Vitaly Friedman

Smashing Media AG

Creator of the video library on “How To Measure UX and Design Impact”, with practical tips around UX and interface design, along with a live UX training taking place twice a year.

Video Course + Live UX Training

Creator of the video library on “Smart Interface Design Patterns”, with practical tips around UX and interface design, along with a live UX training taking place twice a year.

UX consultant and UX lead working with mid-size and large organizations on improving clarity, accessibility, performance and conversion of digital interfaces. Worked with: European Parliament, OTTO, Zalando, Marc O'Polo, Axel Springer SE, REWE Digital and many others.

UX Lead, Senior UX Designer/Consultant

Smashing Conferences

A curator of Smashing Conferences, friendly and inclusive in-person and online events for designers and developers who design and build the web. Taking place in San Francisco, New York, Freiburg, Antwerpen and Barcelona.

Curator, Creative Lead

Smashing Magazine

Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine (www.smashingmagazine.com), an online magazine for professional designers and front-end engineers.

Editor-in-chief, Founder

Speaking with love and passion about the techniques and strategies that help designers and front-end engineers get their work done better, and faster.

Speaker

Freelance

Freelance Web Designer

As a UX Lead, I’ve been working with mid-size and large organizations for over 19 years, helping improve UX of complex systems, accessibility, performance and design of their digital experiences. Among many others, I’ve been working with the European Parliament, OTTO, Zalando, Marc O'Polo, Axel Springer SE, and REWE Digital.

I’m also the founder and editor-in-chief of SmashingMag, a popular online magazine and platform for designers and developers, where I help curate and organize friendly and inclusive conferences, such as SmashingConfs, and run video courses and live UX training (Smart Interface Design Patterns linked above).

I am incredibly passionate about writing, speaking, running workshops, and sharing what I’ve learned on UX. I love complex UX challenges, intricate processes, and difficult stakeholders, and my goal is to design digital experiences that people understand and can fall in love with.

If you are interested in working together, feel free to drop me an email at vitaly[@]smashingconf.com — I will do my best to help in every possible way!

UX Designer, Creative Lead, Front-End Performance Lead 

🔮 AI Interaction Design Patterns (https://www.shapeof.ai), a fantastic (!) living catalog of emerging design patterns, heuristics, anti-patterns and real-life examples that shape the experience of AI — from identifiers and wayfinding to prompts, tuners and trust indicators. Incredible project by incredible Emily Campbell. 👏🏼 👏🏽 👏🏾

AI experience can go way beyond a text box. One of the most underrated yet impactful patterns for AI interfaces is the ability to tune AI experiences. This could show itself as a style lenses or temperature knobs — little tools to help users generate a more personalized output easier. E.g. Risky ↔ Risk-averse, Sad ↔ Happy, Concrete ↔ Abstract, Creative ↔ Precise.

Instead of expecting large and highly detailed text prompts, we could slow people down when they prompt — e.g. with prompt constructors, prompt strength meters, presets or templates. Perhaps by defining an expected format, structure, personas, roles as checkboxes or chips — both for user input and AI responses (priming).

Another much-needed feature is scoping. Users should be able to quickly scope their inquiry to a particular domain, level of expertise, sources or even a set of videos or PDFs. We need pre-screening of sources, and proactive alignment with users. These are features that would make output much more specific without having to write a long prompt.

And: the AI output shouldn’t be bulky nor static. Users should be able to granularly iterate or revise little bits of it — e.g. by asking for sources of specific statements, or diverging from one view to another, or manipulating small parts of an image or a video. These refinements should happen not via text prompts, but contextually — acting on the relevant parts of AI outcome.

We can go way beyond a text prompt. Better results come from combining good old-fashioned design patterns such as search, filtering and sorting with AI — to first find relevant and trustworthy sources, and then generate insights from them. That’s a great way to boost accuracy and make AI more relevant to more people.

💎 Design Patterns For AI Interfaces

Prompt UX Patterns, by Sharang Sharma
https://lnkd.in/eCytfAe9

Where should AI sit in your UI?, by Sharang Sharma
https://lnkd.in/dyyMKuU9

AI UX Patterns, by Luke Bennis
https://lnkd.in/dF9AZeKZ

Design Patterns For Building Trust, by If
https://lnkd.in/eEJngtVv

AI Design Patterns Catalogue, by Maggie Appleton
https://lnkd.in/ebAp9Sb8

---

🚀 Fantastic AI Examples:

Elicit (research tables): https://elicit.com
Consensus (confidence levels): https://consensus.app/
Scispace (search + AI): https://scispace.com
v7 Labs (AI auto-fill): https://v7labs.com/
Exa (semantic grid): https://exa.ai
DeepL (translation): https://deepl.com
NotebookLM (scoping): https://notebooklm.google/

[continues in comments]

#ux #ai

Practical insights for better UX • Running “Measure UX” and “Smart Interface Design Patterns” • Founder of SmashingMag • Speaker • Loves writing, checklists and running workshops on UX. 🍣

🔬 How To Measure UX Research Impact (+ PDF) (https://lnkd.in/etNUJEtx), an updated framework to define and measure UX research impact across UX, business, organization, engagement, structure and reach. Wonderful work by Karin den Bouwmeester. 👏🏽

Teams often struggle showing the actual value of research, and it's often very difficult to attribute business impact to initial research initiatives. Impactful research uncovers insights that are rooted in urgent problems and severe bottlenecks.

The higher the urgency, the more visibility research initiatives will have. As Karin suggests, I would always start by exploring signals that something isn’t quite right and requires attention. 

For example:

– Significant drop-offs in the funnel
– Increased support tickets on a specific feature or flow
– Low engagement with a newly launched feature
– 2–4 star reviews citing UX issues
– High abandonment after onboarding
– Teams making assumptions without any data
– Workarounds or shortcuts reported by users
– Insights from sales and customer success teams
– Analytics showing repeated navigation loops

Karin suggests to measure UX research impact on 3 levels: Outcomes, Organizational Influence and Research Practice.

---

🔹 Level 1: Outcomes — What value does research create?

We are exploring the business value, user value and societal value that research delivers. The question is how the work helps reduce risk, increase retention and support user's goals while reducing harm or bias.

