He’s going to talk about that recent dark pattern in Instagram where they put an e-commerce component where your notifications used to be.

No. This is a dark pattern alright, but that’s not what I think the bigger problem is.

Instagram combined with “humanity” doesn’t work. As humans we’re vain and selfish and this narrative is pushed on that platform more than on any other. We “follow” rich people and watch their yachts, designer handbags and Ferraris.

I’ve seen an influencer (girl) at a SPA recently filming her entry into an outdoor Jacuzzi SEVEN TIMES. Great way to show spontaneity of her awesome life when it’s so choreographed.

Instagram creates a divide between the people, and an outburst of completely mindless, useless people sharing their “amazing lives” on the platform. There are “creators” who don’t create and consumers who definitely DO consume.

There is nothing educative or meaningful in this “content”. It’s just babble. Stupid, silly and designed in a way that you want more.

We’re living in a fake world, and accidentally tapping on a shopping cart instead of the notifications should be the least of your problems.

How much time a day you spend on Instagram?

Evilstagram

Today Apple has announced the first computer running on their own in-house made CPU. Of course, they teased it back in June and sent a nice-looking ARM-based Mac mini to developers. But now it’s real — an official machine that you can buy.

The new MBP is the one I’m getting. Source: Apple Keynote

This is actually a really big deal for designers. Over the years we fell into a typical trap in computing — the more power we had (and used) the more we realised that it’s never enough.

tarted to design websites, we only had Photoshop. At that time it allowed for a single “artboard” or project that you can work at the same time. Sure, you can open more “files”, but you’d have to switch between them to work. So in reality you only moved then-bitmap rectangles on one “artboard”.

There were simple vector shapes in Photoshop, but they were too constrained by the app to be useful. Most designers simply used much larger, bitmap shapes. But zooming into these shapes often resulted in the fuzzy, pixelated edge as seen on the image above.

Of course those mostly bitmap projects were also pretty heavy. An average mobile app screen in 2009 was about 50MB. That’s just one screen, now imagine an app has 50 of them.

The limited capacity of both the displays and the computers of the early 2000s weren’t catching up with the need to design complex, multi-screen products.

Having only one ‘artboard’ visible at any given time, it led to a lot of inconsistencies, including the problem of “pixel-jumping” when you scrolled through a list of similar screens.

Screen 1 was ok, but then on a similar screen, even the base objects from the first one were a pixel or two off. Going back and forth between them gave the impression of a sloppy design (which it was) — you can see it in the GIF above.

Clients hated this as much as designers did.

 first appeared over 10 years ago, it radically transformed the way we think about design. There were two features that I think were the most transformational — vector shapes all the way and having multiple artboards.

When I first started working in Sketch back in 2013–2014 I was blown away by the ability to browse and edit all the screens at the same time. You could — for example — select one object on multiple screens and change it’s color or position for all of them. This one feature killed pixel-jumping once and for all.

 entered our workflow you can’t even start to believe how happy it made us! Finally we were able to create complex, multi-screen prototypes inside Sketch, link the screens together with transitions and test the flows.

Craft — a plugin for Sketch that allowed the InVision integration to work was often quite slow when creating those blue connection arrows. This was visible especially on more complex pages with many visually complex screens on them.

The arrow would slightly lag before reaching the target artboard. But this was a minor annoyance at that time.

But it was a completely new way of working and it was a lot of fun.

(Of course, Axure allowed for prototype building way before that, but it wasn’t really a UI tool, so we wireframed in Sketch as well)

Another revolution was Symbols. They’re a common UI element that can be nested multiple times and create reusable, consistent design components. But in some cases, like this cell (above) from the Analizy.pl portal, we had several nesting levels with pretty high data density and a project with at least a hundred screens and screen versions.

This portal also has a professional trader and beginner mode which modify how the entire cell looks like. There are smaller versions for comparing them side by side and countless other iterations of this general “symbol”.

