Sketching for UX Newsletter Issue #9 (April 2023)
My favorite design and visual thinking resources I discovered in April
My work
Before sharing my favorites, here are some pieces of my own work:
#1 Live sketchnoting pro tips for designers - Illustrated by my WebExpo 2023
WebExpo is an annual conference for designers, developers and everyone involved in creating digital products and services. This was my third WebExpo, and as always, I created sketchnotes of the talks.
In this article, I answer the question I get frequently in connection with sketchnoting live: “How do you do it?”. And I also share the sketchnotes I created during the conference.
Watch back the Webexpo 2023 talks here.
#2 My second lesson inside 10X
I published my 2nd lesson inside the 10X Designers Community, it is about training your designer eye, more specifically how to collect design inspiration, what you should collect, and why sketching might be useful in this process.
Join me in this learning journey! If you use this link to buy your membership, you can support me! Let me know in a DM either on Twitter or on LinkedIn if you are interested in the membership, I can offer you a discount code that provides 25% off the first month.
#3 Visual Thinkers to follow - my list
I share my favorite design resources on the StartHereDesigner.com website. One section inside the database is about people to follow. I updated the visual thinkers to follow list, now it contains 48 visual practitioners :)
Favorite resources
Here are my highlights of April, 2023:
#1 Maze’s Question Bank for UX research
A database of almost 400 great UX research questions - from discovery to usability testing; covering different scenarios like onboarding and testing landing page effectiveness.
#2 Marc Andrew’s UI design guides
Discover many-many UI/UX Micro Tips and some other topics e.g. using the 8 pt grid system by Marc, author of the Cabana design system.
#3 UI Adrian’s YouTube Channel
Adrian Kuleszo (UI Adrian) has recently launched his YouTube channel, check it out if you want to develop your Figma skills (and your design skills in general). I love his teaching style, and he provides a lot of free Figma templates so that you can put everything into practice right after watching his tutorials.
#4 Accessibility for designer: where do I start?
An epic collection of accessibility resources by Stéphanie Walter. Two resources I especially like from this list is the Giving a damn about accessibility ebook and Accessibility Myths.
#5 Accessible Target Sizes Cheatsheet
Practical guidelines to prevent rage taps and rage clicks with accessible tap targets for icons, links and buttons — on desktop and on mobile written by
Vitaly has recently launched his interface design blog, check it out here!
#6 Looking back on a learning experience with a visual reflection template
A nice visual self-reflection exercise by Eva-Lotta Lamm:
“The template works to reflect on any kind of course, learning experience or even project and I want to share it with you in case you might want to try this method yourself.”
#7 WebExpo 2023 talk recordings
My favorite talks this year:
Designing better authentication UX by Vitaly Friedman
How to save money by fixing forms by Caroline Jarrett
Futuristic UI: How to make users feel like they´re in a sci-fi movie by Filip Hráček
#8 Using dark patterns to overcharge for pizza
If you have been a long time subscriber (I sent out my first newsletter 6 years ago, wow), you know that I love Peter Ramsey’s design walkthroughs. His most recent one is about the dark patterns used by Domino.
Btw. Peter has recently added a new section to the Built for Mars website: UX Bites, let’s see how it’ll evolve in the future, it looks very promising!
UX writing is one of my favorite fields, I collected tons of great examples over the years, and I was very excited to see that Wise included a very inspirational Tone of Voice guidelines in their new design system, highly recommended if you are interested in writing good UX copy!
A browser extension that shows you a selection of handpicked designs in 14 categories. Updated daily, made by Erdem Kirmitci.
A great essay by Alex Murrell, these are my favorite parts:
“I believe that the age of average is the age of opportunity.
When every supermarket aisle looks like a sea of sameness, when every category abides by the same conventions, when every industry has converged on its own singular style, bold brands and courageous companies have the chance to chart a different course. To be different, distinctive and disruptive.
[…] Our visual culture is flatlining and the only cure is creativity.”
+1: a great quote by Alejo Porras to inspire all my visual thinker friends: “I wanted to learn all the languages in the world so I learned to draw, because images speak all languages.” If you are interested in Alejo’s work, check out this Visual Jam Meetup episode: Coach yourself and find your gold: A framework to discover your VISUAL style.
Favorite posts (LinkedIn & Twitter)
#1 Fons Mans’s most popular visual design tutorials
“Level up your Figma visual design skills!” Fons shared his 10 most popular visual design tutorials in this thread.
#2 Animation breakdown by DeeKay
A deep dive into the animation 'Am I Dreaming?'
The Reflect website looks great, and while it is very similar to Linear’s website in some ways, Oğuz added some very interesting parts, and he explains all his design decisions in this Twitter thread.
It’s an awesome feeling that my older sketches are getting noticed by more and more people thanks to design influencers like Nick Babich. He shared my Design Workflow UX Knowledge Base Sketch recently, it’s basically a table of contents for my previous 99 sketches.
Luke Wroblewski is one of my designer heroes, I love his talks, books and articles. Now you can chat with a LukeW bot :)
“[…]is a blog AI engine that has scattered 2336 images, 3420 mins of video and 540K words from UX articles written by Luke Wroblewski, and allows you to have a conversation and pick up Luke’s AI brain on some of the UX challenges, along with videos, images and slide decks.”
My newest UX Knowledge Piece Sketch: Modals
My newest sketch is about using modals in user interfaces. “Modality is a design technique that presents content in a separate, focused mode that prevents interaction with the parent view and requires an explicit action to dismiss.” (Human Interface Guidelines)
Check out my sketch & detailed article here.
Coupon codes for my Udemy courses
Sketching for UX Designers course - 86% off coupon code, €12.99
Be a better designer by understanding development aspects course - 86% off coupon code, €12.99
Thanks for reading my newsletter, I hope you enjoyed it! 💙
Krisztina
P.S.: Have you written or found an interesting design / visual thinking article or other resource lately? Please send me a DM on Twitter! I might feature your resource in the next issue!