Design critiques, mandated screen addiction, locksmith stickers, accessibility lessons

Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.

“A critique is not a governance mechanism, nor is it a group brainstorming session. It’s a necessary collision. It’s the intentional application of adversarial thought to something that isn’t finished yet. Its sole purpose is to pressure-test the underlying assumptions. Ultimately, critiques are about injecting constructive doubt into a designer’s premature certainty before they build too much or go too far.”

Critique: on elevating craft through critical thinking →

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Editor picks

• Human engineering →
  Doing the right thing should be easy.
  By Michael Parent
• Is there such thing as Product Design? →
  The value of Design in a product organization.
  By danramsden
• Mandated screen addiction = undemocratic design →
  There is a contradiction in digitalization.
  By Sanna Rau

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

Color palette pro: customizable palettes in advanced color spaces →

Make me think

• Is AI really eating the world? →
  “Generative AI appears to be the next platform shift, or it could break the cycle entirely. The range of outcomes spans from “just more software” to a single unified intelligence that handles everything. The pattern recognition is smart, but I think the current evidence points more clearly toward commoditization than Evans suggests, with value flowing up the stack rather than to model providers.”
• The Rosetta Stone of design engineering →
  “I’ve always imagined design and engineering as two rails on the same track. They run in parallel, supposedly toward the same product, but they rarely sit at the same spot. Design debt on one side, tech debt on the other, shifting priorities somewhere ahead, and the occasional giant ‘wait what are we building again?’ boulder in the middle.”
• To be a leader of systems →
  “Firstly, you need to hold in your head the knowledge that you will probably–no, almost certainly–fail. You will need to hold that uncomfortableness in your heart and carry it with you always. Never to share, but always to hold. Ground yourself in the impossibilities of what you’ll attempt, lest your hubris lead you to ruin.”

Little gems this week

Locksmith stickers are annoying, but kind of genius →
By Faux Icing

Florence Nightingale on vanity metrics →
By Nate Sowder

Dawn of the undead peripheral →
By Neel Dozome

Tools and resources

• A conversation on HMI design →
  A series of thought pieces on UI design beyond mobile phones.
  By Ascanio Colonna di Paliano
• Accessibility lessons →
  What an accessibility conference taught me about designing for all.
  By Darren Yeo
• Invisible users →
  The people our design processes forget
  By Dolphia

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Design critiques, mandated screen addiction, locksmith stickers, accessibility lessons was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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