That resulted with heavy nesting and multiple instances of the cell to choose from. Given, that a typical catalogue / search results screen had 20 or more of these at the same time — it was starting to make my 2017 Macbook Pro 15" fans sound like a drone about to take off.

Loading all that data was simply a big strain on the CPU / GPU of the top of the line Mac. Of course I could’ve optimized the Sketch file myself too — but when you get a chance to have the power to build complex structure, you can rarely say no to that.

My UI Design book was also put together in Sketch. Trust me — 450 artboards on one page can sometimes slow the laptop down too, albeit not as much as I expected.

That’s a lot of artboards! Some of them are very complex, as most of the example designs are done “in place”

When I was tasked with designing a product that worked on multiple platforms (from iOS, all the way to Android TV boxes and Gaming consoles) I didn’t think twice.

Created an external style library (another great innovation by Sketch) and started to build components, guides and general styles for the interface to still be familiar on every platform.

Sadly I can only show these shots covered like that. + There was a lot more screens in the project.

After a while I had to split the main project file into separate files (one for each platform) and connect the external library with the “basics” to each one.

But imagine if this didn’t have to be the case. Imagine a machine powerful enough to handle this with ease.

This is what I’m hoping these new Apple devices will finally deliver.

Continuity … but with design tools running

One of the most amazing features that Apple products have is the ability to start something on one device and seamlessly continue on another.

Sending text messages from your phone, but typing on your computer is something that’s very hard to put down when switching to Android.

If the new Macbooks will be ARM Based (On the Apple A-chip line) it means they’ll have a version of the same CPUs that you already have in your iPhones and iPads.

Once design tools start working on those CPUs, a future in which you’ll be able to just connect your phone to a mouse, display and keyboard and pick up a Sketch or Figma project you were working on are closer than you think.

With all that great power you’ll have more artboards, more nested symbols, more ways to prototype. All working seamlessly on ANY device that you have.

It’s like Samsung’s Dex, but with actually useful (for designers) apps on it.

The future is going to be fast. I already ordered my M1 MacBook Pro.

Why the new Macs are a game-changer for product designers

Hi, Welcome to Square — this is going to be my super-short-form here. Like Twitter and Medium had a baby and it looked something like this.

I’m starting to see that staying at home is giving us more creative ways to procrastinate, as we can now do it at our workspace with

We’re building in public … our bad habits. 🤣

My desk looks like a weird mix of snacks, hipster-drink bottles, bottle caps and other non-essentials.

Glued to the screen and almost merging with my chair I’m beginning to notice PFH becoming the next big thing.

The billion dollar idea — maybe it’s time to write a book on how to professionally waste time?

Chasing the aerodynamic shapes cars have become a little like Material Design. They simply started to look the same regardless of the manufacturer. Sure - premium brands have more luxurious interiors and better engines, but from the outside the general shapes have been merging into a "typical car shape" for a while now. 

The Cybertruck was a breath of fresh air into the car industry, just because it didn't look like all the other cars. Now, its aesthetics can be debatable - some people love it, some hate it. Countless memes were created on the fact that it looks like a low-poly render. But it is different and it's a big step outside of the regular styling. 

Inspired by its example I started to pay attention a little more to what the car industry is making when it comes to visual trends. I want to share a couple of these examples with you, because I think they're definitely worth knowing about. 

Retro-futurism has been a sci-fi trend for a while now, and it seems like it's making it's way into the automobile industry. What it means, is that the cars are a mix of 60's or 70's style, with futuristic, modern screens. For some reason those years and the designs created then still have a very special place in our hearts. 

Maybe we simply innovated too much, to end up with all that boring sameness? While the engines are going all electric, the external chassis is often going back in time and I love it!

The car that made the biggest impression on me recently was this Hyundai concept EV that's like straight out of Cyberpunk 2077. The car ditches the round shape and brings us back a classic 70/80's style shape that we all know and love from countless movies. 

And it does it in style! Those tail-lights look amazing!

