Interactivity

Stop Using Boring Buttons: Here are 10 Micro-Interactions That Instantly Upgrade Your UI

🧠 The Power of Micro-Interactions

Musk thinks UX and coding are the same, this absurdity leads to chaos

Is there a divide between exact science and the humanities, or between engineering and user experience?Musk wants to doge the UX industry — Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ CC BY-SA 2.0Elon Musk recently claimed that AI has reached PhD-level intelligence. In any field. No exceptions. It “just” lacks common sense. I tested some of my old philosophy exam questions on a few AIs. Lo and behold, the AIs were far from right. But ok, in daily use, the subtelities of Hegel’s dialectic are irrelevant. No 

The design of shallow thinking

How the internet’s design choices rewired the way we thinkIllustration: authorLast week, I was reading one of the many articles about AI’s impact on thinking. Besides making me question my own ChatGPT habit (admittedly a little embarrassing at times), it made me realise something that’s bothered me for years: we’ve been losing our capacity for deep thought long before AI showed up.As many of us, I grew up online, and along with many other technological shifts, I’ve witnessed the internet going f

Design is a conversation

Can we put the vibes aside and focus on what matters?Image generated using AI by author.Design is so many things — too many things, in fact.I’ve always wanted to create a really expensive hard-bound coffee table book that outlines 1,234 definitions of design, with large colorful diagrams, pictures, and examples from various creations and industries — all legitimately falling into a unique definition of design.The thought that it could appeal to so many people because it hits such a multitude of

Breaking promises

James Gibson’s theory of affordances explains the gap between what technology offers and what it can actually deliver.James Gibson (Courtesy of Cornell University)This week we’re dusting off James Gibson. His theory of affordances is a lens on why some technologies keep their promises… and others break them.I’m Nate Sowder, and this isunquoted, Installment 6.Dinner with dad means one thing for my 8-year-old: how to get the rest of my fries. On the way to an FC Cincinnati game, we stopped downtow

Who Owns the Web Now? Centralization vs. Decentralization in the Age of AI

The web isn’t just centralized—it’s now *thinking* for us. In the age of AI, a handful of companies don’t just own the platforms—they shape reality itself. If we don’t reclaim control soon, the future of the internet won’t be built by humans—it’ll be autocompleted.

Terrible design solutions, vibe‑making illusion, storyboarding for AIUX

Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.“Designer portfolios share only the most pristine of examples. And we’re taught about efficiency and time savings. Best practices tell us to move fast, fail fast, and get to good solutions quickly. So why waste your time thinking about the worst possible option?”Why designing terrible solutions makes you a better designer →By Jon DaielloLevel up your design career this fall →[Sponsored] Back to school isn’t just for students. Explore m

OKLCH with ChatGPT-5

A universally accessible color triad that works in traditional & perceptually uniform color spaces.Exploring the ChatGPT-5 Perceptual Triad Color Harmony Suggestion.Given the challenge that the Claude chatbot faced in specifying a perceptual uniform Triad color harmony that passes color deficiency, I decided to explore how ChatGPT-5 might handle this request. ChatGPT-5 provided a straightforward solution that works in both traditional and perceptual uniform color spaces. I describe this amaz

Pixels of the Week – August 31, 2025

👉🏻 Curated weekly UX Research, Design & Tech resources: enterprise UX and accessibility, the age of no AI consent, design for neurodivergent users, accessible graphs, synthetic users vs real personas, optimal onion dicing, aging face experiment, mushroom color atlas,  nice rocks, ChatGPT for neurodivergent users, dark mode toggles.

A Breeze Of Inspiration In September (2025 Wallpapers Edition)

September is just around the corner, and that means it’s time for some new wallpapers! For more than 14 years already, our monthly wallpapers series has been the perfect occasion for artists and designers to challenge their creative skills and take on a little just-for-fun project — telling the stories they want to tell, using their favorite tools. This always makes for a unique and inspiring collection of wallpapers month after month, and, of course, this September is no exception.In this post,

Interview with Ed Lea, former Head of Design at YouTube TV, Director of UX at Google

Ed Lea is a product designer who grew up in a village near Leamington Spa, a small town in the United Kingdom that he describes as a bit like the Shire from The Lord of the Rings. He’s lived there on and off since the age of four, recently returning with his wife and daughter after over a decade in San Jose.Ed was my manager at Google many years ago and has since quickly risen through the ranks at Google. He started as a Design Lead, and was quickly promoted to Head of UX at Google News, Directo

UX Fatigue: When Your Website Asks for Too Much (and how to fix it)!

