From Duolingo, Typeform, Notion, Monzo & moreContinue reading on UX Collective

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.

A $2.1 billion market is emerging, unlocking new design roles and its already underway.Continue reading on UX Collective

How to handle being laid off as a designer.Continue reading on UX Collective

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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There are several ways products can improve a keyboard users experience with indentation. Lets talk aboutthem.One of the more foundational experiences in a digital product is the ability to format text: creating paragraphs, adding lists, or providing emphasis for certain words or phrases. All of this adds texture to the readers experience and helps them better understand content. And for the author, there are several established ways in which they can navigate, select, and format thistext.But what happens to the author experience when an important part of text formatting includes indentation?This is an important situation for designers to understand because for keyboard users, indentation is always controlled by the Tab key. But this key has a far more important function for accessibility: its the primary way these users navigate digital products. And as a result, when indentation is enabled in a text formatting experience it raises an important question:has the users ability to navigate the product beenbroken?This is so important in fact that not being trapped while using a keyboard is a fundamental requirement by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). But this also raises a few practical questions. If no keyboard traps are required, thenHow are these traps typically handled for these experiences? And how do users discover existing exitmethods?And this is where things get a little complicated.Existing methods and opaque standardsAs the industry has matured over the last couple of decades, many products have chosen to solve this challenge differently. And one important result from this is that theres no industry-wide consensus about what the right solution shouldbe.One existing method is to use the F6 key as an alternate form of navigation. But unfortunately, its inconsistently used across applications and operating systems. For example, some browsers use this key to navigate between major landmarks (Firefox, Chrome, Edge) while others (Safari, Arc) do not. At the same time the F6 key may also execute other functions, such as cycling through non-landmark elements or repeating the last user action. And an important side-effect of this inconsistency is that discovering exit methods by a user is impaired. But theres something else that makes matters a little more challenging.When looking at Success Criterion (2.1.2) more closely, theres no clear definition for what a standard exit method is. And as a result of this, its also not clear when or how a user must be advised of an non-standard method.I do think the guideline hints at its overall intent, that exit methods should be both available and easily discoverable. But to better illustrate how this affects users, lets look at a common situation with GoogleDocs.Trapped in a Google DocWhen a user opens a Google Doc, focus is immediately (and smartly) moved to the main text area for editing. If the user then wishes to move to another part of the applicationsay the toolbarthey can either use the F6 key or custom shortcuts to exit this text area. Except, theres a small problem with both of thesemethods.Because the F6 keys functionality is not consistent it cannot be used to meet the Success Criterion, leaving the user to rely on custom shortcuts. Unfortunately, these shortcuts are also not directly communicated to users and the only way to escape this text area with a keyboard is random trial anderror.From the users perspective this outcome is obviously frustrating. However, because of the language of the Success Criterion it could be argued that Google is adhering to the guideline as the application does technically advise the userjust not directly.With this in mind then, what could we do to fix thisproblem?Situations with different needsWhen it comes to text formatting experiences that include indentation, there are two situations that users will encounter.The most common situation is when indentation is only allowed for specific formatting options. And thankfully this situation is much more forgiving as the user always has at least one option to step away from this trap and return to navigation.An example of this is Slacks primary message component. When a user adds list formatting to their text and either (1) the caret is also at the start of a list item or (2) any part of the list items text is selected, the Tab key is rewritten to control indentation. And its easy enough to escape these situations to re-enable normal navigation behaviors.In contrast, the more challenging situation is when indentation is always enabled as there is no position within the text that will re-enable the default function of the Tab key. And its this situation that needs help themost.Creating a better, more consistent solutionIndent-enabled text formatting experiences affect how users both interact with and navigate products. And Id like to suggest a few adjustments that would both clarify how this problem can be solved, and provide a more consistent user experience.The F6 key and WCAGThe first change would be to enshrine F6 as a landmark navigation key in WCAG and require it to be used for this function, and this function alone. And this not only would provide a guaranteed exit method for keyboard users, but it would also improve landmark navigation in products as well (a great side-benefit).Improving the Success CriterionAnother improvement would be to clearly define in Success Criterion (2.1.2) what exactly constitutes a standard exit method, what advising the user means, and if better discoverability is the underlying intent of the guideline.Consistent local interaction behaviorsFinally, adjusting the interaction model of these experiences would be the most practical and consistent way of helping users. And only small changes are actually neededhere.The most meaningful change would be to extend the functionality of the Escape key so that it can toggle between an active or inactive editor state. This would provide a consistent way to exit this component. And a few additional behaviorslike progressively clearing conditional functionalities or remembering the carets last positionwould also improve the overall user experience.Theres also a larger benefit to this solution as well. Because it provides a consistent model at the component level, it could also be used across any product that includes this kind of formatting experience. And this would greatly improve its chances to be discoveredwhether thats Google Docs or Obsidian, coding tools like VSCode, or many other text editing tools thatexist.And whether its a person using a keyboard due to a mobility impairment or someone who just wants a more consistent way to navigate their environment, these changes would positively impact their experience with these indentation-enabled text formatting situations (thats really a mouthful).Note: Ive filed an issue in w3c/silver about clarifying no keyboard traps. If you feel there are additional improvements that could be made, join the discussion.Why text formatting experiences can be a trap 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 Jean-Claude Van Damme performing the splits between two eighteen wheelers careening down the highway, all while eating poptarts. Credit:Me.How to choose the right career path foryou.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 gapforever.Im still asking myself thequestionWe all start our careers as ICs. But its around the time of Senior Designer that were confronted with the diverging path of IC and Manager. This is a challenging question, as both paths require totally different skillsets. Ive often seen people move into management ill-equipped to teach, mentor, and lead their teams well. They were just good at design and wanted to move forward in theircareers.I dont want this to happen toyou.Over the last three years, I have been managing a steadily growing team. I now have 5 designers and 3 engineers reporting to me. Ive been learning a lot about what being a manager is (and what it isnt). Ive steadily been answering the questions that Ive had about the transition from individual contributor to manager. And Ive learned a lot about what it means to lead and influence others.Maybe youre in a similar position I was, questioning what the next step in your career holds. Here are a few things that Im learning:Lets bethankfulDo you know how many people would have killed to be in our position 20 or 30 years ago? Its only been relatively recently that growth in our careers as designers does not necessarily include management. Companies are realizing the importance of employing and incentivizing expert IC talent in their organization. Thats a really cool opportunity for us as UX designers.We dont have to become managers to move forward in our careers. We can keep designing. We can keep doing the thing that welove.This was not always the case. I think its important that we take some time to appreciate it. Were not in a rush, and we shouldnt make any decisions toorashly.Leadership is not just formanagersIn the book, The Servant, Hunter identifies two levers you can use as a manager to get people to do what you want: power and authority.Leadership: The skill of influencing people to work enthusiastically toward goals identified as being for the commongood.Power: The ability to force or coerce someone to do your will, even if they would choose not to, because of your position or yourmight.Authority: The skill of getting people to willingly do your will because of your personal influence.He spends the book communicating that while using the lever of power may be necessary in some situations (firing a bad employee for instance), as leaders, we need to be practicing authority and influence in order to lead the people aroundus.When I read this for the first time, I found it incredibly empoweringI didnt need a particular position tolead.If were to advance in our design careers, our craft, and our influence, whether were an individual contributor or manager, we still need to learn to lead other people well. Managers are not leaders. ICs are not leaders. Leaders are leaders. And the core of leadership is influence. That means that anyone, in any position can be aleader.Management is what you do; leadership is the person you are and the influence and impact you have upon the people you come into contact with. Management is not synonymous with leadership. Leadership is synonymous with influenceEveryone is a leader because everyone influences other people every day, for good or not so good, which is why you dont have to be the boss to be aleader.James C Hunter, TheServantThis world needs