Example metrics:
📈 Order value
✅ Task success rate
❌ User errors
♿ Accessibility score

---

🔶 Level 2: Organizational Influence — Is research driving change?

Often research gets stuck due to poor interest or low influence. We study if research findings are picked up and acted upon. If they shape strategy and inform roadmaps, and how engaged are stakeholders when it comes to research.

Example metrics:
🧭 Product changes driven by research
📑 References to research in meetings/docs
📩 Number of research requests
👀 Number of observers in research sessions

---

♦️ Level 3: Research Practice — What are we doing and how?

Here the question is how deeply research is embedded in day-to-day operations and product development cycle. We study how much research is happening, and when, and if it's a driver or an afterthought.

Example metrics:
📊 Ratio discovery research / testing
📆 Studies per quarter/year
📁 Use of research templates

We don’t have to measure everything at once. But we can start by measuring something impactful. We always try to locate bottlenecks with high visibility and high priority first, and focus on them. Even if they are internal and not customer-facing.

It won’t always work, but it might help put UX research into a bright spotlight — and that could be a very good start. And a huge thanks to Karin den Bouwmeester for putting it all together! 🙏🏾 

#ux #research

🥊 Top vs Side Navigation In Complex Products (https://lnkd.in/e54HWryC), with interesting thoughts on which 3-level menu navigation structure works better for a complex product, and how to decide which to use. By Taras Bakusevych.

🤔 On desktop, people often use relatively wide displays.
↳ Limited vertical space, abundance of horizontal space.
✅ Side navigation shows more relevant options at once. 
✅ Top navigation hides some options behind tap/hover.
✅ Filters could work well both in the sidebar and on top.

✅ Side navigation → vertical scanning is easier, faster.
🤔 But: expanded side navigation takes a lot of space.
✅ Collapsible side drawers help make space if needed.
✅ Top navigation eventually runs out of space (“More”).
✅ Side nav works better for many top-level nav items. 

✅ Side nav works better for a tree/folder structures.
✅ If possible, always open/close menus on tap/click.
✅ Hover: use Amazon’s triangle pattern for accuracy. 
🚫 Don’t rely on icon alone: add text labels for icons.
🚫 Don’t rely on hover alone: support tap/click menus.

So how do we decide which option works best for a given project? Typically websites rely on top navigation, while applications often use collapsible layers of side navigation. But personally, I would ask 3 simple questions: 

1. How much space do we need to display content well?
2. How many navigation options do we have on top level?
3. What tasks do users perform in the product most?

If we will be displaying a dashboard with customizable widgets, or a map, or a complex data grid with dozens of columns, then we need to either go for a collapsible side drawer, or top navigation. If it's mostly text content, top navigation will work, unless we want to show the siblings of a page in a sidebar. 

But then if users perform only a small number of tasks and rarely navigate between sections, top navigation might work perfectly well. Navigation shouldn’t get in the way of people completing tasks or accessing content.

But if we expect users to explore vastly different views and sections on any given day, we can achieve faster navigation with a side navigation, and allow users to collapse it to make space if necessary.

In a way, every product is like a city. There are “hubs”, flows, features and actions that are very frequently used by different users. These frequent areas of use must be accessible at all times, fast — hiding them behind a “Menu” button doesn’t help anyone.

Ultimately, in my experience, both options could work fairly well. It’s really a matter of good IA work and showing what matters when users actually need it. If we fail at both, we might have a fast and seemingly “obvious” navigation that only helps users fail faster.

(Useful resources in comments ↓)

Principal UX Designer | AI-Powered Product Design & Strategy | DesignOps & Team Leadership

✍️ Golden Rules For UX Writing. With practical guidelines on how to avoid confusion and help people understand better ↓

✅ Always write with respect, for people as smart as you. 
✅ Write mobile-first: short, plain language, bite-sized chunks.
✅ Decide what to say, then find the shortest way to say it.
🚫 Avoid long buttons: use 2–4 words, max. 25 characters.
🚫 Avoid long links: at least 8 chars, max. 8 words (55 chars).
 
✅ Use sentence case by default, Title Case only for headings.
✅ Use progress anchors for long forms: “Next: Payment details”.
🚫 Don’t use placeholders as replacement for labels or hints.
🚫 Don’t hide critical details or guidelines behind a tooltip.
🚫 Don’t hide frequently used filters/nav behind a button.

✅ Front-load keywords in headings and text summary.
✅ Make people hunt for destructive buttons to avoid mistakes.
✅ Leave room for translation. Expect your text to grow by 40%.
🚫 Avoid more than 20 words/sentence, 50 words/paragraph.
🚫 Never mix 2+ type treatments (color, bold, indents, italic).

Good writing is an incredible opportunity. Not only to help people get work done faster and with confidence, but also to build a strong and lasting relationships. To be charming when users get started. To help without a fuss when things go wrong. To show respect and sincerity, but also understanding and care when it’s needed.

One little technique that has helped me is to imagine a real person speaking to the customer before I choose words to communicate something to them.

I think about how they speak — from voice and tone to speed and intonation. How casual or formal they are dressed. What their personality is. And, most importantly, what traits, values, beliefs and principles they uphold. A product then needs to match that personality, and adapt tone based on user’s context.

Once we have it, we write down all the questions users might have. We re-arrange them in order of importance and severity. We decide what to say, and find the shortest way to say it. And then we test, by reading out a piece of content loud. And if it doesn’t sound right, it doesn’t read right either. 

