Library

I don't gatekeep.

Materials I have consumed during my leisure and work time that I find useful, thought-provoking, or even with which I disagree.

User Flow Is the New Wireframe

An illustrated guide on the different ‘resolutions’ of user flows, and when to use them.

Do Things that Don't Scale

One of the most common types of advice we give at Y Combinator is to do things that don't scale. Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off. There may be a handful that just grew by themselves, but usually it takes some sort of push to get them going.

Designing User Onboarding: Lessons From Figma, Duolingo, and More

Find out the common mistakes in designing onboarding and learn the secret sauce behind engaging onboarding from 20+ top tech companies.

Inside arun.is · Table of Contents

The Secret Science of Perfect Spacing

Spacing is what gives UI's that 'oddly satisfying' feel when done right, and that 'something's off' feeling when it's done poorly. How do you design spacing correctly? Should you use a framework? Let's find out!

Visual Design Rules You Can Safely Follow Every Time

You do not have to follow these rules every time. If you have a good reason to break any of them, do. But they are safe to follow every time.

Music Software & Interface Design: Propellerhead’s Reason

In this video, I discuss interface design and music software by focusing on Propellerhead's flagship DAW: Reason 10. I look at how they adjusted to the ever-changing audio production landscape over the last 18 years and the painful choices they needed to make in order to succeed. I conclude with a few software design principles.

Think Fast and Talk Smart On the Spot: 1-2-3 Framework

Creating in Tech in 2024 Vs. Consuming in Tech in 2024

In this video, McGuire cover the difference between the two, and I'll talk about the three people in tech I feel are making some of the biggest waves right now because they both consume and create.

人為什麼自卑？ HT60 自信是可以培養的嗎？

昨晚和H促膝長談的議題是關於我的自卑和沒有自信, 戰勝自己是一輩子的課題。

Difference Between Vision, Strategy, Objectives, and Roadmap.

A Beginner's Guide To Breakcore, Drum & Bass, Jungle & Breakbeat Hardcore

Mixes made using a DDJ-400 and rekordbox.

5 Tips for Naming Design System Variables in Figma

Using Apple's Materials Blur & Vibrancy in Your App Design

Level up your designs by creating blur effects with native iOS materials.

Modal vs Page: A Decision Making Framework

There Are No Definitive Rules For Using Modals

How To Get Started: The Cult of Done

I think of many of the 13 principles every single day, as I write these videos, produce my audio fiction podcasts, and write music or code for any of my projects.

Design Systems Tools by Romina Kavcic

A brilliant overview of design systems tools by Romina Kavcic where she broke down the list into three main categories: Acquisition, Activation, Conversion

What Is UX Engineering

How I Teach, Part One

What Is UX Engineering

Currently the CEO of Obsidian.

UX Research Methods Cheatsheat

UX research is the systematic investigation of users’ behaviors, needs, and preferences to inform the design and improvement of user experiences in products and services.

An Inside Look at How Figma Builds Product | Yuhki Yamashita (CPO of Figma)

We talk about operationalizing quality, the case against OKRs, and how Figma isn't just known for product-led growth, but also for building a community of empowered users. Yuhki also shares why he thinks storytelling is key to being a great product manager, owning the 'why,' and the potential impact of Adobe's acquisition of Figma.

The Art of Focus (Summary) by Dan Koe

The Art Of Focus is a practical philosophy to find meaning, reinvent yourself, and create your ideal future.

Prototype as if You Are Right. Listen as if You Are Wrong.

To make change in the world, we must constantly engage in a yin-yang cycle of prototyping.

Good Enough Design: How to Boost Your Efficiency

How to make your work on time and budget? How to boost your efficiency? How to use your time to reach the most impressive or valuable results?

App Critique Made Easy! Systematic Approach to App Critiques in UX/UI Product Design Interview

May uses Pinterest as an example to demonstrate the method and provides tips for selecting an app, sharing your screen, and pausing to interact with interviewers.

Readability Guidelines

Imagine a collaboratively developed, universal content style guide, based on usability evidence.

Designing with Content: How Using Content Patterns Can Help

Content patterns are blueprints made of words. If you have a lot of content items of the same type, designing the content layout in the same way and repeating content elements is a good idea.

How I Find Design Inspiration for ANY Aesthetic

Rituals of Modern Product Teams - Yuhki Yamashita, Shishir Mehrotra (Config 2023)

Building great products starts with building great teams. And building great product teams is more than just hiring the right people; it’s designing the right rituals that help them operate effectively and unlock their full potential.

