Decluttering in UI design, Jobs-To-Be-Done, Designing a career in AI & more
Sketching for UX Newsletter Issue #17 (Jan, 2024) - my favorite design resources I discovered last month
Hey dear subscriber,
Just one quick note: from now on, you can find a new section in this newsletter: I’m including my favorite AI-related resources from the previous month. You might feel overwhelmed by the content generated around designing for AI, but you might have heard that AI won’t replace designers in general, however, designers who apply AI effectively will replace designers who are not familiar with these new possibilities. (Jakob Nielsen’s article about why you should care about AI.)
✏️ My work
Before sharing my newest sketch and my favorite resources, here are some news concerning my work:
#1 10x Designers Conference
I' have been lucky enough to be in the 10x Designers Conference team, it turned out to be one of my favorite conference experiences ever.
Thanks Fons Mans and the 10x team for this!
My summary posts:
Day 1 (Ioana Teleanu, Darshan Gajara, Erik Kennedy, Tommy Geoco , Bonnie Kate Wolf, Benten Woodring , Gabor Pribék)
Day 2 (Liam McCabe, Ozan Öztaskiran , Olena Subchuk, Joey Banks , Dmitry Novikov, Jason Lopez, Femke Schoonhoven, Pablo Stanley )
#2 WebExpo (Prague, Czechia, May 29-31, 2024)
I have been a social media partner of my favorite conference, WebExpo, and the organizers kindly offered two promo codes for my subscribers:
Use the code “SKETCHING” at the checkout to get 20% discount on a conference ticket
And if you are interested in their premium workshops, here is a 10% discount code: “24SKETCHINGFORUX10” (e.g. Vitaly Friedman 🇺🇦🏳️🌈 ‘s Making complex systems easy to use)
+1: I’m working on my newest article: it is going to be about my favorite design courses (and the reasons for recommending them).
✏️ Decluttering: The most important balancing act in UI design - my new UX Knowledge Piece Sketch
One of my favorite topics in UI design is about creating a good balance in terms of including everything that’s necessary at a given point of a user flow, and at the same time removing parts that are irrelevant or that is just noise.
Check out my sketch & detailed article here soon. (As a newsletter subscriber, you get early access to my newest sketch.)
✏️ Favorite resources
Here are my favorite discoveries of January, 2024:
#1 UX Case Study: AI-Powered Spatial Banking
As a designer working in fintech and banking, I found this case study fascinating. “How can we use this spatial computing opportunity to create the next generation of banking experiences? The UXDA team has spent 1000 hours of work to design its vision of AI-powered spatial banking of the future on the visionOS platform.”
#2 Better Sales Pages with better Typography
I love Oliver Schöndorfer’s work, in his newest article, he shows how better typographic choices can improve a landing page. (Video format)
#3 A Global Design System
Brad Frost introduced his concept of a global design system at the Smashing Conf Design & UX 2023 conference (here is my sketchnote of his talk). Here is his article about this “cause”.
“What if we don’t waste any more human potential on designing yet another date picker, but instead, we create a global design system together, collaboratively?”
#4 How to nail product market fit with clear Jobs-To-Be-Done
The Growth.design team did it again: yet another awesome case study, this time showing what JTBD really means. (Here is my UX Knowledge Base Sketch about the Jobs-To-Be-Done method).
#5 Contrasting Aesthetics
My new Udemy course, How to train your designer eye contains many lessons about how to get inspired by the offline & the digital world around you, how to collect design inspiration and what you should collect. This article is about how contrasting aesthetics might make you stop for a moment, and spark your interest. “But in search for novelty, it can more often than not be found at the intersection of many unrelated disciplines or styles, as one is able to increase their pool of inspiration to remix from. What does the Renaissance mixed with analog technology look like?”
#6 Indicators, Validations, and Notifications: Pick the Correct Communication Option
One of my favorite topics in interaction design is providing meaningful feedback to the user (my UX Knowledge Piece Sketch about it). This article explores use cases for each of these patterns (indicators, validations, notifications).