✤ Content Design in Design Systems

Adobe Spectrum: https://lnkd.in/eM6YWZWU
Atlassian: https://lnkd.in/eGpzQqm4
Amplitude: https://lnkd.in/eaB85T7n 👍
DHL: https://lnkd.in/eF494fkT 👍
Duolingo: https://lnkd.in/egCSX9At
Girlguiding: https://lnkd.in/eZ8zMyC3 👍
Gov.uk: https://lnkd.in/ekRadXad
Intuit: https://lnkd.in/eGyBUrZ2 👍
JSTOR: https://lnkd.in/eAnyrtcu 👍
MetLife: https://lnkd.in/evVE8sqf
Progressive’s: https://lnkd.in/evx_8bzY 👍
Shopify: https://lnkd.in/eAKgEHNW
Zendesk: https://lnkd.in/euxijT5m 👍
Wise: https://lnkd.in/eWk-Mvf9

✤ Books

– Strategic Writing for UX, by Torrey Podmajersky
– Content Design, by Sarah Winters
– Nicely Said, by Nicole Fenton, Kate Kiefer Lee
– Everybody Writes, by Ann Handley
– Conversational Design by Erika Hall
– Writing Is Designing, by Michael Metts, Andy Welfle ✏️

[continues in comments ↓ ]

🎩 “How We Designed a Multi-Brand Design System” (https://lnkd.in/erc3mA4i), a fantastic case study by Ness Grixti on the pains of maintaining multiple systems, how to make a design system work seamlessly across multiple brands — with a multi-system token infrastructure in Figma, applied everywhere.

Most teams eventually go through a “consolidation” effort — and that’s where struggles emerge as different systems have slightly different needs. Wise team created a system where the entire library is controlled by a top brand layer, which contained nested libraries for type, spacing and colors.

I love Wise's approach of 1 system with 2 tracks to avoid duplications — typography and spacing on one track, and color on the other. Both pulled from shared primitives and brought together in a single Global Token library that houses all brands. As a result, designers can manage responsive type, spacing and interaction states across all color themes from one place.

🧱 Raw values core → for color, type, spacing without brand associations
🧅 Layered structure → primitives, scaling/device, sentiment, brands
🌈 Sentiment themes → for alerts, neutral, warning, success, proposition
📏 Accessible dynamic scaling → for type and spacing values
📦 Nested variables → scaling lives within responsive device library
♻️ Avoiding token explosion → tokens shared across brands + diffs

If you'd like to dive deeper, I highly recommend to take a look at the Multi-Brand Design System Figma Kit (https://lnkd.in/eShgnPnW) by Pavel Kiselev, a practical guide and Figma kit on how to set up a design system in Figma for multiple brands, platforms or products — with full control over colors, typography and visual styles.

And huge kudos to Ness Grixti (along with colleagues Henrique Gusso and Willem Purdy and the wonderful Wise team) for sharing the challenges, the failures and successes for all of us to learn from! 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾

#ux #design

How we designed a multi-brand design system

🧔🏽‍♂️ Design Patterns For AI Chat Interfaces. With practical guidelines on how to designing more useful, and less annoying AI chat ↓

🚫 Nothing erodes trust more than disguised AI.
🤔 Often users dismiss AI chats almost instinctively. 
✅ Users expect an option to “speak to human”.
✅ Be transparent about who users speak to.
✅ Wait for users to end a chat on their terms. 

✅ Use separate avatars for AI bot and humans.
✅ Context changes over time: collapse older chats.
✅ Support pinning chats + highlight useful bits.
✅ Let users adjust granularity of reasoning traces.
✅ Allow users to restore iterations of canvases.

✅ Allow users to collapse chat without ending it.
✅ For long, complex tasks → full page screen.
✅ For multi-tasking, co-creation → side panel.
✅ For short, momentary tasks → chat widget.
✅ On mobile, full page AI chat works best. 

As many product teams race to not fall behind AI features in their products, we see AI chat interfaces becoming almost second nature every time AI initiative is launched. However, people have difficulty articulating intent in a chat, and good old UI controls — buttons, presets, radio buttons could help there.

Nothing erodes trust more than an AI that desperately pretend to be a human. We might not be able to distinguish AI-generated content from human-crafted content, but human conversations differ significantly from AI chats — and there people spot the difference almost immediately:

– People talk in quick bursts of text → AI is verbose (by default).
– People can respond with 1–2 words → AI respond with sentences.
– People never receive unfinished text → AI “streams” output live.
– Messages can arrive unprompted → AI responds to prompts.
– People have strong opinions → AI is apologetic, overcorrects itself

Knowing that AI is on the other side isn’t really a problem — it’s what is required to build trust. And when people realize they talk to a chatbot, they are more direct, use “keyword” language, and avoid politeness markers. But when service does provide access to humans, it shows that company cares about customers.

Human answer might not be accurate or swift, but it builds a much stronger relationship with the brand, especially when things go unexpected ways.

💎 Useful resources:

Visa Design System: Chat UI Patterns
https://lnkd.in/ewVjfr86

The Quest For Usable AI, by Michael Gower
https://lnkd.in/eeq83btK

Usable Chat Interfaces to AI Models, by Luke Wroblewski
https://lnkd.in/d-Ssb5G7

UX Guidelines For Chat UX, by Raluca Budiu
https://lnkd.in/e7-RErGE

#ux #design

Senior Consultant in Accessibility at IBM

Product & Design

Senior Director of Data Strategy at Nielsen Norman Group

🔮 Four Levels Of Customer Understanding (https://lnkd.in/eJFghrDe), how to think of underlying reasons for user behavior, hidden motivations, root causes and the different layers of reality that are often overlooked in product design — from what people say to what they think or feel to what they actually do to reasons why they do it. By Hannah Shamji and Helio.

🤔 What people do, say, think and feel are often different.
🚫 Assumptions and hunches rely on most obvious reasons.
✅ But most obvious reasons rarely paint the full picture.
✅ People don’t always cancel because they actually want to.
✅ Pricing is never the only reason why people don’t buy.

🤔 Customers often don’t realize why they made a decision.
✅ We built understanding by studying 4 levels of reality.
✅ Level 1: “What we tell others”, unreliable, opinions, hearsay.
✅ Level 2: “What we tell ourselves”, interviews, debrief, surveys.
✅ Level 3: “What we actually do”, task analysis, observation.
✅ Level 4: “Why we do it”, task walkthroughs, context, interviews. 

Level 1 is most unreliable, and barely brings good insights. Often people imagine and say things that don’t necessarily represent real reasons for their behavior. They rather explain behavior through the lens of how a customer perceives it, or wants it to be perceived.

The real magic happens on higher levels. But they require right questions, interviews and observations and, most importantly, user’s trust. So ask people to walk you through their daily routine. Explain to you where your product fits in their life. Observe how they complete their tasks in their environment.