Design Systems Database

Best-in-class Design Systems with components and foundations references from top-tier tech companies and leading UI teams

Working with UX Writers in Figma - Andrew Schmidt, Chris Baty, Ryan Reid, Sylvie Kim (Config 2022)

In this talk, Figma’s UX writing team shares their favorite tips for designers on using Figma to deepen the creative bond with writers, and build more intuitive, delightful products together.

Navigation Patterns in Mobile Applications. How to Make the Right Choice?

This article will explore the most common navigation practices in the market as of the end of 2023.

From Speculative Methodologies to Crafting Delight - Kalyani T, Shihan Z, Richard E, Kim B, Nick J

Designers dream of a world without constraints, but what happens when there are no limitations?

Word to the Words - a Content and Product Design Love Story - Candi Williams (Config 2023)

This talk delves into linguistics and examples to highlight why real content is crucial — even when your content designers are stretched thin (or are non-existent at your org!).

Prototyping the Path: How Slack Builds Product with Customer Love - Ethan Eismann (Config 2023)

Join Ethan for a look inside Slack and learn how to use principles to change your own company’s culture for the better.

Design at the Speed of the News - Chen Wu, Jay Guillermo (Config 2023)

This talk discuss about how product designers on The New York Times Home and Storytelling teams, react and respond to ever-changing newsroom and reader needs, balance speed-to-market with design quality.

Putting Joy on the Roadmap - Jenny Wen, Mihika Kapoor, Kee Yen Yeo (Config 2023)

Making Sense of Research with a Sense-Making Process

Learn sense-making processes that will guide your research and meaning-making from initial question to company wisdom.

Figma Tip: Scoped Slot Components

With this technique, we can 'outsource' the component composition to a main component, whilst still allowing for completely flexible content within.

Reimagining Design Systems at Spotify

In this post, we’ll share what motivated us to create Encore, how it’s structured, and how it’s different from what we’ve tried before.

Polaris UX Nuggets

This open-source version of Polaris will let you get a closer look at the Airtable base powering Sharon's innovative UX methodology.

What Is Atomic UX Research?

Atomic Research, helps you organise knowledge in an infinitely powerful manner.

The 4 Degrees of Anthropomorphism of Generative AI

Users attribute human-like qualities to chatbots, anthropomorphizing the AI in four distinct ways — from basic courtesy to seeing AI as companions.

Introduction to DesignOps

Learn more about Design Operations. What is it? Where is it? Who does it involve? How can I get started?

Mastering the Problem Space for Product/Market Fit by Dan Olsen

In this talk from Mind the Product San Francisco, Dan Olsen, the author of The Lean Product Playbook, tackles the key components of product/market fit and how to achieve it.

Mastering the Problem Space

What problem are you trying to solve? Learn how to avoid solution pollution.

Defining Your Problem Space

In this video, I talk about how to synthesize literature on a broad topic to narrow it down to your problem space.

2022 State of Design Ops

As this field develops from an emerging to a mature industry, the State of DesignOps Report seeks to be the de facto resource for all things DesignOps.

Transition Animations: A Practical Guide

Principles that can be used immediately by anyone in their design process.

DesignOps: The API of Design Teams - Inayaili León (Config 2022)

In this talk Inayaili will give you a look into the DesignOps team at GitHub, including their successes and areas of growth, and give you a few ideas to try out in your teams.

A Googler's Perspective on Building DesignOps with Adam Fry-Pierce

Hear from Adam Fry-Pierce, Chief of Staff, UX Leadership @ Google and co-founder of DesignOps Assembly, as he shares his experiences in scaling DesignOps.

The Psychology of The Man-Child (Puer Aeternus)

The term puer aeternus is Latin for eternal boy. Carl Jung used the term in the exploration of the psychology of eternal youth and creative child within every person.

What the FOUC Is Happening: Flash of Unstyled Content

How to solve a situation where Web browser ends up showing your Web page’s content without having any style information yet.

Invisible Details of Interaction Design

This article deconstructs the why behind great displays of interaction design.

You Need To Be More Strategic

Not all “you need to be more strategic” feedback is the same.

The AI Revolution: Redefining The Role of Designers

This research report takes a dive into understanding the inner workings of AI, investigating its potential impact on design by exploring the evolution of UX design, and summarizing insights into future predictions and preparations.

Fintech Over 50: Designing for Low to Moderate Income Older Adults

This report offers recommendations for fintech customer experience design that financial services innovators can use to overcome these barriers and join older adults as partners on their journey toward financial health.

