytic phase where the wicked condition is disentangledand problem solutiona synthetic phase where designers explore potential solutions (Rittel, 1973). This concept is similar to the famous double diamond of the design process, in which the author divides the process into four phases: Discover, Design, Develop, andDeliver.The design process continuously shifts between these phases, all iteratively while embracing ambiguity to unpack the wicked condition. Due to that condition, one crucial aspect of design activities is pattern recognition to find cross-relations. Edward de Bono, in his book Lateral Thinking, talks about establishing code communication as a mind language that can create a symbolic system that allows for understanding complex concepts in a simpler way. The designers task is to establish their own code of communication to help unpack wicked problems, seek patterns, and connect them with different variables. This system acts like a self-established framework that helps designers make sense of disparate information.The play and playfulnessWe understand play as an activity that produces pleasure and fun. Johan Huizinga (1949), the Dutch philosopher and author of Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, defined play as a cultural phenomenon that is older than culture itself. It is something natural that humans do without needing to learn it. In practice, play goes beyond just physical activity; it evokes feelings of joy, tension, and satisfaction. Interestingly, play doesnt necessarily have to be funit is pleasurable, which can come from serious or even dangerous activities (Sicart, 2014). In the six key principles of play, Huizinga mentioned that play needs to be temporary with specific approved rules, meaning players need to pretend in a created temporary sphere and within a limited time to complete defined goals. The goals need to be believed by everyone, such as the score in footballa translation of putting the ball into the opponents goal. Even the goals can be more abstract, like role-playing games with a purpose to explore different identities and understand different perspectives; players need to pretend to be someone else in a different context, which also enhances the ability to imagine different conditions.Childrens Games painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1560), exhibited in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, showing kids playing 90 games in one picture. Can you mention at least 10 games played in the painting?The activity of play evokes playful feelingspsychological, physical, and emotional perspectives regarding the activity. Scott G. Eberle (2014) identifies six play feelings: anticipation, surprise, pleasure, understanding, strength, and poise. These elements bring different emotions that make play enjoyable. For example, anticipation brings excitement as we look forward to what happens next, surprise gives us unexpected moments of fun, pleasure keeps us engaged with the activity, understanding evokes as we learn something new while playing, strength gives us confidence when overcoming challenges, and poise helps us stay calm while doing a task. These broad feelings contribute to a rewarding experience ofplay.Design, play, and playfulness.Play and playfulness must be understood as essential elements in creativity as a whole.Irvin Singer, Modes of Creativity: Philosophical Perspectives.So how do play and playfulness fit into the designprocess?Lets consider three aspects from the visual framework I developed:Circular Playful Design Model by theAuthorPlay as an activity: Based on Huizinga (1949), play determines the rules to create structure and spontaneity. Similar to design, we engage with a set of constraints, either the problem to solve, requirements, business goals, budget, or time. Moreover, both play and design involve an element of pretending; in play, we create imaginary scenarios, take on roles, and pretend that, with those roles, we can achieve the goals. Similarly, in design, we use imagination to think about possibilities that arent there yet. Designers often need to pretend and imagine themselves as the user, thinking about how a product might be used, creating a user journey to fit the users context, and considering many scenarios when users engage with the product. This pretending aspect helps both play and design move beyond the current condition, requiring belief in ones imagination.Playfulness as an attitude: Playfulness evokes due to the effect of play. Eberle mentioned that playfulness evokes six feelingsAnticipation, Surprise, Pleasure, Understanding, Strength, and Poise. These feelings evoked during play should also be involved in design. For example, anticipation mostly arises in the problem definition and problem solution phases, where designers try to explore edge cases of their product while asking questions to cover situations that might happen. Surprise in design comes when we find unexpected insights during the research process. Pleasure emerges after solving a problem effectively, seeing positive user feedback. Understanding arises during the process of learning user behavior, which can lead to better pattern recognition. Strength in design can be seen as experience; the more opportunities to unpack complex problems, the more designers can practice their skills. Meanwhile, poise is the designers ability to stay resilient when diving into the design process. Involving these playful feelings helps create a positive and resilient attitude, fostering an exploratory mindset.Design as a methodological approach: Design, as mentioned by Rittel (1973), forms two key parts of the journeyProblem Definition and Problem Solution. Throughout this process, designers need to juggle between analytical and synthetic parts. Designers need to be aware that the problem they handle is a wicked problem that requires thinking in layers. Solutions arent necessarily defined as good or bad, and this is similar to playwe learn from each move and adapt along the way due to different scenarios.By embracing play in design, we are not only thinking about how to solve a problem but also rethinking the nature of the design process, including what attitudes we need to prepare for uncovering challenges. To delve into the details of how this concept suits the design process, I modified the double diamond model as a basis for the designprocess.Circular Playful Design Model adapted to Double Diamond FrameworkDuring the design process, from discovery and definition, which can be included in the problem definition phase, its often abstract and full of ambiguity. Designers attitudes of anticipation and understanding of the social context may help in searching for new patterns and meaning. Throughout the process, designers face ideation, which involves the attitudes of strength and poise to continue working in uncertain conditions to reach a solution.This model visualizes how play can be a foundation to fill the design process with feelings of surprise, curiosity, and most importantly, joy.Moving forward,What if, instead of viewing design as a linear, boring path of problem-solving activities, we saw it as a playground?A sphere that we can explore, test, fail, laugh, and bounceback.ReferencesBateson, P. (2014). Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation. Animal Behavior and Cognition, 2(2), 99. https://doi.org/10.12966/abc.05.02.2014Buchanan, R. (1992). Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. Design Issues, 8(2), 521. https://doi.org/10.2307/1511637Cross, N. (2006). Designerly ways of knowing: with 15 figures. Springer.Eberle, S. (2014). The Elements of Play Toward a Philosophy and a Definition of Play. Journal of Play,6(2).Edward De Bono. (1992). The use of lateral thinking. Penguin.Huizinga, J. (1949). Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. American Sociological Review, 16(2), 274. https://doi.org/10.2307/2087716Price, R. (2019). In Pursuit of Design-led Transitions. Academy for Design Innovation Management Conference 2019. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332964016_In_Pursuit_of_Design-led_TransitionsRittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155169. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01405730Sicart, M. (2014). Play Matters. The MITPress.Singer, I. (2011). Modes of creativity: philosophical perspectives. The MITPress.Embracing play as the core of design was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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You dont need to pay such a big penalty for innovationPhoto by Jack Carter onUnsplashYour teammate rolls across the floor to yourdesk.They patiently wait for you to finish typing. No matter, youre already distracted. You dont work well when you can feel eyes uponyou.You turn to addressthem.A spiel begins: I was working through the requirements for microservice [X]you know, the one that handles API [Y], for feature [Z]. Well, I was in there, and I realized, why dont we just [A], because if we did that, then [B], [C], and if were lucky,[D]Youre not fully following along. Your brain is still trying to hold onto those last few thoughts you had, before you lose them completely and have to retrace your steps to figure out what you were thinking and why andhow. So yeah, that doesnt necessarily take into account [L] or [M], but if we[N]Youre barely holdingon [R] [S][T]Oh never mind. You might as well focus on this new thing. You apologize, say you missed a couple details and the story begins all overagain.And meanwhile, youve lost any stringified attachments to where you were in your brainspace.But then you get into it. Yeah! [A] through [T], that makes a lot of sense, plus [U], [V], and [W]. Lets see what Morgan thinks aboutthis(So much for anyone making progress today! But who doesnt love a shiny newthing?)/sadpandaThat idea might not have even been worth thinking about in the first placeor who knows, maybe its the next big thing thats going to push your startup into unicorntopia.All that you know at this point is it sounded like a decent idea, and it didnt hurt to put a little thought into. (Or didit?)And there it isthe moment that you realized your productivity was killed and your focus was derailed, all for an idea that probably wont matter in two weeks (if not two minutes). But youll do it again tomorrow, because thats what product teams do. We entertain ideas. We explore possibilities. We chase potential.And who can blameus?Well thats what were here to talk about. Take aseat!Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Theyre a lot like [checks metaphor list] potato chips. Everyone loves them, theyre addictively easy to consume, and before you know it, youve eaten the entire bag and feel slightly sick. But unlike potato chips, the consequences of gorging on good ideas last much longer than a bad case of indigestion.This is the idea taxthe hidden cost thats slowly bankrupting your product execution.The seductive dance ofideationWere all guilty of it. That rush of dopamine when we think weve cracked the code on the next big thing. That surge of excitement when we imagine the possibilities.It just feels so good to have goodideas.And thats exactly theproblem.While bad ideas are easy to shoot down (sorry Phil, were not adding a blockchain to our journaling app for cats), good ideas are insidious.They slip past our defenses with a wink and a smile (so flattering!).They sound reasonable.They feel achievable.They come with compelling user stories, undeniable pain points, intriguing solutions, and impressive slides about TAM, CAC, MRR, LTV, POC, MVP, PMF, and (dare I say it)IPO.But what everyone in the room fails to recognize or acknowledge is that every good idea you entertain comes with a tax bill. A very real drain on your very humanteam.The true cost of all thoseideas(Yes, even the good onesin fact, especially those.)Every time your team considers a new idea, youre spending more than just a little time to talk about it. The true expense starts the moment an idea enters your teams orbit (even just near one planetary team member), and you dont stop racking up bills until it gets absorbed into your sun (you build it) or it gets slingshotted back into outer space (you reject it). (Is this metaphor working?Anyway)All ideas, whether you ultimate execute against them or bail somewhere along the way, consume valuable resources. They affect your teams focus, clarity, and execution.Theyre more expensive than is apparent on thesurface.Strategic dilutionEvery good idea you pursue is a vote cast for a particular future. But when youre voting for everything, youre effectively voting for nothingboth because of the truth that if everything is a priority than nothing is, and also because, well, what exactly are you strategically building if youre building everything all atonce?Lets break this down with a realistic product scenario.You start with a clear vision: Were building the best AI sales call analyzer to train reps and level up their pitchgame.Then the good ideas start rollingin:Hey, what if we added real-time coaching duringcalls?You know whatd be cool? AI-generated discovery questions!Our enterprise customers really want pipeline management (or at least, thats what I imagine our enterprise customers would ask for, if we hadany).We should add our own video conferencingreps hate switching platforms.Have we considered adding follow-up email sequences?What about automated pitch deck creation?Wheres the prospect data enrichment?Buyer intent signals! We definitely need to show buying readiness scores!But look what happens to your strategynow youre competing with:GongZoomSalesforceHubSpotZoomInfoand every other tool (even merely tangentially) related to sales enablementAnd nobody knows what makes you specialanymore.Its like being at a restaurant with a 50-page menu. Sure, they can make sushi and pizza and tacos and curry but do you really trust them to do any of itwell?