Study where they lose time, repeat actions, hover but don’t click, or click and then go back. Don’t ask them to speak loudly. Pay attention to when they scratch their neck, or raise their eyebrows. Smile, or laugh, or look worried.

Many companies speak about “validation”. Yet validation often means accepting and confirming existing assumptions. As Hannah Shamji writes, instead, we should diagnose existing behavior without any preconceived notions or affiliations. So don’t validate — research instead.

The hardest part is understanding customer’s real motivations — and the only way to get there is by building a sincere, honest and trustworthy relationship. A relationship that feels right. One that customers can wholeheartedly engage in. Once your customers really care and want to help, getting to real understanding will be much, much easier.

(Leaving useful resources in the comments below due to LinkedIn link policy ↓)

Therapist and Consumer Psychology Researcher. Cornell & Brown alum.

🧭 How To Measure The Impact Of Features (https://lnkd.in/eCkjrJR6), a practical reminder by Adrian Raudaschl on how to evaluate features and answer the crucial question, “What does a good outcome for my feature look like?”.

Adrian suggests to measure 4 key metrics to measure which features are performing well, and which aren’t:

👩🏻‍🦱 Feature target audience (%)
We quantify the target audience by exploring what percentage of all product’s users have this specific problem that a feature aims to solve. We can approximate the target audience by studying existing or similar features that try to solve similar problems.

🗂 Feature adoption (%)
We track how many users actually engage successfully with a feature over a specific time period. High feature adoption suggests that the problem was severe and impactful. Low adoption suggests the problem has simple workarounds.

🗃️ Feature retention (%)
We study how many users who engaged with the feature actually returned to it and keep re-using it in their sessions. Usually it’s a strong signal for meaningful impact. However, high retention alone doesn’t say how successful people are in task completion.

If a feature has >50% retention across users, we can be quite confident you have a feature of high strategic importance. A 25–35% retention rate is likely of medium strategic significance, and retention of 10 -20% is of low strategic importance.

❤️ Satisfaction rate (CES)
We run research to understand how easy it was for users to solve their problem after they used our feature. We could use a Customer-Effort-Score survey, and ask only retained users to understand if there are any hidden problems with retention.

🎯 Bonus: Task Completion (%)
Personally, I would always additionally measure task completion rates for most critical tasks and flows that users have to perform. We would identify 10–12 tasks, and track how users actually complete them — along with accuracy and completion times.

One thing that’s worth emphasizing — as Adrian points out — is that low adoption doesn’t necessarily mean failure. It might be that a feature wasn’t surfaced well enough in user journeys or that we over-scoped the target population.

And once we start measuring, we can track and map overperforming features, project feature, core features and liability features across 4 quadrants in a 2×2 matrix. And that could be a great conversation starter to discuss where the product UX should move next.

A great framework to keep in mind to prioritize and track performance of features, and evolve product over time. 

Thanks for putting it together, Adrian Raudaschl (and if you are interested in metrics, I highly recommend you to follow Adrian for practical and useful guides all around just that)! 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾

#ux #design

🎯 Right-to-Left Thinking in UX. Why starting from the future goal instead of current state often brings better outcomes and higher success rates ↓

Design never happens in isolation. It’s a journey to move from the current state to a better future state. And typically it requires planning — mapping the messy, complex reality into the problem space, then explore the solution space, and then orchestrating delivery with all its fine nuances and details.

Yet instead of finding real problems to solve, many companies “validate” already signed-off solutions by finding problems that justify them. As a result, many of us often see only what is in front of us — small inconsistencies, big ideas, huge business initiatives and weak assumptions.

It takes a lot of grit to change that way of working in organizations. But you can frame your work around the desired outcome to increase a chance of success. It also produces more meaningful and noticeable impact — for both users and the business.

One way to do that is by applying right-to-left (R-L) thinking (also called “backcasting”) to your work:

🚩 Right-to-left → Start from the goal, then move backwards to start.
🎯 Expose complexity → Map a path that maximizes chance of success.
🧱 Map what happens → Known success moments, frequent blockers.
🪜 One step at a time → Always focus on immediate previous step.
❓ Mark unknowns → Flag strong assumptions for research to-do.
🚀 Prioritize work → Choose key blockers/successes to work on next.

In practice, Right-to-Left thinking often performs better:

✅ The decisions are always purpose-driven and focused
✅ The end goal is always fixed and non-negotiable
✅ We prioritize purpose, rather than the process
✅ We expose gaps, risks, limitations, constraints early

✅ We move from tactical work to strategic work
✅ We map what actually MUST happen for success 
✅ We maximize the chances of successful outcomes
✅ We avoid tasks that are urgent but not strategically important

Journey maps often represent ideal user journeys that people should take, but rarely do in practice. There is a lot of complexity and chaos that they hide — from back-and-forth to external factors that influence their decisions. 

Often many things must happen at the same time, coming all at once, and working together towards the shared goal. The beginning must be something that we can control. And the goal should be ambitious but feasible. Along with it, we often also map risks, blockers, opportunities and unknowns.

In other words, R-L thinking makes us stop and think very carefully about the right path we must take towards a shared goal. We don’t brainstorm ideas — we think critically. And we don’t focus on a thousand of details that might matter short-term, but won’t make a difference at scale. And that’s a big win for everyone.

#ux #design

⛺🪵🔥 Effective Story Structures For Storytelling, an incredible (!) overview of story structures for different purposes — from winning hearts and minds to planting a seed in people’s minds, in digital design or in business presentations. Neatly put together all in one single place by Jeremy Connell-Waite. 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾

🗺️ 50" x 50" Hi-Res Wallchart (PDF)
https://lnkd.in/eUZmRfYm

📖 15-pages document (PDF with each structure on a seperate page)
https://lnkd.in/dzdMsmvp

Nine Principles of Better Stories (PDF)
https://lnkd.in/eFQKm-8q

The Art Of The One Pager (132 pages, 415MB)
https://lnkd.in/euaj9Zc7

Free Storytelling Masterclass (+ PDFs)
https://lnkd.in/ehG-8376

Over the years, I've been falling into the trap of relying on the same structures over and over again, just because I felt very comfortable with it. But over time, it comes across as being a bit stale — and if not tailored to an audience, it becomes less effective and perhaps even slightly confusing to the audience.