better leaders. It needs people who can change the culture around them, people who know how to make work better (in a whole lot of different ways). We are surrounded by poor leaders, and if were not thoughtful and intentional with how we engage with our teams, well become the part of theproblem.The way that we grow in our careers as UX designers is by increasing our ability to solve complex problems, but our capacity to solve problems individually only gets us so far. It is our ability to lead and influence people around us that allows us to have a bigimpact.Leadership is a skill, and we can start developing itnow.Lets take a look at how leadership shows up (or doesnt) in the two career paths that we have as UX designers.The Individual Contributors RoleThe Job: Solve problems.ICs make things. Their primary output is some kind of artifact. They have trained hands and minds to build things that assist in the software development process. And as more skills and experience are acquired, more leadership and influence can be exercised.UX Collective has an amazing series of interviews with Individual Contributors, Leading with Craft (with some terrific illustrations by Shreya Damle). Id like to focus on this one interview with Madhavi Jagdish. Shes asked about the difference between lead, staff, and principal designer.The differences in my mind are mostly those of scope, responsibility and visibility.As a lead designer, your focus is the project, and your responsibilities are to ensure that you work cross-functionally with PM and Engineering to deliver high-quality work that meets deadlines and expectations.Staff designers have a broader scope, their work reaches beyond their immediate functional and cross-functional teams. They contribute to design strategy at the company, and have more visibility with leadership and executives than lead designers do.Principal designers have even more responsibility outside their teams and functions. They are seen as design leaders at the company, contributing to strategic growth not just technically, but also along the lines of team culture and growth. They use systems thinking to ensure their work can have far-reaching impact, and set the vision for the team and companys creative work. They are also expected to have a deeper understanding of the business impact of their work and to communicate the value of research and design to executives.The level of a designer is directly related to the complexity of the problems that theyre solving. And their ability to solve complex problems is directly related to their influence over other people. A design lead influences the immediate people on their project. A staff designer influences people cross functionally. And a principal designer influences people across an entire organization.The Managers RoleThe Job: Protect yourteam.Its the managers job to teach, equip, and block for the people on their team. They are responsible for their teams output. They should be supporting and mentoring the career development of theirteam.This means less design, less making, and more meetings. It means learning how to understand people (and a wide variety of different types of people), and putting them into places or giving them the resources they need to be successful. That could be education and training, it could be additional experience. It could also be strategic insight so that the team member can solve the problem accurately.In my role as a manager, I view myself as a shield, protecting my team members so that they can do their best work. And while I still get the odd chance to build a component or perform user research, most managers dont. That is their blessing and their curse. They are communicating with everyone around them so that the men and women on their teams dont haveto.This can lead to a few pitfalls. Work for a manager is meetings. Its communication. Its coordination. If they get caught up in that work, they may start to believe that other people have similar responsibilities. They may forget that the bulk of the work that needs to be done requires human beings to bring forth something from nothing, spending a great deal of time and effort in the creation of something new.Christopher Nguyen has some great, practical tips for being a UXmanager.Meetings are not work for a designer who is making things. Theyre mostly distractions. At best, a meeting is an opportunity for quick relational connection, and information sharing. The real work happens when the designer is free to think, make, andbuild.Similarly to an Individual Contributor, the level of a manager is directly related to the complexity of the problems theyre solving. The difference is that a manager leverages the people on their team, while an IC is able to make a much more direct contribution.Lead, No Matter YourRoleWe need more leaders. Not enough people are doing the good work of leading. And I think that too many people are waiting around to be given a title. Dont wait for someone to hand you the mantle of leadership. Start rightnow.Care about the people youre surrounded by. Influence the culture of the people and work around you. Cast vision for a way to make thingsbetter.You do not need to be a manager to do that. Most managers dont do that anyway. Lead now. Do it with humility. Be genuinely interested in the people around you. Identify ways to make the culture of your workbetter.ResourcesThe Servant, James C.HunterYou dont need to be the boss to be a leader by Matt Mayberry, Harvard BusinessReviewLeading with Craft, UX CollectiveIndividual Contributor designers are cross-functional leaders by Caio Bruga, UX CollectiveHow to be a better UX manager by Christopher NguyenAffiliate Disclosure: Any Amazon links are affiliate links and help support my writing anddrawing.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!The split decision: IC or manager? was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Are we doing the same as our competitors expecting different results?Image by Midjourney. Prompt by theauthor.Are we using the same research formats to ask the same questions of the same customers, the same tools or models to make sense of the same data and insights, the same channels to interact with them, the same metrics and measures ofsuccess?Are we using the same strategy tools and frameworks, are we setting up the same types of teams with the same experts working in the same way as everyoneelse?Are we still expecting to be differentiating, innovative or to increase market share?How?Are we doing the same as everyone else, but still expecting to stand out?. Icons by the nounproject visualization by theauthor.I mean... Einstein was so close, but he should havesaid:Insanity is doing the same thing as everyone else expecting different results.The customer is the most underutilized resource in any organization. not because they are not already visible, listened to and included, but because we are utilizing at most only a few percentage points of the potential they are offering us. We are neither innovating, imagining or pushing the boundaries when it comes to the customer. We are going backwards**several research reports suggest customer satisfaction and customer experience quality is dropping over the last few years(1).We are not getting better at our customers. We are gettingworse.A few examples to challenge the thinking:(please remember that most of these tools / approaches were very good ideas at the time of their invention, but that they still mirror the environment and technology limitations of thattime)We still use surveys to learn about our customersWe treat people as if their purpose is to buythingsWe still use events / ceremony based innovation processesWe filter and bias our insights through tools that limitusWe are using digital and data to do more of the same only faster andcheaperWe measure experiences in terms of engagementWe see the customer ascharityWe assume customers care about efficiency as much as wedoWe railroad our customers as if they are algorithms that we just need to get to do things: open email, click on link, visit website, sign up for webinar, join,repeatThe goal here is to be provocative. Everything can be improved, even if we dont see it yet (and when we do its usually because someone else is already doing it). We need to ask more questions.Examples:Let me take a few of these just to demonstrate my point that we need to keep pushing the status quo to dobetter.Survey. Illustration by Midjourney, prompt by theauthor.Surveys: when was the last time you cared while filling out a survey? The last time you felt a survey captured some important insights or the last time you felt you were able to share something important? The reason we use surveys is not because they are very good at learning important things. They are simple scoring mechanism for ranking our own thinking mostly appreciated for their ease of use and scale (I also use surveys). Whats the better option? Designing our online experiences to learn what we need to learn. People who are online moving around dont feel surveyed, they are just trying to find what they need. Their behavior is remarkably honest. Identify what assumptions we want to test and design the experience having the customers interactions produce the learnings we need (2)(3)(4).Customer Journey. Illustration by Midjourney, prompt by theauthor.Journeys: research proves that no two customers have the same path to purchase (5). And nobody buys something just to buy it. A journey pushes a narrative that the most important lens through which we can understand a human being is how they become customers. But Ive seen how much valuable insights this removes from the conversations teams have when they try to work out opportunities. Every problem becomes uniform, and every answer the same. E.g. almost every problem becomes a problem of content, efficiency and price where talking about the product and getting in front of the customer (attention) is the biggest opportunity. Instead of journeys Ive seen how system maps broadens the view of the team, how new opportunities become visible through a new understanding of how the goal is not at the end of a linear journey but moving the pieces around the map amplifying or dampening different forces of influence leading to the goal. Ive also seen how real-time journeys work where there are only signals, actions and reactions. They only thing we need to know is what is happening right now and where to go next.. this produces individual experiences for customers fit to their personal journey towards solving their, not our,need.Engagement metrics. Illustration by Midjourney, prompt by theauthor.Engagement metrics: If we use the same engagement metrics as everyone else we will create engagements similar to everyone else. Instead the team should identify customer value and measure its ability to deliver on the customers ability to get what they need that delivers value back to what the business needs. E.g. people are visiting an experience to learn something, are