Don't trust AI at all? Trust it a little too much? Regardless of where you sit on the spectrum, chances are it isn't going anywhere soon.

As AI becomes baked into everything from our work tools to our daily conversations, trust has become the critical design challenge. Not blind faith, not total skepticism — but calibrated trust that matches what these systems can actually do.

This week, we're exploring how to design AI experiences that earn and maintain user confidence through transparency, appropriate friction, and honest communication about limitations. Because the most dangerous AI isn't the one that fails — it's the one that sounds so confident you forget to question it.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. The Psychology Of Trust In AI

2. Building Trust in Opaque Systems

3. Signs of AI Writing

4. The Shape of AI | UX Patterns for Artificial Intelligence Design

5. What's Next for AI Design Patterns

The Psychology Of Trust In AI

www.smashingmagazine.com/2025/09/psychology-trust-ai-guide-measuring-designing-user-confidence

TRUST AND AI

Trust isn't something you can just slap onto an AI product like a badge. It's earned through thoughtful design decisions that acknowledge both the power and limitations of these systems. As AI becomes more integrated into our daily tools, understanding how to build and maintain user trust isn't just nice-to-have — it's essential.

THE JUICE

Trust is Multidimensional: Trust in AI isn't a single switch—it's built from:

• Reliability (does it work consistently?)

• Transparency (can I understand what it's doing?)

• Predictability (does it behave as expected?).

Calibrated Trust is the Goal: The sweet spot is where confidence matches actual capability. Over-trust leads to dangerous dependency; under-trust means useful tools go unused. Design for appropriate reliance.

Show Your Work: Explain why the AI made a particular decision, what data it considered, and what it might have missed. Transparency doesn't mean dumping technical details — it means providing the right level of insight for the user's context.

Measure Trust Through Behavior: Track how often users verify AI outputs, whether they return to use the feature, and how much they rely on suggestions versus their own judgment.

Design for Failure: How your AI handles mistakes is as important as how it handles success. Create clear pathways for users to correct errors and provide feedback. Every failure is an opportunity to either build or break trust.

Dive deeper

Building Trust in Opaque Systems

uxdesign.cc/building-trust-in-opaque-systems-ce38cef741b6

HUMAN-LIKE, BUT NOT HUMAN

We're remarkably bad at knowing when to trust AI. These systems sound so confident and natural that we've lost our usual BS detectors. Every day, millions chat with AI like it's their smartest friend, but this very naturalness creates a dangerous setup: trust works best paired with critical thinking, yet the more we rely on these systems, the worse we get at questioning them.

THE JUICE

The Magic 8 Ball Problem: AI responses aren't intelligent reasoning — they're statistically probable word chains. Ask the same question twice, get different answers. Those convincing responses are well-formed guesses, not verified truth.

Confidence Without Competence: Companies give AI human-like qualities through "thinking" indicators and conversational tones. This removes the uncertainty signals we normally use to detect when something's off. AI sounds equally confident whether it knows the answer or is completely making something up.

Warning Labels Don't Work: After all that effort to make AI feel human and trustworthy, a tiny "can make mistakes" disclaimer buried at the bottom is just plausible deniability — not genuine transparency.

Scaffolding Over Crutches: Current AI systems provide so much support that users become dependent without developing critical thinking skills. What if we designed AI as temporary scaffolding instead? A "learning mode" could surface uncertainty, prompt verification, and gradually build users' judgment rather than replacing it.

Friction as a Feature: Adding verification steps might hurt engagement, but that's the point. Protective friction helps users develop the judgment needed to work safely with AI.

Dive deeper

Signs of AI writing

en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing

A FIELD GUIDE TO ROBOT PROSE

Wikipedia editors have catalogued thousands of instances of AI-generated text to create a pattern recognition guide. This isn't about banning certain words — it's a field guide to help detect the deeper problems that surface-level AI tells point to.

THE JUICE

Regression to the Mean: LLMs use statistical algorithms to guess what should come next, which means outputs tend toward the most statistically likely result. Everything sounds safe, generic, and eerily similar — because it's optimized for the widest variety of cases, not accuracy or originality.

Puffed-Up Importance: AI constantly reminds you that subjects "represent or contribute to a broader topic" using a small repertoire of phrases. Things always "stand as a symbol" of something or carry "enhanced significance."

The Neutrality Problem: LLMs struggle with neutral tone, especially for "cultural heritage" topics. They'll describe anything cultural with promotional language that sounds more like travel brochures than encyclopedias.

The Formula Problem: AI loves rigid structures. Articles end with "Despite challenges..." followed by hopeful future prospects. The "rule of three" appears everywhere. Transitions rely on a tiny set of phrases like "in summary" or "overall" or the classic "it's not only X, but also Y."

American English by Default: A mismatch often appears between user location, topic origin, and English variety used. An Indian writer covering an Indian university wouldn't use American English — but LLM outputs default to American English unless prompted otherwise.

Don't Trust Detection Tools: AI content detectors like GPTZero perform better than random chance, but they have significant error rates and can't replace human judgment.

Dive deeper

The Shape of AI | UX Patterns for Artificial Intelligence Design

www.shapeof.ai/#trust

DESIGNING FOR CONFIDENCE

Trust builders give users confidence that AI results are ethical, accurate, and trustworthy. These patterns address the fundamental question: how do we design AI experiences that earn and maintain user trust through intentional design decisions?

THE JUICE

Consent in Recording: Being intentional about consent for data sharing builds trust and supports ethical experiences. Limitless disabled default recording of others' voices until audible consent is registered, while Granola initially launched without disclosure. The industry is converging around opt-in disclosures.

Voice Cloning Consent: It's increasingly easy to create fake voices and avatars from recordings. ElevenLabs requested consent from celebrity estates like Burt Reynolds to clone their voices — establishing a pattern similar to laws preventing unauthorized image endorsements.

Incognito Mode: Only ChatGPT has integrated private browsing mode for AI, while Google explicitly disallows AI search features in incognito mode. Meta offers a middle ground — users can't prevent Meta AI from learning preferences, but can mute messages temporarily or indefinitely.

Memory Management: The more we interact with AI, the better it knows us. Three memory patterns emerge:

1. Knowledge maps expose what data the AI has captured

2. Selective memory lets users edit retained data

3. Clear the cache allows full reset without forcing account deletion.

Watermarks for Differentiation: As AI becomes more prolific, differentiating generated content from human-created content protects everyone. Four watermark types exist:

1. Overlay (visual symbols, easily removed)

2. Steganographic (imperceptible patterns)

3. Machine learning (distinct keys readable only by other models)

4. Statistical (random patterns, hardest to crack).

The Regulatory Patchwork: China requires source-generated watermarks plus metadata. The EU's AI Act imposes labeling standards. The US established watermarking standards via executive order but needs congressional action for enforcement. There's no conventional approach yet — it'll likely require regulation and source code combined.

Dive deeper

🤿 Dive Club | Vitaly Friedman — Beyond Chat: What's Next for AI Design Patterns

www.dive.club/deep-dives/vitaly-friedman

BEYOND THE CHATBOT

We're so obsessed with being AI-first that we've forgotten the good old things people already know and understand. That magical ChatGPT text box? It has a high interaction cost—people are terrible at articulating intent, we have to wait 20-40 seconds for responses, and then AI keeps forgetting things. Why should everyone learn prompt engineering? Shouldn't AI understand us better instead?

THE JUICE

Reduce Prompting, Increase Context: Before anyone sends a prompt, make it so succinct, accurate, and contextual that generic responses are minimized. Slow people down with structured inputs — buttons, sliders, checkboxes. Tools like Perplexity let you add clarifications while AI is working. Consensus offers filters for date ranges, citations, methodology — infinitely more useful than "ask me anything."

AI Should Ask Questions: Give AI a prompt that says "ask me a bunch of questions and then we'll make a thing together" — yet most people outside tech don't know that's possible. Design affordances to help people understand AI can be conversational, not just transactional.

Bring Back Familiar Controls: Consensus uses filters really smart — last five years, minimum citations, journal rank, methodology. It shows result distribution (95% of papers say yes, 5% say possibly) rather than just one answer. These are simple UI patterns we already love, applied to AI.

Fix the Refinement Journey: People copy AI output to text editors, cherry-pick paragraphs, bring it back to AI to restructure — creating a dedicated workspace elsewhere is a bad sign. Perplexity's edit mode lets you convert responses to pages with table of contents, then use context menus to extend or remove sections.

Format Controls Should Be Standard: Instead of typing "please write in list format," give users view toggles — list, table, compact. This should be default in every AI experience.

Leverage Loading States: While AI is processing, that's the perfect time for context extraction. Gamma prompts theming controls during generation — people stop caring about loading time when they have something to do.

Show Your Scope: Build trust by showing where answers come from. Display "for this query, we considered 279 pages from experts with 20 years experience" rather than just generic sources.

AI Second, Not AI First: Take the existing user journey, then sprinkle AI across it to reduce frustrations or speed up successes. Dovetail does this beautifully — no sparkles, just AI quietly helping. Research shows people aren't looking for AI features — they're looking for features that work.

The Future Is Orchestration: We're moving from tactical to strategic work. AI won't replace people who create emotional connections with products through attention to detail. What we want are wonderful human-first experiences that happen to have AI components — not AI-first experiences with human afterthoughts.

Dive deeper

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

P.S. I used AI to help write this edition. Trust me any more or any less? Trust AI any more or any less? Who knows, we're all figuring this out together…

Cheers, Jake

Hi folks, we’re back from our summer break for regularly scheduled programming. Didn’t know there was a Links for Thinks summer break? Neither did I — but you gotta let that brain take a break sometimes.

The inspiration for this edition came from some unfortunate circumstances. I was recently bedridden for around a week, and while I’m grateful it wasn’t longer — I did get sucked into a bit of a dark hole that is seemingly more common these days.

That dark hole was a few days of doomscrolling. It’s something that doesn’t seem to be getting any better after we crawled out of our lockdowns a few years ago.

It made me wonder, “why is this happening, and how did we get here?”

So let’s take a look at why this is happening and how we got here so we can collectively figure out how to get out of here.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. Infinite Scrolling: When to Use It, When to Avoid It

2. YouTube Regrets

3. Why Everyone is Quitting Social Media

4. Turn Off the Internet

5. POV: Is it the designer’s responsibility if an app is addictive?

Infinite Scrolling: When to Use It, When to Avoid It

www.nngroup.com/articles/infinite-scrolling-tips

THE CONTENT THAT NEVER ENDS

Let’s set the stage with a design pattern introduced circa 2006 that makes modern day doomscrolling possible. The infinite scroll. Dreamed up by Aza Raskin, it’s not inherently a dark pattern, but when it’s coupled with poorly designed intent — we find ourselves falling into rabbit holes that leave our brains drained of dopamine. Yes, he does realize the gravity of the situation.

THE JUICE

When To Be Infinite: Believe it or not there may be some use cases where infinite scroll isn’t awful. If it’s being used to reduce interruptions to a users task, probably a good use case. Used for reducing interaction cost? Probably not so bad. And of course if it makes something easier to find for a user on a mobile device, why not. If it’s being used to keep you sucked into conspiracy theory rabbit holes, probably not so good.

Usability Woes: For every good reason to use infinite scroll, there likely comes two reasons why not, reasons like…

• Difficulty re-finding content — Making it tough to remember the location of something specific

• Illusion of completeness — When there isn’t an action to keep going, and it’s unclear that there is more to do

• Inability to access the end of the page — Sometimes people actually need to get to a footer, don’t make that impossible

• Accessibility problems — If someone navigates a page in a way that isn’t just scrolling (e.g. keyboard-only or screen readers), infinite scroll adds some complications if not handled in an accessible way

• Increased page load — If you’re dealing with some spotty connectivity or low bandwidth on a phone — infinite scroll can slow things down

• Poor SEO performance — Crawlers might have a tough time finding your content

Yes, And: If you find yourself needing an infinite scroll for a good use case, try and supplement the pattern with a landmark or action to add intent. Adding a load more button could be beneficial, or adding integrated pagination to let folks know they’re moving onto a new batch of content.

More on infinite scrolling

YouTube Regrets

www.mozillafoundation.org/en/youtube/findings

CROWDSOURCING THE TRUTH

The second bit of important technology that enables doomscrolling is the recommendation algorithm. Having really found its stride in recent years, let’s take a dive into a case study on one of the most prominent recommendation machines out there. YouTube.

When YouTube won't provide transparency into how its recommendation algorithm works, sometimes you have to get 37,000 people to help you investigate instead. That's exactly what Mozilla did with their RegretsReporter project — the largest-ever crowdsourced study of YouTube's algorithm.

Between July 2020 and May 2021, volunteers from 91 countries flagged 3,362 regrettable videos they encountered on the platform. The findings paint a pretty clear picture: YouTube's algorithm isn't passive — it’s actively steering people toward problematic content.

THE JUICE

The Regrets Are Real and Varied: Volunteers reported everything from COVID misinformation to sexualized children's cartoons to election conspiracy theories. The most common categories? Misinformation, violent content, hate speech, and spam. About 12% of reported videos either shouldn't be on YouTube or shouldn't be recommended, based on YouTube's own Community Guidelines.

Recommendations Are the Problem: 71% of all reported regrets came from YouTube's recommendation system, not from searches. And recommended videos were 40% more likely to be regretted than videos people actively searched for. Some of these recommended videos even violated YouTube's own rules and were later removed — but only after racking up millions of views.

Non-English Speakers Get Hit Harder: The regret rate is 60% higher in countries where English isn't the primary language. Brazil, Germany, and France had particularly high rates. Among regrettable videos in non-English languages, 36% were pandemic-related, compared to just 14% in English.

Regrets Perform Well: The reported videos weren't obscure content — they were getting 70% more views per day than other videos volunteers watched. YouTube's algorithm was actively amplifying this stuff, because well, they know it works.

Unrelated Recommendations: In 43% of cases where researchers could see what volunteers watched before a regret, the recommendation was completely unrelated. Someone watches wilderness survival videos and gets recommended extreme right-wing political content. Checks out.

What Needs to Change: Mozilla's recommendations were pretty straightforward — platforms need to enable independent audits of their recommendation systems, publish transparency reports that actually mean something, and give users real control over what gets recommended to them.

