Pixels of the Week – June 25 , 2023

Variable in Figma, dreams AI experiments and testing with blind users

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On Twitter, LinkedIn, and Mastodon, I share curated articles I read, resources and tools about UX Design, User Research, UI and mobile design, HTML, CSS, the web industry, some processes, some inspiration, etc. This is an archive of everything I shared this week. And some extra links that I decided to only share for the blog readers. Also, subscribe to the newsletter to get notified when those are published!

Now: what I’m currently up to

A couple of news from my content: my “Accessibility for Designers workshop” has now a dedicated page. My “Web Accessibility for Designers: checklist & documentation kit” got a huge update based on the workshop content, plus the Figma file has new components to help you document accessibility. And I added a small update of my “Accessibility for designer: where do I start?” with a couple of more links.

Also, I’ll be speaking at Wey Wey Wey at the end of the year (23-24 November)!!

On a personal note, I’m still playing Just Dance and it’s still full of bugs in Switch too, for example, recommended songs preview not loading. At least I reached master in this season of Wild Rift?

TL; DNR: the one you should not miss

Figma tutorial: Prototype with variables: okay, variables and if/else logic in prototyping for @Figma is going to be a game changer, we can finally go beyond click click prototypes and have logic. Welcome to the Axure area of Figma my friends! (Next step: actual form controls that can use keyboard and more?)

Interesting articles that caught my attention

UX Design, usability and information architecture

Accessibility

The other interesting things

  • Generative AI Takes Stereotypes and Bias From Bad to Worse: every part of the process in which a human can be biased, AI can also be biased, the question is, who bears the responsibility, the data set providers, the model trainers, the creators?
  • Generating income from open source: a couple of ideas how what to do and not do when you want to make money with open source and different economical models
  • The New CSS: I love the enthusiasm, but, in my experience, in a lot of teams, we might mostly go from “you can’t do that with CSS” to “yeah, you can do it with CSS, BUT, it’s not part of our React component”. We need more people to learn CSS. And frameworks to follow with the new cool features!

If you want to learn more about biases and mitigate them, check my “UX Cognitive Bias Cards & Workshop“. It’s a fun way to raise awareness of biases when designing products & services

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

Chocolate doesn’t cause acne – but carrots do help you see in the dark: the best and worst health myths and wisdom: so, yeah eat chocolate and don’t bother peeing on your jellyfish stings

Inspiration: fun experiments, beautiful art, and great ideas

  • Bento Grids: a collection of (mostly dribbble) tiles-based layouts for your inspiration. This kind of layout can be interesting for iPad apps, especially if you have monitoring dashboards.
  • 2023 Logo Trend Report I kind of like the bloblend trend haha, very lava lampish vibes, perfect for the summer. What’s your favorite one?
  • archives.design: a collection of books, branding guidelines, posters, type specimens and more graphic design related items, available as archives. I’m still a big fan of the Nasa branding book.
  • The Dreamkeeper: a fun experiment of collaboration between AI engineers and dream scientists to bring your weird and wonderful dreams to life.
  • Times New Bastard: it’s Time (hahaahaa) to annoy some typography lover friends, with Times New Roman but every seventh letter is jarringly sans serif

Useful tools & resources

  • UX Bites a collection of fun, interesting UI interactions for your inspiration
  • Recraft: this tool is very cool, you can build, mix and match some vector images using AI drawing tools, different styles, specific color palette, etc.
  • Huemint: a color palette generator that can help you find inspiration and find tune your brand identity
  • Tunera is a transnational type foundry, that aims to present new and original typefaces for everyone.

Cool and Interesting Videos

UX Tea Break: UX research v Market research: 5min video to understand the difference between both. I like those short tea break videos, the rest of the channel is quite nice too

Tutorials

Latest news in the industry

US Agency Releases Free Stock Photos of People With Disabilities: representation is important, you can access the whole gallery of pictures here