There are many ways to tell a story. But depending on the amount of time people have, or the expectations they have, or the purpose of the meeting at hand, different structures could apply better or worse. A fantastic reminder and reference to keep nearby.

Thanks Jeremy Connell-Waite (and highly recommend to follow for anything all around storytelling as well!).

✤ Useful resources

Extensive Storytelling Framework: Pillars of Story Structure (free PDF), by Peter von Stackelberg
https://lnkd.in/eh8yVsTm

Strategic Storytelling for Designers, by Saielle DaSilva
https://lnkd.in/e3Bb9X7C

How To Make Stakeholders Happy With Everyday Storytelling, by Ryan Bigge
https://lnkd.in/eRj2TidZ

Periodic Table of Storytelling, by James Harris
https://lnkd.in/d9Sz92Sq

Storytelling PDF Worksheets, by Steve Rawling
https://lnkd.in/eSN25dhv

A Guide to Becoming a More Effective Storyteller, by IDEO
https://lnkd.in/eCERYDRC

Pixar’s Rules of Storytelling In UX
https://lnkd.in/evGc4jF5

Pixar The Art Of Storytelling (Free Course), by Khan Academy
https://lnkd.in/eKU_TvdA

Free UX Storytelling Guide, by Jeff White
https://lnkd.in/eN6M44xB

Better UX Storytelling, by Mayya Azarova, Ph.D.
https://lnkd.in/efNm-7gV

How To Use Storytelling In UX, by Marli Mesibov
https://lnkd.in/eqmMgnwY

Five Steps To Design With Powerful Storytelling, by Chiara Aliotta
https://lnkd.in/erHB9WDH

Inclusive Customer Experiences With Storytelling (Miro), by Sandra Heinzen
https://lnkd.in/e8UPkerT

UX Storyboarding: Guides and Templates, by yours truly
https://lnkd.in/eSNfHeTJ

Story Arcs For Effective Storytelling (PDF)

🌧️ How To Consolidate Design Systems (https://lnkd.in/ehZd-UGQ), a practical guide with strategies, potential benefits and quick wins for merging existing design systems. Shared by Evgeny Khoroshilov, heavily inspired by Nathan Curtis's thorough article on Consolidating Design System (https://lnkd.in/dCZHZikx).

🚫 In many companies, not every design system is the same. 
✅ Design teams have different needs, budgets, size, skills.
✅ They often see “design system” projects very differently.
✅ It could be a style guide, UI kit, product, process or service.
✅ Audit what kinds of “design systems” your company has.

✅ A: Keep all systems as is, but add a shared practices layer.
🤔 Each brand maintains its main focus, but duplication is likely.
↳ Set up community of practice without changing structure.
↳ Useful when teams have very different needs and priorities.

✅ B: Identify shared practices and move them into subsystems.
🤔 Priorities might be misaligned, risk of poor collaboration.
↳ Involve all teams to shape subsystem for efficiency gains.
↳ Helpful when shared practices are duplicated or differ a bit.

✅ C: Slowly retire old systems and launch a shiny new one.
🤔 Very expensive, with a risk of disruption and poor adoption.
↳ Run a pilot to test and refine, involving key stakeholders.
↳ Good choice with a legacy system that’s falling apart.

✅ D: One system stays and others gradually retire.
🤔 Streamlines operations, but requires re-training + retooling.
↳ Respect needs and work by other teams, and migrate them. 
↳ Helpful if one system can be extended to meet all needs.

Often the main reason for consolidation of design systems is the need of consistency. It is of course important, but sometimes the cost of enforcing consistency might be very high, disrupting everything from workflows and tooling to culture and team spirit.

Consistency for the sake of consistency is a dangerous path to take. There are exceptions, "snowflake" scenarios and specific use cases that often require a particular level of complexity that can’t be avoided or reduced — it must match the complexity of decisions in real life.

I always try to keep in mind that in the end a design system is just a product that we use to build the actual product across teams and brands. It doesn't have to be perfect or comprehensive. It must be useful and easy to use.

So consolidate design systems if you must, but always involve and support teams behind them as much as you can — just to make sure no core functionality is left behind, and that the team has a clear path and goals to move forward.

[Useful resources in the comments due to LinkedIn linking rules ↓]

#ux #DesignSystems

Design System Tech Lead | Web Accessibility, Design Systems

Design system architect

George George

🚀 Finally! After so many years, I’m very happy to update “How To Measure UX and Design Impact” (https://measure-ux.com), my practical guide for designers and managers on how to set up and track design success in your company — with UX scorecards, UX metrics, the entire workflow and Design KPI trees. Now with 25 chapters (8h video), templates, and updated annually.

🍰 25 chapters, with new videos added yearly
🍎 Free preview, examples, templates, workflows
🍧 Add-on: live UX training, running 2× a year
🍿 No subscription: get once, access forever
🎟️ Use the code LINKEDIN to get 15% off today
🚀 Jump to details → https://measure-ux.com

In many companies, designers are perceived as disruptors, rather than enablers. Designers challenge established ways of working. They ask a lot of questions — much needed ones but also uncomfortable ones. They focus “too much” on user needs, pushing revenue projections back, often with long-winded commitment to testing and research and planning and scoping.

Almost every department in almost every company has their own clearly defined objectives, metrics and KPIs. In fact, most departments — from finance to marketing to HR to sales — are remarkably good at visualizing their impact and making it visible throughout the entire organization.

But as designers, we rarely have a set of established Design KPIs that we report to senior management. We don’t have a clear definition of design success. And we rarely measure the impact of our work once it’s launched. So it’s not surprising that most parts of the business barely know what we actually do all day long.

Business wants results. It also wants to do more of what has worked in the past. But it doesn’t want to be disrupted — it wants to disrupt. It wants to reduce Time To Market and minimize expenses; increase revenue and existing business, find new markets. This requires fast delivery and good execution.

And that’s what we are often supposed to be — good “executors”. Or to put differently, “pixel pushers”.

Over years, I’ve been searching for a way to change that. This brought me to Design KPIs and UX scorecards, and a workflow to translate business goals into actionable and measurable design initiatives. I had to find a way to explain, visualize and track that incredible impact that designers have on all parts of business — from revenue to loyalty to support to delivery.