The Bigger Picture: YouTube's algorithm drives an estimated 700 million hours of watch time every single day. That's a massive amount of influence with almost zero oversight.

Read the research

FROM FRIENDS TO FEEDS TO… SHAREHOLDER VALUE

The third and final piece to our doomscrolling storm is technology built to maximize shareholder value.

Instagram’s onboarding once promised to "see photos and videos from your friends." Feels like we’ve drifted a bit away from that. Social media platforms, generally speaking, were built for genuine connection. But we all know at this point they’ve morphed into attention-extraction machines with advertisers being the real customer, not regular folks.

That’s a problem, because we humans have little feeble brains that can be easily manipulated if the right levers are pulled. And boy has modern social media (and media companies at large) been really pulling those levers.

THE JUICE

The Ol’ Bait-and-Switch: Web 2.0 gave us something revolutionary — the "follow." You decided who you wanted to hear from, creating your own corner of the internet. But once these platforms went public, the game changed. Connection had to become profit, and the real customer became advertisers hungry for your attention.

The Arms Race Providing Shareholder Value: When platforms compete for attention, they’ll exploit every psychological vulnerability they can find. Infinite scroll, to name one.

TikTok's Algorithm Revolution: While everyone focused on short-form video, TikTok's real innovation was ditching the follow entirely. Your feed became determined by what the algorithm thinks you'll watch, not who you chose to follow. Every scroll is a data point teaching the machine exactly what keeps you hooked.

The Negativity Bias Problem: Algorithms don't care if content makes you calm or angry. They only care if you keep scrolling. Unfortunately, humans naturally stare at negative and outrageous content longer than positive and calm content. Mix infinite scroll + recommendation algorithms + human psychology = we got ourselves that perfect doomscroll storm I was talking about.

The Designing of Less Social Media: During Meta's FTC trial, Zuck admitted only 7% of Instagram time is spent viewing friends' content. Social media has become less social and more about consuming lifestyle aspiration content. It's moved from "what's going on with my friends and how can I connect with them" to "what should I be doing with my life."

Values vs. Attention: There's a gap between what we value and what we pay attention to. We'll scroll through endless content that doesn't bring meaning, joy, or growth to our lives. These systems are so powerful that even people who build them (looking at you, tech workers) have to set hard limits on their own usage (And I usually end up ignoring it anyways).

Finding Balance: We're only two decades into figuring out this massive shift in human communication. The internet is brand new in the grand scheme of things. We have time to course-correct and design technology that adds value to our lives rather than extracting it. The future isn't written yet — and that's actually pretty exciting. So long as we don’t design ourselves into an anxiety ridden future.

This is less about us trying to course correct and buy a farm to live off the grid with our goats. It’s about being more intentional. It's about designing experiences that serve humans, not shareholders. The question isn't whether to use technology, but how to use it in ways that actually better our lives.

Watch the video

Turn Off the Internet

staticmade.com/2025/09/17/turn-off-the-internet

TO REGULATE, OR NOT TO REGULATE

It sounds like our doomscrolling journey led us to… well, more gloom and doom. We know that big tech has built machines designed to hold your attention. And we know that the algorithms don't care what keeps you scrolling — puppy videos or conspiracy theories. They only care that you keep consuming. And unfortunately as we know, nothing keeps people engaged quite like rage. But there are still things that can be done to get us to a better spot.

THE JUICE

Social Media is Media: Tech companies claim they're neutral platforms, but every algorithmic recommendation is an editorial decision. When YouTube suggests extreme content or Facebook amplifies angry reactions, those are editorial choices — they just don't want the responsibility that comes with it.

It’s a Business World: These algorithms aren't just reflecting polarization, they're manufacturing it. Companies could change their algorithms tomorrow to prioritize accuracy over engagement. They choose not to because extremism is more profitable than moderation.

Regulate The Machine: Three things could help loosen the grip:

1. Algorithmic transparency — disclose how recommendations work

2. Algorithmic accountability — consequences for harmful amplification

3. Algorithmic choice — let users opt for chronological feeds instead of manipulative curation

Dive deeper into regulating algorithms

POV: Is it the designer’s responsibility if an app is addictive?

www.itsnicethat.com/articles/pov-ethics-of-gamified-ux-digital-creative-industry-insights-070324

WELL, NOW WHAT?

If you're designing digital experiences, you're either part of the problem or part of the solution. There's no neutral ground when your design decisions directly impact how people spend their time and attention. The gamification tactics that boost engagement metrics often exploit the same psychological vulnerabilities that make doomscrolling so addictive.

THE JUICE

The Reality Check: Every product team discusses and cares deeply about ethics. But executive leadership might not always partake in the same line of thinking. Designers often imagine themselves as powerful beings shaping products to benefit people, but most are acting on what leadership believes should be done to generate numbers that satisfy investors. Though not always possible to convince folks of your POV, that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook.

Question Everything: When stakeholders ask for features designed to increase engagement, dig deeper. What problem are we actually solving? Who benefits from this design decision — the user or the business? Accept your role as a challenger of the status quo, not just an executor of business requirements.

Put Needs Over Profits: Your role should be to question decisions made for you and to put the needs of the many ahead of the profits of the few. Sometimes the most ethical design is the one that helps people leave faster, even when that conflicts with engagement metrics.

Start With Users: Go talk to actual users. Get to know them, understand their real-life problems, and how digital products fit into their lives. Then start telling people in your company about what you learned, even when they don't really want to hear it. It won't dismantle the system entirely, but it's a start.

Learn more about taking responsibility

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

Woof — what a whirlwind of a month. I didn’t intend to have such a huge lapse in content, but here we are. Thanks for bearing with me.

Ever been stuck in an endless cycle of “I like that” or “I don’t like that” feedback? Not sure how to back up your decisions or chart a clearer path forward? Well maybe you could use a little help from our friend validation.

Often when we talk about testing, we lean into A/B testing. We think we test two different things and the one that “performs” better must be the solution, right? Maybe not.

Leaning too heavily into only relying on A/B testing can be a bit of a double edged sword. Design is often dealing with a more complex set of decisions rather than taking a single action on a single page.

So you may be asking yourself “Well, what else can I do to test my designs?” Glad you asked — let’s take a look at how you can expand your design testing horizons.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. Stage 5 in the Design Thinking Process: Test

2. Concept Testing in UX

3. Testing Visual Design: A Comprehensive Guide

4. 6 Dimensions for Assessing Usability Data in Analysis

5. How To Test And Measure Content In UX

Stage 5 in the Design Thinking Process: Test

www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-5-in-the-design-thinking-process-test

THINKING ABOUT TESTING

Before we dive deeper into specific areas of design, let's make sure we're aligned on the basics. Design Thinking. We all know it. We all love it. Testing isn't just about validating your final design — it's a crucial stage that feeds back into every other part of the design thinking process. And the reality is you should be testing throughout the entire process, not just at the end.

THE JUICE

Testing Is Learning: The test phase isn't all pass/fail — it's about uncovering opportunities. Every problem discovered is actually a gift — valuable information that guides your next iteration. Success generally means learning something new, not getting everything right on the first try.

Test Early and Often: Don't wait until your design is polished to start testing. Testing rough prototypes early in the process is less time-consuming, less expensive, and gives you crucial feedback when you can still make significant changes.

The Feedback Loop: Testing isn't the end — it's part of an iterative cycle. User feedback often sends you back to empathize, redefine, ideate, or prototype again (or whatever your framework of choice is). Each loop refines your solution and brings you closer to solving the right problem.

Implementation Matters: Beyond usability, look at how your solution fits into people's lives. A design that passes usability tests might still fail if it doesn't integrate well with users' broader context and needs.

Observe More, Ask Less: What users do is more revealing than what they say. Focus on behavior — where they hesitate, what confuses them, where they succeed or fail — rather than direct opinions about your design.

Testing Isn't Just for Users: Include stakeholders in your testing process. Their buy-in is crucial for implementation, and watching real users interact with your design can transform their understanding of user needs.

The Right Mindset: Approach testing with curiosity, not defensiveness. The goal is to improve your solution, not defend your current design. Be ready to revisit earlier stages if testing reveals deeper issues.

Dive deeper into testing

Concept Testing in UX

maze.co/guides/concept-testing

WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER

So you've got a great new idea for a product feature — but do people actually want it? Concept testing helps you answer that question before investing time and resources into development. It's about validating the core value proposition with your target audience early in the process, when changes are still relatively easy and inexpensive to make.

THE JUICE

Fail Fast, Save Resources: Testing concepts early helps you identify non-starters before you invest in detailed design and development. Each hour spent on concept testing could save days or weeks of wasted effort later.

Types of Concept Tests: Different approaches serve different needs:

• Monadic testing: testing one concept in isolation

• Sequential monadic: testing multiple concepts one after another

• Comparative testing: directly comparing alternatives

• Protomonadic testing: deep dive on one concept followed by brief exposure to alternatives

The When and Where: Timing matters in concept testing. Early-stage testing validates the basic idea, while later tests can refine specific implementations. Remote testing gives you scale and diversity, while in-person testing offers depth and nuance.

Beyond Like/Dislike: Don't just ask if folks like your concept — dig deeper into whether they understand it, whether it solves their actual problems, and whether they'd choose it over existing alternatives.

Quality Questions = Quality Data: Focus on asking about specific aspects of the concept rather than vague overall impressions. "Would you use this?" is less useful than "How would this fit into your current workflow?"

Look for Patterns, Not Validation: The goal isn't to confirm what you already believe — it's to identify patterns that reveal underlying needs and pain points. Sometimes the most valuable insights come from concepts that fail.

From Insights to Action: The best concept testing doesn't just tell you what works — it tells you why. These insights can inform not just the current concept but future design decisions as well.

Read more about concept testing

Testing Visual Design: A Comprehensive Guide

www.nngroup.com/articles/testing-visual-design/

BEYOND “DO YOU LIKE IT”

Visual design isn't just about aesthetics (though still important) — it shapes how users perceive and interact with your product. But when it comes to testing visual design, it still gets reduced to subjective opinions about what looks or feels "good." There's a better way: focus on how visual design impacts user understanding, expectations, and behavior.

THE JUICE

Attitudinal vs. Behavioral: Choose your testing method based on what you want to learn. Attitudinal methods gather thoughts and feelings about aesthetics and brand alignment. Behavioral methods like A/B testing and eyetracking show how design elements influence actual user behavior and task completion.

The Five-Second Rule: 5-second tests capture gut reactions to visual style before people can read copy or notice details. It's perfect for testing first impressions and overall visual impact, but don't warn participants about the time limit — you want authentic reactions.

First-Click Testing: When users have specific goals, first-click tests reveal if they can quickly find what they need. Most people spend only a few seconds scanning for actionable elements, making this ideal for testing visual hierarchy and navigation placement.

Preference With Purpose: When comparing design variations, make sure differences are significant enough for non-designers to detect. Change one element at a time (like layout while keeping colors consistent) to draw clear conclusions about what impacts users most.

The Right Questions: Move beyond "do you like it?" to structured approaches:

• Open-ended explanations for discovering what matters to users

• Open word choice for specific but unconstrained feedback

• Closed word choice for measuring brand attribute alignment

• Numerical ratings for quantifying specific qualities

Beyond First Impressions: Visual design impacts long-term user behavior. Use eyetracking to see what draws attention and A/B testing to measure how design choices affect conversion rates and task success over time.

Read more about testing visual design

6 Dimensions for Assessing Usability Data in Analysis

www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-data-in-analysis

ALL CURIOUS RESEARCHERS STOP AND ANALYZE CAREFULLY

No single data point tells the whole story in usability testing. When 4 out of 5 users say they like a feature, but only one actually used it (and struggled), you're looking at misleading surface-level signals. Each piece of data — whether behavioral or attitudinal — needs to be examined through six critical lenses to separate real insights from noise.

THE JUICE

The Six Dimensions: Use this fun lil mnemonic to remember the dimensions: All Curious Researchers Stop and Analyze Carefully.

• Authenticity: How natural was the comment or behavior? Was the participant trying to please you, or did they genuinely mean what they said? Pay attention to how something is said, not just what is said.

• Consistency: Does this data point align with other feedback from the same participant? When someone says a task was easy but their behavior shows multiple restarts and errors, trust the behavior over the words.

• Repetition: How often does this comment or behavior occur across sessions or participants? Repeated patterns reveal underlying mental models and real user tendencies.

• Spontaneity: Did the feedback come naturally, or only after you prompted for it? Spontaneous reactions are generally more authentic than responses to direct questions.

• Appropriateness: Does this feedback relate to your research questions, or is it just interesting but irrelevant noise? Stay focused on what you actually need to learn.

• Confounds: What other factors might have influenced this data point? Consider study design, participant characteristics, and environmental factors that could skew results.

The Reality Check: When behavioral and verbal data contradict each other, prioritize what people do over what they say. Actions reveal true user experience more accurately than self-reported opinions.

Critical Context: Every data point exists within the context of your study design, participant recruitment, and research goals. Apply these six dimensions systematically to avoid being misled by surface signals.

Dive deeper into usability data analysis

How To Test And Measure Content In UX

www.smashingmagazine.com/2025/02/how-to-test-and-measure-content-in-ux

TEST CONCEPTS, NOT JUST WORDS

Content testing isn't just about finding typos or checking if your copy sounds good. It's about understanding if people actually get and act on the information you're presenting. Are they getting the right message? Do they even know what you're asking them to do? Sometimes seemingly perfect written content completely misses the mark.

THE JUICE

Banana Testing: Replace all key actions with the word "Banana," then ask folks to suggest what each action on the page could prompt. This tells you things like whether your icons are helpful, if interactive elements are perceived as clickable, and if actions are in the right places. It can uncover what words might be useful to double down on context. It sounds weird, but it might just work.

Content Heatmapping: Give participants a task, then ask them to highlight things that are clear or confusing using different colors. Map all highlights into a heatmap to identify patterns.

Run Moderated Sessions: People might say a page is "clear and well-organized," but when you ask specific questions, they might also really have no idea what’s going on. These insights rarely surface in unmoderated sessions — you need to observe behavior and ask follow-up questions on the spot.