#7 Designing better target sizes
I really appreciate exhaustive design guides, this interactive article by Ahmad Shadeed is a resource I’ll surely recommend a lot in the future. “If an action has a small target size, it will be harder for the user to click, or they might click an adjacent action element by mistake.”
#8 The 9 Principles of Better Stories
Storytelling is an essential skill for designers (my sketch about it), this easy-to-digest guide explores what makes stories better, and you can even download a poster that you can always use as a reminder :)
#9 In Praise of Buttons – Part One
Signifiers (and affordances) is a topic I really like (yes, I have a sketch about this, too). This piece by by Niko Kitsakis explains why we need buttons, and why you should apply established design patterns. “But if you are going to implement a design element that works like a button, it should look like one too.”
#10 Sketchplanations book
I’ve been a long time fan of Jono Hey, author of the Sketchplanations sketches. Now his little drawings (130+) are available in a book! If you haven’t explored these sketches before, here is a great starting point: sketchplanations about cognitive biases. (Btw. I have been working on a coffee table book format of my UX Knowledge Base Sketches, please let me know if you have any advice :) ).
+1 Product Disrupt by Darshan Gajara
I have discovered Product Disrupt a long time ago (in fact, it was one of my inspirations for the Start Here, Designer design resource database). At the 10x Design Conference, Darshan gave a talk about the importance of side projects: his advice is that launch your own side project, you never know where it'll lead you! “Do you or your friends have problems to solve? Start there!” Product Disrupt has brought many great things to Darshan’s life, if you haven’t done already, make sure to check it out, you’ll find one of the best curation work of our design industry.
✨ Favorite AI-related resources
Explore UI patterns for AI workflows: a growing library of 100+ image and video teardowns of cutting-edge AI interfaces
Stuff we figured out about AI in 2023: This collection is a great starting point if you want to start exploring the world of designing for AI.
Designing a career in AI with Ioana Teleanu: Believe me, this conversation between Ioana Teleanu and Hang Xu is epic, make sure to listen to it!
✏️ Favorite posts [LinkedIn & Twitter (X)]
1. The Dare to Share movement by Benten Woodring
Dare to Share is a challenge about showing your work and asking for feedback: “a challenge to post work every week for the year of 2024”. It has started out as a movement on X (Twitter), now it has a separate website and a dedicated X community.
Join this Design & Thrive space on Saturday to learn more about it.
2. 10 Paradoxes that changed my life
A great summary by Felix Lee.
3. Evernote before-after
Ridd ‘s analysis of Evernote’s recent redesign.
4. A personal post by Adrian Kuleszo
Adrian took a break from social media, and he had a serious reason for that. I believe that he sets a great example by sharing his personal struggles.
5. 58 rules for beautiful UI design critiqued by Stéphanie’s Substack
I very much appreciate Taras Bakusevych’s new article, there is so much wisdom included in it. But I also appreciate that Stéphanie added her thoughts on some of the rules. It’s a great reminder for all of us: design resources, articles are good starting points, but we should also practice critical thinking.
✏️ Coupon codes for my Udemy courses & other deals
Udemy courses
My NEW course: How to train your designer eye - €12.99
Sketching for UX Designers course - €12.99
Be a better designer by understanding development aspects course - €12.99
My (pay-what-you-want) books
Other deals
Being part of the 10x Designers Community has been one of the best experiences in my professional life as a designer. Join me on this learning journey, let’s grow together! (Sale: $99 instead of $129 for 3 months)
As you know, I find collecting and analyzing design inspiration a very important skill, and I became an advocate of Mobbin, join with my link to support me with a couple of dollars, I’d really appreciate it!
The Ultimate UI Design Mastery Bundle is an epic starting point if you want to become a UI designer. I attended their Advanced Figma course, so I experienced their teaching style myself. Again, if you join via my link, you’ll support my work!
Pip Decks: sets of oversized, beautifully designed cards that’ll help you become a better design professional in many areas, like storytelling and workshop facilitation.
Thanks for reading my newsletter, I hope you enjoyed it! 💙
Krisztina
Thanks for the shout, Krisztina!