(In full transparency, my wife loves The Cheesecake Factory, but thats neither here northere.)And the truly insidious part? This dilution happens gradually. You dont wake up one morning and decide to completely abandon your strategy. Noit erodes one reasonable decision at atime.Well, were already analyzing pitch performance, so real-time coaching isnt that big a stretchSince were tracking sales conversations, we might as well predict their outcomesEveryone loves tool consolidation because it saves them money, so maybe we should just build our ownCRMAnd on andonBefore you know it, your product strategy resembles a Jackson Pollock paintinglots of activity, but good luck finding the focus. Your simple pitch improvement tool is now yet another all-in-one revenue acceleration platform (whatever thatmeans).Strategy is as much about what you say NO to as what you say YES to. When you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone. Youre not making strategic choices; youre just accumulating features.Context switchingEvery time your team pivots to explore a new idea, theyre paying a mental toll. Research shows it takes 23 minutes to fully regain focus after a disruption. And in product development, were not just talking about a quick chat by the water cooler (or perhaps more aptly, by the robot barista).Were talkingabout:Engineers mentally unravelling complex technical architectures and keeping it all magically together in their braincachePMs juggling roadmap plans three years out, yesterdays sudden escalation, unrealistic stakeholder expectations, and overall death-by-meetingDesigners deep in user research, user interviews, user personas, user stories, and use casesall in the name of design exploration for a feature that may never see the light ofdayAnd this isnt happening just occasionally (as much as managers may pretend it is). Its happening many times per day, across the entire team, org, andcompany.For some roles, this can indeed be a quick side convo. Not in product development, though. There, each context switch requires rebuilding complicated mental models, understanding intricate system interactions, and maintaining consistent product vision across an ever-growing list of features.Yeah, that 23 minutes doesnt hold water for this team. Say goodbye to any semblance of productivity for the rest of theday.Decision fatigueYour brain has a finite amount of decision-making energy each day. Its like your phone batteryeach choice drains a little more juice, although unlike your phone, theres no quick-charge solution (unless you have time to sneak in a nap between meetings).Every good idea that simply must be discussed demands its fair share of your brainpower:Should we prioritize this now? (And if not now,when?)How does it fit within our strategy? (Or does it just seem to fit because we want itto?)Whats the opportunity cost? (And are we being honest with ourselves about those tradeoffs?)Should we build, buy, or partner? (And do we have bandwidth for any ofthose?)Who should be the owner of this effort? (And do they actually have capacity to take thison?)How will this impact our existing roadmap? (And all the promises weve already made, including last quarters bigideas?)Whats the minimum viable version? (And how are we defining viable in the grand scheme of MLP/MMP/MUP/MSP/MDP/MAP/MTP/etc.?)Before you know it, youre making your most important product decisions with the mental equivalent of 2% batterylife.And the other half of the equation isnt prettyeither.Youre working hard at all this, burning mental calories deciding what to do about that game-changing AI-powered feature to automatically post pictures of users pets to their personal social media pages (the pets pages, not the users) by taking advantage of the blockchain and Dogecoins impending moonshot sorry, where was I? OhyeahMeanwhile, youre not thinkingabout:How to improve your core product experienceWays to reduce customerchurnHow to give your users more Aha!momentsWhy onboarding seems to be taking too long for all newusersThose critical security updates your engineering team has been warning you not toignoreThe growing technical debt thats slowly-but-surely turning your codebase into spaghettiIts like spending all your energy choosing breakfast, and having nothing left for dinner. Except in this case, breakfast was deciding whether to add dark mode to your B2B enterprise software, and dinner was supposed to be figuring out why 10% of your user base left for your competitor lastmonth.Feature BloatEach feature you add is like buying propertyyoure not just paying the upfront cost, youre also signing up for the ongoing maintenance. The work on your residencethats just the cost of business (/living). But the work on your second and third home, vacation lakehouse, and rental propertiesthose are all a bit distracting and expensive so expensive.Youve got to constantly dealwith:Code that needs updatingsecurity vulnerability patches, third-party API changes, performance optimizations, bug fixes,Documentation that needs maintaininguser guides, API documentation, internal wiki knowledge base articles, onboarding docs, release notes,Support tickets that need answeringwhy doesnt this work like it used to?, I cant find the option for, is this a bug or a feature?, a myriad of edge cases you never could have imagined,Training that needs deliveringSales needs new demo scripts, Support requires new troubleshooting steps, Success needs new implementation playbooks, new hires need deeper onboarding, partners need capability briefings,The worst part? This tax increases over time. That simple feature you added two years ago? Its now critical to three of your biggest customers workflows, tightly integrated with five other features, andyou guessed itall that time spent ignoring it hasnt left it in very good shape but at the same time, any minor change requires a full regression testing cycle that makes your QA team break out in coldsweats.Of course, some of those features are worth the extra expenses. But that doesnt mean every brilliant idea is worth pursuing. You need to pick your battles wisely. Theres no such thing as set it and forget it in product development. Everything you build today is a commitment to maintain it tomorrow and the month after that and the year afterthatAn idea tax avoidance strategyDont worry, Im not suggesting you become a product development hermit, rejecting all new ideas at the door. But there are some things you can do to help yourself avoid the very painful costs of all those brilliant ideas.1. Protect your execution timestayfocusedFirst off, you need to make sure that big ideas arent getting in the way of doing good work and delivering customer value. So, create uninterruptible space for your product development team to actually, yknow, develop theproduct:Fix your calendaring woes and block off entire days to give your team time to truly focus purely on executionMake sprints actually sacred instead of allowing them to be blown up all the time (although first youll need to plan thembetter)Discuss ideas during dedicated discussion times (yes, even if thats a meetingbut put those either at the beginning of the day, end of the day, or duringlunch)Create explicit processes and allowances for the handling of emergency ideas (true emergencies are rare, but Im not trying to pretend that they dontexist)Encourage (force?) people to sit on their idea for a hot second (or really, a hot day or week)that gives them time to 1) sleep on it to see if its really that good (many will dissipate into the ether just from thistime saved!), and 2) formalize their thoughts on it (shower thoughts not-so-welcome, they need moremeat)Ideas without execution are just daydreams. And if you dont give your team space to execute, they wont build anythingbig idea or otherwise.2. Assess valueis it worthit?For the ideas that still make it to your desk, make sure theyre fully vetted. Its easy to get all starry-eyed at the prospects of a brighter futureits way more fun that the grind, anywaybut youve got to know the difference between a pipe dream and an honest-to-goodness executable game-changer.What specific problem does this solve for our coreusers?How does this amplify (or dilute) our key differentiators?Whats the true engineering cost?Which strategic opportunities will we sacrifice?Whats the downstream impact on product complexity?How will this affect other teams? And will that be in a good way or a bad way? (This is everyoneSales, Support, Success, Marketing, other Engineering teams, other Product teams, everyone)Ideas are easy; execution is hard. The more rigorous your assessment process, the less likely youll chase mirages. Your products success depends not only on the ideas you accept, but also on the ones youreject.3. Planchanging course every day isnt pivoting, itschaosJust because a decent idea indeed turned out to be a great idea, that doesnt mean you should pivot straight to building it. There are real implications for dropping what youre doing in the middle of doingit.Ruthlessly protect committed workyou committed for a reason, it should be rare to change course in themiddleCreate space for strategic bets (and build in check-in points so you can bow out if its not working out the way youdreamed)Balance core improvements with new capabilitiesyou cant move on all ideas, but you will need to move on some; even if you managed to create a moat, it wont survive forever unless you keep diggingitPlanning isnt about predicting the future, its about preparing for it. Your roadmap needs to be firm enough to execute against, but flexible enough to adapt. The best plans enable focus for today while maintaining optionality for tomorrow.4. Back to the beginningThis isnt really step 4, its back to step1.Now that you know the ideas actually worth pursuing, and have a reasonable and realistic plan to move forward with them, you can utilize all that time you freed up to focus on execution to build the next bigthing.This is the past you giving a gift to the current you. (But also, the current you giving a gift to the future younows not the time to break thecycle!)The cold, hardtruthLook, I get it. Believe me I get it. Saying no (or la la Im not listening while covering your ears) to good ideas feels wrong. It goes against our instincts as product people. Were builders, creators, innovators. Our natural state is to see the art of the possible everywhere welook.But (and this is the big but)your capacity to execute will always be smaller than your capacity to ideate. Always. Its like trying to drink from a fire hoseno matter how thirsty you are, youll only be able to swallow so much atonce.So:Protect the ever-loving heck out of your ability to dodont let big ideas get in the way ofthatBe sure that you want to move forwardthis doesnt mean you have to sign up for everything about everything about the idea (in fact, purposefully dont do that, give yourself outs along the way), but do your due diligence before youbeginMake a game planjust because you decided you will execute doesnt mean you have to start right now (i.e., remember step1)Keep the cyclegoingThe most successful product development teams arent the ones with the most good ideas. Theyre the ones who are ruthlessly efficient at executing on the rightideas.The payoff for skillfully managing your idea tax will be a team that can actually execute, features that actually ship, and a product that actually evolves one deliberate idea at atime.Speaking of good ideas Are you tired of fighting with Jiras UI? I get it. Thats why were building Momentumits Jira on the backend, but with a UX that actually helps you do agile. No migration necessary. Curious? Join the waitlist.The not-so-hidden tax of good ideas was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Building products aroundprices.Lets be short and clear: businesses only exist to make money. All their placed bets are based on the sooner or later expectedprofit.To determine the viability of any business case, we need to calculate the expected profit by subtracting estimated costs from estimated revenues. But heres the issue: even if were good at estimating costs (as all the information is on our side), were typically bad at estimating the other 50% of the equationrevenues. Most often, we take a wild guess and postpone pricing decisions until the very end. We embark on the long and expensive product development journey, hoping to make money on our innovations, but not knowing if wewill.When I started working as a Product Manager, we naively believed that if we just built a great new product, customers would come and pay a fair value for it. We even believed Product Managers should actively avoid the money talk, as it could pollute innovative thinking. If we failed, that would be okay, as so many innovations do. We werentalone.Its true: most new products become monetizing failures. Either because no customer wants to pay for it and we put it in the market anyway; or because we give up on bringing it to market without even making any monetization study; or because we cram too many features and create a confusing and overpriced mess; or even because we price products too low from their full revenue potential. Either way, if money is essential to businesses and monetization failures are so common, shouldnt we do something more to preventthem?Especially with the ongoing economic crisis, Product managers cant afford to be blind to market realities any longer. To prevent monetization failures and increase the likelihood of success, we must flip the process: market and price, then design andbuild.Here, following the principles outlined in Monetizing Innovation by Ramanujam and Tacke (the best book I know on the topic), well explore how to market and price a product to get to a reliable businesscase:Market ResearchProduct StructureMonetization ModelPricingBusiness Case1. MarketResearchWe dont need to know precisely what product were building before assessing its worth. Neither customers have to experience a new product before they can say how much they would be inclined topay.Willing-to-pay ConversationsWe can assess a products worth right away by having early conversations with customers about their overall willingness to pay and the value they place on specific components. These conversations uncover whether we have an opportunity to monetize our product and help us prioritize the correct set of features (consequently resulting in a better product experience forusers).As price indicates what customers value and measures how much they are willing to pay for that value, the simplest way is to just ask them aboutit:Direct QuestionsWhat is an acceptable price? What would be an expensive price? And a prohibitively expensive price?Purchase ProbabilityWhats the likelihood (05) of you buying this product at this price? (If not a 4 or a 5, ask again for a lowerprice.)With these questions, well quickly reach a reasonable price range. And we must ask ourselves whether that price range would work for our company. It may not if we cant deliver a market-acceptable product at a price that makes aprofit.Afterward, we can use more advanced questions to dig deeper into the value of specific product components.Best-Worst ScalingFrom this feature set, which features do you value the most and the least? And this other featureset?Build-Your-OwnBuild your ideal product from this set of featureseach with a price to make the choice realistic.Purchase SimulationFrom this product lineup with different price points and feature combinations, which ones would you choose? And in this different scenario?If we follow each question with the most powerful question of all: Why?, well know much about customers willingness to pay and