Designers love to complain about constraints — deadlines, budgets, brand rules — but secretly, that’s what makes their best work possible. Total freedom kills creativity; limits spark it. The truth is, we don’t need fewer rules — we need better ones.
Hi, I’m Nikki. I run Drop In Research, where I help teams stop launching “meh” and start shipping what customers really need. I write about the conversations that change a roadmap, the questions that shake loose real insight, and the moves that get leadership leaning in. Bring me to your team.Paid subscribers get the power tools: the UXR Tools Bundle with a full year of four top platforms free, plus all my Substack content, and a bangin’ Slack community where you can ask
When learning the principles of basic CSS, one is taught to write modular, reusable, and descriptive styles to ensure maintainability. But when developers become involved with real-world applications, it often feels impossible to add UI features without styles leaking into unintended areas.This issue often snowballs into a self-fulfilling loop; styles that are theoretically scoped to one element or class start showing up where they don’t belong. This forces the developer to create even more spec
How funny and totally unnecessary writing of this Amsterdam coffee roastery makes customers happier.Continue reading on UX Collective »
Four ways of thinking about design, work, and uncertaintyContinue reading on UX Collective »
A practical scoring model to decide when to Delegate, Assist, or stay Human-Led.This essay was originally published on my Substack Syntax Stream, where I write about principles of human–AI interaction.For years, application design followed a straightforward goal: reduce friction so users can complete their jobs faster. We mapped flows, removed steps, and optimized interactions — assuming the user would remain the primary actor.AI changes that assumption.Today, we find ourselves in a dangerous “m
How LLMs are reopening this question — and why it could turn into a professional identity crisis.Text written manually without AI. Images made with Midjourney.Maybe this text will become outdated as quickly as all the changes we’ve seen happening in our field over the last few years. But even if I run that risk, I feel I need to write a bit about a feeling I’ve seen spreading more and more among designers who work with digital products: the crisis of professional identity.It’s no longer recent t
We’re building Tikpal, an AI voice productivity tool based on a simple principle: Human creativity should remain the core engine. AI should be an accelerator, not the protagonist.The goal is to reduce screen dependency and cognitive fragmentation, and let people work in a more natural “voice-first” flow. Instead of clicking through interfaces and context-switching between apps, you talk to Tikpal, and it helps you think, structure ideas, and execute tasks.Three layers we are focusing on:FOCUS —
# TelUITelUI is a Electron-based UI framework that packages a handful of reusable front-end primitives—color utilities, typography helpers, and basic structural styles—so you can prototype simple desktop UI ideas with minimal setup.## Features - Bundled Electron runner (`npm start`) that serves `index.html` for instant desktop previews. - Tokenized styling layers: `color.css`, `font.css`, `header.css`, and `align.css` keep presentation rules isolated and easy to remix. - Micro-interaction helper
# TelUITelUI is a Electron-based UI framework that packages a handful of reusable front-end primitives—color utilities, typography helpers, and basic structural styles—so you can prototype simple desktop UI ideas with minimal setup.## Features - Bundled Electron runner (`npm start`) that serves `index.html` for instant desktop previews. - Tokenized styling layers: `color.css`, `font.css`, `header.css`, and `align.css` keep presentation rules isolated and easy to remix. - Micro-interaction helper
How UX/UI will Survive AIThis document serves as both design deliverable and research activity, allowing us to:(1) optimize the research and design cycle to iterate faster,(2) ensure we have had a measurable impact on your experience, and(3) help us meet (and exceed!) our key success metrics.We welcome honest and open feedback in the comments section below. There are no right or wrong responses, no “stupid questions.”Your thoughts and feelings serve as valuable data points, allowing us to operat
Domain knowledge is one of the most valuable skills designers can haveContinue reading on UX Collective »
So what’s the difference between combobox, multiselect, listbox, and dropdown? While all these UI components might appear similar, they serve different purposes. The choice often comes down to the number of available options and their visibility.Let’s see how they differ, what purpose they serve, and how to choose the right one — avoiding misunderstandings and wrong expectations along the way.Not All List Patterns Are The SameAll the UI components highlighted above have exactly one thing in comm
I posted Julie here a few days ago as a weekend prototype: an open-source desktop assistant that lives as a tiny overlay and uses your screen as context (instead of copy/paste, tab switching, etc.)Update: I just shipped Julie v1.0, and the big change is that it’s no longer only “answer questions about my screen.” It can now run agents (writing/coding) and a computer-use mode via a CUA toolkit. ((https://tryjulie.vercel.app/))What that means in practice:- General AI assis
Hi HN,I built this last week after an experience at a bank branch that stuck with me. The rep literally said, “Don’t bother reading it, just scroll to the bottom so the button unlocks.”It hit me how routine and meaningless “consent” has become, not a decision, just a UI step everyone knows they’re supposed to get through.So I made PURE. It looks like a minimal fintech onboarding flow, but the ToS never actually ends. As you scroll, the text starts reacting to you, poking at the whole idea of bli
Designing how models behave.UX team using their new toolkit (Ilustration from Nothing Fancy)We have entered a world where the experience is generated in the moment, and users react to it. The days when products rendered code that produced exactly what we designed are numbered. When someone uses an AI product, they are responding to behavior unfolding in real time, shaped by probabilistic systems rather than fixed screens. This marks a break from the era where designers could predict and control
The one with React, Tailwind and the separation of concernsWhen I started learning about web development I learned clean HTML, vanilla JavaScript and pure CSS, which are three different ways of saying: “No Frameworks”.That’s the way most developers learned to code, at least in my age group, since we didn’t have any framework other than jQuery back then, and AI coding assistants weren’t a thing yet.Years later I did learn React (a JavaScript framework) and I did had to get to know Tailwind (a CSS
What we can learn from Linear about trusting judgement without ignoring evidencePhoto by Vitaly Otinov on UnsplashData feels objective, defensible, and safe. In many product teams, it has quietly become the most powerful decision-maker in the room — not because it consistently leads to better outcomes, but because it removes personal accountability. When a decision can be justified with numbers, no one has to truly own it.“Although you may think that people instinctively want to make the best po
Modern brands are so obsessed with being “on brand” that they’ve forgotten how to be interesting. In chasing consistency, they’ve killed creativity, spontaneity, and the human spark that makes design memorable.
What organisations gain by hiring PhD researchers in user research and service designContinue reading on UX Collective »