Test Concepts, Not Words: Don't just tweak individual words — test broader concepts and flows. Avoid speaking your content aloud during testing since that's not how people normally consume it. Ask questions and wait silently for genuine reactions.

Choose Your Method: Match your testing approach to what you want to learn:

• Do users understand? → Interviews, highlighting, Cloze tests

• Do we match their mental model? → Banana testing, Cloze tests

• What word works best? → Card sorting, A/B testing

• Why doesn't it work? → Interviews, highlighting, walkthroughs

• Do we know user needs? → Competitive testing, process mapping

Beyond Individual Words: Content isn't just copy — it's voice, tone, and the entire communication experience. Test how people perceive your end-to-end experience, not just isolated pieces of text.

Dive deeper into content testing

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

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Cheers, Jake

Documentation is one of those things we all know we should be doing, but always is the first thing that gets pushed to tomorrow's to-do list. I know I've shipped more designs with incomplete documentation than I care to admit. But after working through many implementation hiccups that could’ve been avoided with better documentation, I've learned my lesson (mostly).

This week, we're tackling the art of good documentation — how to create it without losing your mind, how to structure it so people actually use it, and what pitfalls to avoid. Whether you're explaining your decisions, documenting a complex design system, or just trying to leave breadcrumbs for your future self — these resources will help you turn documentation from a chore into a superpower.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. UX Design Documentation Guide

2. Documentation That Drives Adoption

3. Diátaxis Framework

4. Best Design System Documentation Sites

5. Examples of Bad Documentation (And How to Do Better)

UX Design Documentation Guide

www.pencilandpaper.io/articles/ux-design-documentation-guide#why-bother-with-design-documentation

RESPECT THE SPECS

As designers, we're all familiar with creating specs and redlining, but comprehensive documentation goes way beyond that. While it might seem like a tedious task you don't have time for (guilty), documenting your design decisions and process brings order to the product development chaos, helps you feel accomplished, and can dramatically improve team collaboration if done right. This practice becomes especially crucial when tackling complex feature sets for enterprise UX workflows with multiple stakeholders and users in the mix.

THE JUICE

Beyond Specs: Design documentation isn't just about what to build — it's about capturing why you made certain decisions, how you arrived at solutions, and what the next steps should be. Think of it as creating a map of your thought process that both you and others can follow.

For Future You: Imagine returning to a project six months from now and instantly understanding your past thinking. Your future self will thank you for leaving breadcrumbs.

Strategy Meets Design: Your documentation represents how you're manifesting the product strategy. It connects high-level intentions with practical design decisions and gets everyone aligned on both purpose and execution.

Sanity Check: Writing down your process is a part of storytelling in design — and learning to spot plot holes before they become problems. By documenting as you go, you naturally QA your own work and avoid missing crucial details.

Documentation Done Right: Whether you use Notion, Figma, Confluence, Carrier Pigeons, or whatever else — be sure to establish a dedicated space for documentation that everyone can access but won't accidentally modify. Create templates to standardize the process and make it a natural part of your workflow rather than an afterthought.

Go From Big to Small: Start with the big picture (flowcharts are your friend) before diving into specifics. Show how new features connect to existing ones, explain entry points, and use matrices to visualize conditional logic and different states.

No Time to Document = No Time to Think: If you're consistently skipping documentation, you're missing a crucial part of the design process. Make it a non-negotiable habit — even if it starts with simple sticky notes on wireframes explaining your choices.

Learn more about documentation

Documentation That Drives Adoption

www.figma.com/blog/design-systems-103-documentation-that-drives-adoption/#what-to-include-in-your-documentation

BEYOND THE COMPONENTS

Good documentation transforms abstract design principles into practical tools, but creating documentation that people actually use requires more than just cataloging components. The best documentation bridges the gap between intention and implementation, capturing not just what exists but the how and why behind design decisions.

THE JUICE

The Language Bridge: Folks in different business functions speak different languages. Good documentation bridges this gap, capturing both the "how" and the "why" behind design decisions in a way everyone can understand.

Choose Your Source of Truth: Determining where documentation lives is as important as what goes into it. Whether you build a custom site or leverage existing platforms, what matters is that your documentation meets teams where they work with tools that integrate into their workflows.

Layer Your Information: The most effective documentation is structured to serve different needs simultaneously. Include high-level principles for strategic understanding, detailed specifications for implementation, and clear examples that show the system in action.

Maintain Through Automation: As systems evolve, manual documentation quickly becomes outdated and updating it is a drag. Leading teams build automated processes that keep documentation current, from custom tooling that exports changes from design tools directly to documentation sites to linters that validate documentation for completeness.

Measure What Matters: Look beyond page views to understand how documentation influences behavior. Set concrete goals like system adoption percentages and survey teams to measure productivity improvements when using the system versus working without it.

Create Clear Contribution Paths: Establish contribution guidelines, version control practices, and QA processes that balance centralized governance with team input.

Learn more about adoption

Diátaxis

diataxis.fr

FOUR PATHS TO CLARITY

One of the biggest hurdles of creating good documentation? Trying to do too many things at once. I know we all love a good matrix — so let me show you the Diátaxis framework which offers a refreshingly clear approach by identifying four distinct types of documentation, each serving a specific user need. Rather than a one-size-fits-all documentation smorgasbord, this model helps you craft purposeful content that actually works for folks.

THE JUICE

The Four Quadrants: Diátaxis organizes documentation into four distinct types:

• Tutorials (learning-oriented)

• How-to guides (task-oriented),

• Reference (information-oriented),

• Explanation (understanding-oriented)

Learning vs. Doing: The framework maps documentation along two axes. The vertical axis separates theoretical knowledge from practical action, while the horizontal distinguishes between acquiring new skills and applying existing ones.

Tutorials Done Right: True tutorials aren't just step-by-step guides—they're learning experiences where users develop skills and confidence through practical experience.

How-To Guides With Purpose: Unlike tutorials, how-to guides assume competence and focus on helping users achieve specific goals. They're for people already at work, not studying—like a recipe for someone who already knows how to cook.

Reference Without Distraction: Reference documentation should be neutral, factual, and mirror the structure of what it describes. Like a map or technical diagram, it provides accurate information without interpretation or guidance.

Explanation For Context: This is where you answer "why" questions, provide background, and help users understand the bigger picture. It's the place for perspectives and conceptual exploration—not for action steps.

The Compass in Action: When creating documentation, use the Diátaxis compass to clarify your intentions. Ask: Does this content inform action or cognition? Does it serve the user's acquisition or application of skill? The answers will tell you which type of documentation you're creating.

Start Anywhere: The beauty of Diátaxis is that you don't need to overhaul everything at once. Identify one small improvement you can make right now, do it, and then repeat. Each change will naturally point to the next.

Dive deeper into Diátaxis

Best Design System Documentation Sites

backlight.dev/mastery/the-best-design-system-documentation-sites

STUDY THE MASTERS

As with anything in life, there’s no better way to learn than to imitate those who have paved the way before you. Though the idea of documentation is larger than just design systems, there’s a whole group of people who are building documentation hubs that many different people are expected to consume. There are plenty of nuggets that are transferrable to whatever documentation woes you’re facing today.

THE JUICE

Structure Around User Needs: Design systems are great at organizing information based on what people actually need to accomplish. Look at how they separate reference materials from educational guides, and consider how your documentation could benefit from a similar user-centered organization approach.

Make Updates Visible: The best design systems have clear version history and highlight recent changes prominently. This transparency helps users understand what's changed and why — a practice that can dramatically improve adoption of your documentation regardless of subject matter.

Balance Detail with Digestibility: Notice how design systems use progressive disclosure — showing essential information first with options to dive deeper. This approach prevents overwhelming users while still providing comprehensive information, making it perfect for complex design documentation of any kind. Onboarding 101, really.

Use Visual Hierarchy to Guide: The best design systems use thoughtful visual presentation to help users navigate complex information. Consider how spacing, typography, and color could improve the scanability and usefulness of your own documentation, regardless of what you're documenting.

Explore some design systems

Examples of Bad Documentation (And How to Do Better)

everydeveloper.com/bad-documentation-examples

THE WOES OF POOR DOCUMENTATION

Good documentation is essential for communication around your design work. When done well, it helps folks understand your design decisions and serves as a valuable resource for teammates. When done poorly, it can create confusion, frustration, and lifelong enemies. Here are five common documentation mistakes and how to avoid them.

THE JUICE

Ghost Documentation: The worst documentation is the one that doesn't exist or can't be found. If your design decisions, rationales, and specifications aren't documented or are buried deep in your design tool, your team can't benefit from your thinking process. Make documentation discoverable and prominent.

Broken Promises: Inaccurate or outdated documentation can be worse than no documentation at all. When your specs don't match the actual implementation, or your documented patterns don't reflect current design decisions, it creates a trust problem. Regularly audit your documentation for accuracy and update it when things change.

Format Frustrations: Nothing says "I don't care about your experience" like documentation trapped in hard-to-use formats. Whether it's static PDFs that can't be easily searched or copied from, or unstructured slides that lack context, the medium matters. Choose accessible, linkable formats that work for your audience in the context that matters.

One-Dimensional Approach: Reference-only documentation tells what exists but not how to use it effectively. For example, a design system with only component specs but no guidance on patterns, context, or when to use what leaves too many dots unconnected. Include the multiple types of documentation you just learned about: reference, tutorials, explanations, and how-to guides.

No Point of View: Documentation without narrative or opinion lacks the why behind decisions. When you share only how components work without explaining the design principles or thinking that shaped them, you miss an opportunity to build understanding. The most valuable documentation shares your design perspective and reasoning.

More about bad documentation

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

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Cheers, Jake

Last time I sent out “cool stuff for inspiration” it seemed to go over pretty well with folks. Sometimes the best way to learn is by looking at cool stuff until something clicks — so let’s dig into some inspiring links.

— Jake

Our interfaces have lost their senses

www.wattenberger.com/thoughts/our-interfaces-have-lost-their-senses

YOU HAVE FREE WILL

Remember: You can really do whatever you want when it comes to building stuff. If you have an idea for something that’s unconventional and maybe doesn’t follow any standard patterns — there’s nothing from stopping you from bringing it to life anyways. This is a great piece of storytelling to remind us of that. And to remind us that maybe we need more of that kind of thinking in the world.

Design Systems Report 2025 - Brought to you by zeroheight

zeroheight.com/how-we-document/design-system-report-2025-brought-to-you-by-zeroheight

DESIGN SYSTEMS FOR EVERYONE

We know em’ we love em’, this is a neat little website that sums up zeroheight’s 2025 design systems report. Lots of cool visual and data viz inspo for your eyes. I’m sure I’ll do a deeper dive into the report itself in the near future, but for now have a look for yourself — if you’re into reading stuff.

Brands In Motion

www.brandsinmotion.xyz

GET MOVING

I’m a sucker for some good motion graphics. With modern tooling (Jitter and Spline to name a couple) — there’s a whole lot you can do in browsers to enhance experiences. This website is a great collection of how motion is being used to bring brands to life.

Product Artistry Games

games.productartistry.com/games

GAMES FOR LEARNING

How great would it have been if school was just about playing a bunch of games to learn? Probably would turn out awful, now that I’ve said it out loud. But there’s no reason we can’t have some fun while we’re learning specific concepts on the side. This is a fun example of how learning and gamification can work well together.

Scroll buddy

scrollbuddy.com

LET’S HAVE FUN

Remember when I said that you can do whatever you want when it comes to building stuff? I mean it. So does Scroll buddy.

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

What makes good design, good? Sometimes this question is pretty objective. If something isn’t easy to use, it doesn’t properly communicate purpose, or is inaccessible in general—you’re already not starting on a good foot.

But what about the more subjective stuff? The gut reactions to why people flock towards certain brands and stay away from others. Why some living rooms are more than functional—they feel like an art piece, while others feel like a lackluster shell.

The difference between good design and great design often lives in this nebulous space we call "taste." It's the inherent feeling of "oh I like that" vs "hmm something feels wrong." Some people seem to naturally have it, while others struggle to develop it.

This week, we're diving into the concept of taste in design — what it is, how to cultivate it, and why it matters more than ever in an age where technical skills are becoming increasingly accessible to everyone.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. Taste

2. Toools.design – An archive of 1,500+ Design Resources

3. GV Guide to Design Critique

4. Cultivating Taste as A Designer

5. Design Taste vs. Technical Skills in the Era of AI

Taste

www.doc.cc/articles/taste

TASTE SETTING

Is "good taste" something we're born with, or something we develop? While we often hear that taste is purely subjective, we may be dealing with something more nuanced. There seems to be a shared understanding of what constitutes "good design" that goes beyond just personal preference.

Rather than looking at taste as an almighty gift bestowed upon a lucky few, we might better understand it as a skill — a muscle that strengthens through exposure, thoughtful analysis, and practice. Like learning to point out complex flavors in wine or coffee, developing design taste requires both experience and attention.

THE JUICE

The Taste Gap: Your taste will always develop faster than your skills. That frustrating chasm between "I know this isn't good" and "I can't make it better yet" can be motivation for growth opportunities. Embrace it.

Build Your Taste Muscle: Actively expand your palette by poking your head into different styles, even ones you don't personally love. Create a collection of work you admire and specifically note what makes each piece effective, not just that you like it.

Taste vs. Quality: There's an important distinction to make here. Taste lives in the observer, quality exists in the object itself. The concept becomes more productive when framed objectively around measurable or comparable qualities.

The Elements of Objective Taste: Good taste isn't random — it's based on recognizable qualities: materials that fit their purpose, ergonomics that consider user needs, effective affordances, usability, accessibility, harmonious color choices, aesthetic choices that trigger emotion, and intentional visual hierarchy.

Watch for Gatekeeping: Be wary of "good taste" being used as a way to keep other ideas out. Historically, taste has been kept intentionally blurry to prevent certain people from accessing opportunities.

Taste Through Practice: Like any skill, taste develops through practice — exploring new paths, taking risks, making mistakes. Over time, you build a system of what works and why. There's no shortcut to developing this muscle, you gotta put in the time.

The Demystification Project: For design to evolve, we need to start objectively defining quality: what does quality mean for your company, your team, and your career? When we eliminate blurry words and subjectivity from the conversation, our individual taste skills can finally be used to reach shared quality goals.

