📝 Issue #458: The Psychology of User Decisions, 20 Freshest Web Designs, GitHub Game Off, Cancelled Clown, and more…

Users often make decisions that leave designers perplexed. However, user behavior is relatively easy to understand if you know how users make decisions. Jordan Bowman looks at the factors that influence users’ decisions, and asks how designers can support the decision-making process in this great article.

Lobe is a free, easy to use, machine learning tool, designed to help you build intelligent projects. Using Lobe you can train your own AI to recognize anything from emotional facial reactions, to hand gestures. It’s an incredible way of rapidly developing AI-powered apps. You can apply to join the beta now.

Each month we collect the very best web sites, launched in the previous four weeks, in this handy roundup. In October’s edition you’ll find micro-sites, and just-because projects. There’s beautiful typography on show, an awesome digital musical instrument, and tons of inspiring interaction design.

Tyrus is a digital toolkit created by the design team at Airbnb to help you with tricky business tasks from handling briefs, to understanding feedback. It’s a free resource designed to help illustrators succeed as freelancers, but it’s packed with great advice for anyone hoping to make a profit from freelance work.

GitHub’s annual hackathon for building games kicks off this weekend. On November 1 participants will receive a secret theme, and then have the whole of November to build a game inspired by it. It’s a great opportunity to get into game design, by building your first game. You can join Game Off now.

Analytics are invaluable in growing a web presence, but Google’s free analytics are notoriously slow and invasive. One fantastic alternative is Panelbear, an analytics tool that’s simple to implement, and respects privacy regulations — meaning you don’t need a cookie notice. It’s free for up to 5000 events per month.

There are signs that Apple is planning to build its own search engine to challenge the dominance of Google: Google’s former head of search is now at Apple, Apple’s recruiting search engineers, and some web developers are reporting increased activity from Applebot. Barry Collins sorts out the rumors.

Tabbs is a new extension for Chrome that helps you navigate tabs like a pro. Simply install the extension in your browser and you’ll be able to quickly locate text in any tab, free up system memory by pausing tabs, mute tabs, pin the ones you use the most, and navigate with keyboard shortcuts. Tabbs is free to install.

It’s Halloween this weekend and there are some incredibly creative tricks planned, even in the midst of the pandemic. In Burger King bathrooms across Scandinavia, if you say the words “cancelled clown” three times, the lights will dim a gruesome Ronald MacDonald will appear in this viral holiday prank.