• New Jun 3, 2026

  How To Make Your Design System AI-Ready

  Practical guide on how to reduce drifts, minimize mistakes, maintain context, and improve the quality of AI-generated prototypes. Brought to you by Design Patterns For AI Interfaces, **friendly vi...

• New May 31, 2026

  June Is For Exploring (2026 Wallpapers Edition)

  Let’s kick off June — and the beginning of summer — with some fresh inspiration! Artists and designers from across the globe once again tickled their creativity to welcome the new month with a new...

• New May 28, 2026

  Algorithmic Theming Engines: Building Self-Correcting Color Systems With `contrast-color()`

  Seventy percent of websites still fail basic WCAG contrast checks in 2025. After years of design system tooling, accessibility linters, and JavaScript libraries, nothing moved the needle. We didn’t...

• New May 25, 2026

  Your Prototype Is Not Being Honest With Your Users (And Here’s How To Fix It)

  There’s a moment in almost every usability session where a participant pauses at the login screen, types something, and glances up: checking whether they’re “doing it right.” That pause is a clear...

• New May 22, 2026

  Four Levels Of Customer Understanding

  What people say, feel, think, and do are often very different things. To understand the underlying reasons for user behavior, it helps to look beyond the surface and explore hidden motivations, root...

• New May 21, 2026

  Advanced Tree Counting: Mathematical Layouts With `sibling-index()` And `sibling-count()`

  Meet `sibling-index()` and `sibling-count()`. Staggered cascade effect in one line of CSS without `:nth-child()` rules or JS workarounds. Works for 5 items or...

• New May 15, 2026

  Ten Data-Backed Truths Of User Experience ROI

  Every extra second of friction has a measurable business cost. Carrie Webster shares ten data-backed UX facts that link user experience directly to revenue, retention, and long-term...

• New May 13, 2026

  Practical Interface Patterns For AI Transparency (Part 2)

  Why traditional loading patterns like spinners fail in agentic AI experiences, and how interface patterns that reveal the system’s process, status, and decision-making can improve transparency and...

• New May 6, 2026

  The Architecture Of Local-First Web Development

  An honest perspective on building local-first web apps in 2026, written for developers who’ve been doing this long enough to be skeptical of silver...

• New May 5, 2026

  Rethinking The Experience Of System Tools

  Design always starts with function — function shapes form. But if that function can’t be made completely invisible and people still have to interact with it, it inevitably becomes part of their...

• New May 1, 2026

  Designing Stable Interfaces For Streaming Content

  Streaming UIs are an easy concept on the surface, but are quite complicated in practice. There are many considerations that need to be accounted for, from layout shifts and motion preferences to...

• New Apr 30, 2026

  A Fresh View In May (2026 Wallpapers Edition)

  Let’s welcome May with a new collection of desktop wallpapers! Following our monthly tradition, the wallpapers were created by the community for the community and can be downloaded for free....

• New Apr 27, 2026

  The “Bug-Free” Workforce: How AI Efficiency Is Subtly Disrupting The Interactions That Build Strong Teams

  AI tools are eliminating the need to “bug” colleagues for help, but the informal interactions they replace are the very scaffolding that builds team trust, belonging, and innovation. Casey Hudetz and...

• New Apr 22, 2026

  The UX Designer’s Nightmare: When “Production-Ready” Becomes A Design Deliverable

  In a rush to embrace AI, the industry is redefining what it means to be a UX designer, blurring the line between design and engineering. Carrie Webster explores what’s gained, what’s lost, and why...

• New Apr 20, 2026

  Session Timeouts: The Overlooked Accessibility Barrier In Authentication Design

  Poorly handled session timeouts are more than a technical inconvenience. They can become serious accessibility barriers that interrupt essential online tasks, especially for people with disabilities....

• New Apr 10, 2026

  How To Improve UX In Legacy Systems

  Practical guidelines for driving UX impact in organizations with legacy systems and broken processes. Brought to you by Measuring UX Impact, **friendly video course on UX** and design patterns by...

• New Apr 7, 2026

  Identifying Necessary Transparency Moments In Agentic AI (Part 1)

  Designing for agentic AI requires attention to both the system’s behavior and the transparency of its actions. Between the black box and the data dump lies a more thoughtful approach. Victor Yocco...

• New Apr 1, 2026

  A Practical Guide To Design Principles

  Design principles with references, examples, and methods for quick look-up. Brought to you by Design Patterns For AI Interfaces, **friendly video courses on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly....

