UX design

UX design

The real innovation here is how superkomma approached the fundamental question of user interface. Instead of adding a screen or LED indicators (which would have been the obvious tech solution), they made the fan itself part of the visual language. When the device is running, a fragrance symbol attached to the fan blade spins along with it. You can literally see your scent in motion. It's one of those ideas that feels obvious once you see it, which is usually the mark of genuinely thoughtful design.

Your junior designer spins up a prototype in Lovable before lunch. Your PM shows you a "working" MVP built entirely with Cursor within a day. And your CEO forwards you a LinkedIn post about how AI will replace 80% of UI work by 2026. And it seems like anyone can now make an app to solve a specific problem. Has the graphical interface really died, as Jakob Nielsen provocatively suggests?

UX is entering a new era. At the centre of every design conversation in 2026 lies a singular force: Artificial Intelligence. It is now so pervasive that even five-year-olds can explain its utility, while the AI natives of the new Beta generation are coming of age in a world where a conversational digital collaborator is not a feature but a baseline reality.

The majority of AI products remain tethered to a single, monolithic UI pattern: the chat box. While conversational interfaces are effective for exploration and managing ambiguity, they frequently become suboptimal when applied to structured professional workflows. To move beyond "bolted-on" chat, product teams must shift from asking where AI can be added to identifying the specific user intent and the interface best suited to deliver it.

Sam's issue: "After I signed up it made a git repo with no explanation and the only next step it suggested was to connect my domain, after that is done... what do i do?" This classic. No context, no guidance, no next steps. The industry data shows what's at stake: 77% of users abandon apps within 3 days (Source: Andrew Chen, a16z) Top-quartile onboarding achieves 2.5x higher customer lifetime value (Source: McKinsey) Getting users to their "aha moment" quickly is critical for retention

Visitor = your user / audienceThey come with expectations, emotions, and limited time. Access = your entry pointsLanding pages, SEO/social entry, app open, onboarding, login, paywall moments, notifications - everything that determines whether they can enter smoothly. Zones/Platforms = contextsHome, feed, article page, video page, search, profile, commerce, chat - each is a "zone" with a promise. Rides/Attractions = featuresRecommendation modules, player, comment, follow, save, share, checkout, personalization, bundles - anything interactive that creates value.

I am a UX designer, which means I can no longer use the internet without noticing everything that is wrong with it. This article is about UX patterns that are frustrating, widely adopted, and somehow still treated as acceptable at massive scale. If you have never noticed them, consider yourself lucky. Once you do, they become impossible to unsee. Your tolerance for digital nonsense may permanently decrease after reading this article. That is your warning!

Did you know you can tag Figma in ChatGPT chat and prompt it to do design work? In this article, I want to share my top 4 favorite use cases for using Figma right in the ChatGPT chat window. 1. Instant design critique for real screens What to know what other people think about your design, but don't have access to real users? No problem, you can use ChatGPT for that.

I've lost count of the number of times I've tried to explain, in practice, many of the success criteria of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, better known by the acronym WCAG. The same number of times I've tried to explain them, I've seen the WCAG guidelines presented in many contexts (articles, lectures, webinars, etc.) as a reference to be shared with teams so they can begin the work of implementing and correcting the accessibility of their digital products and services.

To be honest, for many years, I was mostly reacting. Life was happening to me, rather than me shaping the life that I was living. I was making progress reactively and I was looking out for all kinds of opportunities. It was easy and quite straightforward - I was floating and jumping between projects and calls and making things work as I was going along. Years ago, my wonderful wife introduced one little annual ritual which changed that dynamic entirely.

One skill separates good designers: the ability to clearly articulate their intention. No matter what tool you use, whether it's a traditional UI design tool like Figma or Sketch or AI tools like Figma Make, your ability to explain what you want to see accounts for 50% of your design success. The other 50% comes from your hard and soft skills. When it comes to AI-powered design, your ability to write decent prompts will have a direct impact on the quality of your design. In this guide, I want to share some specific tips and tricks that you can use for Figma Make to maximize the output.

"You know, having those conversations early on, reaching out to people in different departments ...that was really hard when I didn't have much confidence.” A VP of Design brought this up recently, reflecting what many designers are facing. There's been a crisis of confidence in design, and it's happening all across the career ladder. Due to shrinking budgets and layoffs, more designers are being forced to work solo.

The hardest part of writing - and I mean non-fiction writing and User Experience writing mostly, because that's what I'm good at (and maybe for writers like Stephen King the hardest part is choosing which Metallica song to listen to while writing) - is the start. The general rule is this: whatever you write first is your worst version. If you're writing a confirmation window, you'll usually end up with something like this:

But now, Bing might be testing a more retro, older-looking interface for the local pack in the Bing search results. This was spotted by Frank Sandtmann who posted this screenshot on LinkedIn: Frank wrote, "Bing appears to be testing a new (?!) design for its Places results. With the small map, it looks a bit retro." I cannot replicate this, I've been trying with several browsers over the past few days but I was unsuccessful.

Software used to feel separate from us. It sat behind the glass, efficient and obedient. Then it fell into our hands. It became a thing we pinched, swiped, and tapped, each gesture rewiring how we think, feel, and connect. For an entire generation, the connection to software has turned the user experience into human experience. Now, another shift is coming. Software is becoming intelligent. Instead of fixed interactions, we'll build systems that learn, adapt, and respond.

We're witnessing the birth of a new kind of designer: The AI Designer. Designers who work in evals, prompts, and tool calls. Designers who have as much of a taste for models as they do for fonts. Designers who think in mental models, agents, and intelligence.

Information allows us to act more skillfully. Imagine you come to a fork on a road. Without a sign, you'd need a compass or a great sense of direction to choose correctly. But with a clear sign, you'd quickly know which road to take. The sign reduces ambiguity. The Moylan arrow, too, disambiguates a choice. Pulling in on the wrong side of the pump is an annoying inconvenience.

In 2016, I presented at @Roblox Indie Game Developer Meetup about design strategy as an indie developer. Back then, I had no idea children as young as 5 were interacting with random adults on their platform. Today, the same company (NYSE: $RBLX) is filled with poorly moderated "games" like Bathroom Simulator and worse - all while letting adults animate their avatars for sexual role play.