theirneeds.SegmentationWith the previous conversations, well quickly notice that not all customers have the same willingness to pay or needs. Whether we like it or not, a market where customers are homogeneous is yet to befound.The only way to cope with this variance is to embrace customer segmentation and not force a one-size-fits-all solution. If we have two customer segments and design offerings for the average customer, we end up building a product neither group is entirely pleased about. Segmentation gives us the power to cater to customers specificneeds.There are many sorts of segmentation. Weve all heard about personas and dividing users by demographics, behavior, etc. While this might be good for customizing sales and marketing messages, it is often uncorrelated to what matters the most in product creation. Instead, we should build segments based on differences in needs and willingness to pay and shape products accordingly from there. Segmentation then becomes a product design and development driver rather than an afterthought.What if theres not enough capacity to focus on all segments? Fair enough (and expected for startups). When so, we should prioritize and build for the segment with the biggest opportunity (in terms of size or revenue potential) while creating a plan to introduce future solutions for the other segments. This way, were still avoiding a one-size-fits-none solution.2. Product StructureWith identified segments, we can think of a segment-based product offer structure. It means selecting the right functionalities for a segment product configuration (aka variation, aka package)just the ones they need and are willing to payfor.ConfigurationOur instinct will be to pack as much functionality as possible in just one configuration.However, counterintuitively, we must get comfortable giving segments only what they need rather than giving them everything. Too many features lead to feature shock products, especially if customers are not wild about those. Lets recall that one big reason for monetizing failures is cramming too many features and creating an overpriced mess. No one likes to pay for functionality they dontuse.Product configuration requires the courage to take away, not just add up. Plainly, we must deliver the Must-Haves, we may keep the Nice-to-Haves, and we should eliminate Turn-Offs.Must-Havescritical functionalities that drive a segment to buy aproductNice-to-Havesfillers of moderate importanceTurn-Offsdeal-breakers if a segment is forced to pay forthemStill, what is a Turn-Off for a segment could be a Must-Have for another. We might need to include it in another variation, or we could sell it stand-alone if only a few wantit.BundlesComplementing product configuration, we have bundles. A bundle is a product combined with others, sold for a cheaper price than the sum of those individual products. It works well for cross-selling nice-to-have products and maximizing sales. Think McDonalds mealscustomers end up buying more than they would have if they hadntbundled.It is easy for customers to become overwhelmed trying to decide which offer is right for them. Bundling not only boosts our revenue but even increases customer satisfaction because deciding is more straightforward. They didnt have to choose between A or B; they got both forless.The classic approach to bundling is to create a tieredmodel:Goodcheaper, with the most essential products (but not giving away toomuch)Bettermore expensive, with product combinations better fit for mainsegmentsBestmost expensive, with ALL the products!Also, many people avoid extremes: when presented with a choice, they choose the compromise option. Playing with this psychology, we drive people to choose the Betteroptions.Yet, without tremendous market power, customers wont be happy if we hard-force bundles. Selling the products both as stand-alone and in a bundle will probably work betterits more flexible, and the bundle price advantage becomes morevisible.3. Monetization ModelNow that we have product configuration and bundles for the right segments, we have the building blocks to consider the right price points. Isit?Well, not right away. First, we must define the monetization modelhow the customer pays. We need to know how to charge before we know how much wecharge.Today, numerous models are in use, not simply the pay-per-unit standard. Ramanujam and Tacke identified five different ones that have proven to be the most valuable for new launches:Subscriptions, as in Netflix and most SaaSIts beneficial for industries where customers use the product continually. It has proven to be stickier than regular transactions.Dynamic pricing, as in Uber and the airline industryThe price fluctuates to monetize volatile demand and capacity constraints.Auctions, as in art, yes, but also as in Google AdWordsLet the market figure out what it wants to pay. Customers outbid each other to buy and raise prices. Its ideal for seller markets and when theres competition for the inventory.Pay-as-you-go, as in AWS and other cloud productsPricing transactions on alternative metrics closer to product value and customer benefits. It easily adjusts for different levels ofusage.Freemium, as in Medium and most product-led softwareTwo or more tiers of pricing for its products and services, one of which is free. The goal is to land a huge customer base for the free version and later expand a significant percentage topaid.These models are by no means the only ones we can use. We can also combine pieces of each one for a mix-and-match model, as the progressive example below. When done right, the best monetization models are a win-win for us and our customers.This is not a small matter: the chosen monetization model can be as critical to success as the product itself, and a flawed monetization model can be worse than a badprice.4. PricingWeve chosen what and how to charge; now, we can start deciding how much. But first, we needdata.Price ElasticityFrom our analysis of the willing-to-pay research and the decisions on product schemes and monetization models, we can deduct the quantity consumers are willing to purchase at various price scenarios. With that breakdown, we are ready to assemble a demand curve and visualize the relationship between price and salesvolume.With those inputs, we can also assemble a revenue curve: just multiply the price by the volume quantity.Now, we can better see what would be the optimal pricethe one that maximizes revenue. How much margin we have on the optimal price depends on the elasticity. Elasticity is about how sensitive customers demand is to a change in price. If our product has high price elasticity (a steep demand curve), well have a relatively low margin in the optimum price. The other way around is also true: low elasticity leads to a high optimalmargin.With the revenue calculated, it would be easy to get the profit if we have estimated the expenses. We have to subtract the costs from the income, et voil. The ideal price for profit might not be the same as for revenue, as some costs might vary according to the quantity.Pricing StrategySo, should we choose the price for maximum profit? Isnt that our strategy? Hum, itdependsThe right strategy depends on our goals, as different goals can lead to contradictory actions. For example, if we want to expand the market share, we need strategies and price levels that differ from the goal of increasing revenue.The good news is that, again, according to Ramanujam and Tacke, only three types of pricing strategies matter:Maximization, as in products with a clear competitive advantageSetting the price to generate the highest possible profit or revenue. Classic and straightforward.Penetration, as in new brands in a competitive scenarioSetting a lower price than Maximization to grab market share and expandrapidly.Skimming, as in Apple and other premium and innovative productsSetting a higher initial price than Maximization to cater to enthusiasts who pay to be first-in-line, then systematically decreasing the price to reach other segments.5. BusinessCaseWeve all built some business cases before. Will this time be different?Business cases usually come in as static documents, built from the inside out, failing to consider critical outside market information. They are run to earn budget approval and put on a shelf right after. Thats a limited usage of this toolspower.With the previous exercises completed, we have the pillars of a good business case filled with informed living data, not just arbitrary numbers we want to hear. Value, pricing, volume, and costs all interact to keep us grounded and allow us to extract our products true potential, before and after hitting themarket.It takes time and effort, but having the money talk early and continuously, instead of postponing it to the end, really prevents monetization failures and increases the likelihood of success.Worthy!Read about this topic from the ones who know best and inspired thisarticle:Ramanujam and Tacke @ Monetizing InnovationThe money talk in UX was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Todays hiring technology is experiencing an arms racebetween hiring managers and candidateswith both groups attempting to process the most applications with the least human contact: the result is a bizarre mockery of the idea of hiring, absent humandecency.Having recently changed my day job, I have had a lot of contact with the tools and practices of hiring: the majority of the aforementioned, alongside the treatment of candidates, has been appalling. I cant claim to point to the ultimate cause, but the result is the dehumanization of candidates by analytical, AI and automated solutions that hiring managers turn to in order to deal with the unmanageable deluge of resumes from candidates who have turned also to scale and toAI.I will address the following irritants:PDF as a prime means of data transmission (forresumes)Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and the new need to keyword-optimize ourresumesThe habit of companies to decline candidates without explaining their reasons or giving candidates a means toreplyUnsurprisingly, I have a few recommendations forreform.PDFs and dataexchangeMore or less, all jobs posts today require you to detail your work history, skills and education. Most commonly, candidates can have the hiring system read their resume, or have the data pulled from their LinkedIn profile, or in more rare cases submit it manually.All of these options are bad. Manually copying and pasting ones experience into the requisite boxes is slow and tedious. LinkedIn is fast and direct, but it is a monopoly in its space, which is a problem initself.Then we have the PDF-parsers, which range from tolerable to hilariously bad: garbling dates, reversing fields like locations and title, and sometimes apparently plucking information from nowhere. This is even after formatting my resume within special tools designed to create parsable PDFs. Note that for jobs that dont allow you to submit experience via LinkedIn, often you must submit either by PDF parse or manually. This, compounded over days and weeks of applications, is humiliating.In addition, PDFs have innate problems as means of information transmission. Most of the PDF standard has been in the public domain since 2008, but working with PDFs feels like working with a proprietary standard like.doc: one must wrestle either with free/open tools that are at best fair quality or use full-featured but bloated and glacially slow proprietary tools, and work around inexplicable differences in formatting betweensystems.With PDF, something is alwaysbroken.This of course raises the question: why do we use PDFs? We do because PDFs are a means of fixing text and images on a page with purported portability between systems. But why does it actually need to be on a page? I say it doesnt: for the majority of candidates, what matters is the organized textual expression of what they can do. Assuming the text is readable, the layout is irrelevant except as a showcase of design skills for relevant professions.When creating a PDF with a tool designed for prettiness or parsability, one is constantly fighting the word-countIndeed, layout is a stumbling block: the best-looking PDFs that can be made by non-designers are built in PDF-building tools. These tools are decent, but the prettiness comes at the cost of inflexibility: no tweaks to layout or font size are possible, meaning that one is constantly fighting character count, for example, to keep things on one page. PDF, like email, comes also with the anachronism of baked-in line-breaks.This text, copied from the PDF in the above screenshot, has carriage returns inserted not by the writer but in order to format thePDF.The text, shown without the offending line breaks. (The width does make for more difficult reading, but this is properly solved by adjusting column width, not inserting carriage-returns.)Today text, just text, verges on universality and openness, flows to fit the allotted space offered by various devices and applications: not so withPDF.A moment spent on deleting spurious carriage returns or editing to keep things on a single page is a moment spent on something irrelevant to what actually matters: ones aptitude.ATSs and keyword optimizationTheres good reason to think that candidates who optimize their resumes with keywords found in the job description have a better chance of being interviewed. This is supposedly because ATSs perform a keyword analysis on resumes as a purported measure of relevance. As with search engine (SEO) keyword optimization, this is a signal that the system is broken: the act of taking words from the job description and putting them into your resume is formulaic, therefore demonstrating nothing nontrivial about ones qualities.The fact that its possible for it to change ones chance of getting an interview suggests that hiring managers are dealing with a scale of applicants and/or lack necessary tools such that they cannot make real judgments on candidates.A screenshot from JobScan, a tool that scans the job description and your resume and recommends keywords to insert. Taken from JobScans tutorial.Meanwhile, if you eliminate candidates based on keyword analysis, this will eliminate candidates who have either not heard that keyword optimization can help or who refuse to do so, feeling that it is deceptive (these people should behired).The picture of resumes will therefore, become something like the Web in around 2010: having discovered keyword stuffing, webmasters gained rankings for thin, derivative rewrites of rewrites, while real ideas languished.As with SEO, this distortion comes from a bad information system (the Web) that lacks a decent indexing, categorization and intercomparison system. Thus, instead of using resumes to exchange information, we have a new arms race: the employers use ATSs to filter us, and we keyword optimize: this arms race cannot be won, and we will continue it at the expense of our time and self-respect.To see the evidence against me, and to confront myaccuserId like to draw attention to an excellent presentation by Casey Muratory, given earlier this year during FUTOs Dont Be Evil Summit. Muratory taks about the process of people being thrown off platforms such as Twitter and YouTube, and claims that these processes would be fairer and have better outcomes if the platforms in question implemented some norms from the legal system, notably the right to know the evidence against oneself and to discuss the situation with the person making the decision.