Ford is also coming back with some classic shapes for their F100 pickup truck. If you ever played Fallout 4, this is the kind of retro-futurism that was a big part of that game's appeal.  

Hyundai didn't stop with the Grandeur. Pony is another beautiful example of that retro style coming back!

That squared-off design is like a breath of fresh air among all cars shaped like the Apple Magic Mouse.

In UI design, about every 7 years the pendulum swings between minimal and more "rich", slightly skeuomorphic look. In cars it took a lot longer, but it's good to see some visual variety on the roads. 

Aesthetics are an important part of buying a car, so the more different choices we have, the better. 

It also is a lot better for the industry, as it allows it to learn from the past, but still innovate - and that benefits all of us. 

Car design trends go full circle

Ethics are having a comeback. Many designers say, that making ethical products is going to be their goal. I know a designer who refuses to work for Big-Pharma™ companies, because of his ethics.

People quit Google (remember “Don’t be evil”?) and Facebook because of their unethical practices all the time. But there’s more designers and developers to take their place.

Movements like “Design for the good of humanity” are sprouting all around, and while they can work on a small scale, they’ll never reach any notoriety.

w we’re built — as humans. If ethical practices would be enough to make a market share for a product, we’d be doing them even without believing in them. But sadly — they are not.

Someone once said, if something is free, then you’re the product. And this, in the last few years grew into an unethical nightmare that you can see in various interviews, hearings, subpoenas and more.

So while you can make a small startup be fully ethical, you’re not going to make an ethical Instagram, Facebook or Google without first changing how humans work. And if we could change that, I’d start by solving other problems (world hunger, pollution, inequalities, education scarcity and more) than an ethical Instagram — really.

And while some industries seem to think of themselves as more ethical than others, if a market share grows enough those big corporations will start going into their headspace’s. Yes, if it becomes popular enough Facebook will make their own meditation app and preach harmony with your body, soul and planet earth.

So as designers, you either go small, or agree to be somewhat unethical, because in those big companies it’s not you who is making the rules.

No place for ethics. 

No place for ethics

As a designer, when playing a video game that has user interfaces inside of it, I can’t help but to think about how they’re made and how they fit the lore and time of the game. So whenever a game has a computer in it, that you can interact with, I sit down and play around with it.

Cyberpunk 2077 has inspired me to take a l

ok at the interfaces in the year 2077, and what I think would be the directions UI’s will take. But before we start going theoretical, here’s a super brief analysis of the in-game UI’s. There’s more but I want to focus on just two elements here.

Apparently, the internet in 2077 is a homage to the late ’90s. I remember making my first website back in 1998 and the websites seen on computers in Cyberpunk are following the exact same design patterns. That means navigation that was made to fit a 640x480 px, CRT 4:3 display.

This is how most websites looked back in 1997.

Nearly all websites from that era had a horizontal, very visual header spanning all the way across. Then below they rocked horizontal, full-width navigation, leaving the rest of the space for the content. Mostly one-column.

So I was surprised to see the exact same thing in 2077 on displays that were definitely a lot wider. I’m not going to mention the uneven spacing, and an overall sloppy look of these websites, because it may actually be part of the lore as well.

The other thing is that the in-game UI’s have some pretty obvious patterns put on their heads. Take a look at this in-game toggle. In most modern UI’s nowadays when a toggle is on the left side it means it’s off. Move it to the right and it’s on. This in-game screen actually had me guessing what to do :)

Because here turning off means moving the toggle to the right. Very unintuitive.

But why are screens so ubiquitous in the future? Especially given the fact that even now, many different input methods are in their early (but growing) stages. Let’s go through them one by one. Especially as I believe that by 2077 most of them would be even more refined and polished. So a need for a bitmap screen showing a traditional UI may not be that high in the future.

Let’s assume a version of the future that still uses visual UI’s for interaction. Most sci-fi movies usually portray them as

holographic, semi-transparent objects that we can manipulate with our hands

. Of course, most of the reasoning behind this portrayal is due to the fact that it simply

in a movie. Some Glassmorphism is also present in them to show the hierarchy of objects in a 3d space.