How Do Older Adults Process Icons in Visual Search Tasks? The Combined Effects of Icon Type and Cognitive Aging

It is necessary to provide Skeuomorphic Icon + text for the older adults to assist in the visual search task by increasing the search speed and accuracy.

WCAG 3 and APCA

WCAG 3 will use a new color contrast method called APCA (Advanced Perceptual Contrast Algorithm).

8 Branding Mistakes You’re Making Right Now

How To Make the Right Decision

In this clip from Dr. Peterson's conversation with Joe Hage, they discuss the art of decision making.

The Secret to a Great Planning Process — Lessons From Airbnb and Eventbrite

This framework is a full top-to-bottom company planning process, most applicable to companies larger than roughly 25 people (once there are multiple teams). It’s intended to help the leaders of the company (i.e. executives, founders) put a planning process in place across the entire org.

Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2020

Product Design Level Expectations Rubric

Developing Blue Sky Ideas

This video teaches entrepreneurs how to develop Blue Sky Ideas, ideas that are not being implemented today but could be utilized new technologies to provide extreme value to their customers.

AI in the Workplace Is Already Here. The First Battleground? Call Centers

They have deployed bots that automate basic tasks and instruct the remaining humans how to do their jobs

Designing of a Natural Voice Assistants for Mobile Through User Centered Design Approach

The primary objective was to define the personality of a Voice Assistant Avatar and formulating a few design guidelines for natural dialogues and expressions for the same.

GDPR From a UX/UI Designers Perspective!

Designing for Users with Dyscalculia or Low Numeracy

Product Design Eisenhower Matrix

The TWS Guide to Creating Content

Diátaxis

A systematic framework for technical documentation authoring.

Optimized for Change

What makes a great API?

The Cushion Journal

The Cushion journal is an ongoing series to document the process of building and running an app on the web.

Meaningful Motion with Action-Driven Animation

The Case For Better Watch Typography

Watchmakers are master craftspeople. Why do so few invest in lettering?

What Is the “Right” Problem to Solve?

And where does customer demand come from?

An Anthropologist Walks Into a Bar…

When “BeerCo” found its pub sales falling, market research and competitive analysis provided no help. So it sent out a team of social anthropologists to investigate.

Building Products at Slack

Behind the scenes with the team that launched Slack Huddles

Feeling Nervous? How Anxiety Can Fuel Better Communication

Kelly McGonigal shares how stress and anxiety can be used to enhance our communication.

Naval Ravikant | How to Be Great at Anything - And What to Avoid

How do we get to be the best at any given domain? Naval Ravikant, Kapil Gupta and the renown psychiatrist Carl Jung (presented by Jordan Peterson) seems to agree in the driver behind greatness - A deep obsession into that domain, which results in forging a unique path that is far off from the prescribed "how to's" of that particular domain.

Bringing Dark Patterns to Light

The term “dark patterns” has been used to describe design practices that trick or manipulate users into making choices they would not otherwise have made and that may cause harm.

Applying Motivation Theory to Achieve Increased Response Rates, Respondent Satisfaction and Data Quality

Targeting respondents’ own motivation to participate in surveys is an alternative approach to achieving higher response rates. Self-Determination Theory provides a theoretical framework for how intrinsic motivation can be stimulated.

Is Design Metrically Opposed?

The world of metrics and analytics have often been at odds with how designers work. Design is a process where we finely tune our intuition to create great user experiences. Yet, sometimes, what we think is best rivals the metrics. So which do we believe—our gut or the data?

Customer Feedback Intercom Customer Feedback Strategy: How to Collect, Analyze and Take Action

Principles of Effective Survey Design

Write surveys that engage users, boost your brand, and deliver insights.

How to Ask About User Satisfaction in a Survey

Satisfaction Is an Emotional Response

What to Consider when Choosing Colors for Data Visualization

Color in UI Design: A (Practical) Framework

Also, why it is important to use HSB colour system.

How to Add Custom Fonts to Gatsby

The Self-Fetishization of East-Asia: Koreaboos & Weebs Aren't the only Problem

How to Start a Project by Erik Spiekermann

Responsive Typography: The Basics

My UX Portfolio Presentation by Sharon Yeun Kim

Maximally Optimizing Image Loading for the Web

Malte from Vercel outlines 8 image loading optimization techniques to minimize both the bandwidth used for loading images on the web and the CPU usage for image display.