The results of that journey are now public in the video course: “How To Measure UX and Design Impact” (https://measure-ux.com) — a practical guide for designers, researchers and UX leads to measure and visualize UX impact on business. I hope you’ll find it useful.

I’ve tried my best to keep the pricing affordable. But if it’s still a bit too expensive, send me a message and I’ll do my best to make it work. 👏🏽

♻️ Please share with your friends and colleagues if possible. And thank you so much for your incredibly kind and warm support, everyone! 🙏 🙏🏼 🙏🏿

#ux #design

measure-ux.com

UX Metrics and Design KPIs (8h video + live UX training) – A Practical Guide To UX Metrics & Design KPIs

💎 Accessible AI-Focused Enterprise Design System (+ Figma Kits) (https://lnkd.in/eVDirtxu), the Salesforce design system, with detailed accessibility guidelines for designers and engineers — for complex tables, menus, tree grids, forms, navigation and status updates.

Docs: https://lnkd.in/eVDirtxu
Figma kits: https://lnkd.in/e_8aVJtS

With close attention to agentic AI, data visualization, record lists, localization, rules, filters and logic out of the box. Fantastic effort by the wonderful Salesforce team. 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾 

✤ More Enterprise Design Systems:

Aria Spectrum: https://lnkd.in/eN9c_jdd 👍
Aarhus University: https://delphinus.au.dk/ 👍
AXA: https://lnkd.in/efpasXYe
DHL: https://lnkd.in/eWUH8auh 👍
DyDx: https://lnkd.in/eUBScaHp 👍
Ethr: https://lnkd.in/ehXufMvs 👍
Enterprise DS: https://lnkd.in/eVQh4C5x 👍
EPAM: https://lnkd.in/eCC8QzqZ
Goldman Sachs: https://www.figma.com/@gs 👍
Gusto: https://lnkd.in/ePR_rNbn 👍
MetLife: https://lnkd.in/ezJMWRHN 👍
Nordhealth: https://nordhealth.design 👍
NRK: https://lnkd.in/eBdwYbQB 👍
Queensland Health: https://lnkd.in/eQEJWQDd 👍
SAP: https://www.figma.com/@sap
ServiceNow: https://lnkd.in/ehPcZfuA 👍
Semrush: https://lnkd.in/dnDRtG32
SRP Medical: https://lnkd.in/eTpTMamt
Visa: https://design.visa.com 👍
Workday: https://lnkd.in/eYwJ9eD4

---

✤ Useful resources on Inclusive UX:

Accessibility: https://lnkd.in/ekq2q7Zb
ADHD: https://lnkd.in/eHrF7Hqb
Autism: https://lnkd.in/ekujAteM
Children: https://lnkd.in/eTSsuxjq
Colorblindness: https://lnkd.in/eqjvPgSZ
Color contrast: https://lnkd.in/ecWS4ue7
Deafness: https://lnkd.in/epeRUMmc
Dyscalculia: https://lnkd.in/e8wyMWp4
Dyslexia: https://lnkd.in/ei9mncR7
Fonts: https://lnkd.in/emEM6ZZj
Gen-Z: https://lnkd.in/efgJtDxW
Left-Handed Users: https://lnkd.in/eWyzRdy5
LGBTQI: https://lnkd.in/eumCiYrk
Mental Health: https://lnkd.in/eEaXjs9x
Neurodivergency: https://lnkd.in/eV-FRBHa
Older Audiences: https://lnkd.in/e54f2FT2
Screen readers: https://lnkd.in/eaviMFkf
Stress: https://lnkd.in/e_5u6fVK
Target sizes: https://lnkd.in/ePuc3mbJ
Teenagers: https://lnkd.in/et3XbUTJ
Templates: https://lnkd.in/ey3ua5b7

And yet again, sincere thanks to our incredible UX community for openly publishing all the insightful kits and guides for everyone to learn from. Thank you for being so kind and generous — now and ever. ❤️ 

Happy designing, everyone! 🎉🥳

#ux #WebAccessibility

Behind The Prompt: The Map of Generative AI (+ PDF) (https://lnkd.in/eedq9XC7), a wonderful reference that shows how intense AI actually is, with actors and resources involved to make it work — but also consequences, tensions and impact of it at scale. Wonderful work by the Barcelonese artist collective Estampa, available in multiple languages to review. Discovered via Patricia Ferreiro. 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾

PDF: https://lnkd.in/ezsi_g8e
Languages: https://lnkd.in/eedq9XC7

AI doesn’t come for free. It often feels like the future is happening in front of our eyes but also silently in the background, and it's not always obvious what exactly must happen for that magical text box to respond back to us. But in the background, there is everything from data cleansing to extreme computing to mining industry to energy consumption.

A useful reference to go through and explore not only how much impact AI has, but also the heavy costs that are associated with it. Too often, these costs are forgotten or overlooked in the world of prevailing AI slop and AI-generated content that has little practical value.

AI can help in automation and finding patterns in areas which are difficult for humans to spot and understand. And often it's a good investment of time and effort and resources — if it's meaningful work that otherwise would take humans ages to get through. And often it’s just barely useful.

I just wish we made the actual costs and impact of AI more obvious and more tangible for people using it.

#ux #ai

🪴 Business Thinking For Designers (free eBooks, email required) (https://lnkd.in/e5qCg8fp), free practical guides to business for designers, with strategies to effectively communicate with stakeholders and techniques that you can put right to work — and design a winning design team strategy. Kindly written and shared by Ryan Rumsey from CDO School.

Design is rarely the central part of a business. Just like many others, typically it’s a satellite that has a significant impact, but often that impact is very difficult to visualize — to defend and explain design decisions, prove their impact and connect design initiatives with a business value.

Personally, I never argue about the role of design and UX. Instead, I try to visualize design work as enabler of business objectives that senior management aims for. That requires us to speak the language of management and understand how to argue about design through the lens of business.

You don’t need an MBA for that though — we just need to better understand the business side, what stakeholders truly care about and how UX fits into the bigger picture of the entire organization.