*https://medium.com/media/99d29bcac2ad4f66f918ab339614238c/hrefI think that we should apply something similar to hiring. In hiring, both of these principles are violated almost universally, see an example application responsebelow:From: no-reply@us.greenhouse-mail.ioSubject: An update on your application to *****Partner Marketing Manager*****Dear Oliver,Thank you for your application to the Partner Marketing Manager***** role at *****. We are writing to let you know that we have reviewed your application. We regret to inform you that we shall not be progressing your application further for this particular role.We appreciate that you considered us for your next career step and hope that you maintain interest in ***** and our products. If you would like to apply for other new openings we would be happy to consideryou.Regards,*****There is no explanation of how my application was lacking. Too little experience? To much of a jump from my current title? Prefer someone on the West Coast? Not enough keywords?How did they make the decision? AI? A human? An algorithm?In that they can arrange to have this email sent and to include the job title and my nameautomaticallythey could include their reasoning. Not including information that could be included at no cost to anyone is called hiding it. I suspect they hide it because they dismissed my application out of hand algorithmically or with the help of AI: its their right to do so, but I have the right toknow.How a database of hiring decisions mightlook.This would of course be galling news, but it would help us candidates immensely to who (or what) and makes these decisions, and how. Indeed, knowing that an algorithm made the decision, say, and that it was based on lack of requisite keywords would help me know that this is something I should focus on in future applications. And if they admit to using AI for this purpose, thats the evidence we need to pushback.Lets say, dear reader, that you disagree that we candidates have a right derived from common decency to this information: fair enough. But let me put it this way: informing candidates about how decisions are actually made will benefit the companies, in that our applications will be better suited to their systems. And, if we know that a given application is destined to fail, we wont waste their time withit.Of course, truly frivolous applicants dont have such rights, but Im treated like a frivolous applicant much of the time, even in response to heartfelt cover letters, detailed answers, even after for one application looking at the % of people in the UK who got the same grade as I did in English to see how good, relatively, my gradewas.It would be useful to know what the hiring manager or machine actually did. Did they look at my answers to their questions? Watch the introductory video Imade?I once experimented with taking time to write long, detailed cover letters that respond to the companys situation and brand, and the results were the same as for any other application I had submitted. Did someone read it? Tell us what we need to do and what will help ussucceed.We will doit.Then theres the no-reply emails. If the company tells me its a no from a no-reply, I have no recourse to dispute the decisions and no way to ask for feedback, or, so to speak, to confront my accuser. This is a sad return of the idea that a computer (which, lets face it, is likely making most of these decisions) cannot err, and by extension that there is no need to be able to query its decision. I can of course fill in the companys contact form: but what good is that actually going todo.Remember, mistakes happen: it may seem absurd, but what if I was the best candidate and the hiring manager accidentally pressed the wrong button? AI makes frequent and colorful mistakes. What if I made a mistake and, realizing it, wanted to let them know after my application had been rejected. Often Im confronted with US applications that require a GPA. I dont have a GPA because I studied in the UK: will they read my explanation? How can I be sure if I cantask?ProposalsBelow, I set out some proposals on how to improvethings.A better information systemThe solution to the absurdity of PDFs is obvious: job seekers should maintain their work history, skills and interests in a standardized format, rendered in plain text. Ideally it would be accessible online via a URL, but you could equally store it as a file. Note that this is not a document; the fields, like employment dates, titles, etc. would be stored to allow universally accurate parsing by computer.Designers and others for whom the visuals are important could maintain both designed resumes and a system like this to optimize for both sides of the equation.My company, HSM, is building a broader solution to the superset of this problem: the proper organization of text, its ownership and control byusers.No no-reason, nono-replyNo-reason decline emails can be abolished immediately at little to no cost: there is no excuse. No-reply emails should be abolished also: the initial result of this will be a deluge of correspondence (much of it warranted, Im sure) but then hiring managers will be forced to raise the bar to reduce the volume of applications: this is good thing, we candidates apply to too manyjobs.No AIFor the most part, I think that AI (read LLMs) should have no application in hiring (and probably most other fields). Using it abdicates responsibility to a system whose decisions are definitionally impossible to interrogate, which is immoral. For more on this, see my longer discussion of AI, Artificial Intelligence: The Soul of Soulless Conditions.If you dont have time to read it, I defer to a famous slide from an IBM presentation on thesubject:Talk to failed candidatesA friend of mine, when laid off, asked whether there would be an exit interview. His boss responded by saying that there would not be, as his was an involuntary termination. What a odd proposition: that this individual, because he was being let go, had nothing useful to offer the company by way of feedback or praise. The same is true for failed candidates: they have a lot to say of much use, but nobody reachesout.I got a survey once; the first question was: Did the job description make it clear to you what the role would entail? I didnt read anyfurther.Walk thewalkFinally, any company that uses PDF parsing, keyword-oriented ATS systems, AI, and that hits candidates with no-reason, no-reply messages should mandate that any hiring manager and anyone who has a hiring manager report to them must apply for their own job with such a system every quarter. This will I hope make them realize firsthand that these systems would be hilarious if they werent so dehumanizing, and will spur change from a sense ofdisgust.ConclusionThere is foul play on both sides here: candidates apply to hundreds of jobs when they probably shouldnt, and use AI to help when they definitely shouldnt. This overwhelms hiring managers, who then need systems to deal with the quantity. The question of who started matters less than the fact that both sides are stuck in this trough: they use computers on us, so we act like computers in order tosurvive.A candidate who applies for a reasonable number of jobs or shuns keyword optimization software hurts only themself; companies must act first, as they have the scale and the clout to do something.All this seems to have happened thanks to the computer adding scale to and subtracting personality from our interactions. Indeed, interacting with real people can be hard and awkward, especially if its bad news. But surely personality is what its all about. Indeed it feels that we subject our personalities to such scale that they risk thinning out into an undifferentiated haze or, like a balloon in a vacuum, expanding rapidly and goingpop.*I note that the question of online platform access is controversial and polarized. However, if you feel that this cause belongs to people who dont think like you do, I encourage you to seek examples of de-platforming when someone like you was the victim, or even to read about non-political examples (all exist). I ask you then to tell me if Muratorys proposals would make things worse: please comment or contact me. This is for now putting the costs of implementing his proposals to one side: they would be considerable, but the most relevant platform companies have similarly considerable amounts ofmoney.Why is hiring software so impersonal? was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Weekly curated resources for designersthinkers andmakers.You are Jean-Claude Van Damme. Youre straddling two 18-wheelers careening through space while doing the splits. Its very difficult, your groin hurts, and you could really use a strawberry Pop-tartHeres the question that has brought on all the pain and Pop-tart cravings: Do I continue the path of individual contributor or turn towards management?As designers, this is a decision that we all need to face eventually. As soon as we become competent in our craft, we start to realize that we cant straddle the gap forever.The split decision: IC or manager? By TripCarrollStreamline feedback and slash revisions for faster, flawless website delivery [Sponsored] Say hello to the deadline-friendly web builder that keeps you focused on creativity, not legwork. The no-nonsense copilot handles the heavy lifting, making it smooth to go from idea to publish. Ideal for small teams and agencies building sites on tight timelines.Editor picksLaid off twice in a year Riding the tech rollercoaster as a product manager.By JeanHuangCustomer as competitive advantage Are we doing the same as our competitors expecting different results?By HelgeTennGreat products transcend the Usability vs. Utility debate Your users want results, not compromises.By AviSiegelThe UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about theirwork.New book celebrates UKs influential modernist graphic designers Make methinkWe did all this discovery now how do we decide? The more discovery they do, the more ideas they get. The ideas, the interviews, the stories, the pain pointsthey all start to pile up. Thats where the problem comes in. Now the PM has a giant portfolio of ideas. But the team can only build one thing at a time. How do they decide on the one thing to donext?Are AI assistants making us worse programmers? In programming, high-level languages many times abstract the complexity away from yousomething developers working with JavaScript, Python, Java, etc, know well. It seems clear that AI assistants introduce a new human-machine interfacenatural language. Is thatbad?Dont forget to localize your icons Localizing your app, web app, or website is more than just running all your text through Google Translate and hoping for the best. Creating effective, trustworthy communication with language communities means doing the work to make sure your content meets them where theyare.Little gems thisweekWhy is the Mac mini power button on the bottom? By ElvisHsiaoHow Insight Timer monetizes 25M users By MaryBorysovaHow I used AI to design brand-aligned illustrations By MotyWeissTools and resourcesText formatting experiences can be a trap Improve a keyboard users experience with indentation.By Nik JeleniauskasReimagining prototyping with AI Bringing creativity, speed, and efficiency to design validation.By VamsiBatchuTest smart Which automation strategy to choose for peace of mind?By JuliaKocbekSupport the newsletterIf you find our content helpful, heres how you can supportus:Check out this weeks sponsor to support their worktooForward this email to a friend and invite them to subscribeSponsor aneditionIC or Manager, laid off twice, prototyping with AI was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Designers use an unconstrained canvas tool to design for rule-based interactive systems, hoping the devs will perfect everything in production. This causes misalignment between designers anddevs.There are two persistent issues that keep plaguing the product design and development worlds. The first one is very much on the surface, and thusno surprisegets both a lot of attention and a plethora of sometimes reasonable solutions. The second one is much deeper, more subtle, and easier tomiss.Lets start with the first onethe handoffproblem.There are, in fact, several reasons why the handoff process is a majorproblem:Friction, and with it the potential for mistakes in a handoff, causes the actual coded products to differ from the designers intentions, as captured in their design tool. The only experience that matters is that of real users with the real-coded product. Not getting the designs perfectly reflected in the final product makes the process ineffective and demoralizing.Handoff wastes a lot of time for designers and developers. It takes a lot of mental effort to encode and decode all the relevant info for building the screens correctly. A designer must over-communicate with specs, examples, comments, and documentation, while a developer must inspect the designs with paranoid, detective-level vigilance, sometimes squinting to avoid missing anything.Handing designs to developers to build from scratch creates a redundant, atrophied artifact. Once the code is live, it diverges from the source of truth, creating a never-ending race to ensure the design file and the reality match. When that pairing is inevitably broken, a chain of mistrust builds. Developers see outdated designs and feel justified in ignoring parts that seem out of touch with reality. As a result, designers become hyper-vigilant, hunting for mismatches between the design and the implementation. This occurs frequently when developers choose a library as the optimal solution for a component and do not properly match the specified styling.The need to hand designs over forces designers to waste time on things they usually dont like or value that much. Its not the peak of creativity to specify and document all the ways a text field should be able to render in the product. Especially knowing that this is not the actual thing being built, but only a disposable artifact. It forces front-end developers to focus