• New Mar 31, 2026

  The Joy Of A Fresh Beginning (April 2026 Wallpapers Edition)

  With the new month just around the corner, could there be a better occasion to freshen up your desktop? If you’re looking for some unique and inspiring wallpapers to accompany you on all those...

• New Mar 26, 2026

  The Site-Search Paradox: Why The Big Box Always Wins

  Success in modern UX isn’t about having the most content. It’s about having the most findable content. Yet even with more data and better tools than ever, internal search often fails, leaving users to...

• New Mar 24, 2026

  Testing Font Scaling For Accessibility With Figma Variables

  Accessibility works best when it blends into everyday design workflows. The goal isn’t a big transformation, but simple work processes that fit naturally into a team’s routine. With Figma variables,...

• New Mar 19, 2026

  Modal vs. Separate Page: UX Decision Tree

  How to choose between modals and pages, when to avoid modals, and how to determine the right level of interruption or navigation. Brought to you by Sm...

• New Mar 17, 2026

  Anime vs. Marvel/DC: Designing Digital Products With Emotion In Flow

  Design is about pacing and feelings as much as pixels and patterns. Alan Cohen explores Emotion in Flow and Emotion in Conflict, showing how anime like Dan Da Dan and superhero films like James Gunn’s...

• New Mar 13, 2026

  Moving From Moment.js To The JS Temporal API

  The way JavaScript handles time has evolved significantly, from the built-in `Date` API to Moment.js and now Temporal. The new standard fills gaps in the original `Date` API while addressing...

• New Mar 12, 2026

  Beyond `border-radius`: What The CSS `corner-shape` Property Unlocks For Everyday UI

  For years, developers have been hacking around the limitations of `border-radius`, using clip-path, SVG masks, and fragile workarounds just to get anything other than round corners. The new...

• New Mar 10, 2026

  Building Dynamic Forms In React And Next.js

  Some forms stay UI, while others quietly become rule engines. Here’s why these two different approaches exist and how to choose between...

• New Mar 9, 2026

  Persuasive Design: Ten Years Later

  Many product teams still lean on usability improvements and isolated behavioral tweaks to address weak activation, drop-offs, and low retention – only to see results plateau or slip into shallow...

• New Mar 6, 2026

  Human Strategy In An AI-Accelerated Workflow

  UX design is entering a new phase, with designers shifting from makers of outputs to directors of intent. AI can now generate wireframes, prototypes, and even design systems in minutes, but UX has...

• New Mar 3, 2026

  Now Shipping: Accessible UX Research, A New Smashing Book By Michele Williams

  Our newest Smashing Book, “Accessible UX Research” by Michele Williams, is finally shipping worldwide — and we couldn’t be happier! This book is about research, but you’ll also learn about assistive...

• New Mar 2, 2026

  Getting Started With The Popover API

  What happens if you rebuild a single tooltip using the browser’s native model without the aid of a library? The Popover API turns tooltips from something you simulate into something the browser...

• New Feb 28, 2026

  Fresh Energy In March (2026 Wallpapers Edition)

  Do you need a little inspiration boost? Well, then our new batch of desktop wallpapers is for you. Designed by the community for the community, the wallpapers in this collection are the perfect...

• New Feb 26, 2026

  Say Cheese! Meet SmashingConf Amsterdam 🇳🇱

  Meet our brand new conference for designers and UI engineers who love the web. That’s [SmashingConf Amsterdam](https://smashingconf.com/amsterdam-2026), taking place in the legendary Pathé Tuschinski,...

• New Feb 23, 2026

  A Designer’s Guide To Eco-Friendly Interfaces

  Every high-resolution hero image, autoplay video, and complex JavaScript animation carries a cost. Sustainable UX challenges the era of “unlimited pixels” and reframes performance as responsibility....

• New Feb 18, 2026

  Designing A Streak System: The UX And Psychology Of Streaks

  What makes streaks so powerful and addictive? To design them well, you need to understand how they align with human psychology. Victor Ayomipo breaks down the UX and design principles behind effective...

• New Feb 13, 2026

  Building Digital Trust: An Empathy-Centred UX Framework For Mental Health Apps

  Designing for mental health means designing for vulnerability. Empathy-Centred UX becomes not a “nice to have” but a fundamental design requirement. Here’s a practical framework for building...

• New Feb 11, 2026

  Designing For Agentic AI: Practical UX Patterns For Control, Consent, And Accountability

  Autonomy is an output of a technical system. Trustworthiness is an output of a design process. Here are concrete design patterns, operational frameworks, and organizational practices for building...

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