Additional resources:

🧭 The Strategic Product Designer (Notion hub)
https://lnkd.in/eCf_t2d9

Business Guides for Designers, by Alen Faljic, Franz Emprechtinger, Klara Faljic, Mersi Silec, Maja Zilnik
https://d.mba/guides/

What Actually Happens in Board Rooms, by Reid Hoffman
https://lnkd.in/e5mXtYtd

How To Manage Challenging Stakeholders Without Authority (free eBook)
https://lnkd.in/e6RY6dQB

How to Boost UX in a Company With Low UX Maturity, by yours truly
https://lnkd.in/eeRKiXDk

How To Defend Your Design Decisions, by yours truly
https://lnkd.in/eFKrj_Qr

First 90 Days Plan For Designers, by yours truly
https://lnkd.in/eswDmnan

---

Printed books on business for designers that I can wholeheartedly recommend:

⦿ The Personal MBA, by Josh Kaufman
⦿ The UX Team of One, by Leah Buley, Joe Natoli
⦿ UX Strategy, by Jaime Levy
⦿ The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, by Blair Enns
⦿ The Build, by Tony Fadell
⦿ The Growth Equation, by 👨🏻‍💻 Andy Budd

More personal and very valuable recommendations on plenty of UX books: "Every UX book I recommend and why" (https://lnkd.in/emDpEVVN) by H Locke. Happy reading, everyone!

#ux #books

Business Thinking For Designers (free eBooks)

🔮 Designing Voice UX (Guides + Figma Kits). Practical guidelines to design better voice UX for products that support or rely on audio input ↓

🤔 People avoid voice UIs in public spaces, or for sensitive data.
✅ But do use them with audio assistants, learning apps, in-car UIs.
✅ Good conversations always move forward, not backwards.
🤔 The way we speak is different from the way we write.
🤔 What people say isn’t always what they mean by saying it.

✅ First, we define relevant user stories for the product.
✅ Sketch key use cases, then add detours, then edge cases.
✅ Design VUI personas: tone of voice, words, sentence structure.
✅ Listen to related human conversations, transcribe them.
✅ Write conversation flows for happy and unhappy paths.

✅ Add markers (Finally, Now, Next) to structure the dialogue.
✅ Accessibility: support shaky voices and speech impediments.
✅ Allow users to slow down or speed up output, or rephrase.
✅ Adjust speech patterns, e.g. speaking to children differently. 
🚫 There are no errors or “wrong input” in human interactions.

Designing for voice requires patience and resilience. We need to design for long silences, thinking pauses, thick accents, slangs and contradictions. Because audio output is short, we must always rank and prioritize options. Also, editing or refining conversation turns is hard, so we need to give people time to think. In practice, 8–10s is a good time for people to respond.

Many people have been “burnt” with horrible, poorly designed automated phone systems. If your voice UX comes across even nearly as bad, don’t be surprised by a very low usage or retention rate.

We can’t replicate a long scrollable list in audio, so answers must be short, with max 3 options at a time. Instead of listing more options, ask one direct question and then branch out. Re-prompt or reframe when certainty is low.

Finally,  people choose their voice assistant based on the personality it conveys, and the friendliness it projects. So be deliberate in how you shape the tone, word choice and the melody of the voice. If you don’t, users will do it for you.

Study how your customers speak. How exactly they explain the tasks your product must perform. The closer you get to a personal human interaction, the easier it will be to earn people’s trust.

---

✤ Useful resources:

Voice Principles, by Ben Sauer
https://lnkd.in/eZH6QWxb

Voice UI Design System, by Orange
https://lnkd.in/ezP-9QUu

Designing A Voice Persona, by James Walsh
https://lnkd.in/e3WXaxEC

Voice UI Kit (Figma), by Shadiah Garwell
https://lnkd.in/engsQrar

Conversational UIs (Figma), by ServiceNow
https://lnkd.in/eXYs55qd

Voice UI Guide, by Lars Mäder
https://vui.guide/

[continues in comments below ↓]

🗃️ Designing Better Sorting UX. When and how people sort, with practical UX techniques to help users find what they need, faster ↓

✅ Filtering is a hard boundary that helps users reduce options.
✅ Sorting is a soft boundary that helps users re-arrange options.
✅ Users often need a “comfortable range” of options to find insights.
✅ It often means 20–75 options on desktop, fewer on mobile.
✅ Set up key filters for each category as sort types in that category.

🚫 Alphabetical order is rarely the most useful sorting type.
✅ Default sorting gives users a perception about the entire list.
✅ The first 10–20 items should reflect the diversity of categories.
✅ Category-specific sorting is most valuable and most underutilized.
✅ Keep sorting and filtering close to each other, or merge them.

🚫 Avoid complex abbreviations and technical labels (“DESC/ASC”).
✅ Use a “Sort by” dropdown, “Sort” buttons or "Sort and Filter"-menu.
✅ In data tables and grids, additionally use column sorting.
✅ There, also allow to combine sorting types, ordered by priority.
✅ Use faceted sorting to let users set a relevant area to sort in.
🚫 Don’t hide most popular sorting options behind an icon or overlay.

Sorting labels often focus on generic direction, rather than user’s value, which makes sorting unnecessarily confusing. Instead of “Ratings (high to low)”, use “Best customer ratings” or “Highest ratings”. Instead of “TV display depth: low to high”, use “TVs by thinnest display”.

Usually there is a very strong connection between categories, filters, data columns and sorting. And often it's a good idea to explore how we can reuse active (selected) filters as sorting types. E.g. if a user filters by duration or publishing time, consider sorting by duration or publishing time as well.

Also, if you can, avoid technical abbreviations and wordy labels such as “Descending/Ascending” with “Low to high ↑“ and ”High to low ↓”. And: don’t implement sorting by rating as average from high to low — always mix average rating and the number of ratings. In fact, users strongly prefer higher number of ratings with slightly lower average.

Sorting is often overlooked. Yet it’s a critical feature when users don’t have a hard boundary in mind, or the has low relevance or when they lack domain knowledge. Design custom sorting options for user’s context and you'll be surprised how effective it is in driving users to answers they are looking for.

[Useful resources in the comments ↓]

#ux #sorting

Vehicle Motion Cues, a fantastic design pattern by Apple that helps users manage motion sickness while riding in a moving vehicle — to minimize dizziness and mismatch between what a person sees and what they feel. Discovered via Andrew Hogan.

