🍌 Banana Testing, Neue Academy, Product Design Psychology & more
Sketching for UX Newsletter Issue #43 — favorite design resources I discovered last month (June, 2026)
Hey dear subscriber,
This issue is about
The newest sketch: Banana Testing - a content testing technique
10 + 2 design resources I loved the most in June
What I have been up to: joining Neue Academy and teaching at UI Academy
👩🎓Joining Neue Academy by Niccoló Miranda and Josh Loh
I joined the beta of Neue Academy as a founding member. I have been part of many learning platforms and communities before, and I couldn’t be more excited about this one. “We are a living academy: a place where the curriculum is built from a real development perspective, where members ship real work, and where the distance between learning something and using it is measured in hours, not months.” You can join the waitlist here.
👩🏻🏫Teaching at UI Academy
At UI Academy, I teach about usability testing and other testing techniques (like first impression testing, card sorting and tree testing), and I’ll be giving a lecture on AI design patterns in some weeks.
✏️ Banana Testing - a content testing technique
Banana testing means “hiding” every key label on a screen by replacing each button, link, and user action with the word “Banana”, then asking people what each one does. The technique was popularized by Vitaly Friedman as a lightweight content-testing method.
As always, I’m going to publish a more detailed article, you’ll find it here soon.
✏️ Favorite resources
Here are my favorite discoveries of June, 2026:
#1 Product Design Psychology by Wouter de Bres
An awesome free book by a psychologist turned product designer & founder: “Each chapter takes one finding from psychological research, explains what it means in plain language, and what it means the next time you open a design file.”
#2 I Taught Children for Years. I Didn’t Know I Was Learning UX Writing. by Grazia Tarantino
”Good UX writing answers an implicit question before the user even thinks to ask it: who does what, when, and with what result. That doesn’t mean using fewer words or a simpler vocabulary. This process asks for precision so that interpretation becomes unnecessary.”
#3 Interfaces - The Design Engineering Magazine by Jakub Krehel
”Interfaces is where I share everything I know and continue to learn about building great interfaces. I cover a variety of topics from animation and typography to layout, color and everything else that is a part of building a great interface.”
3 free issues: Details that make interfaces feel better, How I use shared layout animations, Understanding gradients
One more article about small UI details I liked: Every Frame Perfect by Nikita Prokopov
#4 Animation Vocabulary by Emil Kowalski
”A glossary of common animation patterns taught in the course. Use these names to describe what you want when prompting an AI.”
Another useful glossary I found recently: Words of Type Encyclopedia by Lisa Huang
#5 La Carte Blanche: A Project Definition Framework to Avoid Chaos by Stéphanie Walter
”La Carte Blanche is a small A6 project definition card that you can print. Or fill directly as a PDF. This is based on sentence completion type of surveys. We give people 6 sentence starters, and they have to fill the blanks. Each one forces you, your client, and stakeholders to define specific aspects of your project.”
#6 From Olivetti to Instagram: a short history of modern brand design by Katharina Sussek and Jens Müller
”In an excerpt from Taschen’s The Elements of Brand Design, Katharina Sussek and Jens Müller chart the genesis and evolution of modern branding and visual identities, from the 19th century to how we experience them today.”
The Elements of Brand Design book
#7 The Layers of AI experience - Designing beneath the surface by Emily Campbell
”Spare me the “design is dead” takes. Design is more important than ever. However, the form of our roles and work is evolving, just as it has before, to meet the new challenges and opportunities presented by our changing medium.”
#8 Transitions.dev by Jakub Antalik
Collection of the most essential UI transitions for web apps.
#9 The future is low-tech: lessons from the early 2000s ft. Jésabel DC | Config 2026 by Jésabel DC
”We’ll rewind to the early 2000s—when tech was low-tech, playful and non-extractive. Think: loading bars, Tamagotchis and RollerCoaster Tycoon in a cereal box. This talk explores calm, nervous-system-friendly design: attention regulation, slowness as a feature, autonomy-first mechanics, real-world interaction and gentle feedback loops.”
#10 Daily Designer by Arun Venkatesan
“Every day, I’ll post a thought-provoking quote from a designer I admire.”
Read about the idea & the visual details (like the color system)
+1 The Virtual OS Museum by Andrew Warkentin
1700+ pre-installed operating systems, ready to run.
+2 The Last Museum
Search across 5,843,965 artworks
🔥 Deals & recommended products
My courses on Udemy
My free (pay-what-you-want) books
Recommended design courses
Supercharge Design All access by Andrija Prelec
Master Gorgeous UI Design Course by Pablo Stanley & his team
Figma Academy by Ridd (use the code SKETCHINGFORUX to get $100 off)
Other deals
Mobbin is an essential part of my toolset, it is a growing library of 1,428 apps, 621,500+ screens. Join with my link to support me with a couple of dollars, I’d really appreciate it!
☕ You can also support me by buying a coffee on ko-fi.com.
Thanks for reading my newsletter, I hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know if you have any feedback!
Krisztina
Thank you so much for including my Config talk, Krisztina!
Design has sooo much influence over our lived experience. It’s not just about what a product allows us to do, but what kind of relationship it creates with our attention, our time and our lives. I’m so glad this resonated! ✨