Most of that UI relies on very low contrast with text possibly blending in with the real world beyond good readability point.

But what’s most apparent is that nearly no futuristic UI considers any accessibility. The interfaces usually don’t have enough figure-to-background contrast, the controls are hard to understand and there are not enough visual cues to guide the user.

But let’s look at how we’d interact with those UI’s.

VR still has many problems, but the quality of those interfaces made one of the biggest leaps in UI’s in history. They went from barely usable, nausea induced novelties, to something that can actually work. Even if some of the implications of shutting off from the world completely are a little scary, I cannot be unimpressed by it.

There are two main types of controller-based VR interactions:

As you can see here, you need to move your hand physically to touch a menu option.

Most controllers enable you to simulate making a fist with an option to leave your index finger pointing out. You can then use that “virtual” finger to tap on the floating menus in 3D space. The controller often adds a bit of haptic feedback on touch, so it feels a bit more natural than “touching air”.

With Aim and click you can activate menu options without moving your hand closer.

Aim and click assumes a beam that emmanates from one or both controllers with hit-scanning dot at the end. You simply move the beam to align the dot in the right place and then press the trigger on the controller to activate a button.

This option can also be done with just your hands being tracked with headset cameras. Hand movement is tracked in a similar way, and you use a pinch gesture to click on where the target dot is.

The main problems with VR currently have all to do with haptics and visual quality. The lenses and displays are still not perfect (often to bring the cost down) so there are

, pixellating and blurry parts to be expected from time to time.

But headsets and displays are getting better every year, so this is definitely something to be expected in 2077.

Source: Sony. The Dual Sense controller is a leap in haptics compared to the previous generations.

Another thing is better haptic simulations. Most controllers simply vibrate on touch, and while it “kind of” works, it’s a suboptimal solution. One revolution in this area is already here with the PS5 DualSense controller, so by 2077, I imagine it would be refined to be indistinguishable from real touch.

AR, or mixed-reality is simply adding 3d objects on top of our existing world. They can be interacted with the same way, but we don’t shut ourselves off from the world, only add things to it. Same principles as in VR apply to the actual interaction and potential UI patterns. If we’re to interact with objects, the UI should likely resemble the patterns we have and successfuly use right now. Back and forward buttons, progress indicators, sliders and more.

The Microsoft Hololens has been a prime example of this, but while really impressive, it’s far from being mobile and lightweight.

We’re still waiting on Apple’s AR glasses, but the technology is definitely improving with better processing, Lidar sensors and more.

Right now to authenticate online, we usually need to enter stuff into a set of text fields. It’s a cumbersome and long process that often results in failed authentications and user drop-off. This problem is being addressed by no-password logins, social-media sign-ins and more.

But in the future, I believe biometry will completely take over the need to manually sign-in to anywhere.

We already have fingerprint scanners and face-IDs that in many cases replace entering the passwords. But they only work for the subsequent attempts. If you’re creating an account for the first time, you always need to use a form.

In the future, privacy is a commodity that barely anyone can afford, and we see this happening all around us even today. So the reality of giving up your face, biometry, and details to “The Great Authenticator” is not that far off.

Most sci-fi movies actually predicted this to be the thing, so computers you never used greet you with your first name when you approach them and doors magically open for you — if you had the clearance that is.

In 2077 there will definitely be no privacy, so traditional login-forms would be a long-forgotten relic of the old UX days.

As you can see here, in 2077 people still use regular computer monitors with regular, 2d, flat UI’s on them.

Right now we can’t imagine a life without displays. We are constantly glued to them scrolling away our lives for hours on end. An average person

because what’s on them is mostly beyond our control.

While voice interfaces will definitely improve, they’re still not that great because your voice is also heard by other people. It’s super awkward to interact with a voice-based UI in a public space, and it won’t probably change.

