The hottest UX Design Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Design Topics

Hidden vs disabled states

UX Psychology • 119 implied HN points • 25 Oct 21
🕹 Technology UX Design
  1. When to use disabled states: It's suitable for temporarily unavailable controls like buttons that require user action to enable. Also used to indicate that a feature exists but is inactive.
  2. When to use hidden states: Ideal for controls unauthorized for the user, rarely used functions, or when there's an excess of disabled features. Helps reduce cognitive load and maintain simplicity.
  3. Considerations for disabled vs. hidden states: Key factors include user needs to know and do, feature visibility, and avoiding distractions. Accessibility guidelines and clear visual cues are essential for effective implementation.

UX Roundup: Titan of Human Factors | Long UX Career | AI Articulation Barrier | Design Challenge | Leonardo Text | UX Podcast

Jakob Nielsen on UX • 32 implied HN points • 08 Jan 24
🕹 Technology UX Design Career development AI User Interfaces Podcasts
  1. Jakob Nielsen was named a 'Titan of Human Factors' by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
  2. Consider the longevity and evolution of a UX career over 40 years.
  3. Using AI interfaces raises similar challenges to early computer interfaces like DOS in terms of articulation barriers.

UX Roundup: Domain-Optimized AI | Be a Test User | Heuristic Evaluation Template | Jakob Live

Jakob Nielsen on UX • 30 implied HN points • 22 Jan 24
🕹 Technology UX Design AI User Research Live Q&A
  1. Domain-Optimized AI aims to provide specific answers integrating content from experts.
  2. Participating in research studies can help understand user experiences and the impact of designs.
  3. Heuristic Evaluation Template by Jason Ogle helps evaluate interfaces and offers guidance based on 10 usability heuristics.

UX Roundup: Portfolio Without Experience | AI-UX Course | Jakob on UX Greece | Test with 5 Users | ImageGen Shootout

Jakob Nielsen on UX • 23 implied HN points • 18 Mar 24
🕹 Technology UX Design Artificial Intelligence User Experience AI Tools
  1. When building a UX portfolio without experience, focus on real-world relevance and storytelling to stand out from generic student projects.
  2. Consider volunteering, joining tech apprenticeships, or freelancing for startups to gain practical UX experience and build a compelling portfolio.
  3. Attending courses like 'UX for AI' can enhance your skills and knowledge in the UX field, adding value to your career development.

UX Roundup: Top AI Tools | Fewer UX Firms and Teams | UX Fails in Apple Vision Pro | UX Job

Jakob Nielsen on UX • 25 implied HN points • 26 Feb 24
🕹 Technology UX Design
  1. AI tools play a significant role in UX design, and professionals are encouraged to share their experiences with them for future insights.
  2. The landscape of UX professionals is shifting with fewer specialized firms but more job opportunities overall as UX becomes integrated into all design processes.
  3. Initial user experiences with products like the Apple Vision Pro highlight the importance of balancing technology hype with real usability for successful adoption.
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UX Roundup: AI-First Design | Dark Design | Non-Deterministic UX | Jakob Live | User Research Job

Jakob Nielsen on UX • 27 implied HN points • 29 Jan 24
🕹 Technology UX Design Artificial Intelligence User Experience Design Patterns UX Research
  1. AI-first products involve retrofitting AI onto existing software for productivity gains, but true advancements come from rethinking work processes and building new AI-first products.
  2. Avoid dark design patterns in UX to create ethical and user-friendly interfaces.
  3. Designing for non-deterministic UX involves adapting to AI systems that generate outcomes dynamically and focusing on ambiguity and dynamism.

UX Roundup: AI Saves Fuel | Checkboxes Must be Square | Good Books | AI Jobs Grow | Perplexity Grows

Jakob Nielsen on UX • 21 implied HN points • 15 Mar 24
🕹 Technology UX Design AI Books Job Market Startups
  1. AI technology is being used to save fuel by optimizing airline routing, showcasing the practical applications of AI in various industries.
  2. Square checkboxes and round radio buttons have been a long-standing UI convention for user interfaces to help users differentiate between selecting multiple or single options.
  3. Reading good books, like those on storytelling and non-UX topics, can enhance communication skills for UX professionals and provide valuable insights.

The Digital Age and Language Evolution

The Digital Anthropologist • 39 implied HN points • 30 Dec 22
🕹 Technology Language Evolution Digital Communication UX Design Artificial Intelligence
  1. Human language is always evolving, incorporating symbols, voice, gestures, and text - a complex creative process that continues to adapt to the digital age.
  2. The use of symbols like emojis reflects an evolution in communication akin to ancient cave drawings, now combined with voice, gestures, and text in modern digital interactions.
  3. Advancements in digital communication technologies, including AI, AR, and VR, are shaping how we evolve language to facilitate global interconnection and problem-solving.

