📝 Issue #452: Evolving UX, The Latest Research for Web Designers, PlatformAbuse.org, Your Next Persona Will be Non-Human, and more…

Personas are a great tool for nurturing empathy in your designs. In this exceptional post, Monika Sznel argues that your next persona will be environmental, and that non-human personas are the perfect tool for shifting the industry’s focus towards responsible environment-centered design.

Does your product require users to register with their real name? What about enabling hate speech? PlatformAbuse.org is designed to highlight the abuse that some digital products unwittingly enable. You can check your product against its database, suggest new issues, and discover potential mitigation strategies.

Mega menus are regaining popularity as designers continue to search for solutions that work across a range of devices and a variety of site builds. UX Movement digs into the problem with mega menus, and looks at a simple solution for making this popular navigation pattern a little more user-friendly.

Knowledge is power, and in our regular series of posts investigating scientific research that impacts designers, we’ll arm you with the data you need to make good decisions. In September’s edition we take a look at the light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel, how much you should be earning, and ecommerce trends.

GitLive allows you to collaborate on code, remotely, in real-time, while avoiding merge conflicts. It’s IDE-independent, so you and your team can use your own preferred code editors, and the latest version allows you to open a teammate’s files and start editing just like a Google Doc. You can request early access now.

Experimental product design takes the methodologies used in pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and even market trading, and applies them to digital product design. Unlike traditional product design, experimental product design builds multiple variations and A/B tests. Miklos Philips talks to Chris Gibbins to learn more.

Big Heads is a wonderful collection of free-to-use comic avatars perfect for apps, games, and social media. The avatars are randomly generated, but fully editable with billions of possible combinations. Once you’re happy with your avatar you can import it to React, save it as an image, or SVG file.

There are a plethora of startups in every field that claim to be disrupting the market; yet the design assets of these companies are so similar as to be interchangeable. From oral care, to mattresses, to banking, why do startups follow the same brand direction? Ben Schott looks at what he terms “blands”.

According to Eugene Burndam there are two distinctly different types of designer: the entrepreneur and the linchpin. The entrepreneur designer helms a company or project, whereas the linchpin designer is indispensable to it. In this positive post you’ll discover which of these two design paths you’re best suited to.