Modern websites are exhausting us. Cookie walls, pop-ups, onboarding tours, and constant nags are burning through our patience before we even see the content. UX fatigue isn’t just bad design — it’s killing trust, driving churn, and quietly training users to never come back.

How free food incentivises workers to return to the office

Are we just hungry?source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3473854/The-ULTIMATE-working-lunch-Inside-envy-inducing-canteens-companies-like-Dropbox-Google-Pixar-offer-free-food-extensive-menus-gourmet-desserts.htmlA friend of mine recently returned from a work trip to his company’s head office, and his description of the experience made my jaw drop. “Honestly,” he said, “it felt less like an office and more like a five star restaruant.” He described a buffet style breakfast with daily

Prompting Is A Design Act: How To Brief, Guide And Iterate With AI

In “A Week In The Life Of An AI-Augmented Designer”, we followed Kate’s weeklong journey of her first AI-augmented design sprint. She had three realizations through the process:AI isn’t a co-pilot (yet); it’s more like a smart, eager intern.One with access to a lot of information, good recall, fast execution, but no context. That mindset defined how she approached every interaction with AI: not as magic, but as management. Don’t trust; guide, coach, and always verify.Like any intern, AI needs co

The middle-class burden of digital products

Stuck between scarcity and abundance, we learn that the real challenge isn’t choice itself, but knowing when enough is enough.Photo by Victoriano Izquierdo on Unsplash about “Overwhelm of too many choices”.A few days ago, my partner and I received a shopping voucher worth 500K rupiah ($30). At first, it felt exciting. We already had a plan: both of us needed new denim pants, and this voucher would cover it. We agreed on one rule, the total spend shouldn’t go beyond 20% above the voucher’s value.

Adult verification: an impossible design challenge?

Arbitrary censorship will drive internet traffic underground and pose a cyber-security threatContinue reading on UX Collective »

Vibe‑making: The new way we pretend to know everything

When performance passes for mastery, judgment erodesPerformance on the surface, unfinished understanding underneathWe are in the age of vibe‑making, the feeling of competence without comprehension delivered by AI. You can ship an app without learning to code, cook a restaurant‑quality meal without understanding heat or timing, and write a passable essay without mastering prose. The results feel great, the learning doesn’t.Simulation of mastery is changing our standards. We are getting comfortabl

The User Research Round-up: CW35

It’s my birthday today! I usually keep these roundups just for paid subscribers, but I thought I’d open this one up as a little birthday treat. As always, I’ve pulled together five links that feel especially useful right now, things I’d happily pass along to a friend if we were swapping research stories over coffee. Hope you find something here that sparks an idea or makes your week a little easier.Let’s do it!The User Research Strategist is a reader-supported publi

Connecting the Research Dots | Iwalola Shobowale (MoniePoint)

Listen now on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.—Iwalola Sobowale is a research leader empowering tech innovation in Nigeria’s exciting tech industry. As the Head of Customer Research at Moniepoint, she drives strategic research to enhance customer experience, improve product adoption, and strengthen market positioning.With a background in another Nigerian unicorn - Interswitch, Transsion who are the manufacturers of the Tecno and Infinix, the mobile device brands dominating the African co

Should every country have a design minister?

Why national design policies and even design ministers could reshape our collective futureDesign is no longer just about products or services. From Singapore to the U.S., nations are weaving design into policy, and designers must decide if they are ready to step up (image source: Flag Plaza, Doha)Walking into Dear DesignerIt was a little surreal to see throngs of familiar faces streaming into the convention hall. After picking up a digital yellow invitation, titled 'Dear Designer', I exp