UX design

UX design

I remember being in the third year of design college when I was introduced to this massive book titled "Indian Anthropometric Dimensions." For the uninitiated, this book contained practically all the dimensions of the average (and non-average) Indian person, male and female, old and young. The purpose of such a book was to understand ergonomics numerically, rather than visually. And for designers, this meant adding the ultimate constraint to our wild designs... so humans could actually use them.

I dream of a future where everyone has what they need and where design supports human and planetary flourishing. This vision fills me with hope while also making me acutely aware of the reality many designers face today. Our work is done within the dominant capitalist framework that prioritizes financial growth above all else, often at the expense of true flourishing.

Over the past few months, the UX design field has been flooded with AI-powered prototyping tools that generate interfaces instantly from natural-language prompts. Despite the massive marketing hype, our evaluation with real design scenarios revealed that these tools can follow instructions to achieve a general goal, but they lack the sophistication to weigh design tradeoffs and produce thoughtful, high-quality designs without extensive guidance from humans.

You no longer have to stitch together pageview logs or guess where users are falling off. Browser User Journeys brings it all together into a single view so you are able to easily visualize what your users are doing and quickly connect that to performance data. This saves teams valuable time on manual work and enables them to focus on what's important: solving customer issues fast and delivering great experiences every time.

For your company and your products, your logo, packaging, and the impression you make via search engines and digital channels are the first things that clients and consumers will register. Controlling your brand image is linked to your success, and a polished professional look is vital. Design needs today aren't restricted to graphic design - they also include effective website and UX/UI design.

"Open Twitter, LinkedIn, or any blog platform. Scroll for five minutes. You'll see the same articles rewritten 50 different ways. Headlines like: morning routines of successful people, is coding dead in the age of AI, top programming languages to learn this year, how to stop procrastinating once and for all, ChatGPT will revolutionize everything, side hustles you can start today."

Expectation: Came, saw, conquered. Reality: Logged in, got confused, left. That's pretty much what happens when you run into a poorly designed interface. The only "intuition" you feel is the urge to run away. So what does confusion really look like? It's not one single obstacle. It's a whole pile of rocks scattered across the user's path. And people don't always leave right away. Sometimes they give up after a few failed attempts.

The brief was simple: Our bootcamp team of three had just 8 days to prototype a e-commerce platform that would help VeJa compete in a saturated market dominated by giants like Neural DSP and IK Multimedia. The Stakes The plugin market is crowded. Musicians have countless options. And according to our stakeholder interview with VeJa's founder, their competitive edge wouldn't be feature bloat or celebrity endorsements, it would be competitive pricing and a creative, non-traditional approach to amplifier simulation.

Businesses replacing human support agents with chatbots isn't new. Even before the AI chatbots of today, which are extremely common now, companies were using heavily engineered chatbots that could understand only certain keywords and respond with specific answers. They were terrible, but the one remarkable thing about them is that they showed us what different demographics really expect from customer support and set the standard for how AI-first helpdesks should work - not only in terms of support agents but support overall, including documentation.

There are a few key factors that make an interface clear. They shape how people see your product, whether they want to come back, and if they'll repeat the experience. Right now, there's no magic template - not even AI - that can instantly make your design obvious and attractive. A truly intuitive interface comes only from systematic work: taking into account the business goals, the product itself, and the way your audience thinks.

VeJa is a company that creates guitar plugins simulating amplifiers for music production. They were selling exclusively on the MOD Devices platform but wanted to expand their reach with their own online store. The challenge? They had great products, a loyal niche following, but no website. Just a logo. And us. The brief was simple: Our bootcamp team of three had just 8 days to prototype a e-commerce platform that would help VeJa compete

Have you ever been a part of a product launch that felt more like a daunting experience, rather than an exciting or thrilling one? The product launch where users got more confused and felt helpless? Where they could not even point out what was wrong, because the product team worked so heavily on improving the tech and the UX, that it actually changed the way they were used to working before.

Maybe you were at a coffee shop and when your turn came, you opened your payment app, tapped your phone on the payment device, grabbed your cappuccino, and were done. Quick and easy. Maybe too quick and easy. Did the coffee shop miss a chance to engage with you? Did Mastercard miss an opportunity to show how their brand made this "priceless" moment possible? Did you miss an opportunity to teach your 8-year-old daughter a lesson on the value of money?

Ask @Canva launches aside Canva's first foundational model-an AI model it trained in-house specifically for its own purposes. Instead of generating static designs, it produces new projects as full, editable design templates. That means when Canva uses AI to generate your slide deck or social post, all of the text and photos are discreetly editable with the same basic interface Canva has offered for years.

Global creative company Buck has joined with LinkedIn to give a visual refresh to the platform's in-app milestone moments. Described as "a big glow-up" by LinkedIn's director of product design Audrey Davis, the redesign includes a new suite of animations that hope to make celebrating on LinkedIn a more expressive and engaging experience. Prioritising inclusive character representation, creative metaphors that "connect across cultures", and the blue of the LinkedIn brand, these new illustrations capture a range of milestones and emotions.

Since I can't use the app itself, I thought I'll do a breakdown of what I can actually see - the app icon, it looks simple at first glance but it packs a lot if we can deconstruct it. I'm doing this breakdown as a fun exercise in design appreciation, I know my breakdown will probably not going to align with the authorial intent behind it. If you like this breakdown please share it, now let's dive in.

This week's guest is a true original: James Thompson, the mind and hands behind Black Badger. His one-man EDC studio is renowned for its unorthodox materials, luminous rings, and groundbreaking collaborations with luxury watchmakers. Thompson's journey is anything but conventional. From getting expelled from a Swedish university to building a cult brand admired by collectors and celebrities like Robert Downey Jr., his story is a masterclass in resilience, experimentation, and the understated power of letting the work speak for itself.