Perspectives on emoji, typography, AI-generated art, and more, handpicked by our design team — Hello from the Medium design team! We’re a small and mighty group who shape the features you know well — like the page you’re reading — to help you better share and discover new ideas. This week, we’re taking a break from all our Figma tabs to highlight a few…

The evolution of Growth design over the years and what you can adapt from it to strengthen your product and design skillset. — Like many of us, you may have started your career as a traditional “UX designer”. While this discipline remains powerful, it has since evolved into Product design, with designers taking on even bigger responsibilities. In today’s world, designers must make smart and informed decisions that not only make customers happy…

How letting go of the familiar can help product designers become more creative. — Kids are more imaginative than adults. Not only is this pretty commonly observed, it’s scientifically proven too. In 1968, George Land conducted a longitudinal study where he tested 1600 children’s ability to come up with new and innovative ideas. He initially tested four to five-year-olds and retested them at ten…

When it comes to creating great experiences, company culture is key — In the sprawling suburbs of Chicago, there existed two organizations devoted to making life better for humankind. Each one developed products and provided services intended to improve the health of its customers. But their products were not always widely adopted, their services were seldom used, and they often fell short…

In an industry that touches so many lives, accurate terminology is essential — I’ve worked in UX for the better part of a decade. From now on, I plan to remove the word “user” and any associated terms—like “UX” and “user experience”—from my vocabulary. It’ll take time. I’ll start by trying to avoid using them in conversations at work. I’ll erase them from…

As a designer, you have to pick your battles. This is one worth fighting. — Icons, which may seem like a small part of the digital landscape, reveal larger issues of unconscious bias in tech and beyond. In many instances I can recall, ranging from company presentations to popular apps and websites, the main icons displayed were obviously representative of men. At best, this shows…

Technology makes seemingly inconvenient tasks easier — but at what cost? — In 1926, the last remaining wolves were killed in Yellowstone National Park. It was the outcome of a centuries-long campaign to rid North America of its wolf population. Wolves were viewed as a nuisance. They killed valuable livestock and created a barrier against our drive to conquer the West. Our…

Men dominate the tech sector–so why is it that UX has an abundance of women? — Happy Women’s History Month! Unhappily, the history of women in tech is a story of stolen valor. Before technology gained the prestige the industry enjoys today, the OG computers were women who were incredibly talented with numbers. Ada Lovelace is often credited with the title of the “world’s first computer…

Little hidden gems we love — As you all loved the annual Figma tips and tricks so much, here is a special edition just for prototyping. A summary of some gems I picked up along the way that have helped streamline my workflow and some that made my documentation easier. For this article, I’ve decided to…

Perhaps like you, I naively started out thinking that Google Slides was just a poorly maintained product suffering from some questionable foundational decisions made ages ago that worshipped at the shrine of PowerPoint and which have never since been revisited, but now, after having had to use it so…

How to write clear, helpful copy for when things go wrong — By Marina Posniak & Tamara Hilmes The concept of embracing failure is big in the tech industry. “Fail fast, fail often” is almost an industry mantra. But there’s an everyday type of failure that doesn’t get much attention in the product development process: the humble error message. The error message…