How to optimize button microcopy

UX Psychology • 79 implied HN points • 04 Nov 21
🕹 Technology UX Design User Experience
  1. Microcopy plays three main roles: motivate a user to take action, help guide the user, provide feedback on the actions taken
  2. Effective button microcopy uses action verbs instead of generic words to clearly describe the user action, matches the button copy with the action, and maintains consistency in writing
  3. Good microcopy should be transparent, avoid jargon, pay attention to capitalization, and be user-centered with testing and understanding user needs

Multi-Craft Specialized Content in the AI Era

Jakob Nielsen on UX • 17 implied HN points • 22 Feb 24
🕹 Technology AI Content creation UX Design Authorship
  1. AI in the media world is enhancing human creativity rather than replacing it, providing hyper-targeted content experiences by combining text, music, images, and film seamlessly.
  2. Niche content creation will dominate the future, with highly specialized and targeted content surpassing the traditional mass-market blockbusters in cumulative revenue.
  3. Automation in UI design will streamline the process, with AI editors assisting in creating user interfaces efficiently, though high usability and polished designs may still require human intervention.

A/B Testing Paradox: UX Maturity Reduces Your Gains

Jakob Nielsen on UX • 15 implied HN points • 13 Mar 24
🕹 Technology UX Design Analytics ROI Experimentation
  1. In A/B testing, the average uplift from design changes is small, about 0.15%, with 54% of cases showing improvements of 0.5%.
  2. Only 19% of experiments result in statistically significant gains, with an average lift of 1.0% across those cases.
  3. As companies mature in UX, gains from design experimentation may decrease over time due to the nature of tested designs and the diminishing low-hanging fruit.

Creating personas with secondary data

UX Psychology • 59 implied HN points • 05 Jan 22
🕹 Technology UX Design User Research
  1. Personas are crucial in design, representing target users based on research. They help focus design efforts, improve team communication, make assumptions explicit, and bring empathy to the process.
  2. Secondary data can be utilized to create personas, saving time and costs. Social media, case studies, and internal research are potential sources.
  3. Creating multiple personas ensures a more accurate representation of the target group. It's essential to limit personas to 3-4 major ones, each representing a segment of the target users.

Heuristic evaluation vs. user testing

UX Psychology • 39 implied HN points • 20 Jan 22
🕹 Technology UX Design Usability testing User Experience Software Development Research Studies
  1. Heuristic Evaluation involves experts examining an interface to find good and bad points, following specific industry standards for evaluation.
  2. User Testing is a more effective method since real users perform tasks on the interface, detecting major usability issues and providing valuable insights.
  3. While Heuristic Evaluation is quicker and cheaper, User Testing offers better performance estimates and detects more significant problems that affect user experience.

What’s the best way to display dates to international users?

UX Psychology • 19 implied HN points • 10 Aug 22
🕹 Technology Design User Experience UX Design
  1. Date formatting should consider international users as different cultures have varying ways of expressing dates.
  2. ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD) can help avoid confusion in international date communication.
  3. Design date-entry fields with user familiarity and comfort in mind, using intuitive formats, labels, and separators to prevent errors.

Data Science Weekly - Issue 467

Data Science Weekly Newsletter • 19 implied HN points • 03 Nov 22
🕹 Technology Data science Artificial Intelligence UX Design Programming Machine Learning
  1. User experience (UX) is really important for startups using large language models. Many struggle because they focus on the wrong things instead of improving UX and product design.
  2. Data science notebooks have evolved a lot since they were first introduced. They are now essential tools in data science, and there’s an exciting future ahead for their development.
  3. OpenAI is financially supporting AI startups with a significant investment. They're offering early access to their systems to help these startups grow.

Online Forms: how to communicate format restrictions?

UX Psychology • 19 implied HN points • 25 Feb 22
🕹 Technology UX Design
  1. Good web form design should aim to prevent user errors during data entry but also help users correct mistakes quickly.
  2. Format restrictions in online forms, like for date of birth or password creation, should be clearly communicated to users to prevent errors and frustration.
  3. Research suggests that explaining format specifications to users in advance is crucial for reducing errors, while using format examples alone may lead to interpretation errors.

