UX

A unicorn designer is defined as someone skilled in design, visual design, and coding. While they're very sought after, they are usually looked down upon by other designers because they're seen as avoiding being a specialist in anything. Here's why that shouldn't be the case. I recently discussed the nature of Unicorn Designers with some peers. And I could see pretty quickly that the consensus among Interaction and Prod

Figma, the collaborative design and prototyping tool, has yielded great success as a slick (and free) Adobe XD and Sketch alternative. And this year, its features and UX are being upgraded like never before. So let's have look at what's new in Figma in 2020. The

People will put up with all manner of design sins when settling for a period tracker. And it wasn't until I tried Apple's in-built cycle-tracker that I realised just how dire the situation on the app store was. So whats the big deal? The Importance of a Good Mobile Period Tracker Every friend and family member I know who menstruates uses a period-tracking app. And unless they're into tech, they generally settle on the first or second thing they find in the app store. This is... fine... But we deserve better. So why don't we hold

After a decade of comfortable design stagnation for the platform, the 2020 Facebook redesign is here. And as one of the lucky people who got to test it this week, and I have to say: I'm impressed. Facebook has been altering bits and pieces of their design for the past couple of years. However, as these were mostly small improvements on existing elements, they only marginally improved user experience. So seeing Facebook being re-designed from the ground-up is not only a refreshing surprise, but also something quite necessary.

It's harder than ever to find a mid-range phone in android or iOS that does everything you want it to. But why? Let's analyse the smartphone market in 2020 and go through the best phones for the year. All Out of Options I had a Oneplus 3 for years and I loved it. It was sturdy, beautiful and surprisingly powerful for just £309. When it broke suddenly last year I found myself in a real pickle of indecision over how to replace it. I quickly learned that in the years while owning my Oneplus, the mid

Having proved steadfastly popular since its inception a decade ago, Duolingo shows no signs of slowing down. So how does it keep us hooked? Duolingo's presence as the world's leading language-learning app is undeniable. In fact, according to their LinkedIn page, the app boasts 300 million users. That's not a number to be sniffed at. If you've tried Duolingo (and if you're even a little into languages, you probably have) you'll have noticed just how easy it is. Once

I love my job, but let's be honest, that daily commute gets a little boring and Spotify can only take me so far. I started looking for weird music just to fill my time, staring out the bus window to the increasingly dark winter mornings That is until one day when I opened Spotify and the first suggestion on my homepage wasn't an album or a daily playlist, but a podcast called StartUp. The genius behind "StartUp" Gimlet Media's Startup Podcast If you think of

Thanks to sincere investment in great design, the UK has managed to transform what could have been a complicated process into a breeze. If my name hasn't already made it obvious, I'm not from the UK. Specifically, I come from Ferrara, a small-ish city in northern Italy. With Brexit approaching (apparently), I had to make sure I actually had the right to stay and work in the UK. I put off this very important task for a long period, expecting it to be a bureaucratic nightmare. And considering the state of most UK applications, you

WeChat is the most popular smartphone app in China. Having conquered that market, it's spent the past few months trying its hardest to break into the western world. Here's why that's not going to happen. What is WeChat? The answer to this question is a little complicated. At its core it's a messaging app, yes, but it's been expanded to do a lot more. In China, WeChat is used for essentially everything, including games, payments, transport, and even sharing important documents. If this sounds like a mess

Facebook Messenger falls into some common dark mode UX pitfalls, here's how to avoid them when designing. Recently, the Facebook Messenger app added dark mode support. And although it went through months of beta-testing, it doesn't look like a lot of work went behind it. While this is disappointing, it does give us a good case study on how not to design your dark mode. Why does this matter? The importance of dark modes Nothing makes me happier than apps o