Reddit’s Shiny Secret: Gamifying for 1.1 Billion People
Inside the mechanics that make us want to show off online 🏆Continue reading on UX Collective »
Interactivity
What Does It Really Mean For A Site To Be Keyboard Navigable
Efficient navigation is vital for a functional website, but not everyone uses the internet the same way. While most visitors either scroll on mobile or click through with a mouse, many people only use their keyboards. Up to 10 million American adults have carpal tunnel syndrome, which may cause pain when holding a mouse, and vision problems can make it difficult to follow a cursor. Consequently, you should keep your site keyboard navigable to achieve universal appeal and accessibility.Understand
Why Every Web Designer Secretly Hates Their Past Work
Every web designer cringes at their past work, realizing that what once seemed like a masterpiece has aged into an unrecognizable mess of bad typography and questionable UX choices. This inevitable shame is actually a sign of growth—proof that skills evolve, trends shift, and today's brilliant design will eventually become tomorrow’s regret.
🗞 Why to Stay an IC
🏡 I’m currently on paternity leave and roadtripping through Europe in a converted van. We just made it to Portugal after driving through France, Italy, and Spain. I’ll be picking up the weekly episodes again from here. Thanks for bearing with me! :)🗞 This week, I talked to Auzita Irani from Google about leading UX for multimodal inputs like Lens and Voice, and why responsible AI needs sharper research questions, not more data. There’s also a great piece on wh
Announcing EPIC Champions!
We’re always saying EPIC members make everything we do possible. But at a time when even the toaster company claims you’re the center of its world, it’s pretty easy to be jaded about that sort of thing.EPIC is a non-profit organization built by volunteers and truly sustained by members who know that aligning business value with social value is a collective challenge.That’s why we’re celebrating EPIC Champions who have sustained their EPIC Memberships continuously for at least 10 year
The 500-year-old underdog no one is talking about
What Royal Mail teaches us about optimising for trust, not perfection.Continue reading on UX Collective »
There’s always more pie
A man presents a woman with pie. She’s ecstatic! Pies fill the kitchen and cover the floor. Credit: Me.I work at Cisco. Recently, several business groups have been merged into a larger organization, fundamentally reshaping the way teams collaborate. With these kinds of large shifts, uncertainty is inevitable. Priorities may shift, roles may change, and long-standing projects could be reassessed or even abandoned.I’m beginning to feel a bit uneasy…What if the work I’ve championed gets deprioritiz
9 Best WordPress Themes for 2025
Let’s be honest—there’s no shortage of WordPress themes that look good on the surface. But when it comes to keeping pace with evolving design standards, performance expectations, and user behavior, that list narrows quickly. A theme that dazzles today but falters under tomorrow’s demands won’t serve you—or your clients—for long. That’s why finding a theme […]
Strategic vs Tactical Research Impact | Javier Bargas (Google)
Listen now on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.Javier is a User Experience Research Director with more than 20 years of experience in the field. He is passionate about building effective research organizations that scale and deliver critical user insights that help teams develop successful products that delight users. He has a proven track record of career development and coaching.In our conversation, we discuss:The difference between strategic and tactical insights, not methods and why that distinct
Fostering An Accessibility Culture
A year ago, I learned that my role as an accessibility engineer was at risk of redundancy. It was a tough moment, both professionally and personally. For quite some time, my mind raced with guilt, self-doubt, plain sadness... But as I sat with these emotions, I found one line of thought that felt productive: reflection. What did I do well? What could I have done better? What did I learn?Looking back, I realized that as part of a small team in a massive organization, we focused on a long-term goa
Testing your UX ideas with vibe coding
How UX designers can use AI app builders to their advantageAs AI continues to disrupt many industries (particularly software development), it’s critical to continue to stay up-to-date with new tools that change traditional processes–making them more efficient and opening opportunities to more people.UX designers have historically been constrained to creating high-fidelity wireframes or limited prototypes for user testing or developer hand-off. But designers now have the chance to expand their sk
AI-Driven Personalization in Web Design: The Future or a UX Nightmare?
AI-driven web design is either a game-changer or a UX nightmare, tailoring experiences or trapping users in a digital echo chamber. When done right, it feels like magic—when done wrong, it’s just creepy surveillance disguised as personalization.
A case for slow growth
Lessons on strength from old-growth pinesYears ago, when my wife and I were looking at our house, we had a home inspector out before making the purchase. One of the things they pointed out was the lumber used in its framing. The house was built in the early 60s, primarily with pine. But it wasn’t the kind of pine we see today. This was different lumber, from a different era of forestry.Today’s pine trees are bred to grow fast to meet the demands of modern lumber production. They mature in about
Inclusive Dark Mode: Designing Accessible Dark Themes For All Users
Dark mode, a beloved feature in modern digital interfaces, offers a visually striking alternative to traditional light themes. Its allure lies in the striking visual contrast it provides, a departure from the light themes that have dominated our screens for decades. However, its design often misses the mark on an important element — accessibility. For users with visual impairments or sensitivities, dark mode can introduce significant challenges if not thoughtfully implemented.Hence, designing th
DesignShift: From mindset to access
Changing the system changes behaviors.Much of our society is built on the premise that hard work and a positive mindset can help us escape even the most challenging situations. If we apply ourselves enough, we will reach that goal, get that promotion, and become successful. I call this phenomenon the “Mindset Myth.” The Mindset Myth is the belief that individual success or failure is largely determined by one’s internal drive and attitude. In this narrative, we position the individual as the one
The best way to design for indecisive leaders is to serve them gelato
How to guide indecisive leaders to choose without taking over their jobContinue reading on UX Collective »
UX Design Conferences You Can’t Miss in 2025
Whether you're a beginner taking your first steps or an established professional looking to stay on top of your game, UX design conferences are invaluable for learning and networking. They offer a chance to delve deeper into various disciplines—from User Research to UX Design Leadership—providing critical insights and new developments.In 2024, the Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF) partnered with several conferences to aid in our mission to lower the cost of design education worldwide. Confere
Designing for emotional residue over functional outcomes
Why design’s most human contribution is now its most strategic advantagePhoto by vackground.com on UnsplashThe shift that’s already happeningMore and more, our tools are designing with us, or for us.OpenAI is now building an AI software engineer, capable of doing everything a human developer does — from planning and writing code to testing it and managing pull requests. It’s not a concept. It’s already shipping. It’s happening now.We’re entering the era of agentic software engineering. Autonomou
Show HN: BrandifyIt – AI-Powered Platform for Automated Content (Crowdfunding)
Hello HN,I’m excited to share our work on BrandifyIt – an AI-powered platform designed to radically streamline the digital content creation process. We built BrandifyIt to tackle the endless challenges of manual content generation by leveraging cutting-edge machine learning algorithms. The idea is simple: use AI to produce creative, on-brand copy fast, efficiently, and at scale.What it does:Automated Content Generation: Our system learns your brand’s tone and style to generate high-quality, tail
Show HN: I made a machine learning model to predict 66.45% of NBA games
Introducing DeepShot: An NBA Game Prediction ModelHey devs, sports fans, and data nerds!After weeks of work, I'm excited to share DeepShot – an advanced NBA game predictor powered by historical data from Basketball Reference, machine learning, and a clean NiceGUI-powered web interface.What it does: DeepShot uses team-level rolling averages (including Exponentially Weighted Moving Averages) and an Elo rating system to accurately predict NBA game outcomes. All predictions are visualized in re