More on Taste

Toools.design – An archive of 1,500+ Design Resources

www.toools.design

CONSUMER MINDSET

I have a post-it note on my monitor that says "CREATE MORE THAN YOU CONSUME." It's mostly a reminder to not doom-scroll. But the counter argument to this phrase is that in order to develop good taste — you need to be a conscious consumer of high quality things. You need to look at stuff obsessively to try and pin point what it is about that thing that draws you and everyone else to it.

This is a great resource to start exploring corners of the internet that capture high quality design. And though many of us are designing for digital experiences — don't forget to look up from your screen every once and awhile to find inspiration in the IRL physical world.

THE JUICE

Connecting Dots: With over 1,500 design resources spanning a bunch of categories, toools.design is a perfect partner for consuming with purpose. Instead of random scrolling, you're exploring a carefully filtered collection that exposes you to quality work.

Cross-Disciplinary Inspiration: Discover tools beyond your usual comfort zone — animation resources when you're a UI designer, or icon libraries when you're focused on UX. Often we get stuck in our silos and specific workflows. Exploring output and tools for different disciplines is a great way to further develop taste.

Dive into the Resources

GV Guide to Design Critique

library.gv.com/guide-to-design-critique-86ebf499bed5

EXPLAIN YOURSELF

As you're traveling along your taste journey, you'll inevitably need to explain why you feel a certain way about something.

Those vague feelings of "something's off" or "this just works" need to be transformed into specific, actionable feedback. Think of design critiques as less of a formality and more of the training grounds where you learn to articulate taste and hone your eyes and gut.

THE JUICE

Teachable Taste: Good taste isn't always natural — but it is a learnable skill that develops through structured conversations about what works and why. The vocabulary of critique gives shape to your instincts.

Structure > Chaos: Vague feelings like "this looks off” might be a good starting point for feedback, but try and explain why. The pressure of articulation forces you to develop language that matches your visual sensibilities.

Beyond Like/Dislike: Great taste goes beyond personal preferences by understanding how design serves goals. By connecting feedback to customer and business objectives, you train yourself to evaluate work analytically rather than emotionally.

Context Shapes Perception: Learning to set the stage before presenting work builds your contextual awareness — a staple in heightened taste. You begin to look at design not in isolation, but within its full ecosystem of constraints and possibilities.

More on Design Critiques

Cultivating Taste as A Designer

www.dive.club/deep-dives/thiago-costa

THE ART OF TASTE

Thiago Costa, co-founder of Fey, has some solid insights on developing taste. Insights that don’t revolve around mastering latest tools or following trends — but more about training your eye to spot what others miss and drawing inspiration from beyond the tech bubble.

THE JUICE

Lean Into Art: Even though I just shared a digital design heavy resource — maybe you need to take a step away from the UI design blogs. Art has been perfecting visual communication for thousands of years. Your next breakthrough might come from a painting, not another app interface.

Break the Source-Code: Don't just copy other digital designs —that's like making a photocopy of a photocopy. Go find inspiration in architecture, nature, film. Your work will feel fresher for it.

Design = Art × Science: The experimental side is art; the problem-solving is science. You need both to create something that works and wows.

Design Spidey-Sense: Great taste comes from noticing what others don't. The misaligned cabinet in that architecture video, how light creates shadows on surfaces. This heightened awareness becomes your superpower.

Real-World Physics → Digital Magic: Study how light behaves in the physical world to make digital designs feel tangible. Subtle shadows and highlights don’t just have to be eye candy — they can make interfaces feel grounded.

Scratch Your Own Itch: The best products often solve the creator's problems first. With all the modern tooling at your disposal, don’t sit on your wacky idea to solve a problem — go bring that wacky idea to life.

Rules Were Made for Breaking: Sometimes ignoring established design rules creates better results. Use your developed taste to focus on what actually looks and feels right in context — not what some Medium article told you to do.

Details Stack Up: Users might not consciously notice the perfect optical alignment or that beautifully crafted animation, but they feel the quality. Visual polish is made up of a thousand tiny well placed decisions

Listening as a Superpower: Though design largely is visual, great taste can often come from listening — to feedback, to users, and to the world around you. Words and language often uncover trains of thought that a visual cannot.

More on Cultivating Taste

Design Taste vs. Technical Skills in the Era of AI

www.nngroup.com/articles/taste-vs-technical-skills-ai

THE WILD WEST

Here we are again. Our favorite topic — AI. You might be wondering: "Jake, why develop taste at all if AI can just create whatever I ask it to?" Valid question. Even as AI generates seemingly beautiful images, apps, videos, and whatever else it’s doing — there's still a crucial human element that’s missing. AI is ultimately just another tool and sandbox for you to use.

Remember when design-minded folks were messing around with Myspace templates or Geocities to express themselves without worrying about too much technical feasibility? AI is letting us do the same thing right now, just on steroids.

Developing good taste in the era of AI is about preparing for a new wild west of the web. And honestly? We should all be stoked about that.

THE JUICE

Technical Skills ≠ Good Design: AI might give everyone the technical ability to create designs, but that doesn't mean they'll be good designs. Just like giving everyone a microwave doesn't make everyone a chef.

Design Democratization is Here: With generative AI, the barriers are falling. You don't need a camera to create images or writing skills to craft content anymore. What once may have differentiated designers — technical skill — is becoming universally accessible.

Taste is the New Differentiator: When everyone can technically "do what you do," your ability to make thoughtful, intentional choices becomes your superpower. The eye for what works and what doesn't can't be automated.

Discernment is Critical: Good taste requires navigating seemingly endless possibilities and making decisions that contribute to the whole in purposeful ways. It's about orchestrating hundreds of small choices around a central vision. Also a good time to be a systems thinker.

Context Matters More Than Ever: A tasteful designer understands that elements must work together. That AI-generated graphic might look cool in isolation, but does it fit the site's visual design and align with the brand? Spoiler: probably not.

Intention Over Automation: Creating with intention means every detail expands and enhances a single organizing thought or vision. AI can generate options, but it can't (yet) understand the subtle nuances of what makes something resonate with specific audiences.

The Human Element Remains: Even when AI handles the technical heavy lifting, the time you've spent perfecting your craft hasn't been wasted. Your experience guides which outputs to select, refine, or reject entirely.

Think Beyond the Tool: Just because stakeholders could create something without you doesn't mean it'll achieve their goals or connect with customers. Your value isn't in button pushing or rectangle drawing — it's in vision setting.

More on AI and Design Taste

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

We hear it all the time. You need to tell better stories. Be a good storyteller. The concept is so simple, but when we take a step back and look at it—storytelling is a pretty complex skill that has a lot of moving parts. Let's dissect what storytelling actually is and how to use it when designing and explaining your ideas.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. What is Storytelling?

2. Why Everyone Can (and Should) Be a Great Storyteller

3. Storytelling Tactics for Senior Designers

4. Two Tips for Better UX Storytelling

5. Narrative Biases: When Storytelling HURTS User Experience

What is Storytelling?

www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/storytelling

OH! THE PLACES YOU’LL GO!

We all know what a story is. The concept is simple. Highlight ideas and values by creating an emotional connection. Have a beginning, middle, and end. Make the listener care about what happened, instead of just knowing what happened.

Easier said than done. For the seemingly simple stuff, it’s always a good idea to take a step back to make sure we really understand the mechanics.

THE JUICE

Beyond "Once Upon a Time": Storytelling isn't just for books and movies. It's how we make sense of the world. For designers, it's the difference between showing features and creating experiences that resonate on a human level.

What Makes a Story Work: Turns out we nailed the formula thousands of years ago, and it still applies:

• Plot: The journey your users are on

• Character: The real people behind the personas

• Theme: The deeper truth your product represents

• Setting: Where and when your solution fits into their lives

• Conflict: The obstacles users need to overcome

Connection Over Information: People forget features but remember feelings. The most compelling stories aren't technical specs—they're about transformation. How does your product help users become who they want to be?

The Mirror Effect: Great UX storytelling reflects users' reality while showing them possibilities. Your design becomes the bridge between where they are and where they want to go.

Learn more about storytelling

Why Everyone Can (and Should) Be a Great Storyteller | Figma Blog

www.figma.com/blog/why-everyone-can-and-should-be-a-great-storyteller

IDEAS TO IMPACT WITH WRITING

The best products, designs, and ideas come from people who can clearly articulate their vision. At companies like Microsoft and Slack, writing has become a way to think deeply, communicate clearly, and get buy-in for ideas. And good writing inevitably lends itself to good storytelling.

THE JUICE

If You Can Dodge a Wrench, You Can Dodge a Ball: If you can think, you can write. Stories start somewhere. Most people are better writers than they believe—they're just comparing rough drafts to polished final pieces.

Break Through the Blank Page: Banging your head against a wall staring at another blank canvas? Try explaining your idea to a friend or recording yourself talking about it. You'll find your natural way of speaking is usually clearer than the formal voice we slip into when writing.

Hook Your Readers: The best storytellers don't start with boring background and context—they pull you right into something fun and interesting. After you write that first draft, look at your opening paragraph. Often, you can just toss that in the garbage and start with paragraph two, where the juicy stuff starts.

Make a Map: Think of your structure like giving directions to a friend:

• Use clear headers so people know where they are

• Make each paragraph lead naturally to the next

• Stick to one main idea per section

• Mix up your sentence lengths to keep things flowing

Make It Make Sense: When tackling complex topics, use examples people can actually visualize. Being new to a topic isn't a weakness—it helps you explain things in ways that make sense to everyone else who's also new to it.

Cut the Fluff: When editing, be merciless with unnecessary words. Replace weak verbs with stronger ones. Always step back and ask: "Would someone new to this topic actually get what I'm saying?"

More storytelling goodies

🤿 Dive Club | Chris Abad — Storytelling Tactics for Senior Designers

www.dive.club/deep-dives/chris-abad

MAKE THEM SEE WHAT YOU SEE

Got the night sweats before presenting your project or ideas? You're not alone. Storytelling isn't only useful for designing things—it's also crucial for selling ideas. Chris Abad—who's led design teams at Google, Square, and Dropbox—points out that most designers fall into the same trap: chronologically trudging through research, problems, and solutions—burying the good stuff at the end. There's a better way to structure your story so your ideas actually land.

THE JUICE

Start With the Vision: Don't bury your peak moment behind context. Frontload what the world looks like when everything works well, then work backwards through the obstacles and your solutions. Hook them early or risk losing them to something else more exciting.

Know Your Audience: What a CEO needs to hear is v different from what your design team needs. C-suite folks want to know outcomes for customers and revenue, not your step-by-step design process. Change altitude based on who's in the room.

Outline First, Visuals Later: Most presentation tools force you to start with slides, derailing your narrative. Beginning with an outline helps you nail the structure before getting lost in visual details.

Try Speaking Before Writing: Record yourself talking through your outline, then transcribe it. There's a natural gap between written and spoken communication. Your verbal explanations often have more authentic flow than your carefully crafted sentences.

Keep Slides Minimal: When slides are text-heavy, people read instead of listening to you. The purpose of visuals is to reinforce what you're saying, not replace it. Make your talk track the star, not your slides.

Leave Room for Discussion: Fill about two-thirds of your time with content and save the rest for questions. The discussion is where people figure out how they fit into your vision—and that's often where the real buy-in happens.

Dig into more storytelling tactics

Two Tips for Better UX Storytelling

www.nngroup.com/articles/two-tips-better-ux-storytelling

TWO FRAMEWORKS FOR BETTER NARRATIVES

We’ve established not everyone is a natural born storyteller, but that doesn't mean you can't create compelling narratives. With the right frameworks, you can transform meandering anecdotes into focused stories that resonate with folks and ultimately drive better design decisions.

THE JUICE

The Story Triangle: Great storytelling is a three-way conversation between the story, the storyteller, and the audience. Your audience actively fills in gaps with their own experiences—which is powerful but risky. Include enough details to guide them, but leave room for their emotional involvement.

The Story Mountain: Structure your UX stories using the story-mountain (aka hero’s journey) template:

• Start with exposition: Introduce your user with relevant details

• Build with rising action: Establish the problem and raise the stakes

• Reach the climax: Show how the problem impacts your user

• Navigate falling action: Outline steps taken to solve the problem

• End with resolution: Reveal whether the solution worked

Find the Detail Sweet Spot: Too few details let imaginations run wild; too many ruin engagement. Adjust based on your goals—more details to focus on specific problems, fewer to inspire new solutions.

More storytelling tips

Narrative Biases: When Storytelling HURTS User Experience

www.nngroup.com/articles/narrative-biases

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

As is the case with all things good, there is definitely some murky area when it comes to design and storytelling. Just like you don't want to be over reliant on other aspects of information—like data—you don't want to lean too heavily into the power of story if it might have a longer term negative effect.

THE JUICE

The Narrative Trap: Those carefully crafted user journeys can lead your team astray without you even realizing it. We're all naturally drawn to stories that make sense—even when reality tells a different tale.

Detail Blindness: The more specific a story, the more we tend to believe it. In one study, 41% of designers made statistically improbable assumptions based on a single detail. We get so caught up in the story that common sense takes a backseat.

The Explanation Trap: Our brains aren’t fond of randomness. When data shows a high exit rate, we might immediately blame the design instead of considering that it might just be random noise from having too few visitors. We'll believe almost any explanation over no explanation.

Myth-Making in Action: Remember being told that "digital natives" just get technology? That story makes perfect sense in our heads but falls apart when you actually watch young people struggle with poor interfaces.

Reality Checks: You can't eliminate these biases, but you can protect your work:

• Ground your stories in actual people and research, not assumptions

• Before solving a problem, make sure it's actually real

• When a story feels too perfect, ask: "What evidence backs this up?"

More on narrative biases

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

This past week has been a little wacky and I didn’t have time to write up a full edition. So instead, we’ll try a bit of a trimmed down version without takeaways or a broader theme and just look at cool stuff. I think you’ll want to take a peek at what we have here.

— Jake

Vietnamese Graphic Design

vietgd.com

INSPIRATION THROUGH HISTORY AND CULTURE

When you’re in a creative rut, sometimes getting inspiration outside of what you see every day is a must. Digging into history and different cultures is a great source of getting some fresh takes. This is a neat site full of Vietnamese graphic design to scratch that itch.

