Pixels of the Week – December 1, 2024

My curated weekly-ish online newsletter, where I share interesting articles, tools, and resources I found during the week. You can expect content about UX, design, user research, accessibility & tech, but also some processes, some inspiration, sometimes books, and a couple of videos and podcasts. Also, don’t forget to, subscribe to the newsletter to get notified, you will get the weekly links directly in your mailbox, and be notified when I publish other articles.

Now: what I’m currently up to

Long story short, follow me on Bluesky on @stephaniewalter.bsky.social instead of TwitterX (or on Mastodon, LinkedIn).

Long version: TwitterX has been a giant mess for more than a year now, it’s not worth the time and money investment. I’ve mostly stopped using it, except for daily scheduled resources via Publer. Publer now supports Bluesky. So, I’m unplugging TwitterX from my 3 paid accounts to switch to Bluesky. I might manually share links to my own content on TwitterX. But, if you are interested in curated resources, follow me on the other platforms (I will update the footer of this site soon).

Most popular content this week

Don’t forget to localize your icons (9min) localization isn’t just about translation, you also need to make sure you convey the same meaning with images and icons. Eric Bailey explains how some common emojis (like thumbs up, or the okay hand gesture) can unintentionally offend or miscommunicate depending on the culture. So, be careful with icons in your next design!

Interesting articles that caught my attention

UX and usability

• A guide to designing errors for workflow automation platforms  (12min) an interesting case study from Rucha Abhyankar on designing easy to understand error messages, with good placement, good visual representation, not only relying on colors for a complex tool. Also suggesting next possible actions to users can help them recover from errors.
• 8 excellent user research emails. (11min) we don’t often talk about the importance of a good research recruitment email for survey participation. Rosie Hoggmascall analysis a couple of examples from big companies, from subject to copy and call to action. I think a couple of those ideas can also be used for other recruitment, like usability testing, interviews and more.

Accessibility and inclusive design

• Most disabled people “excluded” by unfit designs (5min) “Accessibility in design is not just a feature; it’s an essential foundation for a truly inclusive world,’ said Ben Evans, director of the London Design Festival. “Design should be a bridge that connects people, not a barrier.”
• The European Accessibility Act (5min) a short too long, didn’t read of what is coming in the EAA in 2025, get ready!
• Foundations: types of disability (12min) There’s a lot of misconceptions about disabilities, and often underestimate how broad this spectrum is. Demelza Feltham (Tetralogical) offers an introduction to the different types of permanent, temporary and situational disability, organized in seeing, hearing, moving, thinking categories. A must-read to better understand how inaccessibility will impact all us, at some point.

It’s all about survival

• How to Survive a Client Meeting When They Say ‘Make It Pop’!!!! (6min) unleash your pop factor with bright colors capable of blinding astronauts, juggle gradients, confetti, more saturated hues than a ’80s fashion show, sparkles and of course, exclamation marks!!! Thank you Simon Sterne for making me smile with this fun satirical article.
• How to survive the broligarchy: 20 lessons for the post-truth world (8min)  “Listen to women of colour. Everything bad that happened on the internet happened to them first. The history of technology is that it is only when it affects white men that it’s considered a problem. Look at how technology is already being used to profile and target immigrants. Know that you’re next.” sad but true (also the 20 other points are quite interesting) by Carole Cadwalladr

Curiosity cabinet: non-design/tech rabbit holes I enjoyed

D&D Baldur’s Gate – What We Do in The Shadow-Cursed Lands you know it’s going to be epic when Astarion is the sensible voice of reason in the party. An epic 2 hours one shot DnD session with Neil Newbon as Astarion, Samantha Béart as Karlach, Theo Solomon as Wyll, Devora Wilde as Lae’zel, and Jeremy Crawford as the Dungeon Master.

Inspiration: fun experiments, beautiful art, and great ideas

Mikael Hallstrøm is an artist who lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. He uses different materials and works with the relationship between nature and culture. I love the watercolor works that look like could occur in nature

Interesting frameworks and concepts

How and why to use Key Drivers Analysis in user research (12min)  KDA is tool to understand what’s behind customer sentiment and behavior. It’s a quantitative method so you will need a little bit of statistics knowledge. The results can be displayed in a 2×2 matrix along two key dimensions: importance (how much it influences the outcome) and performance (how well the factor is currently doing).

Useful tools & resources

• Color Palette Glossary: in case you are wondering what hue is, what a color space is and what tone means, this is a nice glossary to bookmark
• Pixelarticons the perfect icon pack, if you love minimalism and pixel art (free and paying options). You can also get a free version directly in Figma 
• The Game UI Wireframe kit: a Figma wireframe kit to help you create low fidelity mockups of game UI, using dozens of components. It has maps, health bars and more. This is really nice.

Tutorials

• Beautiful focus outlines (10min) Thomas Günther explains how to use currentColor, :focus-visible, :focus outline-offset to create accessible custom focus indicators
• How I used AI to design brand-aligned illustrations (8min) an interesting exercise on how to define brand identify in Midjourney and use reference images to create rapid sketch concepts for your brand identity. By Moty Weiss