Death of craft, new EU laws, Figma’s new aesthetics, GenAI UX framework

“Technological leaps will always happen and creatives always adapt. However, if you are a creative who is mostly just regurgitating the things that have come before, then you have a large reason to be concerned about the current state of the creative industry. I believe what undergirds much of the fear of this disruption is that fear?—?that deep down we have not really been that creative for a long time.”

The death of craft →

What do Meta, Uber, Dropbox, and Okta have in common? → [Sponsored] They’ll all be at Insight Out 2024 on April 11 in San Francisco! Unlock your creativity in design through deep customer understanding. Hear from expert speakers. Network with like-minded product people. Get 50% off tickets with promo code UXCOLLECTIVE or register free for the virtual event.

Editor picks

• Designing probability → Little known secrets to great AI experiences.
• Prompts should be designed?—?not engineered → Rallying design’s relevance in the AI era.
• How do the new EU laws impact UX? → The new rules on competition for Big Tech.

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

Models

All

The

Way

Down →

Make me?think

• Here lies the internet, murdered by generative AI → “Now that generative AI has dropped the cost of producing bullshit to near zero, we see clearly the future of the internet: a garbage dump. Google search? They often lead with fake AI-generated images amid the real things. Post on Twitter? Get replies from bots selling porn. But that’s just the obvious stuff.”
• Front-end development’s identity crisis → “I know how to do full-stack development, not because I wanted to but because I had to. My title was “developer”, as was everyone else’s. According to our titles there were no front-end or back-end developers. We had to do it all. This led to lots of bad HTML and CSS from back-end developers and lots of bad Node and PHP from front-end developers.”
• Conway’s game of hope → “Pandora sat in the living room of her home, staring at the box. It was gold plated and decorated with ancient Greek motifs. A latch kept the box’s lid sealed, and Pandora had been instructed not to open it. But there is no better way to stoke curiosity about an object than to forbid access to it, and Pandora’s curiosity burned deep.”

Little gems this?week

Digital humans: do we really need this? →

Analyzing UX & UI decisions in classic racing games →

Foreshadowing Figma’s next aesthetic ethos →

Tools and resources

• Designing for AI: 8 best practices → Prioritize user needs, not the technology.
• Disney’s 12 principles of animation, exemplified in UX → Elevating your user experience.
• The GenAI Compass → A UX framework to design generative AI experiences.

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