they learning? And is the learning experience what they appreciate (do they get energy/flow from it, is it collaborative or are they learning fast/slow? Is the learning a connected sequence of experiences or.a single event?). Of course we use engagement metrics to optimize conversion, but if we want to design something for our customers, then what is important to them is far more important than what is important tous.Conclusion:Everything depends on what we want to achieve. But are we asking the right questions? Are we asking any questions atall..It seems that there are these things were supposed to have to do to do good customer work and I can only see that many of them are not there for the customer, but forus.They are making us eerily similar to our competition and because of this the customer has stopped delivering on their promise to help companies outperform. Theyve become a cost and not an opportunity.Its not their fault.. itsours.Sources / references:(1). https://everythingnewisdangerous.medium.com/when-it-comes-to-customer-experience-are-we-investing-in-the-right-things-64cb66d7792b(2). https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/design-for-better-data-3dbc7fef28c5(3). https://everythingnewisdangerous.medium.com/if-we-design-for-it-34e37d067746(4). https://everythingnewisdangerous.medium.com/design-for-better-data-6d2f780028d(5). https://www.sas.com/no_no/insights/articles/marketing/digitization-of-everything-buyers-journey.htmlCustomer as competitive advantage was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This satirical concept remains surprisingly pervasive and an easy tool for leaders to mute career growth and skirt accountability.Continue reading on UX Collective

Your users want results, not compromises.Photo by Andre Frueh onUnsplashYour design team is pushing for simplification to make users lives easier. Your sales team is advocating for power features to close deals. Your customer success team is demanding botha clearly impossible feat.Youre stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place. The next step is for you to choose which flavor of pain you want thisquarter.If this sounds familiar, youre notalone.The whole scenario exemplifies the casualties of the usability vs. utilitywar.But the problem isnt what you think it iswhich is why you keep getting surprised when deals dont close and customers churn, often for contradictory reasons.The reality isthis:The battle between usability and utility is a futile war thats destroying product value on both sides. While most companies choose between power and simplicity at every turn, the best understand that the right answer, as always, lies somewhere in betweenand they find a way to maximize both utility and usability.Its not a zero-sumgame.The high cost of the false dichotomyProduct teams the world over are bleeding value trying to pick sides in a war they shouldnt be fighting.Treating usability and utility as opposing forces has created a generation of products that either overwhelm users with power they cant access, or underwhelm them with simplicity they cantscale.The cost isnt just in lost dealsits in the very soul of product development.Death by perfectionOn the one side, you have designers on a quest for the perfect user experience. When you fight this fight, unintended consequences ripple through the entire product lifecycle.Beautiful interfaces temporarily (and only temporarily) mask missing functionalityeventually new users realize that their needs are not being met, and *poof* theyregoneSimplification efforts accidentally remove critical power user features (or they do so not-so-accidentally) (you tell me how important those power users are or arent to your business)User testing focuses on ease metrics while missing capability gapsEngineers, what with their logical brains and all, dont react well when told to remove useful complexity (which by the way, they spent a lot of time thinking about and building)When you sacrifice utility at the altar of usability, you dont just lose featuresyou lose your products reason for existing (i.e., its value to users). If its pretty but doesnt do anything useful, then its prettyuseless.Death by featurefactoryThe opposite approachpiling on features in the name of powercreates a devastating spiral of complexity.Feature bloat makes simple tasks unnecessarily complicated (where do I even go to do thatthing?)Training costs skyrocket as complexity compoundsboth when onboarding new users, and when onboarding newhiresSupport tickets keep rising and rising and risingusers cant keep it up with it all, theyve only got so much brain cache and muscle memory to goaroundTech debt accumulates as features interact in unexpected (read: should-have-been-expected-but-remained-unplanned-for) waysUser satisfaction paradoxically drops as capabilities increaseAdding features without considering their accessibility isnt building valueits building barriers to success. The more friction you add, the slower users moveand when they hit a critical slowness threshold, theybail.A path to powerful simplicityAs always, the answer isnt one or the otherits somewhere in themiddle.But its a bit more nuanced than that aswell.Its not a matter of reducing complexity in favor of some extra usability, or trading a feature or two on the roadmap for sorely-needed UX-improvement time, or deciding that the team should sacrifice usability and/or user testing so you can move faster and/or break more things, respectively.Those are just compromises.What you need is a mindsetshift.Dont sacrifice one for the other. Build a product that is both usable and useful, all at once, together.Step 1: Focus onvalueThe ever-important first step is to acknowledge, understand, and agree that success comes from focusing on user outcomes rather than feature lists or design principles.Each feature must tie directly to measurable uservalueEnd of list. If not value, you have gifted your usersnothing.True product value isnt about features or designits about enabling user success throughboth.Step 2: Iteratively build value naturallyComplexity doesnt have to be overwhelming. You just need to introduce it at the right time, at the rightpace.Interfaces should prioritize frequent tasks while making power accessible (albeit not via minimalclicks)Complex workflows should be broken down into digestible steps (and take advantage of the SparkEffect)Learning curves should feel naturalgradual, not exponential or step functionsAdvanced capabilities should be introduced contextually, not haphazardly strewn about theproductFeatures should follow consistent, familiar patternsusers shouldnt need to learn new paradigms on everypageGreat products dont just contain powerthey reveal it at exactly the right moment, allowing users to seize it when they can most benefit fromit.Step 3: Ensure users feel empowered to attainvalueNone of this focus on value can work if users themselves dont feel like its possible to achieve what they want to achieve (or, feel like its too hard, or not worth the time oreffort).Advanced capabilities should feel like rewards, not obstaclesHints in the UI should guide users toward greater masterythey should nudge, not force (said another way, those power user features arent hidden, theyre just tucked away in a sensical manner, waiting to be revealed)Power user paths shouldnt obstruct casual users (or users on the path to power userstatus)Features that dont add value should be deprecated (or at least pushed aside that much more)the complication for the 99% isnt worth it just to satisfy the edge case needs of the1%Products win when they grow with their users instead of forcing users to adapt to them. And more importantly, the users win when they can do what they need to do without being confused by what theydont.How to know itsworkingUnderstanding whether youre succeeding requires zeroing in on metrics thatmatter.And those metrics are the ones that are directly tied toyou guessed itvalue.So watch for signs that users are attaining that value.E.g.:Time-to-value decreases for new users (note: this is not onboarding time, it is the time it takes for a user to realize actual value and experience their first Aha!moment)Cumulative value (however that is measured for your users) continuously increases over time (put serious thought into what value truly means for your usersit can be revenue earned, time saved, users acquired, customer satisfaction achieved, anythingjust make sure it matters to your users, notyou)Support tickets decrease and shift from basics to advanced topics (if the easy stuff isnt buried amongst a mountain of complicatedness, users will need to ask less questions aboutit)Feature adoption increases with product tenure (note: feature adoption in and of itself is not a value metric, but rather an indicator; still, especially for products that offer a large amount of features, this should generally increase overtime)Power features see organic discovery and adoption (but only by the users who actually need it, allowing the rest to go on their merryway)Success isnt measured by what your product can doits measured by what users actually accomplish withit.In closingStop fighting a senseless war of usability vs.utility.Learn from all the products-that-could-have-been.Choose value. Focus on helping your users accomplish their goals, instead of providing them endless actions to take or over-simplifying capabilities in the name of cleanUI/UX.Its not that usability and utility dont matterthey do. Its that their balance will come naturally when you focus on helping your userswin.So the next time someone asks you whether the team should be prioritizing power or simplicity, remember this: the wrong answer is choosing between them. The right answer is making them work together to create products that both delight and empower users at every step of theirjourney.Speaking of usability and utility Are you tired of fighting Jiras interface? 