Complicated sticks
Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.
“This is the trend of making what I call complicated sticks. Complicated sticks are complex tech products that are useful for everything and nothing in particular. Evident in these wispy ads that try to give a blanket impression of good vibes and positivity that’s more suited to fashion, fragrances, and marketing within flooded product categories, not supposedly innovative tech that helps us do things we couldn’t do before.”
Building a new app or website? You don't have to reinvent the wheel →
[Sponsored] Mobbin is the world's largest & most comprehensive UI & UX reference library of fully searchable mobile & web screenshots, with over 1000 apps in our library — updated every week. Product designers use Mobbin to find real-world design inspiration. Easily search for best practices for common user flows like: Onboarding, Subscribing & Upgrading, Canceling a Subscription.
Editor picks
From hard-working to highly-efficient →
It’s time we get better at this.Stop moving fast and breaking everything →
You’re not even moving fast.Is the planet the missing member of your project team? →
The internet has a dirty secret.
The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.
Why designers aren’t understood →
Make me think
Generative AI is totally shameless. I want to be it →
“What I love, more than anything, is the quality that makes AI such a disaster: If it sees a space, it will fill it—with nonsense, with imagined fact, with links to fake websites. It possesses an absolute willingness to spout foolishness, balanced only by its carefree attitude toward plagiarism. AI is, very simply, a totally shameless technology.”The more you polish, the less you see →
“Polish is something only the person who creates it will notice. It’s a paradox; polishing something makes it invisible. Which also means that pointing out examples of polish almost defeats the purpose.”Tooling and feeling →
“Humans doing the hard jobs on minimum wage while the robots write poetry and paint is not the future I wanted.”
Little gems this week
The psychology of deceptive discounting in UX →
The stripe: not just a pretty face →
What Betty Croker can teach us about AI and UX →
Tools and resources
Missing skills for AI UX →
Identifying skills gaps and how to close them.Designers are more than keywords and portfolios →
How exploring a designer’s journey can reveal quality traits.Designing for Gen Z →
What can UX Researchers learn from YouTube’s success with Gen Z?
Support the newsletter
If you find our content helpful, here’s how you can support us:
Check out this week’s sponsor to support their work too
Forward this email to a friend and invite them to subscribe
Share open positions on our job board