So let’s skip voice for now — it will exist, but it won’t be drastically revolutionary. The AI’s will simply get better at understanding what we want for them. Hi Siri! ;-)

Technology allowing us to control an interface with your brain alone has been available for a while now. Things like MindMouse were showcased back in 2010 to allow control of a mouse cursor with just the mind alone — no hands required. That of course is super helpful to the disabled — as for many it’s the only way they can start communicating with the world.

But as the technology progresses, it will likely go a little bit beyond that. Because right now it uses our brains biology to influence a very foreign concept (a virtual mouse cursor). But maybe instead of trying to bring the brain to the UI, we should go the path of making the UI be the part of the brain.

I believe Neuralink-style based interactions would likely be common in the future. But I believe they will be navigation-less. There would have to be some definite way, however, to switch to the next piece of information that you need, without randomly switching it off when you’re not yet done reading.

We can think of a physical newspaper paradigm, but with searchable pages and enhanced focus. You simply think about what you need and it shows in front of you in your preferred format.

Going a step further, we could go “the Matrix” and simply download that information to our heads without the conscious “absorbtion” process. So you’re not reading / or watching anymore, but instead you get the context right into your brain. You get it and you

Not sure how it’d work for various types of content, because it’s easiest to assume it’ll be great for text-based knowledge. But would you prefer to absorb the plot and emotions of a movie without actually watching it?

And in a way it’s for us — the designers — to try and bend the path towards something that’s going to be beneficial for humanity. We all know the corporations will be pulling the other way.

Let’s hope for common ground. And for now, I’m just going to explore a beautiful rendition of a futuristic city, even if some of the UI’s aren’t that futuristic.

UI trends for 2077

Facebook has announced its second rebrand (the first was from THE facebook, to just Facebook). Of course it only affects the parent company, and the website and app will still be called Facebook. Kind of like Alphabet is the parent company of Google. Meta, the new name, means what has been predicted for a while - that the company is working on a Metaverse. 

If you're a Web 3.0 fan, you probably heard this name floating around. In the ideal, romantic, web 3.0 fueled form it's a decentralised, online universe, a new internet where people meet, interact and purchase things (NFT's) from each other directly. 

Now that Facebook is doing it, of course it will not be decentralised. Quite the opposite really. And with the incoming market crash on cryptocurrencies, it seems like the big business will once again win against the romantic vision of decentralisation. 

The Meta logo is actually quite good, and I especially love the presentation of how their various brands merge together to form the M / infinity sign. 

Will our future really be all VR, like in the "Ready: Player One" movie? It sounds dystopian, and not really as much fun. It deprecates human connection, real interactions and drags people deeper into the digital world. Isolation under the new virtual, social construct will lead to even more depression and anxiety. 

I don't believe it's a good direction to "connect people together". 

But of course we'll just have to wait and see.

"The future will be built by all of us. But it will be monetized by Facebook."

Facebook is now called Meta. Is Metaverse the future?

Dark mode is now present in nearly every popular product. When Instagram, YouTube and even LinkedIn added the option, we can now say it has become mainstream.

There’s still many misconceptions about how Dark Mode should be created for the best results in terms of look&feel, accessibility, battery life and performance on all kinds of devices.

There’s more to Dark Mode than just inverting the colors. In this part of the series let’s explore colors and depth.

Avoid using 100% saturated accent colors, as they’re not visible on dark backgrounds. If your brand color is “strong” that way, just reduce the saturation for Dark Mode.

As you can see in the above example, the colors in Light mode, when placed on a darker background are harsh and difficult to look at. With that simple desaturation trick, they end up being a lot easier on the eyes.

Another thing is using a color theme for your dark grey shades that’s based on the accent color. You can’t go too far with it, but when done in a subtle manner it will transform the entire design into a consistent, coherent whole.

In our case (example above) I simply added a little touch of blue to the greys, so that it matches the button (accent color) and other UI elements better.