on tasks of little joy or meaning as well. Recreating an already designed screen in code while chasing down designers to verify how things should reflow when the viewport gets smaller or larger is no funeither.Since those problems are quite clear, the motivation for solving them was, and still is,high.And so there were two general directions for solutions that the market allowed toevolve:One was a path of helper apps to the most popular canvas design tools. It started with tools for easier inspection (Avocode, Zeplin, Simpli, Abstract). Then, design tools added inspection features (like Dev Mode in Figma, Sketch, XD, and InVision). After that, specific tools appeared. These included Zeroheight and InVisions DSM for easier documentation. Many plugins also emerged in the Sketch and Figma marketplaces, like Anima, Locofy, and other Figma-to-HTML tools.The other path was entirely different in nature. It sought to eliminate the handoff altogether by creating a new breed of design tools that were able to ship end-to-end by themselves with little to no help from developers. The most prominent and robust nowadays would be Webflow and Framer, but there is a whole slew of them, starting with Dreamweaver some 25 yearsago.The biggest issue with all these no-code / low-code tools was, and still is, that the way theyre built not only eliminates the handoff, but also the need for developers themselves. This, naturally, created a pretty low ceiling for the complexity of the products these tools can allow designers to build end-to-end. Primarily for this reason, the monetary success followed website building tools, rather than native iOS / Android or web app building tools (at this stage Im only aware of Play for iOS and Draftbit). The chief reason for this, as I can make sense of it, is that in apps the logical complexity exceeds the ability of the no-code tools to deliver. In the last few years, some vertical tools like Framer, Webflow, Builder.io started building bridges as an import ability from canvas tools like Figma, using their ownplugins.And so, the space of solutions for the handoff problem has a trade-off in the middle of itsheart:You either have a generic canvas tool that allows you to design the most complex apps in the world, but the design is only an artifact and necessitates a handoff, or you have a specialized builder tool that frees you to design and develop by yourself, but it has a low ceiling of complexity for the product you want tocreate.As far as Im aware, there have only been two design/development tools that successfully incorporated a different, unifying strategy.Flash (created by Macromedia, succeeded by Adobe, killed by SteveJobs)Blend for Visual Studio using XAML and the WPF platform from Microsoft.Flash had ActionScript that allowed the same object to be freely designed by the designer and logically manipulated using ActionScript commands by the developer. This setup let all the relevant pros do their jobs. The designers focused on what was important, both experientially and visually. They didnt need to hand off anything to developers, since they could just target the existing assets created by the designers. No throwaway artifacts, no handoff, and no limit to the complexity. Flash didnt try to code for you. It allowed developers to pick up where designers maxed out their comfortzone.Blend for Visual Studio had a similar story, but with different files, structures, and logic. It was a twin-environment setup. The designers could design, and the Visual Studio developers could target the exact same assets. Again, no handoff, no throwaway artifacts, and no limits on complexity.As we all know, Flash died because of security and performance incompatibility with the iPhone. Blend and Visual Studio are now niche, unpopular tools. In all the surveys of tool usage in the last 7 years, I havent seen a single mention of them. Meanwhile, Figma has taken almost all the product design marketshare).This has to lead us to the conclusion that the tools with the best approach are still not immune to failing for all sorts of other reasons. Business is a fickle and unpredictable game,indeed.Now, as Ive stated at the beginning, there are two persistent issues that keep plaguing the product design and development worlds. Lets explore the more hidden, but an even more important issue:Naive canvas-based tools hide the vast spectrum of design properties from designers.The ramifications of this problem are large. But its not a malicious plot to keep designers blissfully ignorantits the bad side of a tradeoff that designers used to only look at its good side. Freedom. And boy, do designers love their freedom. I know Ido.It is important to realize how we got to where we are with the canvas tools that have become so ubiquitous in the industry.We started with a physical page. Paper, ink, and colors manipulated to perfection by graphic designers. The page was static, concrete, well-defined, and never changing. Then graphic programs arrived to help speed things upPhotoshop, Freehand, Corel Draw, Illustrator (and many more after those). All helped us design printed and mostly static web assets. Then, something important happened. Computers began to diverge in screen sizes. The internet and native apps had to adapt. They introduced responsive units and rules. It all escalated even more after the introduction of the iPhone and tablets. But the designers, graphic and early-interactive designers that is, were hooked on the page metaphor. Naturally, the revenue-powered design tools kept giving them exactly that. The ease of direct manipulation (first with a mouse and keyboard, then with finger gestures and a stylus) was too comfortable to give up for other benefits. This led to a mismatch where designers were encouraged by the tools to have freedom, while the demand now was for responsive, systematic, smart, parametric design rulesfor developers to implement.And this is where the great divide becomes clearbecause:The set of tools and abilities that maximize intuitive, freeform graphic manipulation is exactly the opposite of the set of tools that help define coherent, robust, flexible, and parametric systems.Think about the very basic nature of gravitation: in all the main canvas tools up until the introduction of Figmas auto-layout a few years ago, the freedom meant that there was no gravitational pull either upwards or downwards. Very much unlike both the web and the native iOS and Android environments.When you have no gravitation, the default mode of everything is to be absolutely positioned in gradual z-index order, one on top of the other. Nothing pushes anything else. Nothing interacts. Paddings and margins dont mean anything. Text doesnt make boxes get larger when more words are typed in. Since theres no viewport, no viewport-related measurements can be used; even percentages are almost never used. So almost nothing is relative.Slowly, UI-friendly tools started appearing. Sketch opened the door for both XD and Figma. It did this by using components, overrides, a generic mapping of frame = div, and more visual qualities that can be parameterized (colors, typography, effects, and layout grids in Figma). It was a breath of fresh air, but the challenges rose in tandem with thetools.The most technical designers felt the pressure to start experimenting with code by themselves. This gave them superpowers because it informed their otherwise naive stance about how the real world of UI programming works. A push towards getting more robust tools was felt, and the leading tools (Sketch, Figma, and XD) introduced Auto Layout, which was a slightly capped but friendly version of Flexbox. It was like having a mini-universe with DOM-like gravity inside a capsuled auto-layout-enabled frame, inside a universe of a do-whatever-you-like canvas.This was revolutionary. Designers began to consider how content affects container sizes. Layout reflow became more robust, and finally, padding mattered.Savvy designers started building almost everything they had in the UI using auto-layout.Now, let that sink in for asecondIn a universe with no gravitation, we are creating almost everything as a bunch of microuniverses with gravitation! Wouldnt it be so much easier if the base default reality was the one with the gravitation, sort of auto layout by default!? Oh wait, thats exactly how the web, iOS, and Android alreadywork.So the trajectory of progress seems clear if you look at the last 10 years. Tools are trying to get designers closer and closer to systematic and flexible design rule-making.ButWe are still before the biggest, most important leapforward.For the actual UI building (components and pages)product designers will have to give up their beloved free-form canvas.As far as I can see it, designing and building digital products will have to abide by the constraints of the platform in which they are coded and tested. As a designer, I must have the full spectrum of tools to use flex, grid, padding, margin, percentages on every single measurement, viewport units, and many more. I need to be able to easily change the viewport and see everything that needs to be affectedbe affected. Components should have a difference between states and properties because they are not the same. Their variants should be set in a rule-based fashion, not by specifying all my variants one by one. Instead of styles, Design Tokens should parametrize everything. Robust, multi-layered tokens with aliases and composite token types (like typography).The default of the tool has to help me make better decisions, not nicer or easier decisions. It has to keep me from veering too easily into a naive, chaotic, inconsistent mess of a system. A system that will be easy to create on a whim, but nightmarish to maintain. To get a sense of what we are actually doing when were designing for interactive digital experiencesread what Frank Chimero wrote in his essay The Webs Grain. This part is about how hard it is to master the design for screens because theyare:an edgeless surface of unknown proportions comprised of small, individual, and variable elements from multiple vantages assembled into a readable whole that documents amoment.This is the grain of digital products, web, and elsewhere. So the design tools we use should help us actually interact with this surface, not hide and abstract it away from us. Its time we mature as designers. The quality of processes, the relationships with the developers, our products, and the well-being of our customers are all well worth theeffort.The right tool will have to be built for a collaboration. A true collaboration, not a handoff. With developers, because complex products (which will be the vast majority) need them. Theres no avoiding that with dreams of magic AI fairy dust and no-code, no-dev narrow builders, empowering as they mayseem.I hope disruption is well on its way. Im working with my friends to build a tool I believe has these properties. Its called Jux. Still very early days and a long way to go, but I think were on to something trulyradical.Dive even deeper by readingthese:Nathan Curtiss great article about what should a spec for handoffincludeBrad Frosts article + demo for prototyping using Claude with real codedobjects.To have a good sense of the real interactivity of most common components go through this list by Iain Bean. Theres a page for components and a page for some great designsystems.Read Shamsis article laying out an argument against thehandoff.Read Joe Alterios deep piece about tools and craft and how AI will affect itall.Great read from Vitaly Friedman of Smashing Magazine regarding nohandoffOriginally posted on the Jux bloghereThe root causes for the dev-design mismatch was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Build a sustainable future in tech by taking small yet efficient steps toward strategic content management.My sense is that if you want to change the world, you start with yourself and work outward because you build your competence that way. JordanPetersonThis article serves as a practical guide to help you implement and maintain a sustainable environment in your team, focusing on the type of content you create, making workflows more organised and efficient.The sustainability challenge intechContent design as a tool for sustainabilityThree content design practices for sustainable communicationBusiness benefits of a sustainable environmentImplementing sustainable content design practices intechExternal communications: UX, Legal, Marketing, SupportInternal communications: Documentation, Meetings, Emails, OnboardingThe sustainability challenge intechAs part of the tech world, each of us plays a role in managing data usage and its impact on our future. While sustainability often evokes ideas of a green world, it also involves strategically organising workflows in tech companies. This approach not only conserves resources but also saves time and effort, enabling us to focus on meaningful tasks rather than repetitive workan unsustainable practice intech.The more sustainable practices we integrate into our routines, the less repetitive work we encounter. This isnt just a responsible approach its also an enjoyable one. In this article, we wont dwell on sustainability issues but instead will present content design practices with actionable steps anyone can take to foster sustainability within their organisation, boosting both efficiency and long-term impact.By putting in the effort to build a sustainable environment now, we can create lasting results for years to come, ensuring we leave a positive legacy. Ultimately, sustainability in tech supports both a greener planet and a more efficient, rewarding work experience.Content design as a tool for sustainabilityAs a content designer, I encounter opportunities for sustainability improvements daily from simple resources like glossaries to restructured sustainable design workflows and collaboration methods at the organisational level.Content, as a tool for answering a user need, is everywhere, and it can be crafted poorly or efficiently. What excites me is how straightforward it can be to create effective content though knowing where to begin can sometimes be challenging. This is why Ive created this guide: to provide clear starting points for fostering sustainability in your organisation through contentdesign.By following these principles, you can reduce unnecessary documentation, create concise yet informative content for external as well as internal use, and leverage templates and ready-to-use solutions. While some aspects of content are unique to specific companies or tools, this article outlines universal practices that require no specialised tools. You can start reshaping your sustainability impact via content as soon as you finishreading.Three content design practices for sustainable communicationAmong the