Notion Faces

faces.notion.com/

NEW YEAR NEW YOU

Notion launched this back at the beginning of January, but ICYMI—you can build your very own Notion avatar for that new headshot you’ve been putting off getting.

Crypto Design Club

cryptodesign.club

CRYPTWHO?

Remember crypto? Is it still a thing? Even if you’re not convinced you want to invest your money into it—invest some of your time getting inspiration from the sites that were built around the hype. They are pretty nifty.

Pattern Club

patternclub.io

JOIN THE PATTERN CLUB

Patterns, shapes, & textures are the surefire way to zhuzh up (yes, that is how it’s spelled) your sites or products. Take a gander at this neat collection of those things.

Build Wars: @BrettFromDJ vs. @Henrik_Wes

lu.ma/sfstux6f?tk=iS7snN

ROBOT VS HUMAN SHOWDOWN

Okay this isn’t a website of inspiration, but it is bound to be an interesting event. Two people battling it out to create the best design using two different models of designing.

Henrik from Lovable using prompts to design with AI vs. Brett from DesignJoy using WebFlow to build manually. Today @ 11PT/3ET, watch for the 45 mins to see what happens to all of our jobs.

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

Design systems have become the backbone of modern digital products, but their success depends on more than just pretty components.

This week, we're diving into the often overlooked aspects of design systems: the documentation, processes, and playbooks that transform a collection of UI elements into a truly valuable resource.

From organizing component documentation to creating comprehensive playbooks, let's explore what it takes to make design systems work in the real world.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. The Digital Playbook: A Crucial Counterpart To Your Design System

2. Designing Design Systems: Supporting Implementation and Adoption

3. How to Bring Structure and Clarity to Design System Components

4. Tokens Studio

5. Design System | eBay Playbook

The Digital Playbook: A Crucial Counterpart To Your Design System

www.smashingmagazine.com/2025/01/digital-playbook-crucial-counterpart-design-system

BEYOND THE BUTTONS

While your design system keeps those buttons looking pretty and consistent, a digital playbook tackles the stuff that's often overlooked: the strategic "how" and "why" behind your digital work. It's your organization's roadmap for navigating all the messy complexities of digital projects, giving everyone clarity on processes from kickoff to retirement. Think of your design system as the "what" and your playbook as the "how.”

THE JUICE

Beyond Good Looks: A design system keeps your visual language consistent, but a playbook handles everything else—from how to request digital services to what happens when a product reaches end-of-life.

Project Clarity: By mapping out the entire digital lifecycle (Discovery → Prototyping → Build → Launch → Management → Retirement), everyone understands what happens when, creating realistic expectations from the start.

Policy Central: Tired of explaining the same accessibility requirements or data policies over and over? Your playbook becomes the single source of truth that anyone can reference.

Make It Stick: The best playbook is useless if it's buried in your company wikis. Keep it visible, engaging, and position it as a helpful resource rather than a rulebook. Start small with core sections and expand over time.

Start Small, Think Big: You don't need to build the entire playbook at once. Begin with your biggest pain points, assign clear ownership, and let it evolve with your organization's unique challenges and culture.

Dive deeper

Designing Design Systems: Supporting Implementation and Adoption

adobe.design/stories/design-for-scale/designing-design-systems-supporting-implementation-and-adoption

FROM CREATION TO ADOPTION

Creating a beautiful design system is only half the battle. If no one uses it—or *gasp*, if they use it incorrectly—all that pixel-perfect work goes to waste. Even the most elegant components need thoughtful documentation, guidance, and ongoing support for a system to refrain from collecting dust. This is especially true for massive systems like Adobe's Spectrum, which serves over 100 applications and 600+ designers worldwide.

THE JUICE

Part Librarian, Part Evangelist: Design system designers are creators and curators. Beyond building components, you'll need to catalog, organize, and maintain libraries while actively motivating and guiding the folks using your system.

Documentation That Works: Be sure your guidance lives in a dedicated sport that signals stability and authority. Include fundamentals, designer guidelines, developer information, and support resources—then supplement with irl examples.

The Key is Communication: Design systems constantly evolve, so build reliable channels for announcing updates. Share works-in-progress with small groups for feedback before rolling out broadly, and consider keeping different types of communications (bug fixes vs. major changes) on separate channels.

Be Opinionated But Supportive: System designers should have firm stances to maintain coherence, but no need to be a jerk. Frame feedback as collaborative rather than directive. Explain rationale clearly, offer alternatives, and connect folks facing similar challenges. We’re all working towards the same things here.

Ask "Why" Not Just "What": Dig into the underlying needs instead of surface level requests, you can probably provide better solutions that fit within your existing system.

Dive deeper

How to Bring Structure and Clarity to Design System Components

www.buttonconf.com/blog/how-to-bring-structure-and-clarity-to-design-system-components

MAD LIBS FOR DESIGN SYSTEMS

Documenting components is often a stumbling block for folks working on systems. Michael Haggerty-Villa's spreadsheet approach offers a practical solution by turning the overwhelming task of documentation into a structured, repeatable process.

THE JUICE

Use a Template: The component outline in this article provides a ready-made structure with ~40 data points to consider. This template helps folks document components without missing critical details.

Structure Creates Speed: At Compass, this approach helped a team document 25 components and launch three months ahead of schedule. The structure helps to accelerate work by eliminating guesswork.

Prioritize Information: Start with a simple structure (breadcrumb navigation, component name, description) then organize additional details based on what your users need most.

Customize to Context: Adapt the template to your needs. If certain sections aren't relevant, modify them. The structure is meant to help, not constrain—think of it as a framework that still allows creativity.

Create Reusable Chunks: You’re breaking down your designs into modular components so why not do the same for documentation? Breaking documentation into standardized pieces makes information more portable across tools (Figma, zeroheight, Storybook) and easier to maintain as your system grows.

Remember the Purpose: Guiding people to build digital experiences efficiently and consistently is the goal of most design systems. Your documentation structure should serve this same purpose.

Dive deeper

Tokens Studio

tokens.studio

THE ALMIGHTY SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH

If you’ve ever tried to get designers and developers to agree on a “single source of truth,” you know it’s about as easy as…well, something not very easy. Colors shift, spacing gets redefined, and someone always has a rogue hex code hiding somewhere. Tokens Studio is a neat tool that helps tame the chaos—giving teams a dynamic way to manage design tokens that actually stay in sync across tools and teams.

THE JUICE

Single Source of Truth: Define, update, and sync design tokens across Figma, codebases, and style guides—no more outdated specs floating around.

Multi-Mode Support: Need dark mode? Localization? A festive holiday color scheme? Tokens Studio lets you create flexible variations for different contexts.

Bridge the Gap: Designers get visual control, developers get structured JSON. Everyone wins.

Automate the Boring Stuff: No more manually updating values across files—sync directly with GitHub or your codebase to keep everything in lockstep.

Explore Tokens Studio

Design System | eBay Playbook

playbook.ebay.com/design-system

LESSONS FROM EBAY’S DESIGN SYSTEM

Talking about design systems is good and all, but sometimes it’s helpful to see some examples in action. eBay’s recently launched design system Playbook is a great irl example to poke around for inspiration. Balancing flexibility with consistency while keeping accessibility at the core.

THE JUICE

Commerce at Scale: eBay’s system is built for a massive marketplace, meaning every component is tested for high-traffic, high-variation use cases.

Accessibility First: Their approach bakes in WCAG compliance from the start, not as an afterthought—something every design system should prioritize.

Get the Juices Flowing: Even if you’re not designing for a global marketplace, Playbook’s structure is worth exploring to see how a well-documented system can drive consistency across teams.

Explore eBay’s Design System

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

Between the hype and the headlines of AI, it can feel like we're all just nodding along pretending to understand what's actually happening.

This week, we're pulling back the curtain on AI—from how it actually works (spoiler: it's not tiny robots typing really fast) to how it's reshaping our interfaces, our work, and maybe even our future.

Because whether you're excited about our new AI overlords or still skeptical about the whole thing, understanding what's happening behind the scenes might just help us navigate what's ahead.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. Large Language Models Explained Briefly

2. The Shape of AI | UX Patterns for Artificial Intelligence Design

3. AI Hallucinations: What Designers Need to Know

4. Anthropic Economic Index

5. Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World

A PEEK BEHIND AI’S MAGIC CURTAIN

By now you’ve likely at least heard the term LLM (Large Language Model). It’s the transformative tech behind what made all our AI chatbot buddies become what they are today. But what does it actually mean? What’s going on behind the scenes? Is it just Frank Morgan pulling levers when we ask questions? Here’s a great primer on what’s happening if you still don’t quite get it.

THE JUICE

Word by Word Magic: At its core, an LLM is actually p simple—it's a sophisticated system that predicts what word should come next in any given text. Think of it like an incredibly advanced autocomplete that can handle complex contexts and generate human-like responses.

Numbers Behind the Words: Every single word gets translated into a list of numbers that capture its meaning. These numbers can shift based on context—just like how the word "bank" means something different in "river bank" and "bank account."

The Attention Game: What makes modern LLMs special is their ability to process text all at once using "attention"—letting all words in a passage interact with each other simultaneously to refine their meaning based on context. This parallel processing is what enables them to understand and generate nuanced responses.

Scale Matters: The training process involves mind-boggling amounts of data—it would take a human over 2,600 years to read what GPT-3 was trained on, reading 24/7. This massive scale is what enables these models to develop such broad capabilities.

Two-Stage Learning: LLMs go through two crucial training phases:

• Pre-training: Learning general language patterns from internet text

• Reinforcement Learning: Fine-tuning for being helpful and avoiding problematic outputs

The Magic of Randomness: Instead of always picking the most obvious next word, LLMs are allowed to occasionally choose unexpected options—like how humans don't always use the most common words. This is why asking the same question twice often gives you two slightly different answers.

Behind the Curtain: While we can design the framework for how LLMs work, their specific behaviors come from training on massive datasets. This makes it tough to understand exactly why they make certain predictions—sorta like trying to understand why a human might choose certain words over others.

Human Touch Required: Despite all this sophistication, these models still rely on human feedback and correction to become useful assistants rather than just text prediction engines.

Learn more about LLMs

The Shape of AI | UX Patterns for Artificial Intelligence Design

www.shapeof.ai

THE UX OF AI

One of the most exciting things (IMO) about new technologies is seeing all the different ways people might interact with them. Not often do we get to witness complete paradigm shifts in our everyday experiences. This website is a nifty collection of UX patterns emerging from all this AI hubbub. And we're only beginning to scratch the surface of what's possible. I think the combination of AI and spatial computing (i.e. getting away from traditional screens and phones) is going to open up an insane world of possibilities.

THE JUICE

Start with Human Needs: Instead of bending humans to fit technology, shape AI interactions around proven frameworks of human behavior. Look for ways to make advanced capabilities feel familiar, like how chat interfaces made complex language models feel more approachable.

Bridge the Adaptation Gap: Recognize that what's possible technologically may not be what's comfortable behaviorally. Design gradual onramps that help folks build trust and understanding with AI features over time, rather than overwhelming them with ✨ magical capability. ✨ 

Explore AI UX patterns

AI Hallucinations: What Designers Need to Know

www.nngroup.com/articles/ai-hallucinations

THE SNOZZBERRIES TASTE LIKE SNOZZBERRIES

AI systems are surprisingly good at sounding confident while being completely wrong. A recent study found ChatGPT falsely attributed 76% of 200 quotes it was asked to identify, and specialized legal AI tools get things wrong in at least 1 out of 6 queries. For designers building AI into products, this creates a unique challenge: how do we create interfaces that maintain trust while acknowledging the imperfection?

THE JUICE

Elegant Uncertainty: Instead of hiding AI's limitations behind generic disclaimers, try using confidence ratings near outputs. For high-stakes decisions, use explicit indicators like "68% confidence" or simpler high/medium/low confidence badges.

Build Trust Through Transparency: Show users the factors that influenced AI's decision when possible. Create expandable sections that reveal competing answers or confidence scores. The goal isn't to overwhelm users but to make verification feel natural and accessible.

Make Verification Seamless: If your AI cites sources, don't just list them—make them easily accessible. Create hover states that preview sources or side panels that show referenced content without breaking the user's flow. Good source design encourages verification without demanding it.

Context Over Warnings: Rather than relying on generic warning labels that folks probably ignore, design contextual indicators that appear when uncertainty is high. Use visual cues like color coding or icons to signal when extra verification might be needed, making it part of the natural interaction rather than an afterthought.

Read more about AI Hallucinations

Anthropic Economic Index

www.anthropic.com/economic-index

THE FUTURE OF WORK

After analyzing millions of conversations with their AI assistant Claude (which I love btw), Anthropic shares first-of-its-kind data on how AI is actually being used across different jobs and tasks in the real world. Keep an eye on this to see how any of these findings might shift over time.

THE JUICE

Where The Action Is:

• Tech leads the pack—37.2% of AI use is in computer/math jobs (tasks like coding, debugging, and network troubleshooting)

• Creative fields follow at 10.3% (mostly writing and editing)

• Physical labor jobs barely register (farming, fishing, and forestry at 0.1%)

The New Work Reality:

• About 36% of jobs use AI for at least a quarter of their tasks

• Only 4% of jobs heavily use AI (75%+ of tasks)

• Mid-to-high salary jobs use AI most (devs, data scientists)

• Both very low and very high-wage jobs use AI least

• AI tends to augment (57%) rather than automate (43%) work

Zooming Out: This isn't about AI replacing entire jobs—it's transforming specific tasks within jobs. The real story is how AI is becoming a collaborator rather than a replacement, especially in technical and creative fields where it bolsters human capabilities instead of taking over completely

Dive into the economics of AI

Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World*

AN AI ARMS RACE

While we're all busy fiddling with ChatGPT and trying to figure out if AI is going to take our jobs, there's actually a fascinating story behind how we got here. The two biggest players, OpenAI and DeepMind, have been racing to create artificial general intelligence (AGI)—but with very different approaches and philosophies. Inevitably big tech comes into the picture when money is needed, muddying the noble cause of creating a technology to better humanity. The classic case of compromising mission to satisfy shareholders.