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.Great products transcend the Usability vs. Utility debate was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Among diverse approaches, the teams can find a unique way on their test automation journey and select the strategy that matches their needs. So lets dive deeper into pyramids, diamonds, hourglasses and other interesting objects.In the massive hype around automation in the QA field, it is easy to get lost in various approaches. The multiple perspectives on automating tests coexist. There is no recipe for success but there are some common-sense patterns to follow. Responding to the feedback of the readers of Test smart: how to apply automation and stay sane?, Ive decided to leave my two cents on automation strategies that might be handy for agileteams.No automation strategySometimes having no strategy is also a strategy. As someone who lives in a Mediterranean country, I have noticed an interesting thing about harvesting olives. Some bigger olive oil makers have used electric rakes to collect the olives from the trees. At the same time, others like us, who possess only five not-so-high olive trees, have picked the yield manually.The same refers to the reality of testing. If your product is small-scale (a few quite low olive treese.g. a landing page with registration and login flows), it may be too early and pricy to automate UI tests. Instead, the manual tests could be done promptly.This works well when you are developing application prototypes or working on Proof of Concept, where the focus is more on rapid feature development than maintaining automated tests.Also, if the user flows are raw, it will be a waste of time and budget if you start automating tests. Once the rework is needed in the UI/UX, some intervention will be required for the automated tests,too.Yet, if your product matures and more olive treesflowsare added, get ready to start using electric rakes: automate the tests for the most critical flows where applicable.If you intend to make a lot out of automating your testing efforts, think strategically and involve the team members in a discussion. From my observations, the discussions might be veryhot.Test automation pyramid as the goldenstandardDo you remember the old test automation pyramid?The last time I talked about it to developers, some guys had yawning faces. Yet what if we turn the pyramid upside down to understand it better? Magically, here the pyramid turned into the bugfilter.Look how multiple bugs fly intoit: Unit tests could filter bugs faster (thats why more unit tests are needed!); Integration tests will be your safety net in the middle (you should not neglect thispart); End-to-end (UI) tests will catch the bugs at the latest stage (and more rework will be required).As Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispinnote:Teams that practice test-driven development (TDD) build up a solid base of unit- and component-level tests that help guide code design. In most contexts, teams want to have the biggest proportion of their automated tests at the lowest level of the pyramid.Furthermore, it is smart not to wait until the bugs fly into the products UI layer. Think whether your team can create more tests for the prior layers of the pyramid (unit, integration) and catch the defectsearly.Anyhow, lets be realistic: the pyramid (bug filter) is the goal that should be targeted. However, in the real world, you and your teammates might agree that your current automation approach reminds you more of otherobjects.Diamond alternativeFor instance, your current automation strategy might be reflected in a diamond, where integration tests are in favour. It makes sense for some types of projects. Once your product is based on microservices, integration tests could bring more value than unit tests or end-to-end (UI)tests.In short, integration tests check how an application behaves once it interacts with other services. Usually, the mocks represent external services so that integration tests run in isolation. It is important to note that the main advantage of integration tests is that they are not as flaky as end-to-end tests in terms of maintenance.HourglassYour approach can also look like an hourglass: there is a large suite of unit tests and there is a certain part of end-to-end (UI) tests, yet there is low number of integration tests or they are missing at all. This could work in certain cases but due to the lack of integration tests, the teams risk that more bugs may fly into the UIlayer.As a result, there could be too many end-to-end test failures. You can avoid this case by adding a suite of medium-scope testsintegration tests.Ice creamconeBesides, there might be a pattern of an inverted pyramid, or ice cream cone: many end-to-end (UI) tests are automated, and there are quite a few integration tests but very few unittests.Overall, this pattern should be avoided when planning a testing strategy. The chances of detecting bugs in later stages of development are getting higher, thus it may cost a lot to make additional adjustments. Nevertheless, according to Kristijan Kralj, there are a few exceptions where the inverted pyramid approach could beuseful.The cases where this makes senseare:Putting legacy code into test automationyou are trying to add some automated tests to your application, but UI and business logic are tightly coupled. This means that its not possible to write unit tests, but you need to start with UI and integration tests. After you decouple UI from business logic, then you might add unittests.Your app mainly calls other API-sif your applications logic consists mainly of calling other libraries and/or performing lots of network requests, then it doesnt make too much sense to write unit tests forit.Interaction with the real deviceif you are working on an application that will be deployed on a physical device, then you might benefit more from having UI tests that will check the application worksfine.Who should be in charge of automation?Traditionally, there is a debate about whether test automation should be the sole responsibility of QA Engineers or Developers. To my mind, the truth is in the middle. Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispinsuggest:Because automating tests through the UI tends to be more time-consuming, theres a temptation to hand that off to a separate automation team or have the testers on the team take full responsibility for it. We recommend that the developers, who are good at writing efficient, maintainable code, work together with the testers, who are good at specifying test cases, to automate tests through the UI as well as all other layers above the base level of the pyramid. Having testers and programmers pair or work in ensembles to automate tests saves time. Your team will enjoy better-designed tests whose results you cantrust.From my experience, the unit tests are more in the domain of Developers, whereas creating integration (e.g. API) and end-to-end tests could be done collaboratively. Surely, the QA Engineer could give a hint about tests that should be picked for automation, and together with the Developer, they could speed up the test automation endeavour. After all, lets keep in mind that quality is a teameffort.There is a thing Ive learned working in various teams: automation strategy is unique. This means that even the golden standard of the test automation pyramid might not work for every product. So gather your team and discuss the current state of your test automation efforts and where you aim to get on thisjourney.With some teams, we visualised the testing pipeline to understand the current drawbacks of our automation strategy. I remember drawing a simple image that showed which tests were used for each development stage. Here is one simplified example ofit:Once you see any gaps in your testing pipeline (e.g. certain tests are missing), make sure to discuss with the team what should be improved. Some stages involve human (manual) testing, e.g. exploratory tests or user tests, as automation has multiple constraints, and this isOK.All in all, it is handy to outline how your testing activities are distributed in the development process: note which tests are applied and at which stage. Once you get a clearer picture of how testing is functioning across the development, it will be easier to tackle the main pain points for automation strategy. There is always a space for improvement if you want toimprove.You may check my LinkedIn page if you feel like connecting with me or are curious about my background. As a QA Engineer with strong commercial experience, Im ready to communicate with teams looking for guidance and help in enhancing product quality andtesting.Illustrations: by me (Apple Pencil, iPad, and no AI:))Resources:Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin, Test Automation Pyramid: https://agiletester.ca/test-automation-pyramid/Ritesh Kapoor, Testing Automation, What are Pyramids and Diamonds?: https://ritesh-kapoor.medium.com/testing-automation-what-are-pyramids-and-diamonds-67494fec7c55Uladzislau Ramanenka, Hourglass into Pyramid: how you can improve the structure of your tests: https://medium.com/bumble-tech/hourglass-into-pyramid-ccf4b4da7785Kristijan Kralj, How to Use Testing Pyramid to Delight Your Boss: https://methodpoet.com/testing-pyramid/Test smart: which automation strategy to choose for peace of mind? 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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Introducing the Agent Computer Interaction era.AI agent as apersonaWhile the UX community has quickly embraced Large Language Models as design tools, weve largely overlooked their more profound implications. Now, as AI agents become integrated throughout our digital products, we face a fundamental transformation: these systems are evolving from tools into active participants in our digital environments, and we need to design forthem.AI agents are emerging as a new class of users, independently navigating the interfaces we design and performing complex tasks on our behalf. This marks the beginning of a new era of interaction, the Agent-Computer Interaction, where user experience encompasses not only human-computer relationship, but also the experiences of the AIagents.Admittedly, humans remain integral to this new dynamic, providing oversight and guidance. Still, AI agents should now be considered distinct user personas, with unique needs, capabilities, and objectives. This entails designing the experience for both humans and agents, crafting interfaces that cater to both, and ensuring they have the necessary resources and information to function effectively.Understanding AIAgentsGoogle I/O defined AI agents as intelligent systems capable of reasoning, planning, retaining information, and thinking multiple steps ahead, all while operating across various software and systems under human supervision. Other companies may frame their definitions differently, but they share this essential concept: AI that can think several steps ahead and retain context while working independently. Its like having a digital assistant that can truly anticipate your needs and proactively solve problems.