best content design practices, three core, widely applicable principles can enhance sustainability in any tech workflow: writing in clear language (also known as plain language), structuring content effectively, and creating reusablecontent.Clear languageClear language ensures that even complex ideas are easy to understand. Many governments, such as Australias, promote these principles to improve accessibility.Key guidelines include:Use everydaywords.Avoid jargon or latin expressions, acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations.Use inclusive language.Learn the words your audienceuses.Choose simple words over complex expressions.Limit terms with specialised meanings.These principles align with readability standards, like those by Jakob Nielsen. Clear language improves comprehension for all readers, including those learning the language. Aim for a reading level equivalent to GCSE or A-levels (10 12th grade), ensuring clarity for a broad audience.Clear language applies to writing and speaking, so consider borrowing from your natural spoken style for clearer writtencontent.Structured contentOnce ideas are expressed in clear language, structuring content becomes essential. Proper structure allows readers to scan information and complete their tasks quicker and with less energy waste, saving time on reading, understanding, and recalling content. Well-structured information is also easier to remember and visuallyprocess.To make content accessible and easily digestible, follow these guidelines:Use meaningful titles that summarise the sections mainidea.Be succinct and remove unnecessary words andphrases.Ensure relevance: if a sentence or phrase doesnt contribute essential information, removeit.Keep it brief: focus on one main message at a time and avoid unnecessary punctuation.Use a logical hierarchy: in English, this typically means placing content from top to bottom, left to right (e.g., legal text should appear before, not after, abutton).Add clear calls toaction.Use bullet or numbered lists wherever possible.These steps make content accessible and assist people in achieving their goals, promoting better UX and supporting sustainability. When content is well-structured and clear, users are less likely to repeat tasks, reducing inefficiency. UX patterns that frustrate users or lead to misclicks increase energy use without addingvalue.Reusable contentOnce content is clear and well-structured, reusability becomes the next step. Reusable content involves creating standardised components that can be used across different contexts.Reusable content benefits all user-facing communications, from product descriptions to onboarding flows and support chat. For instance, product descriptions might be presented in the form of a short text, titles and subtitles, or detailed instructions all used at different stages of the user journey. Consistent access to reusable content helps every team stayaligned.Different companies manage reusable content in variousways:Content Management Systems (CMS) help international teams manage translations and maintain consistency across languages.DITA XML is widely used in technical documentation to create and manage reusablecontent.Integrated content design system or content standards work best when embedded within the product designsystem.Product glossaries (spreadsheets like Excel files uploaded to a CMS) help maintain consistent terminology.Having a single, reliable source of truth for content prevents teams from creating duplicate material and supports a sustainable workflow a key content design approach that benefits tech companies overall.Business benefits of a sustainable environmentSustainability initiatives, when done well, directly impact costs. Without it, companies often waste resources. Clear language and structured content help teams spend less time reading and comprehending, while reusable content allows teams to access existing resources, reducing repetitive work.Lets estimate the savings from implementing sustainable practices. Imagine only 25% of a companys 1,000 employees benefit from implementing these three content design principles, saving each of these 250 employees two hours per week. Assuming an average hourly rate of $45: 250 employees x 2 hours per week x 50 weeks x $45/hour = $1,125,000 savings per yeartotal.This rough calculation shows the substantial savings sustainable content design practices can offer a company of 1000 employees.Implementing sustainable content design practices intechThese core content design practices clear language, structured content, and reusability are initially intended to streamline workflows within content teams in a tech company. They enhance collaboration, alignment, and productivity, helping content designers develop consistent guidelines and tone of voice, especially valuable for emerging teams. However, content isnt solely the responsibility of content designers it extends throughout UX and beyond, impacting all areas of an organisation.How to use thisguide1. Identify the type of communication you manage or contribute to within yourcompany.2. Review the three content design principles applied to that type of communication, and explore how you can foster a sustainable approach.3. Start with a practical example to make your initial steps towards sustainability.4. Share your approach with other teams to strengthen your companys overall sustainability efforts. Using a RACI chart can support this initiative by defining roles and responsibilities within content projects.External communicationsExternal communications extend to various teams within the organisation. Product and marketing teams should meet periodically to share updates and proposals regarding external communications. The engineering team needs to be aware that the content they develop is part of a collaborative effort, while support teams, who engage directly with customers, must align their communication style with the UX principles. The legal team plays a key role in ensuring that all legal content is clear and serves its purpose throughout the user experience. If a brands different communication platforms convey messages in varying ways, it may confuse people when they interact with each ofthem.While there is much to discuss regarding the impact of content design principles on all aspects of a product, it is important to remember that implementing these three principles to boost product sustainability is a manageable process. Once established, these practices will become self-sustaining.User experienceThe direct outcome of content design principles is evident in the user experience of digital services and products. While the quality of code and documentation is essential, sustainable digital products also depend on efficient infrastructure, optimised content delivery, and clear governance practices. Design decisions influence the overall system sustainability by shaping how resources are used and maintained over time. Oftentimes, the elements that make a product or service more sustainable are those that also make it good forusers.Clear language: When utilising clear language, we should aim for terminology that is easily recognisable, constructing short sentences where each conveys a single idea. Unnecessary elements should be eliminated, and if elaboration enhances understanding, we should not hesitate to expand on specific points. All texts must be concise, informative, and distinct from one another. Button names must clearly indicate the actions they perform, enhancing usability. When we use clear language, we minimise the need to rephrase ideas, which leads to clear and concise texts that reduce code complexity.For international companies, a product glossary integrated into a content management system ensures that translations are automatically updated alongside content resources.Structured content: It is vital to create a logical hierarchy of information that guides the reader on what to consume first and what follows. Logical ordering through titles (h1, h2, h3) and subtitles makes code creation and navigation straightforward. During the content structuring process, it often becomes apparent what information should be retained and what can be discarded as excess. This clarity not only improves the overall code quality impacting sustainability in tech companies but also enhances product accessibility.Reusable content: While a design system has to offer flexibility we can identify various elements that can be reused in UX, such as titles, subtitles, labels, error messages, buttons. There is no need to recreate these components repeatedly. Reusable content ensures that your content remains agile and future-proof. Reusable terminology should begin with how we spell the companys name. We should also standardise introductory texts that represent our product and its features, ensuring there are both short and long versions. Legal texts, including agreements such as those that appear when users click buttons should be streamlined. Understanding the meaning behind legal texts can reveal that some may be eliminated entirely only when approved by a legal team simplifying the user experience.Reusing content also contributes to sustainable coding. Each line of text that is reused is easily updated without requiring code rewrites. DITA is an excellent solution for this, and content management systems serve as practical and effective tools.Begin by assessing the content creation tools currently used in your company and align your work with your content design teams guidelines. Utilise the terms in your product glossary, and if such a document does not exist, establishing it should be a priority. This process may be extensive, but the time invested is invaluable. Start with onboarding materials, titles and subtitles, and concise legal texts, alongside clear button labels. Ensure that the maximum character length is defined for labels in space-restricted modules. Ensure every word serves a purpose and aids people in navigating the content flow. When choosing a non-text content format, opt for the lowest-emission option that provides the mostvalue.Collaboration with development teams is most important. Observing their meetings can provide insights into their coding practices and tools, enabling discussions on effective collaboration and the steps necessary to integrate sustainability practices into their workflows.LegalLegal texts are essential for everyones understanding, both within the context of user experience and beyond. However, legal terminology can often be confusing, highlighting the need for improvement.Clear language: Legal terminology can be transformed into easily comprehensible texts using clear language principles. It is well-established that even professionals in highly specialised fields prefer simple language over complexjargon.Structured content: Legal documents often contain lengthy texts that cover numerous specific topics, making navigation challenging. Typically, individuals do not need to access all sections simultaneously instead, they need to quickly find relevant information. Here, clear titles and a logical sequence can significantly enhance usability.Reusable content: This practice is a common challenge for many legal teams. Documents may be reused for extended periods after being created and approved, resulting in new team members hesitating to make changes for fear of legal repercussions. Content reusability should not involve outdated or inaccurate material rather, it is about maintaining the best pieces of content in terms of user experience and ensuring they are readily available as authoritative sources. Regular audit will ensure that the most current information is consistently reflected wherever the content isused.Start by creating a list of rules for updating legal texts, including approval processes, guidelines on the length of information, style of titles, and so on. Additionally, compile a document with links to all legal texts, including the date of the last update and the name of the person who signed itoff.Content designers or UX writers can be invaluable in updating and restructuring legal texts. The UX research and support teams, who understand the audience best, can assist in finding the appropriate voice and testing whether the updated version is sufficiently clear or requires further iteration.In terms of sustainability, these practices can reduce excessive legal documentation, creating an environment where finding relevant, accessible, and up-to-date information benefits not only users but also the legal teamitself.MarketingCopywriters, PR professionals, and CRM specialists often engage with audiences even before their first interaction with a product. The impact of these teams on sustainable communication practices is significant.Clear language: While clear language is essential for global marketing communications, exceptions may arise for local campaigns. For example, marketing teams operating in specific regions may use humour, or puns in slogans and calls to action. However, such language should be limited to local campaigns and must be tested and approved by local experts. In contrast, clear language is critical for onboarding materials that highlight the products positive impact on users lives and for website content that conveys the companys values.Structured content: When detailing product benefits, focus on clarity and conciseness avoid unnecessary repetition. For long-form content, adhering to general structuring practices is beneficial. In emails and SMS communications, ensure that title or subtitle conveys a clear action for thereader.Reusable content: This represents a significant opportunity for creating a sustainable environment within marketing teams. Proper categorisation and filtering of reusable content are vital. Important tags may include the applicable location, links to translations, approval names, campaign names, and target audiences.Begin with a source document containing all the baseline taglines and brief texts about the company, its products, values, and benefits. Align these messages with your audience and establish a single source of truth that specifies where, when, and how to use this content shaping how you want your audience to perceive and remember your brand. Make your SEO decisions as strategic as the contentitself.Distribute this document widely along with concise guidelines on when and how messages can be used independently and when your involvement is required. The UX team should have access to this document to incorporate the content into draft layouts of landing pages, for example. During the initial creation or updating phase, engage with all stakeholders involved in tone of voice decisions, including content designers or UX writers, business developers, and legal advisors.SupportCustomers seek empathy when reaching