Pixels of the Week – March 15, 2026

Pixels of the Week is my weekly-ish curated newsletter for designers, UX folks, devs, and anyone building accessible, inclusive, usable (and let’s be honest, awesome) digital products.

This week covers a debunk of Miller’s 7±2 rule, the age verification privacy trap, the design of toggle button states in Material design and the cost of AI tools and their military usage. We also explore women’s sizing exclusion chaos, beautiful fonts and some cute clay art.

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Articles, talks and workshops

I was busy bringing new content last couple of weeks:

• I published a new article last week: Your menu doesn’t need Miller’s 7±2 rule If we want our work to be taken seriously, we need to stop using simplified “laws” that misrepresent the research. Be careful with anyone selling “magical” UX rules as universal answers.
• Also, reminder, my axe-con 2026 talk “How to Convince People to Care and Invest in Accessibility” is online. I’ve collected the questions in the chat and will write an article about it, eventually, promise!

And, I shall keep busy in the next ones hehe: there are only a couple of days left before my Designing Better Products Masterclass! It’s remote, online, 5 × 2.5h live sessions over 3 weeks from March 23 to April 6, Mondays and Tuesdays, to learn how to start a product design project, from research all the way to pages. Grab a 15% discount ticket.

Bike, plants, food and yarn craft

Sun is, kind of back in Luxembourg, so started my little seedlings. I bought a big plants raised garden that doubles as a green house. It’s big, but I was able to fit it on my bike. I ordered some fun tomato varieties too, expect pictures and me getting annoying about my balcony garden from sprint to autumn.

I also managed to make tantanmen with soystrips instead of chicken, and they were, amazing.

Last but not least, I continue my crochet adventures. I’m currently working on a totbag, and I crocheted a really cool dinosaur hat for my niece. For that, I had to rewrite a whole pattern, so, I guess I also write crochet patterns now? You can check the pictures on Bluesky.

Interesting articles that caught my attention

The State of Buttons (5min) It’s always complex to visually convey the state of toggle buttons to the users. Liam Spradlin argues that Material design’s “expressive buttons” solution that changes the shape of the container, on top of icons and sometimes name change works well. I’m curious if users agree. Also, this works well for mobile, when buttons are gigantic and cutely rounded. Would this work for complex UIs where you need to put a lot in a screen (bank tools, CRMs, etc) ?

Propellant (5min) Ethan Marcotte, on the cost of AI tools and their military usage, because, in an industry leaking money, investors turn to public sector, and, of course, military usage, to secure funds. Yuk.

Is Age Verification a Trap? (12min) The age-verification trap is not a glitch. It is what you get when regulators treat age enforcement as mandatory and privacy as optional. Strong age verification pushes companies to collect intrusive data, rely on biometrics and IDs, and keep logs indefinitely. This goes against most privacy guidelines. It’s especially problematic in countries where privacy is already jeopardized.

Saying “No” In an Age of Abundance – Jim Nielsen’s Blog (5min)  In an age of abundance, restraint becomes the only scarce thing left, which means saying “no” is more valuable than ever. Yup. By Jim Nielsen

Curiosity cabinet: women’s clothing size

Sizing chaos. Women’s clothing — designed for adults — fits modern teen girls better.

If you are totally lost, in women’s clothing sizes, you are not alone. The interactive infographics by the Pudding shows how most “regular” ranges end at size 16 while the median adult woman actually fits a size 18. So more than half of adult women are excluded.

With vanity sizing, the labels have shifted upward in the measurement, but this mostly benefits marketing, no shopper.

Add mass-production grading from a single “sample size” body and a narrow hourglass ideal, and you get garments mathematically scaled from proportions that almost no one actually has.

The result is systemic exclusion, especially for larger and non‑hourglass bodies, in an industry that still thrives on exclusivity and gatekeeping.

Conclusion: yup, I’m really going to learn how to sew!

Inspiration: fun experiments, beautiful art, and great ideas

DJR Glyph Navigator a little gem for my typography lover friends: a tool to visually explore glyphs from different typefaces designed by David Jonathan Ross

Paintings of paintings: an awesome level of inception (via cassido)

The Trolley Bag (Teaser) Nik Bentel turned a Lidl trolley into a bag

This week’s craft inspiration is Angelyn, alias weenbean, a UK based clay artist who creates the cutest worry stones and key caps ever!