UX
101 bites tagged UX — interview questions with model answers, and 60-second explainers.
How Might We: Frame Problems, Not Solutions
“How Might We” questions turn research insights into broad prompts for brainstorming. Use them after user research to frame design challenges before ideating. The biggest footgun is embedding a solution in the question, which kills creativity.
Problem Statement Framing: Define the 'Why' Before the 'What'
Don't just solve the problem, solve the *right* one. Problem framing forces you to deeply understand a user's need before building. It's the first step in product development, ensuring teams don't build something nobody wants.
User Personas: Build for a 'Who', Not a 'What'
Personas are fictional character sheets for your ideal users, grounding product decisions in human needs, not just features. They guide choices from UI to marketing by asking "What would our user do?".
Setup Wizard: Guiding Users Through Complexity
A setup wizard turns a complex form into a simple, step-by-step conversation. It's ideal for infrequent but critical tasks like software installation, where the system determines the next best step. The footgun: A true wizard alters the user's *path*.
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Options Can Hurt
The Paradox of Choice argues that more options can decrease user satisfaction. Instead of empowering users, an explosion of choices in pricing tiers or feature settings can lead to decision paralysis. The footgun is assuming users want maximum choice.
The Peak-End Rule: Design for Memory, Not Averages
Users don't remember the average of an experience; they remember its most intense moment and its end. This shapes recall of onboarding, support calls, or checkout. The footgun is optimizing for overall 'goodness' while ignoring a painful peak or weak ending.
User Journey Mapping: Seeing Your Product Through a User's Eyes
A user journey map tells the story of a user achieving a goal, visualizing their actions, thoughts, and feelings from start to finish. It's essential for understanding complex, multi-channel processes.
Form Layout Best Practices
Guide users with a clear visual path, not a maze. A single-column layout with consistent spacing creates a streamlined data entry experience. Use it for everything from contact forms to complex UIs.
Conversational Component Model: Building Blocks for Voice UI
Think of conversational components as LEGO bricks for dialogue. You assemble standard pieces like questions, confirmations, and apologies to build a natural flow for voice assistants or chatbots.
IA: How to Organize Docs So People Use Your Design System
Think of your design system docs like a library. Information Architecture (IA) is the shelving and catalog system that lets users find the right component or guideline. It's crucial for any system where discoverability impacts adoption.
Empty State Pattern: More Than Just a Blank Page
An empty state turns a blank screen into a helpful guide, showing users what's possible and how to get there. It's crucial for first-time use, 'no results' searches, or after data deletion. The footgun is treating it as an afterthought, leaving users stuck.
Design System Adoption: Treat It Like a Product
Treat your design system like a product you're selling to internal teams, not just a library. Without an adoption strategy focused on real workflows, even a perfect system will be ignored, leading teams to build from scratch or create their own mini-systems.
Spatial UI Design Systems
Spatial UI design systems define how interfaces behave in 3D space on devices like Vision Pro: depth-based hierarchy, distance-aware scale, and gaze-and-pinch interaction, replacing the flat, pointer-driven rules of traditional 2D design systems.
Systematizing Haptics: Beyond Simple Vibrations
Treat haptics like a design system for touch, not just random vibrations. Use them to confirm actions or signal state changes. The biggest footgun is overuse, which turns meaningful feedback into annoying noise that users will disable.
System Usability Scale (SUS): A Quick Usability Score
The System Usability Scale (SUS) is a 10-question survey that gives a single 0-100 score for a system's perceived usability. It's a quick, industry-standard way to benchmark usability. The biggest footgun: the score is not a percentage; 68 is average.
Branding Your Design System for Adoption
Treat your design system as an internal product. Give it a brand—a mission, vision, and narrative—to drive adoption and ensure consistency. This aligns teams on the 'why' behind the components, not just the visual rules.
Design System Feedback: Start with User Needs
A design system's success depends on feedback from the end-users of the products it builds, not just its internal consumers. Prioritize features and validate designs by continuously testing with real people to ensure the system solves actual user problems.
Keyboard Focus Order: Navigating by Tab
Keyboard focus order is the path a user takes through your UI using only the Tab key. It must follow a logical sequence that preserves meaning, especially in forms and modals. The footgun is when CSS creates a visual layout that diverges from the HTML.
Wizard/Stepper Pattern: Guide Users Through Complex Tasks
A wizard or stepper pattern is like a recipe for a complex task, breaking a long process into numbered, manageable steps. It's ideal for multi-stage forms like onboarding or checkout flows.
Skeleton Screens: Faster by Faking It
Skeleton screens create the illusion of speed by showing a wireframe-like preview of a page while content loads. They're used for full-page loads to set expectations about the layout. The footgun is showing just the app frame, which gives no structure.
Design System: The Whole vs. Its Parts
A design system is the parent; style guides and component libraries are its children. It's the full toolkit for building consistent products at scale, containing rules, patterns, and ready-to-use code.
A Design System is a Shared Toolbox, Not Just a Sticker Sheet
A design system is a shared toolbox of reusable UI components and rules, not just a style guide. It ensures consistency and speed when multiple teams build products at scale.
Faceted Search: Guided Drill-Down for Large Datasets
Faceted search turns a massive result list into an interactive drill-down experience, like the filters on a shopping site. It's used in e-commerce and document libraries where items have structured attributes.
Data Sonification: Hearing Your Data's Story
Data sonification is data visualization for your ears, mapping data points to sound properties like pitch or volume. It helps find patterns in complex datasets, like network traffic, where visuals fail.
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