out to support, so clear and straightforward communication demonstrates care simply when it saves their time. Conveying a unified message also allows the support team to showcase the humanity behind theproduct.Clear language: These additions to clear language fundamentals help support teams work efficiently and thoughtfully, laying the groundwork for creating effective FAQ sections as the nextstep.Be transparent about decision-making processes.Avoid saying sorry unless the error lies with theproduct.Do not claim to understand customers feelings instead, focus on providing relevant information.Structured content: Support teams frequently provide information that can be structured for better scannability. By organising content effectively, both customers and support staff save time, fostering a sustainable workflow within the techcompany.Reusable content: Developing templates for support chat messages and structured responses can significantly reduce the workload while ensuring a consistent tone of voice. Resources invested in creating and maintaining an up-to-date FAQ section or Help Centre are worthwhile, as they provide comprehensive guides not only for users but also for internal teams. These resources can facilitate onboarding for new employees and serve as a reliable reference for all teammembers.Begin by identifying existing templates and creating a repository for them. This will allow for easier updates, target audience identification, and ensure the team has a template to quickly address typical customer inquiries. This document should evolve into an accessible FAQ for users, followed by the iterative development of support chat templates. Collecting pain points and resolving them through clear, structured content is a significant investment that the support team can make for thecompany.Engage with other departments to avoid confusion in providing inaccurate information. Content designers or UX writers first to determine the best methods for collecting and transforming support data and user feedback into a useful FAQ section. Engineering and analytics teams possess valuable insights into how customers use the product and where they encounter difficulties. UX/UI designers can enhance the visual appeal and navigation of the FAQ section. This project requires careful planning utilise a RACI chart to outline initial collaborators while remaining open to new partnerships as the project unfolds. Such initiatives will foster valuable relationships and collaboration opportunities.Internal communicationsContent design principles extend beyond external communication they can significantly enhance internal workflows. While content designers may not be directly involved in improving processes, these practices can be used independently by everyone, fostering a sustainable environment within thecompany.Photo sourceDocumentationIn todays tech environment, documentation is essential for capturing new features, projects, and approaches. With remote teams and varied work schedules, the need for accessible, written information is greater thanever.Clear language: Regardless of your role, create content that is accessible to all employees. Empathy is key people prefer not to struggle with complex language when reading documentation. As mentioned earlier, even experts want clear, concise information. Consider including a list of terms in each document to ensure everyone uses consistent language.Structured content: Use descriptive titles that clearly reflect the documents main ideas, and organise content logically. If a document covers different topics, consider splitting it into separate files. Clear cross-references and link names are essential for effective navigation, especially when different teams use varied tools. Streamline this process by implementing templates for common documentation types (such as project, feature, update, task, marketing, design, support, legal, content, research feedback). Utilise tags to enhance searchability and maintain a shared template space, accompanied by usage instructions to ensure consistency and sustainability.Reusable content: Documents templates enable their content reusability. Develop example project documents that colleagues can copy and adapt as needed, maintaining the initial structure and navigation to support sustainable documentation practices.Start by selecting an appropriate documentation tool. If thats not feasible, create a simple document with links to all relevant workspaces to facilitate cross-referencing. Prepare a table covering key aspects of projects and share it with colleagues during meetings.While someone should oversee this documentation project, engaging collaboratively will enhance the effectiveness and relevance of the documentation.MeetingsMeetings can be time-consuming. To maximise their effectiveness and ensure that all participants understand their purpose, basic content design principles can be invaluable.Clear language: It is easy to overwhelm attendees with complex terminology. Prior to the meeting, refer to a word list related to the topic and provide explanations for any unavoidable jargon. Offer synonyms or brief descriptions to aid understanding. Facilitate discussions efficiently by actively listening, paraphrasing participants contributions, and reiterating key points using clear language.Structured content: A clear agenda, including a brief overview of the project and an introduction to all participants. Include a checklist of objectives to be covered, specifying priorities and the individuals responsible for each topic. This approach clarifies the discussions focus and the rationale behind each invitees presence.Reusable content: Meeting structures can and should be standardised. Create or adapt a template that includes comprehensive details and specifications, allowing for easy modification. Its more efficient to remove unnecessary elements from a template than to add them later. This iterative process will help develop an optimal meeting format. Also, consider drafting an instruction guide for facilitators on starting meetings, summarising discussions, and achieving consensus, as meetings arent always about immediate decisions.Start by assessing the current structure of your meetings and gather informal feedback from colleagues about potential improvements. Compile valid suggestions into a single template and note any additional ideas that arise during discussions for future consideration. Establish fundamental meeting rules, such as starting with the project background, outlining current targets, introducing participants, and posting the agenda in advance clarifying what in advance means aswell.Once youve refined these ideas with your immediate team and key collaborators, present the principles to your department, demonstrating their effectiveness by following your own guidelines.EmailsEmails are a concise form of communication where all three content design principles apply effectively.Clear language: Ensure your email is easy to understand. If using complex terms, provide a glossary at the end to clarify. Write as you would speak if unsure, read it aloud to check itsclarity.Structured content: Make your email scannable by avoiding unnecessary introductions. Be polite yet concise, expressing gratitude without lengthy pleasantries. Use titles for different topics or provide detailed project information. Include links to related projects to facilitate easy navigation.Reusable content: Titles can be reused as part of your email structure. For example, Meghan Caseys Content Strategy Toolkit suggests elements for an email agenda, suchas:Introduction: Who youare.Overview of the project: What problem youresolving.Why you need them: Specific tasks for each recipient.The team: A brief overview of teammembers.Expectations: What you request from the recipient.A big thank you: Acknowledge their commitment to reading youremail.Start by experimenting with this structure, adapting it to your needs, and documenting it for team reference.Collaborate across the company to make this documentation easily accessible and promote the efficient email structure forall.OnboardingThe principles discussed in this article can serve as effective onboarding material. With clear documentation and a single source of truth for information, newcomers can self-onboard, reducing the time experienced colleagues spend answering their questions. This allows new hires to focus on role-specific information rather than generalqueries.Clear language: Avoid complex terminology without clarification. Provide a glossary to ensure newcomers easily grasp company values and rules. This initial interaction shapes their understanding of internal processes, making clarity essential.Structured content: Present information chronologically, helping newcomers absorb insights without needing to go back. Clearly indicate new information, its relevance to daily tasks, and provide examples. Videos can enhance onboarding, but ensure accompanying text summaries and subtitles for accessibility.Reusable content: While onboarding materials should cater to individual roles, core information should be reused across departments. This saves time and ensures consistency in presenting company values and rules. Structure this information to be general, with department-specific adaptations.Begin by gathering company values and rules in a straightforward format. Decide on the presentation style and tone of voice, which may differ from external communications. Typically, the internal tone is friendlier, allowing for a more casual approach.Collaborate with different departments, especially with an internal communications specialist. Ensure the recruiting team is aware of the onboarding materials provided during the first days and weeks of employment.The journey towards tech sustainability through content design principles reveals a fundamental truth: its not just about what we create, but how we create, manage and maintain it for long-term impact.When teams across the organisation write clearly, organise thoughtfully and reuse content systematically, they reduce waste and work more efficiently. These principles benefit both the environment and business by saving time, reducing costs and making information more accessible. Every tech professional who writes emails, creates presentations or develops documentation can apply thesebasics.The way forward is simple: create less, reuse more, and make every piece of content work harder for longer. This approach extends beyond content designers it empowers everyone in tech to create more sustainable content.Content design practices for sustainable communication in tech was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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How generative AI tools are bringing creativity, speed, and efficiency to design validationCredit: Blush IllustrationsIs anyone else feeling the same way as I do? Struggling to keep up with the thousands of AI products and capabilities being launched every day? When I first discovered Claude Artifacts a couple of months ago, it felt like magic. Suddenly, I had the power to see interactions, animations, and complex user flows unfold right before my eyesinstantly. Were truly at a point where AI is turning our design dreams into areality.Remember when designing a product meant meticulously crafting static layouts in Photoshop, hoping they would translate well into the real world? Weve come a long way from those days of pixel-perfect PSDs. Our journey has taken us through the revolution of collaborative design tools like Figma, which transformed how we create and iterate. But now, in 2024, were witnessing another evolution in our design toolkitone where AI serves as a powerful ally in testing and validating our design decisions through rapid, interactive prototyping. Incorporating realistic interactions through prototyping is essential for obtaining valid user feedback. As highlighted by AWA Digital, Prototypes that demonstrate realistic user flows and interactions help users evaluate designs in a meaningful way.The prototype challengeTodays digital experiences are no longer confined to clicks and taps. Were designing for a world where users interact through images, voice, gesture, text, and multiple modalities. This shift has added a level of complexity that traditional prototyping tools struggle to handle effectively. While tools like Figma excel at crafting pixel-perfect interfaces, they fall short when it comes to capturing dynamic interactionsanimations, conditional behaviors, or real-time data feedback. Testing complex interactions and behaviors often becomes a bottleneck, requiring costly and time-consuming handoffs to development just to see if an idea willwork.Twitter exchange about prototypes between Brian andSuhailThe conversation between Brian Chesky and Suhail underscores the reality that many companies skip prototyping, leading to poor outcomes. Prototyping helps validate a design in its full context, reducing the risks of building something that ultimately misses themark.Real challenges designers face:The data-driven dilemma:Crafting a beautiful real-time analytics dashboard in Figma is one thing; validating smooth tooltip animations or natural chart transitions is another. Static prototypes cant capture these nuanced interactions, and waiting for development cycles can takeweeks.The cross-device dance:Users start tasks on their phones and continue them on desktops. Static mockups cant show fluid state transitions or seamless data sync across devices, leaving designers guessing if interactions will feel intuitive in realuse.The stakeholder communication gap:Imagine presenting a new filtering system only to hear weeks later: This isnt what I imagined. Without demonstrating complex interactions early, features risk missing the mark on expectations.Prototypes serve as a common language for communicationThe innovation barrier:Innovative ideas often fall flat because prototyping them is too resource-intensive. We default to conventional patterns not because theyre better, but because theyre easier to validate.Generative AI tools like Claude and Vercel v0 are changing the game. They arent replacing our design process but enhancing it. With Claude, we can quickly generate interaction scenarios from natural language, while Vercel v0 turns these ideas into polished, production-ready components. This revolution in prototyping allows us to rapidly validate and communicate our design decisions through live, interactive previews.Prototyping in action: A real-world exampleLets explore how AI can enhance our prototyping phase with a real example. Imagine youve already designed a stock market dashboard in Figma, carefully considering the visual hierarchy, component structure, and interaction patterns. Now you want to validate how certain