Snappy Gradients and Systemic Thinking–Weekly Links
Every week, we compile a list of 5 great articles — one for every work day of the week. Want to suggest a post for this series? Let us know!
Monday: Oh Snap!
Let’s start with some good, old-fashioned interaction design. And by old-fashioned, I mean something from 12 years ago, when Windows 7 came out. One of it’s coolest productivity features was Aero Snap, which let you arrange windows on the screen more quickly. In this deep dive article, Stephan Hoefnagels walks us through the thinking that went into this feature in great detail.
By the way: if you want a similar feature on the Mac, I can recommend the Rectangle app.
Tuesday: Systems for People
While design systems have grown out of asset libraries, they have since become full-blown workflow management systems. And as with any system used by humans, usability is an important factor in how effective they will be. In this post, current and former members of the Lyft UX team give us a nice overview of how all the components of their design system play together.
Wednesday: Accessible From The Start
If you ignore a problem for too long, it becomes much harder to fix. This isn’t just true for yesterday’s dishes that you still haven’t cleaned up, but also for accessibility in products. Lisha Dai shows us how easy it can be to design more accessible mobile apps and websites when thinking about different ways of usage from the beginning.
Thursday: Being There Without Being There
Observing people in their day-to-day context is an extremely valuable aspect of user research — and it has become much harder to do since the pandemic started. This article by Hossein Raspberry takes a look at the tools at our disposal.
Friday: Smooth.
Since we started this week with interaction design, it’s only fair to end it with a visual design topic: Gradients. If you were every using gradients in your UIs but they just didn’t look quite as cool as you wanted, this overview will give you some handy pointers on where to start tweaking.
How to Design Sexy Gradients
Actionable UI tips to help you design better gradients.
blog.prototypr.io
And with that, we wish you a great week ahead!
