📝 Issue #470: Tackling Complex Design Debt, Why Tailwind Isn’t For Me, Microanalytics, Exciting New Tools for Designers, and more…

Design debt is the accumulation of all the shortcuts you took to hit your deadlines. As products grow, the design debt they collect increases until you’re left with an unmanageable product. Alex Potrivaev introduces a three-part framework for managing design debt, with some great advice on moving slow.

Microanalytics is a lightweight alternative to Google Analytics that’s simple to implement. Aimed at sites that value their users’ privacy, Microanalytics is GDPR, PECR, and CCPA compliant. With real-time stats, acquisitions, technology, and events, the service is free for up to ten thousand views per month.

Every month we round up a collection of the most exciting tools, downloads, apps, and resources we’ve seen on the web in the previous four weeks. In January’s edition, you’ll find graphics generators, an awesome UI component library, build tools for coders, and as always, some great new fonts to try out.

Haystack is an essential tool for project managers running teams of coders. It helps you optimize your team’s progress by removing bottlenecks, warning you when developers are approaching burnout, visualizing trends, and monitoring project progress. There’s a free trial available, and pricing starts from $25 per month.

Tailwind CSS is one of the most popular CSS frameworks on the web, described by its proponents as CSS's future. But there is a growing number of developers who are uncomfortable with the way Tailwind functions. Jared White puts his neck on the line to break down why Tailwind may not be for everyone.

unloved is an incredible marketplace for pre-owned tech subscriptions where you can buy and sell licenses for top digital assets. Own an Adobe CC license but switched to Figma? Put it on unloved. Need a Wix subscription but don’t want to pay full price? Find one on unloved. It’s free to subscribe and currently in beta.

Good design is invisible, which means the experience of interacting with it is so seamlessly painless that the content or product being designed takes center stage. In this excellent post, Ida Persson highlights the bad design that’s invisible because the UX problems it creates are specific to minorities and go unnoticed by designers.

When writing for the web, first impressions count, so your headlines must be attention-grabbing and SEO-friendly. Headline Studio is a brand new app from CoSchedule. Enter your headline, and the AI will analyze it and suggest improvements. There’s a free trial available, and plans start at $9 per month.

Push notifications plague our waking life. They are intrusive, self-important, and very rarely improve our relationship with the app that’s sending them. Clo S investigates the current state of notifications and introduces mindful notifications that reduce cognitive load and signal for attention rather than shouting for it.