With Vehicle Motion Cues, animated dots on the edges of the screen represent changes in vehicle motion to help reduce sensory conflict without interfering with the main content. 

If you ever struggled with reading an article or replying to a message in a backseat of a car, with headaches, tiredness or dizziness afterwards, this might be a helpful accessibility feature to turn on whenever needed.

📱 On iPhone, you can turn on "Vehicle Motion Cues" by going to:
Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Show Vehicle Motion Cues
Set "On" (always) or "Automatic" (when vehicle motion is detected).

And please, whenever possible, please make sure that the scrolling behavior maps with the movement on the screen, and avoid parallax — or provide controls for users to turn off, hide, or reduce (not necessarily remove!) motion for people who experience motion sickness. 🙏

Useful resources:

Accessible Motion And How To Do It Right, by Stephanie Cree
https://lnkd.in/e2DbbWgB

Purposeful Animations, by Emil Kowalski
https://lnkd.in/eT953Csy

Your Interactive Makes Me Sick, by Eileen Webb
https://lnkd.in/eAjnkG3k

Designing With Reduced Motion For Motion Sensitivities, by Val Head
https://lnkd.in/esacKtsi

Respecting Users’ Motion Preferences, by Michelle Barker
https://lnkd.in/dZjNwpxR

Accessible Animation and Motion, by web.dev
https://lnkd.in/excvSsQc

A Designer’s Guide to Documenting Accessibility, by Stéphanie Walter
https://lnkd.in/eZRZT4zd

#ux #accessibility

European Accessibility Act (EAA): Why WCAG AA Isn’t Enough (https://lnkd.in/eHXE3YFK), a guide on why meeting WCAG standards alone doesn’t mean that digital products are compliant with EAA, and what EAA covers beyond the usual suspects. Put together by fine folks at Stark.

WCAG guidelines focus on web content accessibility — color contrast, headings, navigation order, focus states, etc. It’s necessary, but not sufficient. The EAA adds requirements that go beyond the UI layer:

1. Interoperability with assistive technology
2. Third-party vendors, tools, services
3. Accessible support and cancellation flows
4. Conformance statements and technical docs
5. End-to-end usability (e.g. across devices, platforms)
6. Full-service accessibility (before, during, after)
7. Information delivery at every stage of use (e.g. emails).

Frankly, it’s very difficult to imagine that an end-to-end accessible experience that covers the points above would emerge with a few accessibility-focused sprints running a few times a year. 

Yet in many organizations, accessibility initiatives are one-off efforts. As the time comes, there is a big effort to make digital products and services compliant, document these efforts and leave it be — until the next round of compliance work. Accessibility is treated as necessary work that must be done every now and again, rather than an ongoing investment and opportunity to reach wider audience.

I love the point that organizations need to operationalize accessibility like they govern privacy and security. It requires people who enable and establish accessibility efforts, track their success and inform product development. It’s easier to achieve when it’s an ongoing effort, and when it involves a diverse group of users in research, design and testing.

Accessibility never happens by accident. There must be a deliberate effort to make products and services more accessible. It doesn’t have to be challenging if it’s considered early. No digital product is neutral. Accessibility is a deliberate decision, and a commitment. Not only does it help everyone; it also shows what a company believes in and values.

And once you do have a commitment, it will be so much easier to retain accessibility, rather than adding it last minute as a crutch — because that’s where it’s way too late to do it right, and way too expensive to make it well.

And yet again, a kind word of support to everyone speaking for and supporting accessibility work, often with a lot of resistance, with very little budget and with a lot of care and persistence — to help people who often need help the most, and add benefits for everybody else. 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾 

Useful resources:

The New European Accessibility Act (EAA), And What It Means For You
https://lnkd.in/dJMuDhmW

[continues in the comments below ↓]

#ux #WebAccessibility

European Accessibility Act: Why WCAG AA Isn't Enough

💎 Goldman Sachs Design System (Figma Kit) (https://www.figma.com/@gs), a fantastic design system with complex grids, large forms, dashboards, filtering, sorting, data tables, data trees, wizards, charts, data visualization — and even a podcast player. Unfortunately discontinued, but after all these years still my go-to reference for complex products.

Patterns & Layouts (Figma): https://lnkd.in/d6Pj69GN
Components (Figma): https://lnkd.in/eVHG_tA7
Foundation (Figma): https://lnkd.in/e4BDxxAU
Docs (archived, partially broken): https://lnkd.in/ejGCUmpv

I’d like to wholeheartedly applaud incredible efforts of the ex-design system team at Goldman Sachs. It’s so rare to find public, open-source systems that are so meticulously thought through, and embed accessibility and usability at their very heart. Thank you! 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾

Other useful complex design systems: 

Aviva: https://lnkd.in/eSp-nsen 👍
Brainly: https://lnkd.in/eFT_A67M
Doctolib: https://lnkd.in/eCg4AXQB 👍
GE Healthcare: https://lnkd.in/e9n2sP4Y 👍
Intuit: https://lnkd.in/eCSpHa_z 👍
Kiwi Orbit (Figma): https://lnkd.in/ewcv4kFP
Metlife: https://lnkd.in/eMSusp4R
NHS (Figma): https://lnkd.in/e8q9iBnH 👍
Neurodiversity: https://lnkd.in/edBzmUT8
Newskit (Figma): https://lnkd.in/eNrXguFm
NordHealth: https://nordhealth.design 👍
Queensland: https://lnkd.in/eiFB3rcF 👍
ServiceNow: https://lnkd.in/ehPcZfuA 👍
SJ Railways: https://lnkd.in/euebkyCy
Telepass: https://lnkd.in/epq_e-dr
Visa: https://design.visa.com 👍
Zendesk (Figma): https://lnkd.in/eiPyJT4G

And thanks to all the designers working behind the scenes, releasing their work for all of us to use and learn from — especially if you work in complex enterprise world with a lot of red lines, tough IP regulations and NDAs! You might not know that, but you help other designers around the world, every day. And for that a huge THANK YOU for your fantastic and often unrecognized work. 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾

#ux #DesignSystems

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