Maybe you’ve heard the popular, data-centric phrase, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” I like data; it often informs what I do. The fact remains that we designers are so often beaten down by data in an attempt to create logic where feelings are scary. I’ve done my share of A/B tests. I’ve used that tool to argue for what I believe the users need. I’ve also read that you can run an A/B test again and get the opposite result, despite the mathematical significance. Usually, this is from poor test design, but there are so many factors at work. We like certainty, and given the many things we can’t control, I get it. Just remember that every tool provides another data point in the puzzle. Don’t expect it to all make sense.
Web Design/UX/UI
Details that make interfaces feel better
Great interfaces rarely come from a single thing. It’s usually a collection of small things that compound into a great experience. Below are a few small details I use to make my interfaces feel better.
Statistical Significance Isn’t the Same as Practical Significance
Statistical significance helps establish whether a result is reliable, while practical significance helps determine whether it is worth acting on.
Is AI truly eliminating navigation, or is it simply shifting its agent and form?
Industrial Design
VARMBLIXT by Sabine Marcelis for IKEA Expands Further
There is the expansion of the universe––that original burst of energy, moving at a speed we can hardly comprehend––and then there is VARMBLIXT by Sabine Marcelis for IKEA. Both are toric forms, continuous and never-ending, bound by physics, time, and space.
How Nike ACG Designed A Pitch That Can Live Anywhere
There is something fairly rebellious about a football pitch that doesn’t require permission, a groundskeeper, chalk lines or even a postcode, for that matter.
Industrial Design Case Study: Rethinking Cabinets, Especially the Hinges
Alessandro Stabile’s Tacito, for Magis
Typography
Designer Andy Cruz and the world of House Industries • A Type 7 Film
The legendary design studio House Industries began with the sale of a Porsche 944 Turbo. Now responsible for some of the most recognisable fonts of the last quarter-century and a frequent collaborator with Type 7, co-founder Andy Cruz reignited his Porsche obsession as way to find inspiration away from the desk, using the emotion he finds on the road as a way to push design further.
Tools/Books
Browse and download 250,000+ free SVG icons from 220 carefully curated icon libraries. Customize, copy, and download in multiple formats including PNG, SVG, JSX, and Base64.
a personal selection of titles that show design in ways the screen never could. These books inspire, educate, and support the creators who dedicate themselves to design
Pattern Collider: Create Patterns Explore Symmetries
Quasiperiodic patterns are patterns that don’t repeat themselves when you slide in any direction, but where every motif (i.e. every cluster of tiles) occurs infinitely often throughout the pattern.