📝 Issue #461: UX Lessons From Big Sur, Exciting New Tools for Designers, UXToast, Design to Save People From Themselves, and more…

Design systems are excellent tools for creating consistent design output across teams; get it right, and your colleagues will thank you. But there are pitfalls to avoid when creating a design system. Tyce Clee lists 5 things he wishes he’d known before establishing a design system at music streaming giant Spotify.

UXToast is an awesome app for iOS and Android that helps you learn the fundamentals of UX design. It’s a pocket reference of all the major UX laws from Hick’s Law to the Pareto Principle, and includes some helpful UI design tips. It’s a handy refresher for designers and you can download it for free.

We publish this roundup of the most exciting new tools we’ve found online every month. In the penultimate edition for 2020 you’ll find a helpful typography tool, a no-code website builder, some awesome patterns, CSS helpers, free illustrations and icons, and as always some great new fonts.

Notion is an all-in-one organizational tool for your whole team. It includes a team wiki, notes, and a project-orientated task list that sorts everything across a timeline. It’s a mature tool used by some of the highest-profile teams in the world. There’s a free plan for freelancers, and team plans start at $8/month.

We all make mistakes. Some of them are tiny insignificant things that can be rectified easily, and some of them wipe an entire server. The very best UI design anticipates mistakes, helps people avoid them, and provides an undo option as a last resort. Brian Lovin looks at design that saves people from themselves.

Interactive features like polls have been shown to engage users and keep them on your page longer. Polls API is a simple-to-use API that does all of the heavy lifting for you, so you can develop quizzes, feedback forms, actual interactive polls, and anything else that canvases opinions from users. Plans start at $10/month.

Apple has just launched the latest version of macOS, Big Sur, which includes updates to Safari, Messages, Maps, and tons of individual utilities. Jordan Bowman looks at seven of the biggest UX lessons designers can take from Big Sur, ranging from drilling down on key workflows, to clear visual feedback.

Craft is an app for iOS and macOS that rethinks the way we write documents. A lightning fast writing experience, it allows you to easily create structured content with pages, and sub-pages that can be reordered, revised, and even co-authored with members of your team. There’s a free plan and pro plans start at $3.75/month.

Transform the way your business communicates (again). Unslack is an offbeat parody on product hype that will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s spent time working on product launches. Unslack is simply Slack, rebuilt on Google Sheets. If your latest product marketing is anything like this, it’s time for a rethink.