(Image from Google I/O)Reminder, these are my personalviewsWhile earlier AI agents relied on solely APIs to interact with other systems, recent breakthroughs, particularly in computer use pioneered by models like Claude, have unlocked a new level of agency. These advanced agents can now directly interact with graphical user interfaces, controlling the cursor, entering inputs, and navigating through applications just like a human user. This grants them unprecedented access to browser-based products, allowing them to perform tasks with a level of autonomy and sophistication weve never seenbefore.In this new era of Agent Computer Interaction, AI teams must choose between two approaches for enabling AI agents to interact with software:Direct API Integration or tool use: Using function calls and APIs to interact with systems programmatically. This is often more efficient since it avoids the overhead of rendering visual interfaces. However, API quality and coverage canvary.Visual Interface Interaction or human tools: Having AI agents interact with software through their graphical user interfaces, just as humans do. While potentially slower, this approach offers greater transparency and allows humans to better monitor and control the AIsactions.API integration might be ideal for high-volume, well-defined tasks where speed and efficiency matter most. Visual interface interaction could be better suited for tasks requiring careful human oversight, providing more transparency and control. UX practitioners, and cross-functional partners, face a crucial challenge in determining the most effective interaction method for each use case, and the relationships with endusers.Anthropics computeruseDesigning the experience for AIagentsAs AI agents evolve into active users of our digital products, UX designers need to expand their practice to account for these new participants. Just as we research human user needs, we must now understand their capabilities, what they require to function effectively, and how they achieve their assignedgoals.While agents ultimately serve human intentions, they often work in complex networks where they interact with other agents to complete tasks. For example, one agent might process data that another agent uses to make recommendations, all in service of a humans original request. This creates new layers of interaction that designers must consider andsupport.As we create personas for human users, we should now develop personas for AI agents. These personas should capture the nuances of an agents behavior, its strengths and limitations, and its evolving capabilities as technology and context advance. This will enable us to design interfaces and interactions that are optimized for agent workflows, as if they were justpeople.Agent persona(Modified FigmaJam template)Prepare to embrace new research methodologies, such as A/B testing different interface designs to determine which best supports agent performance. While AI systems may not be sentient, they possess motivations and can reason, plan, andadapt.This new era presents us with a fundamental question: should interfaces be optimized for humans, agents, or both? The answer remains elusive, as we navigate this uncharted territory. The key lies in recognizing that AI agents are not merely tools, but users in their own right, exploring thoughtful design considerations and a nuanced understanding of agents uniqueneeds.When the mobile interrupted the world of desktop, it was first treated as a scaled-down version of the desktop experience. However, we soon unlocked the unique potential of mobile devices, and it changed the world in a way it was difficult to predict before. Similarly, we are now looking at AI advancement through the lens of existing paradigms, and time will show how new experiences will be shaped in a way we dont expect. What is clear is that we appear to be on a trajectory from web apps to mobile apps, and now towards a future shaped by intelligent agents.Shaping the AIMindLarge Language Models (LLMs) are the brains behind AI agents, imbuing them with intelligence and reasoning capabilities. But UX designers have a crucial role to play in shaping these LLMs, going beyond interface design to influence the very core of agent behavior.In The rise of the model designer I argued that as designers we needed to get a seat at the table to shape AI models. We possess a unique understanding of user needs and mental models. This expertise is invaluable in crafting effective prompts that guide LLMs towards desired outcomes. By collaborating closely with engineers to develop system prompts aligned with user intent, we can ensure that AI agents provide relevant and meaningful experiences at the service ofpeopleAI model training & UX involvement from the Model designer articleMoreover, UX designers should actively participate in creating strategies for evaluating agent performance and leveraging user feedback to refine LLM behavior. This involves establishing a data flywheel that continuously improves the agents ability to understand and respond to userneeds.The key takeaway is this: designing for AI agents requires a shift in mindset. We are not only crafting a product for them to use; we are actively shaping the agents themselves, influencing their intelligence and behavior through careful prompting and continuous feedback. This represents a new frontier for UX, where our expertise extends to the very heart ofAI.Keeping Humans in theLoopWhile designing for AI agents presents exciting new challenges, we must never lose sight of our ultimate goal: enhancing human experiences. AI should serve humanity, and our design efforts must prioritize human needs andvalues.Control is paramount. UX practitioners must carefully consider how to empower users with agency over their AI interactions. This includes designing clear mechanisms for granting permissions, providing context about data access, and offering opt-out options for those who prefer not to engage with AI agents. Establishing trust through user control is essential for the successful adoption of agent-driven experiences.Transparency is equally crucial. Users need clear insights into how AI agents utilize their data, interact with their tools, and collaborate with other agents. In scenarios involving multiple agents from different companies, users should have visibility into the participants and the ability to choose which entities they allow into their digital ecosystem.Fortunately, we can draw upon existing UX frameworks to navigate this complex landscape. System design, for example, offers valuable tools for visualizing the intricate relationships within agent-driven ecosystems while maintaining a human-centered perspective. By adapting mapping techniques like blueprints commonly used in service design, we can effectively represent the interplay between humans, agents, and products, highlighting lines of visibility andcontrol.Agentic experience map draft (Modified FigmaJam template)These modified blueprints, which we might call agentic experience maps, should not only depict the flow of interactions but also incorporate elements related to agent training and evaluation. This holistic view will enable us to design systems that are both powerful and trustworthy, ensuring that AI truly puts humansfirst.ConclusionWe are entering a new phase of digital design where AI agents are becoming active users of our systems, not just tools within them. This shift requires UX designers to expand their perspective, considering how both humans and AI agents interact with interfaces and with eachother.While the rapid evolution of AI technology may feel overwhelming, this field is still in its early stages. The core principles of user experience design remain valuablewere simply extending them to encompass artificial users alongside human ones. This presents a unique opportunity for designers to shape how AI agents interact with systems and serve humanneeds.The future of UX lies in understanding and designing for this Agent Computer Interaction. Those who develop expertise in this area now will help define best practices for years tocome.So take a deep breath, sign-up for a class, and join the movement to design a future we can all be proudof.Sources:AnthropicIntroducing computeruseNNgService BlueprintsLatent Space podcastLanguage Agents: From Reasoning toActingCognitionIntroducing DevinMIT technology ReviewGoogles Astra is its first AI-for-everything agentAlex KleinThe agentic era ofUXTreating AI Agents as personas was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A guide to designing errors for workflow automation platformsEnsuring good visual representation, easy-to-understand copy, thoughtful error placement, intuitive troubleshooting techniques, and accessible error resolution.Source: Grafana technical docsPicture this: youre in the middle of troubleshooting a critical issue, and time is runningout.Youre staring at a screen full of error logs, trying to figure out where your workflow failed. Theres so much information, but nothing points to the exactcause.You need to sift through mountains of data to get the right insights to get to the solution. Its like trying to find a needle in a haystack, with every second counting.Somehow, you are able to pull off solving the critical issue in timeand thank God for that, otherwise it wouldve cost the organisation you work for, a huge customer.As a UX designer working on B2B SaaS products, I found myself solving for a similar problem faced by our companys internal users. My goal was simple: To help internal users identify errors or issues in workflow automation platforms, and to troubleshoot them.Let me first break down the jargons in the above statement:To help internal users identify errors orissuesThis means giving people working in my company the tools or guidance to find mistakes or problems in their automated tasks.in workflow automation platformsThese are the tools or software used to set up these automated processes, such as Zapier, Microsoft Power Automate, or Integromat. They let users connect different apps to automatically carry out tasks without needing someone to do them manually.and to troubleshoot themTroubleshooting is the process of figuring out what went wrong and fixing it. I wanted to help people understand and solve problems they find in these automated tasks.Here is another example of how workflow automation tools work: Automated Birthday Reminder Workflow:Trigger: Runs monthly using an HR management app (like BambooHR or Gusto) to check for upcoming birthdays.Reminder Email: Sends an email through an email marketing tool (like Mailchimp or Outlook) to the team about birthdays nextmonth.Card Collection: Uses a collaboration app (like Slack or Microsoft Teams) to notify team members to contribute to a group card orgift.Event Creation: Adds a birthday celebration to a shared calendar (like Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar).Follow-Up Reminder: Sends a reminder a week before using a task management tool (like Trello or Asana) to finalizedetails.But the design problem I was trying to solve was far from simple. I was trying to help internal users identify errors or issues in the workflow automation platform used by them, and to troubleshoot thoseerrors.It was very nuanced, technical and complicated. I was trying to look into the following 2aspects:How can I design the actual error message so that it helps users to troubleshoot errors in the automation workflow?How can the errors be shown effectively to 4 different type of users, solve different error types in varied contexts?To simplify things, this is how one of the typical journeys would look like for theusers:Open a failed workflow See how many errors occurred and where Identify error type, location and reason Either solve it, or escalate to anotherteamSource: Image generated byauthorOne of the tough challenges for me was making sure that