THE JUICE

Tale of Two Visions: Both OpenAI and DeepMind started with the same vision—developing AGI to benefit humanity. But like any good story, they took different paths to get there, shaped by their founders' distinct philosophies.

Altruism to Acquisition: While both organizations began with altruistic missions, their integration into larger tech companies (Microsoft/OpenAI and Google/DeepMind) created tension between profit and purpose.

The Ethics Equation: As these companies push the boundaries of what's possible, they're grappling with major ethical questions about bias, privacy, and power concentration. When you're building something this influential, it changes the meaning of "move fast and break things."

Power Play: The development of AI has created an unprecedented concentration of power within tech companies. This raises important questions about who gets to make decisions that could affect all of humanity.

Balancing Act: The future of AI development isn't just about making smarter systems—it's about finding the right balance between pushing technological boundaries and ensuring responsible development.

Get a copy of Supremacy*

*This is a product recommendation and affiliate link. When you buy through this link, I may earn a commission.

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

February is upon us. One month of 2025 already behind. At the beginning of January, we took a peek into what we might expect to see in 2025.

Of course, there are always more trends to consider. Before this year slips right out from underneath us, let's take one more look at what we might see on the horizons.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. Designer and Developer 2025 Trends | Figma

2. Font Trends 2025

3. AI Business Trends 2025

4. What's Next in CX

5. The Biggest Pinterest Trends For 2025

Designer and Developer 2025 Trends | Figma

www.figma.com/reports/designer-developer-trends

THE STATE OF THE DESIGNER (AND DEVELOPER)

The last few years have us wading in a new era of product creation and collaboration. This report from Figma is neat because it isn’t just focused on designers in a vacuum—but how ultimately our dev counterparts fit into the picture. It gives us some surprising insights about how designers and devs are adapting with their work environments, collaborating, and looking at changes in technology.

THE JUICE

Remote Work Renaissance: The Great Workplace Shift™️ is settling into a groove. Nearly everyone works remotely at least sometimes, and most are splitting time between home and office (and ofc a good chunk are embracing fully remote). We see a little bit of difference across the globe—with European teams happy with this flexibility, APAC folks are maintaining a stronger office presence.

Collaboration is Actually Key: The most satisfied designers and developers turn out to be the ones working more closely together, not in silos. Digital collaboration tools are bridging gaps between teams, whether they're across the room or across the globe. Turns out we like each other after all.

The Handoff Headache: Despite improved collaboration, the designer-to-developer handoff remains a pain point. Teams struggle with misaligned priorities and assumptions about each other's processes. Digital tools help, but there's still work to be done in translating design intent into development reality. Stay tuned for the design <> dev Links for Thinks edition.

AI as Amplifier: AI isn't necessarily replacing anyone, it's making teams more optimistic about their future. Most see it as a way to reduce busywork and speed up processes, especially in APAC where adoption is highest. The impact on collaboration is still emerging, but the potential for transformation is becoming clear.

The Job Market Reality Check: While there's more uncertainty about job prospects than last year, there's also more optimism about the evolution of both disciplines. Teams see AI and improved collaboration as opportunities rather than threats.

Dive deeper

Font Trends 2025

www.fontspring.com/trends

LETTERS WITH PERSONALITY

Technology promised us perfect letterforms—pristine vectors and flawless curves. But in 2025, typography might be leaning into its rebellious side. While AI and design tools chase pixel perfection, type designers are intentionally breaking rules, adding personality quirks, and proving that sometimes the most powerful statement is being perfectly imperfect.

THE JUICE

Scene Stealers: High-contrast serifs are serving main character energy. Think bold strokes, extra swashes, and letterforms that demand attention. These aren't your grandmother's book fonts.

Medieval Times: Blackletter and garalde styles are getting a modern remix. Sharp edges meet formal elements for an aesthetic that says "I have a LinkedIn, but I also joust on weekends."

The Human Touch: Digital handwriting finally feels... human-ish? Natural imperfections and organic flow make signatures feel less like robots trying their best.

Mix & Match Families: Font families are going beyond just bold and italic. Single typefaces now pack sans, serif, and display styles—like a typographic Swiss Army knife.

The Independent Scene: Small foundries and independent designers keep pushing boundaries, creating fresh takes faster than you can say, well, something that takes a long time to say.

Dive deeper

AI Business Trends 2025

cloud.google.com/resources/ai-trends-report?hl=en

ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER AI-OLLAR

Maybe one day soon AI won't be taking over our entire discourse. Until that day though, let's talk about AI. Are we going to be stuck in chatbot purgatory for our whole lives? Probably not, according to Google Cloud's latest report. Here's what they're seeing for 2025.

THE JUICE

See, Feel, Hear: Multimodal AI might finally understand context like humans do—processing images, voice, and text simultaneously, making interactions feel more natural and less like you're talking to a robot with distinct steps.

Agent Smith(s): We're moving from single chatbots to multi-agent systems where different AI specialists work together behind the scenes for specific tasks—think one for visuals, one for data, one for coding, all collaborating to get stuff done.

Smart Search: Search is evolving beyond typing keywords into a box. Future systems will understand complex queries, help refine questions, and even spot patterns you haven't noticed yet.

Invisible Tech: The best AI experiences will be the ones users don't even notice. Customer service will resolve issues before they become problems, and personalization will feel natural rather than creepy.

Defense Squad: As AI gets more integrated into everything, security becomes crucial. But instead of adding friction, AI security will work behind the scenes to protect users while keeping experiences smooth.

Dive deeper

What's Next in CX

go.contentsquare.com/whats-next-in-cx-2025

LESS ROBOT, MORE HUMAN…ROBOTS

Between the AI hype (see, can’t get away from it) and privacy concerns, customer experience has hit a crossroads. While some companies chase shiny new tools, the real winners in 2025 will focus on something different: making digital interactions feel more human, not less.

THE JUICE

AI Integration Changes Everything: 34.2% of digital pros are all-in on AI as their top priority. But we're not talking sci-fi robots—think more "making mundane tasks magical" and less "sorry, HAL can't do that." Companies are using AI for everything from customer service to product recommendations, focusing on working smarter, not harder.

Hyper-Personalization Beats Vanilla: Basic segmentation evolves into hyper-personalization. With 78% of consumers more likely to repurchase from brands offering personalized content, companies are using AI to deliver highly contextualized experiences at scale.

Journey Unification Matters: Data shows that deeper, more consistent experiences lead to better conversion. The magic number? 20+ pages across devices for converted users. Turns out people like when things just work, regardless of whether they're on their phone, laptop, or smart fridge.

Data Gets Smarter: Companies are moving beyond basic analytics to combine first-party data with qualitative insights. This deeper understanding helps deliver better experiences, with data-driven companies growing 30% faster annually. Because sometimes the best insights come from actually watching what your customers do, not just counting clicks.

Dive deeper

The Biggest Pinterest Trends For 2025

business.pinterest.com/pinterest-predicts

PINTEREST’S CRYSTAL BALL

Pinterest has a lot of folks searching for inspiration. So naturally, they can put together a pretty interesting report to predict visual trends that might creep into the year. The latest trend report paints a picture of 2025 that's bold, expressive, and wacky weird. The data shows a clear shift from minimalist design toward something more personal and playful, both in physical spaces and digital experiences. Dare I say more fun?

THE JUICE

Mix & Maximalism: Bold patterns and eclectic prints layer together in surprising combinations. Gen X and Boomers lead this departure from clean minimalism, embracing organized chaos in design.

Terra Futura: Sustainability gets a sci-fi makeover. Solarpunk (idk wtf this is, but it sounded cool) aesthetics merge eco-conscious living with futuristic elements, making green living feel less granola and more cutting-edge.

Digital Makeover: Avatar customization moves beyond gaming. People invest in their digital personas with the same care they give their physical appearance, influencing both online and offline style choices.

Beyond Beige: Color becomes the new neutral. Full-spectrum looks replace muted palettes as personal energy and individual style take center stage in visual expression.

Dive deeper

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

We’ve all been there. Staring at our portfolio case study, getting ready to debrief with a stakeholder, or just generally sitting in existential dread. What did this thing I design actually do. Was it successful? What even was considered successful?

I find myself struggling with this train of thought often. While there’s not an easy answer to any of this—I thought I’d dive a bit into how some folks have tried to find answers.

There’s no perfect formula that works for everyone (if there is plz let me know). Every discipline, problem, business, and user has unique needs. But having a few frameworks in your back pocket can help you figure out the right approach when you need it.

Let’s dig into how you might measure your impact.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. 🤿 Dive Club | Ryan Scott — Making Strategic Impact as an IC

2. A Practical Example of How to Measure the Impact of Design | Design for Growth

3. How to Measure Design Impact - Tanner Christensen's Notes

4. How to Quantify the Value of Design

5. The 6 Levels of UX Maturity

🤿 Dive Club | Ryan Scott — Making Strategic Impact as an IC

www.dive.club/deep-dives/ryan-scott

NOW YOU’RE SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE

When designers wanna make a bigger impact, we can often get stuck between our craft and business outcomes. Design education—whether from universities, bootcamps, or elsewhere—does a pretty poor job in preparing us for the business side of building products. Getting to the next level of influence requires learning a new language. Learning to talk metrics, strategy, and outcomes in ways that resonate beyond the design team.

THE JUICE

Start With Curiosity: Don't wait for permission to understand business metrics. Show genuine interest in what drives decisions by asking questions about goals, numbers, and strategy. Even if you don’t understand at first, keep asking questions until it makes sense.

Bridge The Divide: Move past the "us vs them" mentality with other teams. Since designers are the minority in most companies, success comes from making it "us and us"—being a true partner rather than just a service provider.

Unlock Credibility: It's not enough to just learn the business context—you gotta consistently demonstrate it. Show up to meetings prepared to discuss not just design, but timelines, metrics, and strategic impact.

Break Down Silos: Different companies operate with different levels of cross-functional collaboration. Some have rigid swim lanes, others are more fluid. Learn to recognize these cultural patterns wherever you’re at and adapt your approach accordingly.

Connect The Dots: Frame design decisions in terms of business opportunities, not just user needs (but don’t forget about those either. That’s like, a pretty big reason why you’re designing). When you can tie your work to clear business outcomes, you gain the credibility to push for bigger changes.

Build Alignment: Rather than trying to "drive" alignment, bring stakeholders in early as advisors. Have clear hypotheses about what could go wrong and plans to address them. Sometimes you need all the pieces to align before seeing positive results—don't give up too early.

Dive deeper

A Practical Example of How to Measure the Impact of Design | Design for Growth

pony.studio/design-for-growth/how-to-measure-the-impact-of-design

THE NUMBERS GAME

Now that you can speak the language—how do your designs actually relate to the business? Connecting your pixel-perfect work to outcomes can feel impossible. A lot of teams either skip measurement entirely or fall into the trap of looking at metrics after the fact and trying to make assumptions.

But measuring design impact shouldn’t feel spooky and mysterious—it just needs the right framework for the job and, most importantly, should start well before you’re making rectangles.

THE JUICE

Start With the Why and KPI: Don't just track random metrics—tie your design work to clear business objectives. "Increase engagement" is too vague; "increase premium subscription conversions by reducing friction in the upgrade flow" gives you something concrete to measure.

Break It Down: Split loftier design initiatives into smaller, measurable chunks. “Increasing checkout conversion” might actually have three separate inputs and experiments with their own hypothesis: e.g. new product cards, simplified forms, and better error states. Each project should be trackable on its own.

Science Experiment 101: Be sure to isolate those variables. Change one thing at a time and keep your control groups clean. If you're updating both your navigation and payment flow at once, you'll never know which change drove the results.

Build Your Funnel: Map how design changes influence user behavior step by step. If your hypothesis is that better product photography will increase sales, track the whole journey:

• Do more users click product images?

• Do they spend more time viewing details?

• Does this lead to more add-to-carts?

• Do more complete purchase?

Track Early, Track Often: Set up your measurement framework before you start designing, not after. The best insights come from comparing before and after data, not just looking at final results.

Due Diligence: Mix quantitative data (conversion rates, engagement metrics) with qualitative insights (user interviews, support tickets). Sometimes the most important design impacts don't show up in your analytics dashboard—like reduced customer confusion or improved brand perception.

Dive deeper

How to Measure Design Impact - Tanner Christensen's Notes

FRAMEWORKS MIXER

The beauty of finding frameworks is that you don't always have to use a single one for everything. Sometimes, circumstances call for you to mix and match what you need based on experience and current problem context. This article combines top tasks and PURE to measure design impact.

THE JUICE

Start With Jobs: Map out every stage, job, and task your users need to accomplish in the problem area. And this isn’t just a feature list of what you offer—it's trying to understand the complete journey from your users' perspective, whether or not you’re currently solving it.

Get the Pain Points: Survey both internal experts and actual customers about what parts of the process are painful or frustrating. Create a "pain index" by rating tasks from exciting (1) to upsetting (4).

Break Down Top Tasks: Once you've identified the most painful areas, document every single step users need to take to complete these critical tasks. No detail is too small.

Score Your Solutions: Have internal experts rate each workflow step on three factors:

• Ease of use

• Speed

• Efficiency

Track Progress: Re-evaluate scores quarterly. Lower overall scores mean your design improvements are working—higher scores mean it's time to rethink your approach.

Beyond The Numbers: While metrics help track progress, remember they're just one part of measuring design impact. Balance quantitative scores with qualitative feedback about how your changes affect the actual user experience.

Dive deeper

How to Quantify the Value of Design

medium.com/kainosxd/how-to-quantify-the-value-of-design-c843c046b1f4

SHIFTING MINDSET

Sometimes we find ourselves in an odd disconnect within our orgs. Everyone knows (or claims to) the importance of great user experience, but still treats design as a superficial final touch. Here’s another framework to help move beyond justifying design's existence and start showing exactly how design choices drive business success.

THE JUICE

Measure What Matters: Break down design's value into four key areas:

• Design Activity: Specific tools and methods used

• Outcomes: Direct results of those activities

• Benefits: Business value delivered

• Measures: Quantifiable metrics to track success

Success Stories That Matter: Study real impact across other organizations, how are they surfacing the value of design:

• Facebook's visual fix-a-thon led to significant revenue increases

• PayPal's content redesign boosted international checkouts

• Nationwide saved resources by researching what customers actually wanted

Focus on Outcomes: Instead of narrowing in on metrics like NPS scores, reframe problems to look at underlying causes. Good design shifts conversations from asking "how" or “what” to asking "why."