Another important part is the hierarchy of the layers, that’s mostly created by their brightness. The typical angle at which we old our phone is around 45°, and the most natural light source is the one coming from the top — either the sun or a ceiling light.

Even though the interface is completely flat, our mind still prefers to be cheated a little bit for better, easier to grasp hierarchy. This is why fake depth is important!

This is why you should avoid objects that are perceived as “on top”, or closer to the users being darker than the background. As you can see in the example on the left, it looks unnatural and takes it longer for our brain to process the image. The one on the right is more in line with how a real stack of layers would be lit.

One trick in particular that does it well is simply starting with a base brightness of the background (the darkest color) and adding 8 or 10 points of brightness to each of the levels.

Using that trick you’ll have a consistent “color distance” between the layers and it will help our brain process it faster.

I talk more about these concepts in my recent YouTube video, so be sure to watch it and let me know in the comments if you found the knowledge useful.

Good luck exploring Dark Mode! These videos will be connected into a longer, free course right here at hype4.academy! 

Dark Mode UI Essentials Part 1

Hello, Apple October event. I’ll share some thoughts on what was announced from the perspective of a designer. One thing I found instantly cool, was the hint of magsafe in the intro - cool move apple. 

Then they talked about music, but I don’t think many people care about that, so just to sum up, new home pods with colors now, now airpods pro and max with spatial audio. 

They also showed new, smaller regular airpods, i.e. the cheap kind. Fun Fact, Diane had both the regular ones and the pros and she lost one of each. From now one we always go wired. 

So a new, larger MacBook pro with a faster M1 chip was to be expected. It’s not M1X though, but M1 Pro. Oh and a second chip called M1 Max that’s also a double of the M1 Pro. So now I guess we have three processor tiers in the mac. 

Also don’t know if you noticed, but the Pro and Max naming conventions are almost matching the iPhones - the faster CPU should be called Pro Max though. But still some consistency is welcome. 

I tested the M1 MacBook Pro in Sketch a while ago and found out I can move an impressive 1800 design heavy artboards without a problem. You can watch that video here:

Now, they shared a lot of transitor science, but I don’t think most people understand any of that. 

The basics are there’s now a 10core CPU cores and 16 GPU cores. The graphics is now a lot faster too. For video editors building in ProRes support into the chip itself is likely going to be a game changer.For me the additional thunderbolt controllers were a happy addition, as I encountered many problems with connecting external devices to the M1 laptops. 

There are improvements in power efficiency, but I think it’s not as important as most pros use their laptops connected to power. It’s a nice to have though for some on the go work.

All the performance graphs now have numbers along the axis, which is something people made fun of at the M1 introduction where the graphs were a bit arbitrary - you couldn’t really see what they meant. I guess apple listened and added the numbers here - maybe they’re more condifent in the performance now. 

As for the video editing, I’ll have to use one of these chips to see a difference. I’m generally happy with my M1 Mac Mini, but it does stutter a little bit with two 4K videos on top of one another. Only for a second or two, until it plays fine, but I do feel it. 

They announced two new laptops, as expected 16 and 14” displays. 

They have magsafe again, hdmi, sd-card and headphone jack is still there too. Happy days! 

Three thunderbolt ports are still better than two, but I actually liked the four-port MacBook pros on Intel. But I guess that wouldn’t really fit into the chassis. 

Touchbar is also gone, good riddance! The new keyboard also looks a little different overall. 

There’s also a notch now for the camera, which I guess makes sense as it blends in with the action bar at the top. Unless you’re not using dark mode, then I guess you’ll have to adjust a bit because in light mode that camera notch is quite visible … 

ProMotion refresh rates on the display is also welcome - but mostly for content consumption. 

The display is now also Mini LED, so brighter and more like the largest iPad pro, which looks awesome. 

Better microphones and speakers were too be expected, but on that front Apple laptops were always pretty good. This is more of a feature for musicians. 