the error message was designed perfectly so that different users with their own goals can easily understand what to donext.The other challenge was to make sure that the end-to-end process of debugging and resolving errors was intuitive. But that is not something we will be diving intotoday.Here is how I would de-construct the anatomy of an errormessage:Anatomy of an error message | Source: Image generated byauthorTip: Instead of blindly using the above anatomy, a better approach would be noting down all possible details the user might need to see on the error message, prioritising them and shortlist ONLY the must-have details on thecard.The best error designs will come from a mix of good product research, stakeholder collaboration, and user feedback.These are some of the iterations of error message cards I worked on, with varied colour usage, iconography, hierarchy and information:Source: Image generated byauthorThese are my 7 key takeaways from the exercise of helping users troubleshoot errors:1. Use colours and iconswiselyEveryone knows that in the world of signs and semiotics, red =danger.But there are many variations of catching the users attention to something that has gone wrong. A quick google search for error icons shows 2 different colours and 4 different type of icons being used to denote thesame.But which one worksbest?Source: Google search results screenshot for erroriconsThis is where context comes into play, along with considerations for your own design system, if you haveone.If I were to break down how Workato (a workflow automation tool) has donethis:Source: www.workato.comThe topmost error message, which acts as a summary, grabs the initial attention with the translucent red box, a distinct left border and a clear heading stating what has happened.2. The next order of business is debugging errors at each step. Upon clicking one action of the flow, the user can see the main things they can do to fix the errors in thestep.3. One error icon has been used on the step node, and the same icon has been used in the right panel where the tool suggests how the user can fix thestep4. And the fourth observation is a typical input field level error message Please complete this requiredfield.Looking at the complexity of the product, it is very important to ensure consistency of colour and iconography to reduce the cognitive load of someone who is already doing a complexjob.2. Where should the error message beplaced?The location of the error message depends entirely on how much importance you want to give it and how critical the actionis.Figure this outfirst:How important is the errormessage?What happens if the user somehow misses the error message, skims past it, or ignoresit?Make.com, an automation tool, shows errors using icons and coloursonlyIn Make.com, the user has to click on the app to view moredetailsError messages should be positioned close to where the error occurred.This proximity helps users quickly identify the problem area without having to search for it. It would also be useful to have inline validation for errors where the user can immediately interact with the elements and see the real-time feedback.Monday.com gives the user a way to solve the error inlineright where itoccurredMaintain consistency in error message placement throughout your application. This helps users develop a mental model of where to expect error feedback.In complex interfaces, consider placing error messages in a dedicated area thats always visible, such as a persistent sidebar or status bar. This can be particularly useful for ongoing processes or multi-step workflows.The image below shows how Workato places the error summary at thetop:Source: www.workato.com3. Possible nextactionsDesign interfaces that minimise the work required to fix errors. Auto-correct minor issues when possible. Auto-fixing or using smart defaults might work for errors in simple forms, but for complex use cases, might not be that smart of achoice.Offer contextual help documentation linked directly from error messages, like Zapier, Workato, or Hubspotdo.Hubspot offers external links to help the user either solve the error on their own, or contact HubspotsupportGiving corrective measures or suggestions might make it easier for the users to solve the errors faster than going through the help docsthough having help docs is better than figuring out how to solve the issue on theirown.Workato lists all errors that have occurred at each step in the workflow, and directs the user to the specific configuration in the panel where the error has occurred:Source: www.workato.comZapier follows a brilliant approach of not only giving the technical details of the error, but also using human understandable language to help non-techies resolve their issue. They also give a link to the helpdocs.Source: zapier.comTray.io only shows errors in the form of the input and output, which may not be understood by laymen like you and I, but it might make perfect sense to their target audiencepeople with knowledge of building integrations and workflows.Tray.io showing error logs for theworkflow4. Making sure the experience scales for different users, for different error types, and in different contextsThis issue was very specific to the problem I was trying tosolve.Imagine this scenario.User Type 1 opens Application 1, sees an error, and realises that it is out of their scope to solveit.So they reach out to User Type 2, a person with more technical knowledge, and ask them to look intoit.User Type 2 realises that the root cause of the error is in some configuration in Application 2, not Application 1. So they open Application 2 and test the automation workflow to see what is causing the errorthere.In this scenario, it was crucial for me to make sure that the error resolution experience was uniform for Applications 1 and 2, but also that the user is able to differentiate quickly as to whether they are in Application 1 or2.To reduce the cognitive load on the user when they are trying to figure out which app they are in, I used iconography and UX copy to make sure that the difference was known. But these are more subtle ways of showing the difference.A more direct way could be having one visual differentiator between both applications to make sure the user does not have to spend a lot of conscious effort in identifying where theyare.Differentiating Application 1 with a header like Google Meet screen sharing. It also lets the user know what kind of actions they can dohere.Differentiating Application 2 without a viewmode5. Ensure that the experience is accessibleWhen I was designing for this experience, I was not educated enough about how to design for accessibility. But if I could go back and rework on this, here are some of the things I would consider:Screen Reader CompatibilityTest your interface with popular screen readers to ensure content is properly announced and navigable.Verify that all interactive elements have appropriate ARIA labels androles.Check that dynamic content updates are announced to screen readerusers.Keyboard NavigationEnsure all functionality is accessible via keyboard alone, without requiring amouse.Verify logical tab order through the interface.Test that focus indicators are visible and follow a logicalpath.Dont rely on colour alone to convey informationuse additional visual cues. This was something I ensured to follow in the designs, as mentioned above, with the use of colours, UX copy, as well asicons.To sumupUse colours and iconswiselyIdentify where the error message should be placed, andwhySuggest the next possible actions to the user to help them solve theerrorsMaking sure the experience scales for different users, for different error types, and in different contextsEnsure that the experience is accessibleReferences:UX Design Practices for Error Screens andMessagesError-Message GuidelinesNielsen NormanGroupError Messages Designing and UX 101UsersnapBlogDesigning Better Error Messages UXSmashingMagazine7 Mistakes to Avoid When Designing the User Experience for YourHow to Design User-Friendly Error Messages?A guide to designing errors in automation workflows 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.Showing an image of four competing smartphones of the day, Jobs said, Whats wrong with their user interfaces? Well, the problem with them is really sort of in the bottom 40 [percent] there.They all have these keyboards that are there whether you need them or not to be there. And they all have these control buttons that are fixed in plastic and are the same for every application.Are physical buttons going extinct? By DaleyWilhelmDiscover Motiff, An AI-powered professional UI design tool [Sponsored] Motiff covers nearly all Figmas core professional design features, enhanced by advanced AI tools like AI Design Systems features and AI Generated UI, making design faster, making collaboration simpler, and significantly more cost-effective.Editor picksA good design is a good essay Developing a persuasive argument is how UX creates value.By PavelSamsonovHow much do you really need to mention AI? Onboarding an AI product: a case study of Otter.ai.By Rosie HoggmascallPhrases that messed up my expectations of Content Design Seat at the table, Writing is designing, and other gems.By Nicole Alexandra MichaelisThe UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about theirwork.GT Claire: celebrating dynamic expressivity Make methinkPointers for effective website IA governance Often, we think of IA in the context of a major project such as a website design or redesign. That is, a big one-off lift towards sound information structures. Its like a constitutional convention: a rare event that requires great focus and alignment. But what happens afterlaunch?The cultural power of the anti-woke tech bro Sometime between 2010 and now, however, the libertarian of the American imagination changed. Our new avatar for laissez-faire economics and leave me alone-ism is more likely an aspiring entrepreneur who rails against wokeness in forums and groupchats.Note to new design managers Org priorities are never flat and equally distributed across the entire projects spectrumunderstand the truly important items and focus your time & energy on them disproportionately.Little gems thisweekMaintaining a growth mindset By EdOrozcoDesign is how it works By NeelDozomeBefore Times New Roman, there was something better By Rita Kind-EnvyTools and resourcesWinning by design Deceptive UX patterns and sports betting apps.By AlliePaschalThe design metric evolution Measuring the value you bring to the business.By PatriziaBertiniTest smart How to apply test automation and stay sane?