Make Friends: When organizations see design as overhead, showing measurable impact on revenue helps to mature the practice and create likeminded folks who understand its value.

Dive deeper

The 6 Levels of UX Maturity

www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-maturity-model

MATURING LIKE A FINE WINE

Great. You can talk about the business. You can tie the lingo to your design decisions. You have frameworks you wanna use to test and experiment. Why is understanding design impact still so hard?

Well, the good and bad news may lie in the idea of a maturity model—ways to assess an organization's maturity in areas like growth, data, and design. If the organization as a whole isn't ready to progress to the next level of maturity, it’s gonna be hard to drive impact.

So how might you understand where your organization stands in terms of design maturity? Glad you asked.

THE JUICE

The Six Stages: Organizations usually fall into one of these maturity levels:

• Absent: UX is ignored or nonexistent

• Limited: UX work happens rarely and haphazardly

• Emergent: UX work is functional but inconsistent

• Structured: Semi-systematic UX methods are widespread but vary in effectiveness

• Integrated: UX work is comprehensive and pervasive

• User-Driven: Deep user-centered dedication at all levels

No Skipping Steps: Moving from one level to the next takes time—trying to jump multiple levels at once rarely works. Each stage needs time to seep into the culture.

Beyond Just One Team: A single team can't reach high maturity levels alone. True maturity requires consistency across teams and leadership support across the org.

Four Key Growth Areas: Improving maturity will mean evolution across:

• Strategy: Leadership and resource prioritization

• Culture: Building UX knowledge and practitioner growth

• Process: Systematic use of research and design methods

• Outcomes: Defining and measuring UX results

Check Your Progress: Even if all seems fine, there are likely areas for improvement that could help your product creation process, team effectiveness, and experiences.

This is the perfect area for you to gain credibility within your org.

Dive deeper

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

Typography is everywhere. From the moment you wake up and check your phone, to that menu board at your favorite coffee shop, to the street signs guiding you home—you're constantly interacting with carefully (or sometimes not so carefully) chosen letters.

While we might take it for granted, typography is more than just picking a pretty font. It's about how we’re using type to enhance experiences, setting the right tone, and making sure people can actually read the dang thing. This week, we're taking a little peek into the world of type—not just the what, but the why and how.

Let’s take a look at some links to help you think about type.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. A Checklist for Choosing Type

2. Typography Terms: Glossary

3. Font Review Journal

4. Canva's Ultimate Guide to Font Combinations

5. What’s Trending in Type

A Checklist for Choosing Type

fonts.google.com/knowledge/choosing_type/a_checklist_for_choosing_type

CHECK THE BOXES

Google Font’s knowledge library is a goldmine of information for understanding typography. Everything from why you should care about typography to considering the emotions of using certain type to using type in AR/VR. But sometimes you don’t have the time to dig deeper to understand everything. This handy checklist sums up some of the most important bits. Keep it nearby to help justify your decisions when you’re in a time crunch.

THE JUICE

Project Fit:

• The personality should match the intended emotional response

• Design suits the use case (e.g., body text vs. display)

• Technical requirements align with project needs

Design Comprehensiveness:

• Multi-language support for your target regions

• Clear distinction between similar characters (1, l, l)

• Basic weights covered (regular, italic, bold, bold italic)

• Proper spacing and kerning pairs

• Clear legibility at intended sizes

Power Features to Look For:

• OpenType features (fractions, small caps, number styles)

• Extended weight range for flexibility

• Multiple widths for layout control

• Optical size variations for different scales

• Alternate glyphs for design options

Technical Reliability:

• Font files include all advertised features

• Features work consistently across the family

• Spacing and kerning is professional quality

• Files work in your required environments

Practical Considerations:

• Compatible with existing brand typefaces

• License covers your intended usage

• Cost fits within budget constraints

• Files available in required formats

Time-Saving Tip: Before diving deep into a typeface's design details, check the technical requirements and licensing first. Nothing worse than falling in love with a typeface you can't actually use.

Smart Defaults: If in doubt, major type foundries and Google Fonts typically offer reliable options that check most of these boxes. Just verify language support and licensing for your specific needs.

Dive deeper

Typography Terms: Glossary

www.nngroup.com/articles/typography-terms-ux/#em

A WHOSIEWHATSIT?

Learning (and remembering) jargon for anything is tough. All the terms for typography is no different—luckily this glossary from Nielson Norman Group is here to remind us what we try so hard to forget. Though it’s probably not important to memorize these—it is important to understand that all of these things inevitably impact your design and choices.

THE JUICE

Typography Powers Design: Mastering typography terminology is crucial for creating legible interfaces, maintaining brand consistency, and streamlining the design process. Good typography isn't just about aesthetics—it's about making digital experiences more usable and enjoyable.

Character Anatomy: Understanding how letters are constructed—from x-height to serifs—lets you make informed decisions about typeface selection for different contexts and screen sizes.

Spacing Mastery: Grasping kerning, tracking, and leading principles enables you to fine-tune the rhythm and readability of text, ensuring comfortable reading experiences across devices.

Font Variations: Knowing the nuances between weights, styles, and OpenType features helps you build clear visual hierarchies and maintain consistency in your designs.

Text Structure: Being familiar with proper line and paragraph formatting prevents common typographic mistakes that can distract readers.

Technical Foundations: Understanding units like ems and web-safe fonts ensures your typography works reliably across different platforms and scales appropriately on all devices.

Dive deeper

Font Review Journal

fontreviewjournal.com

10/10 WOULD USE AGAIN

A thorough font review isn't just about aesthetics—it's about understanding how and when to use a typeface effectively. Font Review Journal does the analysis for you so you just need to sit back, sponge it up, and decide what you’re needing for your project.

THE JUICE

Context & History: Every font has a story that shapes its purpose. Understanding why a font was created (like Untitled Sans aiming to be unmemorable) helps you use it appropriately in your designs.

Design Details: Breaking down the technical aspects—from character shapes to spacing decisions—reveals what makes a font unique and helps you understand its design language for better pairing and usage.

Notable Glyphs: Key characters showcase a font's personality and potential issues. These distinctive elements often determine whether a font will work for your specific needs.

Strengths: Understanding where a font excels helps you match it to the right projects. Every font has its sweet spot—whether it's body text, display use, or specific contexts like brutalist design.

Quirks & Eccentricities: Knowing a font's limitations and peculiarities (like spacing issues or weight gaps) helps you avoid surprises in production and informs whether it's right for your project.

In-Use Examples: Real-world applications show how others have successfully (or unsuccessfully) implemented the font, providing practical inspiration and warning signs.

Dive deeper

Canva's Ultimate Guide to Font Combinations

www.canva.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-font-pairing

THE DARK ART OF PAIRING FONTS

Great font combinations are essential to great design, but finding them often like an impossible task. Lookbooks are great resources to get general vibes, but it’s always helpful to take a step back and really try to describe what it is about those vibes.

THE JUICE

Balance of Distinction & Harmony: The single biggest challenge is choosing fonts that are different enough to create hierarchy, but not so different that they compete. As a safe default, pair a serif with a sans serif.

Weight Relationships: When in doubt, using different weights of the same typeface can be just as effective as combining different fonts, especially when starting out.

• Don't be afraid to use different weights of the same font family

• Contrast light and bold weights to create clear hierarchy

• Consider how weights work together across headings and body copy

Functional Considerations:

• Match fonts to content type (e.g., formal documents vs flashy landing pages)

• Consider readability needs for your specific medium

• Ensure fonts complement your message or brand tone

Structural Compatibility:

• Round and narrow typefaces often offset nicely against each other

• Look for fonts with similar proportions or intentional contrast

• Consider x-height compatibility between paired fonts

Emotional Impact: Along with the importance of technical constraints and visual properties of each font pairing, don’t forget to understand what sort of emotional impact is present. Choose the right pairing to elevate these emotions—try not to detract.

Dive deeper

What’s Trending in Type

www.typewolf.com

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Knowing what you know now, take a peek around Typewolf and see what sticks out. What do you think the emotional impact is of each of the fonts you’re looking at? Is it doing a good job? Any surprising choices in kerning or line height? Hopefully this inspires you to take a step back the next time you’re looking at words on a page or a screen.

THE JUICE

Typography Is All Around Us: From the coffee shop menu we’re expected to focus on in the morning, to the app interface that frustrated you last night—typography shapes every interaction we have with text. It's not just about choosing pretty fonts—it's about creating experiences that guide, inform, and delight.

Dive deeper

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

Have you ever wondered why that one app just feels more intuitive than others? Or why certain designs just click while others feel off? Well there's actually some psychology behind it. This week, we're diving into the Gestalt principles—a set of rules explaining of how we perceive and organize visual information. These aren't just dusty psychological theories—it’s one piece of the puzzle of how our brains actually interact with the world, and why designs “just work.”

This edition is a bit different because I’m only sharing one resource, but it’s a Links for Thinks original resource—a first of it’s kind!

I had a blast building this website, so if you think anyone would find this of particular value OR you have an idea for another resource you think would be cool—reply to this email with your thoughts, I’d love to hear em!

Let’s dig into a few of these principles.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. Common Fate: The Psychology of Moving Together

2. Continuity: Go With The Flow

3. Closure: Fill In The Blanks

4. Prägnanz: Keep It Simple

5. Proximity: Close Things Feel Related

Common Fate - Gestalt Principles of Design

www.gestaltprinciples.com/principles/common-fate

THE GROUP DANCE

Watching words slide perfectly into place after a correct match in NYT Connections. Seeing Spotify's playlist drawer rise smoothly with all its contents in perfect unison. These moments of synchronized motion aren't just delightful animations—they're common fate in action. It's a powerful principle that turns simple motion into meaningful connections, making our digital experiences feel more natural and intuitive.

THE JUICE

Motion With Meaning: Elements moving together aren’t always there just for your “ooo’s” and “aahhs”—they can create instant relationships in users' minds making everything connected and more usable.

Shared Transformations: Combining the principle of similarity, things that change together (fade, scale, move) feel more connected and part of a group.

Group Dynamics: Think of synchronized animations like a well-choreographed dance. When emails all sweep away during a bulk delete or when tasks on a kanban board shift together during a drag-and-drop, folks instantly understand these elements are part of the same story. No instruction manual needed.

Don’t be Distracting: Don’t overdo it. Too many animations can be confusing and distracting.

Dive deeper

Continuity - Gestalt Principles of Design

www.gestaltprinciples.com/principles/continuity

THE NATURAL PATH

Remember how satisfying it was to complete your first Duolingo lesson, following your progress path to the next lesson? We’re experience the dopamine rush given by continuity—our brain's tendency to follow smooth paths and perceive continuous patterns. It's all about about creating intuitive guides that make experiences feel natural.

THE JUICE

Momentum Matters: Once users start following a path, they'll want to continue. It's why Netflix auto-plays the next episode and why doom-scrolling is a thing. Use this power responsibly—make sure you're leading users somewhere worthwhile.

Visual Path Rules:

• Design navigation that follows natural eye patterns

• Create clear visual hierarchy from one element to the next

• Connect related elements through alignment

• Know when to break the flow for emphasis

Directional Design: Use natural reading patterns for your audience. Left-to-right for Western users, right-to-left for Arabic, etc. But also consider digital patterns—we expect menus to dropdown, drawers to slide up, and breadcrumbs to go left-to-right.

Breaking Patterns: Time to break the rules. Breaking continuity works well if you’re trying to do things like signal a context shift or highlight something important. Disrupting established patterns can be as powerful as maintaining them—when done purposefully.

Dive deeper

Closure - Gestalt Principles of Design

www.gestaltprinciples.com/principles/closure

CONNECTING THE DOTS

You know how you still picture a face in Apple’s Face ID logo/animation even though it’s actually not fully there? Or can read txt evn thgh its mssng lettrs? Your brain's amazing ability to fill in the gaps and complete partial patterns lie within the principle of closure.

THE JUICE

Partially Powerful: Sometimes showing less actually communicates more. There aren’t actually three heads in the PBS logo—but your brain has no problem seeing them.

Strategic Incompleteness: Use gaps intentionally to create engagement. It's why LinkedIn shows partial profile views to logged-out users, or why Spotify's playlist covers sometimes peek out from the edge of the screen. Your brain can't help but want to complete the picture and click or scroll.

Balance Mystery and Clarity: There's a sweet spot between intriguingly incomplete and frustratingly unclear. The WWF panda is clever; a completely abstract icon for a critical function is just confusing. Remember: you're (probably) designing for users, not winning design awards.

Dive deeper

Prägnanz - Gestalt Principles of Design

www.gestaltprinciples.com/principles/pragnanz

THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT SIMPLICITY

It’s okay, you don’t need to say it out loud. Prägnanz is also known as the law of simplicity. It's the idea that our minds prefer things as simple as possible—but no simpler. Aka if it doesn't spark joy or serve a clear purpose, maybe it doesn't need to be there.

THE JUICE

Simplicity is a Feature, Not a Bug: In a world of endless options and infinite scrolls, clarity becomes a superpower. It's why Google's homepage is still basically just a search box.

Mental Models Matter: Users of your stuff come with built-in expectations. Work with them, not against them. It's why shopping carts are still shopping carts and save icons are still floppy disks (though maybe it's time to revisit that one).

Reduction > Decoration: Before adding that extra animation or that trendy gradient, ask yourself: does this help users understand or accomplish something? Sometimes the most powerful addition is subtraction. Just remember—simple doesn't mean boring. Think Nintendo Switch: minimal design, maximum fun.

Progressive Disclosure: Don't dump everything on users at once. Layer complexity like a good onboarding flow—show the basics first, then reveal more as needed. It's the difference between a good tutorial and an overwhelming manual.

Dive deeper

Proximity - Gestalt Principles of Design

www.gestaltprinciples.com/principles/proximity

DISTANCE MAKES THE BRAIN GROW FONDER

Our brains are wired to see things that are close together as related. And guess what? This same principle is secretly powering most of the interfaces you use daily, from your favorite media websites to your Netflix recommendations.