interactions would feel in practiceparticularly those complex, data-driven behaviors that are hard to simulate in traditional prototyping tools.Heres how we can use AI to rapidly prototype and test these interactions. Heres the prompt I used to bring this vision tolife:Create an interactive stock market dashboard using React and Recharts that displays historical data for AAPL, GOOGL, and MSFT in a responsive area chart. Include hoverable data points with custom tooltips showing price and volume data, clickable stock cards with performance metrics, and smooth animations. Style it using Tailwind CSS components with a modern blue/green/purple color scheme for visual distinction between stocks. Data points should be enhanced with visual indicators for up/down trends and the chart should support interactive touch/mouse events.The magic of instant interactionWithin seconds of sending this prompt to Claude, we got a fully functional React component with interactive charts, complete with hover states, animations, and responsive design. Notice how the component isnt just a static visualizationits a living, breathing interface that responds to user interaction. The tooltips smoothly appear on hover, the charts animate between data points, and the entire layout adjusts fluidly to different screensizes.Claude Artifacts inActionv0 byVercelSimilarly, Vercel v0 transformed the same prompt into a polished UI component, offering a different yet equally impressive interpretation. The subtle differences between these implementations showcase an interesting aspect of AI-powered designhow the same prompt can yield different creative solutions, much like how different designers might approach the samebrief.Why this enhances our designprocessLets break down how this prototyping superpower enhances (not replaces) our existing design workflow:Rapid interaction validation: Validate interaction patterns instantly without waiting for full development cycles. Working prototypes mean faster iteration ondesigns.Enhanced stakeholder and developer communication: Use interactive prototypes to help stakeholders understand design behaviors, and give developers a clear vision of intended interactions for early technical validation.Experimentation platform: Think of AI prototyping as a sandbox to explore interaction ideas before committing them to your design systemempowering you to experiment beyond conventional patterns.Bringing it alltogetherAI prototyping transforms how we validate complex design interactions in our everyday workflow. Start by sketching ideas, creating wireframes, and building interfaces in Figmayour usual design process. When you face those challenging interaction points that are difficult to simulate statically, thats when AI prototyping becomes invaluable.Instead of getting stuck in endless prototype-feedback loops, describe the interaction you want to test in a prompt, generate a functional prototype in seconds, and gather feedback immediately. This capability empowers you to validate innovative ideas, demonstrate complex data visualizations, and communicate intricate interactions directly to stakeholders and developerslong before the development sprintbegins.Think of AI prototyping as your design sandbox, allowing you to explore and validate ideas quickly, helping you push boundaries without the constraints of traditional, static design processes.The pathforwardThis isnt about overhauling your entire design process overnightits about being strategic in using AI where it makes the biggest impact. Think of AI as a powerful new addition to your design toolkit, bridging the gap between your imagination and a functional experience.As these tools continue to advance, theyll unlock new opportunities for experimentation and validation, allowing us to move faster and innovate beyond current boundaries. But lets not forget, at its heart, great design is still about understanding people, crafting meaningful solutions, and iterating based on real feedback. AI prototyping simply gives us the means to do this more effectively, with fewer barriers between concept andreality.This is where Id love to hear from you. Have you experimented with AI in your workflow yet? If so, what results have surprised you the most? Are there interactions or ideas youve shelved because prototyping them felt too cumbersome? How might using AI tools change the way you think about validating your designs? Im especially interested in which parts of your process have seen the biggest benefits and where you think theres still untapped potential.If youve been enjoying what youre reading, consider subscribing to the newsletter to stay updated. And if you know someone whos on this journey of designing for the future, feel free to share this with them. Lets keep pushing the boundaries of whats possible, together.Bonus bytes:How Claudes team build ArtifactsWriting the right prompts for Vercelv0How to build your designs with Claude and CursorAIWild examples of Vercelv0Reimagining prototyping with AI was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Can AI support brand consistency in design? My experience with Midjourney in capturing Lemonades iconicstyle.Illustration has never been my strong suit. Designing user interfaces, experiences, and products? No problem. But creating illustrations that perfectly reflect a brands unique style? Thats another challenge.After three years as a designer at Lemonade, working on web and mobile products, I gained a deep understanding of the brands distinct visual language: clean lines, a minimalist color palette, and that unmistakable pop of vivid pink. This got me wonderingcould Midjourney and todays AI capabilities actually fill in my gap in illustration skills? Could I finally bring my vision and design ideas to life on my own, without needing a professional illustrator? With that question in mind, I decided to dive in and test it out formyself.As I began experimenting with AI-driven illustration, I couldnt ignore the ethical questions this choice might raise. Could AI tools like Midjourney impact job security for professional illustrators? For me, the decision to use AI wasnt about avoiding the costs of hiring talent but about exploring how AI could complement my creative process, especially in the initial stages of visual experimentation. My goal was to see if AI could help streamline parts of the workflowlike quickly visualizing ideas or iterating on brand consistencywhile still appreciating the unique skills and depth that only a professional illustrator canbring.The challenge of achieving brand consistencyAchieving true brand consistency with AI involves more than just typing in a promptits about capturing the subtle details that reflect the brands core identity. Lemonades illustration style may seem straightforward at first glance, but designers know that simplicity demands precision. Its a style built on clarity: minimalist lines, grayscale tones, and that unmistakable pink accent. Together, these elements create a look thats instantly recognizable.Lemonade HomepageDirecting Midjourney to think in brandlanguageAnalyze existing brand illustrations: I used ChatGPT to create a foundational prompt by examining a variety of official illustrations, paying close attention to line quality, spacing, proportions, and color use. To keep the prompt simple, I decided to leave out pink initially, knowing it could be added later without confusing theAI.The first prompt I startedwith2. Select a reliable, iconic object for prompt testing: I selected an iconic objecta Mini Cooper. Its unique structure allowed me to see how well Midjourney could capture clean lines and simple, recognizable shapes. Using this as a reference helped me evaluate each prompt adjustment without introducing too many variables. I recommend choosing an object youre thoroughly familiar with, so you can easily spot any deviations from its trueform.Prompt inaction3. Refine through iteration: While Midjourney successfully captured the style for the Mini Cooper, other objects like buildings or animals lacked consistency. To address this, I refined the prompt with a focus on specifics like compositionhow each illustration should interact within its space, considering curves, relationships between objects, balance, and angles. These refinements helped align the illustrations with the brands unique perspective, making each object feel cohesive and purposefully positioned.To further enhance consistency, I incorporated thesref command with a range of official illustrations as style references. These included examples of broad structural shapes, rounded forms, depth, architectural elements, and line breaks. This combination enabled the AI to achieve a more unified brand look across diverse object types andforms.Final resultThis design captures the clean lines, minimalist style, and balanced composition.Achieving brand precision, soloAfter several iterations, I developed a powerful, versatile prompt that captured the style precisely, essentially illustrating how each object would appear in the brands visual language. This prompt became a foundational template: I only needed to replace the object description, and Midjourney consistently generated cohesive, brand-aligned illustrations. I was pleasantly surprised by the level of precision and creativity the AI brought to each illustration.The future of AI-driven brand illustrationThis experiment has opened my eyes to the potential of AI in scaling a brands visual identity across platforms. Imagine a company launching a new line of productswith the right AI setup, the brands unique style could be instantly applied to each new product, streamlining the visual identity process and enabling designers to adapt quickly while maintaining consistency. For designers seeking effective illustration solutions, experimenting with AI-driven tools can be a game-changer.This process allowed me to experiment, test ideas, and visualize concepts while staying fully aligned with the brands guidelines. It isnt just about output; it can help companies refine and sharpen their design language by requiring designers to create a precise textual description that captures the brands essence. This exercise enhances the brands clarity and strengthens its core identity, giving designers a solid foundation to approach future illustrations with a sharper, more structured mindset.While Midjourneys results may still require final touchessuch as vector conversion, line refinement, and detail enhancementit represents a significant step toward independence for designers who struggle with illustration, all while maintaining brand consistency.Learning to break down style requirements and refine prompts can elevate design skills and expand possibilities in brand illustration, making rapid prototyping and brand alignment both efficient and achievable.Quick tips to getstartedAnalyze the brand style:Dive deep into the brands visual language, identifying every detailline quality, colors, proportions, and composition. This understanding will guide you in creating a prompt that captures the brandsessence.Select a familiar, consistent object:Start testing your prompt with a single, iconic object that you know well. This will help you assess consistency and refine details without introducing too many variables.Refine the prompt thoughtfully:Focus on specifics like line weight, shadow behavior, spacing, and object relationships. Adjust each element to bring your prompt closer to the brands unique look andfeel.Build a prompt library:Save your most effective prompts to create a prompt bank you can easily reference for future illustrations, maintaining consistency across projects.Make final adjustments as needed:AI-generated results often need minor tweaksvector conversion, line refinement, or detail enhancementsto achieve production-ready quality. These adjustments ensure polished, brand-aligned visuals.Disclaimer:This post is based on my personal experiences and does not reflect Lemonades official branding.How I used AI to design brand-aligned illustrations was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Weekly curated resources for designersthinkers andmakers.Three years ago, during the hard Covid lockdown in The Netherlands, the news arrived at our company; we were going to be acquired by a competitor. At that point, my reference to company acquisitions was Meta buying Instagram or movies depicting evil corporations pushing local shops into bankruptcy.I had no idea how common mergers and acquisitions are all around the world, across many industries. Naturally, questions piled up in my mind: Will I still have a job? Will my colleagues still be around? Will I be replaced by their own designers? Will we lose all the hard work weve put to get the product where itwas?How did a company acquisition feel like for a product designer By TeisanuTudorEditor picksDesigning for how might things go wrong? Anticipating and designing for failure.By ElvisHsiaoHow to build a legendary park Applying UX to transform green spaces.By Rita Kind-EnvyGentrified by design Reflections on the role of algorithms in creative work.By Kristina Gushcheva-KeippilThe UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about theirwork.98.css: a library for building UI that looks like Windows 98Make methinkCare doesnt scale Were pretty limited when it comes to care. In any given moment, you can only really care deeply and individually for one person. There was some pain in that realization.The best prompts start as conversations But my breakthroughs with the new technology started when I realized I was thinking about it all wrong. I needed to stop treating AI like a search engine and start treating it like a jam session.How did you pick that typeface? I think the most important and difficult thing about being a designer is making decisions. () There are around 500,000 fonts available; designers have to choose 2 or 3 for any given project.Little gems thisweekWhy over 100 million athletes are hooked on Strava By MaryBorysovaUser experience without intentional limitations creates chaos By SimoHeroldLaid off twice in a year as a product manager By JeanHuangTools and resourcesTreating AI Agents as personas The Agent Computer Interaction era.By PazPerezCan you design it more like Apple? Stakeholders favorite question and how to respond.By AndreaGrigsbyDesigning errors for workflow automation platforms Pushing for more accessible error resolution.By Rucha AbhyankarSupport the newsletterIf you find our content helpful, heres how you can supportus:Check out last weeks sponsor to support their worktooForward this email to a friend and invite them to subscribeSponsor aneditionCompany acquisition, AI agents as personas, how might things go wrong was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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