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 aneditionPhysical buttons going extinct, growth mindset, the design metric evolution was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Apply defined constraints in favor of the users well-being.Image by cottonbro studio onPexels.Mad Max is an Australian film franchise, following a police officer on the brink of societal collapse, where the government has no capacity to protect its citizens in a dystopian wasteland. The main character, Max, is rather wary of others, struggling to decide whether to help or go his own way. While we are not living on the brink of a civilization collapse, a bad user experience can make you feel like so. Applying intentional limitations to the user experience can help to reduce bad behavior.Constraints in design are often technical, resource, legal, and time-based limitations, which can play a big role in designing products. Besides maximizing profits, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been an integral part of company initiatives for a few decades already, where businesses have strategies to make a positive impact on the world and have responsibility towards the society in which theyoperate.The responsibilities are often categorized into environmental, ethical, philanthropic, and economic. CSR can be summarized as three Ps, meaning profit, people, and the planet. Product user responsibility refers to the duties of the person who uses the product, but what about product provider responsibility?Technology companies are addressing issues of cyberbullying and how to better protect their users with tools, guides, and reporting, but more is stillneeded.User and provider responsibilitiesWhen a business is already forging meaningful relationships with customers, is aware of the constraints around design and development, adheres to legalities, has great CSR initiatives, and designs with the user in mind - are there other duties and responsibilities the product team should consider? Employee well-being is often discussed, but how about user well-being?UX designers are walking in the shoes of the persona they are building for, researching the motivations and behavior of the users, but are they also intentionally protecting and supporting whats in the best interests of the users? Yes, but besides talking about accessibility, problem-solving, ease of use, or enjoyability; the more invisible factors that can impact the experience, are the duty or responsibility to design and develop for the users well-being.While we can't know with 100% certainty the real motivations behind one's actions, the provider can still strive to design to protect the user against possible harm, whether physical, mental, financial, or otherwise.These 4 different profile images were created with Adobe Firefly 3. Image by theauthor.Invisible constraintsIf we intentionally apply a constraint to the user experience in favor of the user, would this be perceived as negative or positive? A limitation tends to have a negative connotation, but it is not always the case. While adding a constraint to the kind of images a user can upload as their profile picture can sound like a limiting factor, it is so if we do not elaborate onwhy.AI has advanced in recent years, which is great, but it brings a lot of attention to how to build for security, avoid fraud, and design the experience around the content we interact with. This is not only for detecting illicit content or picking up on certain words to protect the community but also for determining whether something was created byAI.However, its not ethically wrong or breaking the law to use AI-generated content as a profile picture, nor is it to detect AI-generated content and block its usage, so why would itmatter?Implementing such a limitation may not affect the usual Spotify user listening to music, but can make a difference if applied on a platform like LinkedIn, where strangers often interact with each other and exchange sensitive data, sharing a CV in the hopes of employment for example. Context matters, especially when the users data is atplay.A re-creation of a LinkedIn post/comment dialogue. The profile images were created with Adobe Firefly 3, except the authors profile image. None of the content is real. Image by theauthor.AI detecting AI can become hard as technology evolves. Online platforms do have trust and safety measures in place, such as verified identities. Such measures can make users feel more confident and trusting when interacting on the platform. However, it is also easy to surpass these measures.Fraud in the US topped $10 billion in 2023, where one of the most commonly reported categories was imposter scams. Digital tools and platforms are making it even easier. A lot of the data protection acts help users to keep their data private, and not track their activity, but what about the protection around interaction with aproduct?The duty and obligation of the business is to prevent wrongdoings as much as possible. One big challenge can be how or when to approach these kinds of initiatives. Should one wait until there is a lot of negative feedback, or would this be similar to designing for edge cases? Could it be simply part of aiming to create the best possible experience?A combination of manual and automated checks can help to tackle AI misuse through AI authentication methods, such as defined by the Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC) as Labeling:Watermarks: embedding an invisible or visible signal in text or image, with information. This allows the user to know the content was made with AI. Steganography is a technique that hides information inside the least significant bit of a media file forexample.Provenance tracking and metadata authentication: tracing the history, modification, and quality of a dataset. Content provenance, or Content Credentials, binds provenance information to the media at creation or alterations.Human validation of content to verify whether the content was created by AI ornot.Content Credentials by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA). Source: ITIC. Image recreated by theauthor.One technique might not be enough to authenticate AI-generated content and AI authentication is still developing, but informing users when content is generated by AI is a good policy for promoting consumer transparency around AI-generated content.Image by cottonbro studio onPexelsI was contacted by a CEO, looking for a designer to create a mobile app design for their real-estate project. The LinkedIn profile had a legitimate photo, name, bio, 25k followers, and a premium account badge. However, the profile had no activity or way to see the number of connections.The company name was listed on his profile, but the company was not accessible on LinkedIn. After researching on Google, I found the company was making millions in annual revenue a few years before being delisted, yet according to the LinkedIn profile, the company had 2 employees whose profiles had the same convincing characteristics.When I visited the same profile three weeks after contact, I noticed that the follower number had dropped to 20k, and the company information was removed. Information can seem legitimate at first glance, making digital literacy an important part of the Internet.For comparison, this is a screenshot of a playlist on Spotify (2024), using the same generative AI image as the user profile on the LinkedIn example. The importance of the information displayed on profiles is very different.Digital literacy and the responsibility of theproductDigital literacy varies between ages and educational backgrounds. A 2021 Stanford study found that less than 0.1% of 2019 high-school students could identify an original voting video from a fake one, and policies on the education of digital literacy vary across geographies. Digital literacy is not only for the young, but senior citizens are also partaking in the digital transformation, creating a very diverse user group across multiple lifestages.Older adults tend not to be open to learning or using new digital skills due to their younger family members helping to do it for them, the reluctance to engage in social media, or the acceptance of utilizing technology for dailylife.Not everyone is learning or has learned about digital literacy. Would it be the product or service providers responsibility to educate the users or potential users on how to make the best of theirproduct?Image by Vicente Viana Martinez onPexels.According to a Eurobarometer survey, 72% of users want to know how their data is processed on social media platforms, and 63% of EU citizens and residents desire a secure single digital ID for all online services. With EU Digital Identity Wallets, the holder can verify their identity without revealing their full identity or other personal details, such as date ofbirth.User flow of applying for a bank loan with the digital ID wallet. The user selects the required documents and submits them electronically to the bank. Source: The European Commission. Image by theauthor.This ID gives the holder control of the details shared with third parties. The ID wallet initiative is currently being tested in real-life scenarios and is designed to be more secure and user-friendly than a password.Spam filters are an example of setting intentional constraints on the experience. Emails about inheriting millions might be a thing of the past, yet it is still hard to determine for certain if the person you are talking with online is real, made up, both, or neither. Product and service providers are often the experts in their field, which should be part of their duty and responsibility to design, develop, and educate what is best for theuser.Defined ConstraintsIn most modern cars, there will be a constant chime sound if you do not have your seatbelt fastened on a moving vehicle. It is to ensure you fasten a seatbelt to prevent fatal injuries. Phones in Japan are required to make a shutter sound when taking a picture to alert people nearby of a photographic activity, which is part of a privacy protection law against nonconsensual photography.Defined constraints aim to prevent a problem or limit the usage of features in favor of the user and the people aroundthem.Defined limitations are often applied to product plans, such as the limitations between a Design Seat and a Viewer role on Figma. Perhaps limiting the design privileges is sometimes more beneficial and secure than having full access for everyone.Security constraints are applied when the user types their password wrong multiple times and is locked out for an interval before being able to try again, or is further asked to complete 2-step verification.Product plan types and password constraints are not enforced by law, whereas the shutter sound requirement on mobile phones in Japan is. These types of constraints are the responsibility of the business.Image by theauthor.The UK has become the first country to introduce laws on password security under the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act. The law ensures every new smart device distributed by a manufacturer, importer, or distributor will require a password to be set upon start, and that passwords can't be default or too weak, such as "password" or admin. This is to help the consumer to protect their data and well-being.Furthermore, providers are required to communicate more transparency around security updates and vulnerabilities. Companies failing to adhere can face up to $12.5 million in fines, recalls, or 4% of their globalrevenue.Besides security and safety, there are also defined limitations on experience. Financial tools, such as using leverage on stock trading, often limit the usage of services based on the experience level of the user. This is not in place to restrict the users freedom, but more in favor of the user to protect them from major financial losses due to their lack of experience, as defined by theproduct.User well-beingIntentional constraints for users do not mean that you are restricting the users freedom, but rather help, support, and guide the users to do whats best for them. Limitations are also part of a company or product strategy.Applying limitations may not solve a user problem directly, but it can help to avoidone.Corporate social responsibility has been making an impact for a long time, and in recent years businesses have become more location-independent, making online well-being perhaps even greater responsibility in thefuture.Dystopia or utopiaregardless of the situation, making the best of the situation we arein.References and furtherreadingMad MaxWhat are Design Constraints?What is Corporate Social Responsibility? 