Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.

“You likely know, or at the very least know of, a designer who just gets it. I’m talking about the designer who solves complex problems with elegant, user-centered, buildable solutions without breaking a sweat. Or maybe that designer who turns everything they touch into something genuinely beautiful. Or even the one who gets up on a stage and says what we’re all thinking more clearly and eloquently than we can. Maybe all three. Love or irrationally hate them, there they are, making the things that you struggle with daily look easy. You look skyward and wonder, What is it they have that I don’t?”

The return of the intuitive designer in the age of AI →
By James Harrison

Introducing Mobbin for Animations →
[Sponsored] The world’s largest mobile & web design reference library just got better. See how world class apps use motion to guide, delight, and create seamless experiences — now live on Mobbin.

Editor picks

• Specialize or generalize? →
  Design careers in the age of AI.
  By Matheus Cervo
• Why your brain rebels against redesigns →
  The redesign tested well. Users hate it anyway.
  By Dora Cee
• The safest decision is rarely the right one →
  Trusting judgement without ignoring evidence.
  By Simon Mauro Guido

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

Alt text selfies →

Make me think

• How to shoot a screen using a board of keys →
  “Everybody who routinely takes screenshots on a Mac knows very well the motor memory heaven and hell that are the screenshotting shortcuts: ⌘⇧3 to grab the whole screen, ⌘⇧4 to grab part of it, hold ⌃ ahead of time to put the result in the clipboard, press space at the right moment to select a window, hold ⌥ at a different time to remove a shadow, and so on. (Yes, there’s more.)”
• The displacement of purpose →
  “When work begins to vanish, what disappears first is not income — it is rhythm. The small rituals that gave shape to a day — waking, commuting, exchanging fragments of conversation — are not merely logistical. They are choreography, a social heartbeat that affirms one’s current place in the collective. Even unfulfilling work provides orientation; it punctuates time.”
• Why am I doing the thinking for you? →
  “I got a Slack message the other week, just “What do you think?” with a link to a Notion document. No context or indication of what this person actually believed. Just a link and a question mark. I stared at it for a minute, trying to decide if I was annoyed or just tired (both, probably). What’s this message is actually saying is: “I haven’t figured this out yet and I’d like you to do the thinking for me.”

Little gems this week

Lost for words: why text in AI images still goes wrong →
By Dora Cee

Nothing is certain — not even the “right” design process →
By Ian Batterbee

The art of unnecessary story →
By Rita Kind-Envy

Tools and resources

• The new UX Toolkit →
  Data, context, and evals.
  By Paz Perez
• Test smart →
  How to navigate through dilemmas as QA?
  By Julia Kocbek
• The AI delegation matrix →
  What parts of your UI shouldn’t exist?
  By Taras Bakusevych

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Intuitive designer, AI delegation matrix, the new UX toolkit was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.