UX Roundup: Ideogram Big Improvements | UX Apprentice | High School UX | Kindergarten UX | Self-Taught UX Designers

Jakob Nielsen on UX • 5 implied HN points • 04 Mar 24
🕹 Technology UX Design AI Tools
  1. Ideogram 1.0 released with significant text rendering and image quality improvements, showcasing AI's potential in visual design.
  2. You don't necessarily need a university degree for a career in UX, practical experience and on-the-job learning can be just as valuable, if not more.
  3. Teaching UX concepts in high school, like in Estonia, can prepare students for a future increasingly dependent on digital media and technology.

AI and the Third Age of Human-Computer Interaction

Year 2049 • 15 implied HN points • 14 Apr 23
🕹 Technology AI Interfaces UX Design Chatbots Machine Learning
  1. In the First Age of Human-Computer Interaction, communication with machines was through code like punched cards.
  2. The Second Age introduced point-and-click interfaces, making interactions more visual and user-friendly.
  3. The Third Age brings natural language interactions where AI understands us, like with ChatGPT, changing how we interact with technology.

Best practices for moderated user testing

UX Psychology • 19 implied HN points • 09 Dec 21
🕹 Technology Usability testing User Experience UX Design
  1. Moderated user testing requires active participation of a moderator and can be done in person or remotely.
  2. Moderators play key roles like being a gracious host, leader, and neutral observer during usability testing.
  3. To excel in moderated user testing, prepare well, manage time effectively, build trust with users, maintain a clear session structure, and use prompts, probes, and assists appropriately.

Guiding Choices in UX: The Role and Ethics of Nudging

UX Psychology • 1 HN point • 01 Mar 24
🕹 Technology UX Design Behavioral Economics Psychology Ethics User Experience
  1. Nudging is a technique based on behavioral economics that gently guides people towards beneficial choices while allowing freedom of choice.
  2. Nudges leverage cognitive biases and mental shortcuts to influence behavior positively and enhance the user experience in various contexts.
  3. Using nudges in UX requires caution to avoid pitfalls like over-reliance on defaults, ethical concerns, undermining trust, and unintended consequences.

UX is more than just usability or look and feel

A Better Designed World • 7 implied HN points • 16 Feb 23
🕹 Technology UX Design Product Development Visual Design User Experience E-commerce
  1. UX is composed of five key areas that include usability, utility, functional integrity, visual design, and persuasiveness.
  2. Good UX balances all five areas; a product might excel in one but lacking in others.
  3. Usability is crucial for a product to be easily learnable and memorable; utility determines the value; functional integrity focuses on reliability; visual design impacts appeal and perception; persuasiveness drives conversions and user engagement.

Edition 20: Degrading UX to improve security hurts both UX and security

Boring AppSec • 2 HN points • 30 May 23
🕹 Technology UX Design Information Security User Experience Cybersecurity Internet Security
  1. Degrading user experience to enhance security can harm both aspects.
  2. Considering unintended consequences of design choices is crucial for all engineering disciplines, including security.
  3. Tradeoffs between usability and security can lead to negative impacts on password strength, user behavior, and session management.

2 things I aim to learn during my 3-week holiday

Eddie's startup voyage • 0 implied HN points • 22 Jun 23
💼 Business Copywriting UX Design Learning
  1. Always be learning - Opportunities are unlimited, but time is not. Choose wisely what to focus on for personal growth.
  2. Copywriting is crucial - Being able to write compelling text that sells a product or service is essential for business success.
  3. UX Design with Figma - Developing UX design skills can lead to creating more useful and pleasing products. Learning tools like Figma can help improve design quality.

What Is Happening To OpenAI’s Playground?

Cobus Greyling on LLMs, NLU, NLP, chatbots & voicebots • 0 implied HN points • 07 Nov 23
🕹 Technology AI Software UX Design APIs Development
  1. The OpenAI Playground is evolving into a user-friendly dashboard that makes it easier to create and customize AI assistants without needing to code. This means users can quickly fine-tune models and build applications.
  2. OpenAI is shifting its focus towards a conversational approach, encouraging developers to create applications that enhance user experiences rather than just improve technical functionalities. Users want engaging technology that’s easy to use.
  3. New features like threads for conversations and tools for file retrieval and code execution are being added. These tools help make the AI assistants more practical and capable, allowing for a richer interaction experience.

Product Management Skills - Articulating adoption risks

Joseph Gefroh • 0 implied HN points • 16 Feb 24
💼 Business Product Management Risk management UX Design Customer Satisfaction
  1. Articulating adoption risks is crucial in product management to understand and address potential negative effects of a new solution.
  2. For a product manager, balancing the levers of creating value while ensuring adoption by users is key to successful product development.
  3. Adoption risks can be mitigated by strategies like improving awareness, simplifying usage, setting up effective defaults, and considering whether adoption is even desired for certain features.