4TypesCyberbullying: What Is It and How to StopItAs Nationwide Fraud Losses Top $10 Billion in 2023, FTC Steps Ups Efforts to Protect thePublicThe Importance of Corporate Social Responsibility in eCommerceAI or Not? How to Detect If An Image is AI-GeneratedAI vs. AI: Can AI Detect AI-Generated ImagesHow Identity Verification Delivers Enhanced Trust and Safety for Digital MarketplacesIs Your Organization Ready to Deal with AI-Generated FakeIDs?Authenticating AI-Generated ContentInformation Technology IndustryCouncilState Approaches to Digital Literacy InstructionDigital Media and Information Literacy for Adults Over 60: Five Insights for Media DevelopmentWhy You Can't Disable the Shutter Sound on JapanesePhonesWhat the UK's New Password Laws Mean for Global CybersecurityEuropean DigitalIdentityEU Digital Wallet Pilot Implementation | Shaping Europe's DigitalFutureContent CredentialsUser experience without intentional limitations creates chaos was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Reflections on the role of algorithms in creativework.Illustration by Kristina Gushcheva-KeippilIn Filterworld, Kyle Chayka explores the way algorithms flatten culture. One specific culprit, according to Chayka, is the data-driven nature of many social media feeds. He suggests that algorithm-based curation leads us to consume content that is less diverse and more generic. It also shapes the content we create, whether we fully acknowledge that ornot.Chayka argues that culture has become increasingly homogeneous. In a loop of content consumption and creation, algorithms define engagement and trends, dictating what and how we create. This process packages culture into a mathematically compiled feed, presenting us with content it expects us to engage withregardless of whether we actually find joy init.Of course, what is considered to be good content is highly subjective, it is a matter of tasteChayka acknowledges that too, and merely points out the nature of how our taste might be shaped by such data-driven equations. How much has Spotify impacted your listening habits? How do you choose what to watch next? What do you base your design decisions on?A dim light. I draft a sentenceno, this word wont doerase it. I pause, look at the steady flicker of the text caret. Another sentencethis ones better. On second thought, maybenot.I select the paragraph, and, alongside all text formatting tools, the software suggests to improve my writing. Yeah, why not. Improveit.Another flicker. How am I feelingnow?Theres been a clear change in a way that we talk about AI. I think a lot about Dear Sydney, a Google ad for Gemini AI broadcasted during the 2024 Olympic season. The 1-minute ad is narrated by a father who proudly shares his daughters aspirations and passionsin particular, her admiration for the US athlete Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.His daughter wants to show Sydney some love, but the message has to be just right, the father says. He continues: So Gemini, help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney how inspiring sheisThe ad suggests that Gemini AI is not a tool for fixing your typos, or for improving grammar. No. It derives your aspirations, emotions, and desires from a prompt. It calculates. Are you feeling excited, inspired? Or maybe youre nervous, anxious? Sorrowful, calm? You dont need to think about that anymore. Let Gemini AI handlethat.https://medium.com/media/716fb1183ecc9471154df3ce816a161a/hrefCreating something means exposing oneself to great levels of vulnerability. To think about the body of work, to find the pieces that match. Sincerity can be scary. It is hard to get things right, but even harder to admit that any creative process is fundamentally about directly facing the possibility of not getting things right, failing, and learning fromit.When I think of product design, I think about a discipline that explores how and why people might interact with the product in question. I think about the goals theyre trying to achieve. I think about the circumstances of potential customers, and whether the product can accommodate them.There can be a sense of detachment when it comes to addressing the emotional component of developing and interacting with products. Emotions and feelings can be hard to interpret, and even harder (read: potentially impossible) to translate into universal solutions.A few questions that Ive been pondering:How do we create work that is authentic and ethical in a continuously homogenised landscape?What can we, as designers, do to make our work connect with people in a more meaningful way?Back in June of 2024, Figma pulled its Make Designs feature due to the uncanny results that the tool produced. By September 2024, the feature was repackaged as First Drafta noticeable attempt to change the narrative surrounding the purpose of thetool.Theres a lot of tedium along the journey of bringing great designs to life, says Noah Levin in Figmas blog post announcing the feature. Levin continues: We see First Draft as just one more way to explore the option spaces and help bring the ideas in your head tolife.https://medium.com/media/663ac43195bb8a5da6b8f9dfc4c0c219/hrefStarting from scratch is intimidating. Looking at a blank page, a brightly lit empty screen, a liminal space. When Im stuck, I do needhelp.I press Improve writing. The software calculates, and then presents me with a result. Yes, maybe this paragraph makes more sensenow.However, I cant help but feel like Im giving up control and authenticity during this exchange.Is this what my writing actually sounds like? What learning opportunities or chances to connect with my peers am I missing? Am I prioritising marginal productivity gains over the integrity of my work? By feeding the tool another set of data, am I willingly gentrifying mycraft?Is this how our product experiences become increasingly homogeneous?Theres nothing tedious about finding joy in overcoming formidable challenges, in applying your knowledge and skill to craft something, and, yes, struggling along the way. Frankly, I find this to be the most rewarding and meaningful aspect of being a designer and a creator. For me, this is an integral part of learning and evolving as a professional, as an individual.A few months ago, I shared my thoughts on Jakob Nielsens perspective regarding accessibility and AI. It was gratifying to see that the piece resonated with other peers. However, some responses were more critical.The criticism specifically targeted the perceived rigidity of my stance on AI-powered personalisation and how, in my opinion, it might negatively impact the shared experiences that accessibility aims to provide at itscore.Shouldnt designers embrace change and adapt? Isnt AI the future? Am I too rigid? Perhaps. Yet, I dont find my scepticism to be misplaced. In a reality where representatives of major AI companies are unsure about the training algorithms that their technology uses, a certain lack of confidence is inorder.I want to be better at my work. At times, I wish there was a shortcut. But these feelings prompt many questions: why? Why do I feel the pressure to deliver quickly, or to get better at doing something instantly? Why am I experiencing FOMO each time the industry unanimously claims that Im missing out on an abstractbut definitely bright!future of what my work could beinstead?My train of thought is often chaotic. As Im writing this piece, I endlessly doubt my choice of words. The fear of being unclear or misinterpreted greatly informs each decision I make. I know that I tend to over-explain.I experience similar feelings at work, too. I wonder if Im proposing the right solutions to the right problemseven when I can clearly justify my decisions. I question whether my approach to work is reasonable, or even whether my values prevent me from seeing the bigger picture. Remember, the future isbright.You might find yourself in a position where youre asked not to take things so seriously. If youre working in tech, the relentless push for increased productivity is most likely inescapable. Ultimately, as things stand, the AI discourse is just another symptom of this push, disguised as a promise to eliminate redundancy in your craftonly to reveal that the supposed redundancy is the craftitself.Kristina (she/they) is a design leader based in Finland. Kristina writes about inclusive design, being autistic at work, and thinking insystems.Acknowledgements and referencesKyla Chayka: Filterworldhttps://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/695902/filterworld-by-kyle-chayka/Google: Google + Team USADear Sydneyhttps://youtu.be/NgtHJKn0MckJay Peters, The Verge: Figma pulls AI tool after criticism that it ripped off Apples designhttps://www.theverge.com/2024/7/2/24190823/figma-ai-tool-apple-weather-app-copyJay Peters, The Verge: Figmas AI-powered app generator is back after it was pulled for copying Applehttps://www.theverge.com/2024/9/24/24253252/figma-ai-make-designs-first-draft-app-ui-generatorNoah Levin, Figma: Building a better First Draft for designershttps://www.figma.com/blog/figma-ai-first-draft/Grace Eliza Goodwin, Business Insider: OpenAIs CTO said she wasnt sure if Sora was trained on YouTube videos. YouTubes CEO says that would be a problem.https://www.businessinsider.com/could-openai-be-violating-youtubes-terms-of-service-2024-4Goldman Sachs: Gen AI: Too much spend, too little benfit?https://www.goldmansachs.com/images/migrated/insights/pages/gs-research/gen-ai--too-much-spend%2C-too-little-benefit-/TOM_AI%202.0_ForRedaction.pdf?ref=wheresyoured.at?ref=wheresyoured.atEdward Zitron: Pop Culturehttps://www.wheresyoured.at/pop-culture/Gentrified by design was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.