Interactivity

Facilitation as a Superpower | Bindu Upadhyay (Mendix)

Listen now on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.—Bindu is passionate about understanding people, their behaviour, and the ecosystems in which they interact. As a Lead Service Designer at Mendix, she drives cross-functional collaborations across R&D and Go To Market teams to craft impactful product and service propositions with the most recent being a new product for Customer Onboarding Experience. Having moved from India to the Netherlands, from engineering to design, working in multidiscipl

Back when websites had a pulse

Rethinking web audio in the age of user-first designDircksny.com | Way Back Machine web archiveI recently had to track down a screenshot of a website from 2008 — Dircksny.com, a small agency where I landed my first real design job. I eventually found a live web archive of it on Wayback Machine. And the moment it loaded, I felt this sudden wave of nostalgia I wasn’t expecting.At first, I thought it was the dated (but surprisingly charming) Flash animations that triggered it. But after sitting wit

Benchmarking in UX-an organizational framework

Benchmarking in UX—an organizational frameworkA comprehensive framework for integrating UX benchmarking into the Design Thinking process, emphasizing its role in systematically evaluating product usability and effectiveness to drive data-backed improvements and achieve organizational excellence.From Nelson Norman Group1. Introduction to benchmarking in Design ThinkingThe contemporary landscape of product development and service delivery increasingly demands a human-centered approach, with User E

Designers: We’ll all be design engineers in a year

And that’s a good thing.Earlier this month I met with a product manager who wanted to know if a designer on my team had capacity to take on a small project. Everyone’s stretched thin and we’re no different. I didn’t have a great answer for her.When I asked about the project’s details, she shared a prototype she made in v0. It wasn’t polished, but it showed what she had in mind.No reading through a 15 page PRD.No “Let’s set up a quick call to discuss!”A 15 second schpiel and her prototype told me

Dear Rounded Corners, You Win

Rounded corners didn’t just win—they staged a quiet coup and made our interfaces soft, friendly, and suspiciously comforting. This satirical love-hate letter to border-radius explores how we went from brutalist boxes to UI that feels like a therapy session. If you've ever surrendered to a 12px curve, this one's for you.

The social significance of Spotify Wrapped

How the tech industry ended postmodernism and increased individualismWham!, Coca-Cola commercials, and obligatory family dinners; Western Christmas weeks are very predictable. We even have a new December tradition: the annual Spotify Wrapped.At first glance, the concept seems like a brilliant marketing strategy, but there’s a deeper meaning behind it. Why do these recaps go viral? Why do people want to share the music they listened to?Spotify tells me, “In 2024, you went through your Apocalyptic

Good UX is still important even when users are forced to use your software

How can you track your impact when you’re designing internal apps?Continue reading on UX Collective »

Overcoming Challenges in Enterprise UX

Enterprise UX comes with legacy tools, tricky politics, complex data, and way too many user roles. My live Q&A breaks down how to overcome challenges in such environment. I've summarized 12 takeaways from the session that you can use right away.

Design is flattening. So, how will you fight for your users?

How systems convening can help us keep user-centred design alive — even in the shadows.Continue reading on UX Collective »

Droip: The Modern Website Builder WordPress Needed

This article is a sponsored by DroipTraditional WordPress page builders had their moment. Builders like Elementor, Divi, and Oxygen have been around for years. So long, in fact, that many of us just accepted their limitations as the cost of using WordPress.But Droip, a relatively new no-code website builder, steps in with a completely different philosophy. It is built to provide Webflow and Framer-level power in WordPress, complete design freedom, built-in performance, and no reliance on third-p

How to prompt Figma Make’s AI better for product design

5 ways to improve your Figma Make promptsHow to use AI in Figma Make with UX intention, from smarter prompts to inclusive flows that reflect real user needs.Figma Make UIAI won’t replace designers, but designers who use AI well will stand out.When I started my design internship, AI tools were just beginning to appear in meetings and Slack channels. At first, AI felt like a buzzword, something cool but distant. But then Figma Make arrived, and suddenly AI wasn’t just an abstract concept anymore;

The User Research Democratization Playbook: Part Three

👋🏻 Hi, this is Nikki with a paid article from the User Research Strategist. I share content that helps you move toward a more strategic role as a researcher, measuring your ROI, and delivering impactful insights that move business decisions.If you want to see everything I post, subscribe below!Subscribe nowThis is a series on user research democratization — since this is a tough topic, there was way too much for one article. I will be writing this series and posting it over

10 simple css and javascript micro interactions for

Download 1M+ code from https://codegive.com/5988ee3 10 simple css & javascript micro-interactions: a comprehensive tutorial ...

Show HN: ClassroomFeed – Weekly AI Summaries of Your Google Classroom

What it does: ClassroomFeed connects to your Google Classroom and sends you an AI-generated weekly email summarizing:upcoming assignmentscompleted workproductivity patterns and streaksmotivational prompts to reflect and plan aheadIt’s like a weekly “check-in” powered by GPT, tailored to your school data.Who it’s for: Students (especially high school / IB / AP) who use Google Classroom and feel overwhelmed by scattered due dates. Also potentially useful for parents, counselors, or teach

Design Guidelines For Better Notifications UX

In many products, setting notification channels on mute is a default, rather than an exception. The reason for that is their high frequency, which creates disruptions and eventually notification fatigue, when any popping messages get dismissed instantly.There is a good reason for it: high frequency of notifications. In usability testing, it’s the most frequent complaint, yet every app desperately tries to capture a glimpse of our attention, sending more notifications our way. Let’s see how we co

The Slow Implosion of WordPress: 2025 and the CMS That’s Losing Its Soul

WordPress in 2025 isn’t thriving — it’s rotting. Bloated, outdated, and hijacked by commercial greed, the world’s most popular CMS has become a cautionary tale of innovation gone stale. If you’re still building on WordPress, you’re clinging to a corpse.

Good metaphors, 11 commandments of AI UX, Figma shortcuts

Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.“Here’s something that has always fascinated me: our understanding of the human body, particularly the brain and nervous system, has been profoundly shaped by the tools and technologies of each era.During the rise of mechanical craftsmanship, we began perceiving the body and brain as hydraulic systems (Descartes, 1600s) and intricate clockwork mechanisms of gears and springs (La Mettrie, 1700s). The industrial revolution brought new pe

8 UX research practices we should let die

Some are outdated. Others are misused. And a few were never that useful to begin with. Yet they continue to show up in project briefs, design sprints, and stakeholder requests—not because they work, but because they’re familiar.

Pixels of the Week – July 6, 2025

👉🏻 Curated weekly UX Research, Design & Tech resources: enterprise UX Q&A, motion sensitivity, and accessibility, the broken rhetoric of AI, no yes/no questions, 7 principles for inclusive UX, figma’s new grid system, design good practices, a fun password generator, free poker planning tool, open source tools for designers, 48 mesh gradients, etc.

The masked side of design leadership

The behaviors we need to break and evolveVenetian Carnaval Mask — Photo from PixabayMany in the design industry have been inspired by design leaders who created environments that enabled their teams to succeed, grow, and make a positive impact in the world. However, many of our peers, clients, and colleagues have been frustrated, burned out, and held back by leadership, which can have more negative effects.In this post, authored by Jose Coronado in close collaboration with Jason Mesut and his sh