I was expecting the 16” to get the Max CPU, and the 14” to get the Pro, but apparently you can configure each CPU for each of the screen sizes. Good to know if you like the performance but want to go portable. 

The memory now tops at 64 gigs, which is a good welcome from the 16 gigs on the M1. And seeing how well the M1 performed with just 16, I’m happy to see what 64 will do on the Max. 

Batteries were also improved, but what’s more interesting is that there’s now a fast charge feature, allowing you to top up the battery by 50% in just 30 minutes. That’s going to save a lot of on the go projects!

It means the highest spec ones will be a lot more expensive than that, if this is just for the base versions. 

I was hoping for a 32” iMac Pro with the new chip, or the mini with the pro Cpus but I guess we’ll have to wait for those a while longer. I will definitely check these out though, as they do sound like an exciting step forward.

Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max Laptops are game-changers for creatives

Apple M1Pro and M1Max Laptops are a game changer for designers

As a person who has been doing so called “UX” for about 22 years now I’m going to pop that bubble for you today. Again.

Value is the most important part of the product.

It’s simply the friction that appears where you want to get to the value. The better the UX, the lower the friction. But it doesn’t depreciate the value, only the road to it.

When the value is mindblowing good, people will jump through flaming hoops of bad UX to get there.

Focus on the value first. Then polish the experience.

Don’t do UX just because the UX people used some jargon to tell you about empathy maps and customer journeys. Every customer has a journey to reach value.

Also — Product Market Fit research is not the job of an UX designer. Market researchers existed well before someone put the X in eXperience.

UX Is Overrated

The design world is getting faster and faster every year. Why? There are a couple of reasons. One is that the recent design tool revolution made our workflows much easier and faster. The last few years were also the

adventof design systems, or even design libraries and components. We also have a lot of existing knowledge of what works well, so in many cases, we can use these safe patterns to come up with design solutions much faster.

In general, design is about finding solutions to problems.

poetic reason too — with the global economy declining, companies simply cannot afford as much “design-time” as they were before. They still expect similar results though.

I’m going to share two basic techniques that can help you design faster. Of course, there’s a lot more to speed design in problem-spotting, problem-clearing, and fixing the obvious to reveal hidden issues. But let's start with something easy.

During a typical, 8-hour day, the actual “design” and problem solving usually takes only a small portion of the time. Most of it is repetitive tasks that we can optimize.

Now here’s the thing. The above reasons for speed design are all good, but they’re all business-based. And I’d like to think from the designer=human perspective too.

Counting hours as a way to calculate income is becoming an antiquated way, and when working from home, we should definitely push a “per outcome” approach. Estimate a cost for your work. Then do the work. Don’t worry about the “hours”.

You can accomplish the same amount of work done in less time. Which one would you choose?

And if you estimate it well and use the speed design techniques you, as a designer, will have a lot more time for other things. You’ll finish your UI design a lot faster. You can use that time to either learn new skills or simply relax.

The fact that the world is fast, doesn’t mean you need to keep running the hamster wheel all day. Just be fast and hyper-focused for short bursts. Finish your work and then it’s your time, on your terms.

Now listen up gang! We’re going to be saving seconds here. Yes — seconds.

When this approach becomes second nature, these seconds will compound into hours, days, and weeks. Because if you save a second or two on every little part of the job, the sum of the time saved is going to be a lot greater.

And if one technique saves you 8 seconds every hour, then this one technique will save you four full hours in a year of work. If you combine many of the techniques and a proper mindset you’ll be saving an hour a day in no-time.

Evilstagram

Why the new Macs are a game-changer for product designers

PFH

Car design trends go full circle

No place for ethics.

UI trends for 2077

Facebook is now called Meta. Is Metaverse the future?

Dark Mode UI Essentials Part 1

Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max Laptops are game-changers for creatives

UX Is Overrated

Speed techniques to help you design faster

Deathloop - UI in videogames

Perfect practice makes perfect

How much did I earn as a junior designer in 2002?

Will work from home destroy work?

iOS 15 UI Design changes

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