THE JUICE

Space Signals Relationships: Close things? Related. Far things? Probably not so much. It's why Figma’s properties panel groups things closer together depending on the action and why your iPhone groups notifications by app. The closer things are, the stronger the perceived connection.

Think in Chunks and Breathe: Break content into digestible groups, but don't forget the whitespace. Think of it like organizing a closet—items need to be grouped logically, but you also need room to see what you've got. Too cramped and everything becomes one big mess.

Context is King: Distance is relative to the overall layout or platform. What works on a massive 4K monitor might feel suffocating on mobile. Design your spacing like you're arranging furniture—what feels right depends entirely on the room size.

Natural Grouping > Forced Structure: Sometimes you don't need borders or backgrounds to show relationships, save that for when you really need Common Region. Good spacing can do the heavy lifting, creating natural groups that feel intuitive instead of imposed.

Dive deeper

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

And just like that, we’re barreling into 2025—a year that will most certainly continue to usher in significant changes to how we all work and create. I’ve compiled a few trend reports to take a look at what we might be seeing as we venture into the new year. And though it might feel overwhelmingly AI-focused, there are plenty of other goodies woven in between.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. The State of UX in 2025 | UX Collective

2. The 2025 State of the Website report | Webflow

3. Creative Trends 2025 | Adobe

4. Design Trends 2025 | Canva

5. Tech Trends 2025 | Deloitte

The State of UX in 2025 | UX Collective

trends.uxdesign.cc

WHAT HAVE WE BECOME

Design’s hit an inflection point. The UX buzz from the late 2010s has faded into something more complex. Designers may no longer be creative visionaries shaping products but part of a larger machine driven by algorithms, business metrics, and AI-powered tools. As scary as that might sound, it doesn’t need to be a story of loss—it can be a story of evolution if we craft it right.

THE JUICE

They’re Learning: Your tools are learning from you. Everything from your interactions within Figma to how you’re deploying your apps on Vercel might become training data for the next generation of automated design. This isn't just about faster workflows—it's reshaping who can design and what design is worth.

Growth Over Empathy: We've swapped user research for A/B tests and traded careful craftsmanship for engagement metrics. Design systems now optimize for clicks rather than clarity. In 2025, the numbers won’t lie—but they might not tell the whole story.

The Politics of Design: Your most valuable skill might not be your Figma expertise anymore. Success increasingly depends on navigating organizational dynamics, stakeholder management, and finding the delicate balance between user needs, business metrics, and general human psychology.

The Way Forward:

• Consider deeper specialization in areas AI can't easily replicate: psychology, accessibility, strategy

• Focus on becoming a "meta-designer"—someone who designs the systems that design systems

• Return to craft fundamentals—there will always be value in thoughtful, human-centered design

• Explore adjacent fields where design thinking meets emerging technology

The tools change, but the core mission of design—making technology more human—remains constant. The question isn't whether design is dying, but how it's evolving. The best designers will adapt not by fighting change, but by shaping it.

Dive deeper

The 2025 State of the Website report | Webflow

webflow.com/resources/report/2025-state-of-the-website

LONG LIVE THE WEBSITE

What is the future of websites you may ask? Do they still matter? Well according to Webflow’s State of the Website, they're huge revenue engines. With 91% of marketing leaders reporting their website as their top revenue driver and 62% of companies generating over half their revenue online, it’s safe to say they probably aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

THE JUICE

The Tech Stack Reality: Only 17% of large enterprises feel their tech stack meets their needs. Despite 90% reporting tech stack growth, the gap between capability and execution remains pretty big. Most interesting: 58% believe they need a complete overhaul to improve user experiences.

AI's Growing Impact:

• 79% of teams actively use AI tools

• 69% plan to increase or maintain AI investments

• Key benefits: customer insights, operational efficiency, SEO optimization

• Focus on predictive analytics and personalization at scale

The Collaboration Challenge: Engineering dependencies remain a critical bottleneck—96% of marketing teams need better collaboration with technical teams. This disconnect slows innovation and hampers speedy responses to market changes. This is where designers can shine, learn to speak all the languages and be the connective tissue.

Path Forward for 2025: Folks are looking to:

• Increase experimentation

• Invest in modern CMS and CRO tools

• Build API-first infrastructure

• Focus on cross-functional workflows

• Deploy AI for personalization and efficiency

Struggling to Keep Up: While websites are driving more revenue than ever, most organizations are still wrestling with the technology and processes needed to fully capitalize on this digital opportunity. Designers are primed to help bridge this gap in 2025.

Dive deeper

Creative Trends 2025 | Adobe

www.adobe.com/creativecloud/business/teams/resources/whitepapers-ebooks/creative-trends-2025-guide-sdk.html

CREATIVITY’S NEW FRONTIER

As AI cements itself in the creative toolbox, we're witnessing a fundamental shift in how design and creativity scale. The narrative isn't about replacement—it's about amplification. Adobe's latest research reveals how AI is becoming the bridge between imagination and execution.

THE JUICE

Breaking Reality's Boundaries: Generative AI isn't just making creation faster—it’s enabling previously impossible visual concepts. Folks are blending surreal environments with product photography, pushing traditional advertising into new frontiers. The most successful examples create worlds where products feel both cutting-edge and otherworldly.

The Return of Creative Joy: Data shows 2x higher purchase intent for brands that surprise and delight. This is driving a renaissance in playful, imaginative content that merges nostalgia with futurism. The #retro futurism hashtag has hit 35.5M posts on TikTok, showing people might be craving more creativity in their lives. So maybe it’s time to start building joyful experiences again, only moving forward as we do it.

New Creative Workflows:

• AI tools are removing technical barriers to creative expression

• Teams are using generative fill and expand features to accelerate production

• Brands are training custom AI models on their assets for consistent scaled creation

• Collaboration tools are evolving to support AI-augmented creative processes

The Future of Creative Work: We seem to be leaning towards physical experiences again. Mastercard reports a 65% increase in experience-related spending since 2019. This signals a shift toward immersive, multi-sensorial brand engagement where AI-powered tools help craft richer narrative universes and bring folks together in real spaces.

Dive deeper

Design Trends 2025 | Canva

www.canva.com/design-trends

TRENDING FOR YOU

Canva has seen a lot of designs this past year—over 8 billion, to put a number on it. If your 2024 designs felt a little meh, it’s time to level up. These trends will help shake things up, blending motion, grit, and a dash of botanical flair to keep your work ahead of the curve.

THE JUICE

Designers Just Wanna Have Fun: Remember a few minutes ago when you read about surprise and delight? Well, it seems like we might be looking at more fun in 2025. While the world can often feel like doom and gloom, it seems like we might be able to turn a corner here in how we bring our designs and daily interactions to life.

Dynamism Is In: Static is out, and movement is in. Whether it’s animated gradients, interactive typography, or modular layouts with bold shapes, this trend is all about creating flow and personality.

The Modern Minimalist: Less was always more—but how much less depends on your vibe. From the edgy, stripped-back grit of bold visuals to the luxurious calm of understated glamour, minimalism is taking a turn. Think raw materials meet refined details for a look that’s as distinctive as it is versatile.

Organic Tech: What happens when nature shakes hands with innovation? Magic. Dreamy gradients, negative space, and nostalgic touches like scrapbook collages meet AI precision to create designs that feel both fresh and familiar. It’s harmony between worlds.

Dive deeper

Tech Trends 2025 | Deloitte

www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/tech-trends.html/

ARE WE SINGULARITY YET

Of course, we know the biggest tech trend of 2025 will be AI. You might think designers' roles are diminishing because of it. But maybe they're actually becoming more critical. As tech gets smarter, the human touch in design—making complex systems feel intuitive and natural—becomes the real differentiator. In our emerging AI world, the uniquely human aspects of design might be our most valuable asset.

THE JUICE

Design's New Canvas = Spatial + AI: Not just screens anymore—spatial computing demands we think beyond flat interfaces. The real opportunity lies in crafting experiences that blend the digital world seamlessly into physical spaces. Instead of designing on screens, your next design challenge might just be orchestrating how AI-powered interactions feel natural in three-dimensional space. This isn't sci-fi anymore.

The Core Challenge: Making Smart Feel Simple: As core systems get AI upgrades, your role evolves from pure visual design to experience architecture. The trick isn't showing off how smart the AI is, but making complex capabilities feel accessible and human. Think about Netflix's recommendation engine—the tech is complex, but the interface is simple. Every AI interaction needs that level of thoughtful design to build trust and understanding.

Hardware Renaissance: The pendulum is swinging back from software-only solutions to smart hardware. This means industrial design is getting its moment in the sun again, but with a twist. The future of hardware will need to show off its AI capabilities without feeling overwhelming. Consider how Apple made complex technology feel approachable through careful design choices. How do you make a smart device feel smart without making it feel alien?

Strategic Design Priorities:

• Bridge the gap between traditional design patterns and AI capabilities

• Create design systems that scale across both human-driven and AI-powered interfaces

• Document design decisions knowing they may become training data for future AI

• Focus on making AI's decision-making visible and understandable to users

• Design for varying levels of AI processing power across different devices

The best designs will make AI feel less like magic and more like a natural extension of human capability. When done right, users shouldn't even notice the AI—they should just notice how much easier everything has become.

Dive deeper

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

Happy holidays folks! This holiday season had me thinking about where we find joy in our lives—those unexpected moments that shake us out of our daily routines and remind us to pause, smile, and maybe say "wow."

For this edition, there won't be any actionable takeaways. Instead of diving deep into the psychology of joy, I just want to share a handful of websites that made me think "holy cow that was fun."

In hopes that you'll find a piece of joy, and maybe a spark of creative inspiration.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. Unseen Studio® – Brand, Digital & Motion

2. ZOMBO

3. The Useless Web

4. pictureofhotdog.com

5. Art Basel Banana(s)

Unseen Studio® – Brand, Digital & Motion

unseen.co

THE NEXT FRONTIER

We know what interaction patterns work, we've got our component libraries, and we can A/B test our way into a performance-obsessed frenzy.

But what if we took all that knowledge and, just sometimes, chose chaos? What if instead of asking "will this convert?" we asked "will this make someone smile? Will this make someone say 'wow'?"

Because between all our best practices and proven patterns, there's still that innate human desire to experience something unexpected and delightful.

ZOMBO

www.zombo.com

YOU CAN DO ANYTHING AT ZOMBOCOM

Need I say more? Anything is possible. Who needs AI when you have Zombo.

The Useless Web

theuselessweb.com

EMBRACE THE CHAOS

Why waste time finding weird websites when this magical button will do it for you? It's like StumbleUpon for people who miss the strange corners of the old internet.

pictureofhotdog.com

www.pictureofhotdog.com

NICHEDOG

They say there's riches in niches—but what if your niche was just... a picture of a hotdog? Sometimes the best ideas are the ones that make absolutely no sense on paper.

Art Basel Banana(s)

www.artbaselbananas.com

WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU BANANAS, PROFIT

A little shameless self-promotion to prove a point—the best creative projects often come from that weird intersection of "this is dumb" and "but what if..." Sometimes you just need to tape a banana to a wall and see what happens.

So go forth and create joy.

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

We're on the home stretch folks. The week before the last holiday season of the year in the US. Which means we have to muster up all of our productivity hacks to make sure we get our stuff out the door—all while prepping for our future selves to not hate our past selves when we jump back in at the start of 2025.

No better way to feel productive than to read about productivity—so let me help you indulge with some links to really hit your organizational dopamine receptors. Consider this your permission to procrastinate… productively.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. The Eisenhower Matrix: How to Prioritize Your To-Do List

2. Getting Things Done: A Simple Step-By-Step Guide

3. How to Create the Ultimate Design Swipe File in Notion

4. When Perfectionism Makes You a Better Creative, and When It Doesn't

5. The End of Productivity

The Eisenhower Matrix: How to Prioritize Your To-Do List

NOT EVERYTHING IS A FIRE

Feeling overwhelmed by your increasingly large to-do list where everything seems like a priority? Well maybe it’s time to take that step back, a deep breath, and come to terms that not everything needs to be done right this second. Before he was dealing with actual nuclear threats as president, Eisenhower figured out something we all need to hear—most urgent things aren't important, and most important things aren't urgent.

THE JUICE

Important ≠ Urgent: That client crisis blowing up your Slack? Urgent. The strategy planning you keep pushing off? Important. Learn the difference and suddenly your day stops feeling like one long game of whack-a-mole.

The Matrix Cheat Sheet: Four boxes that'll make your to-do list actually manageable:

• Do: Both urgent and important. Your "the-house-is-on-fire" kinda stuff, handle these now.

• Schedule: Important but not urgent. Your "future-you-will-thank-you" stuff. Plan these properly.

• Delegate: Urgent but not important. Perfect for passing to your teammates like a hot potato.

• Delete: Neither urgent nor important. Your productivity kryptonite. Just say no.

Work Smarter, Not Harder: Make sure your matrix doesn’t just turn into another overwhelming to-do list. Keep it lean by:

• Capping each quadrant at 10 tasks (your brain will thank you).

• Splitting personal and work stuff into different matrices (because your dentist appointment and client deadline need different energy).

• Deleting what you don't need first (fun fact: 60% of work time is just "work about work").

• Color code if you're feeling fancy, but don't let picking the perfect shade become another task to procrastinate on.

Dive deeper

Getting Things Done: A Simple Step-By-Step Guide

todoist.com/productivity-methods/getting-things-done

GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR HEAD

Constantly losing ideas, forgetting about meetings, and leaving important stuff buried under a pile of mental sticky notes? Your brain is great at having ideas but terrible at remembering them—like that one friend who always has amazing plans but can't remember where they put their keys (I’m not that friend, promise).

THE JUICE

The Five Steps of Getting Your Stuff Together:

• Capture: Write down everything (and I mean everything) that's bouncing around in your head.

• Clarify: What does each thing you captured actually mean (turning "website update" into "update pricing page with new enterprise tier details").

• Organize: Create a system you'll actually use (not just another abandoned Notion template).

• Review: Regularly check in so you actually trust your system.

• Engage: Well, you gotta actually do the things instead of just staring at them anxiously.

Two-Minute Rule: If something takes less than two minutes, just do the dang thing—it’s not worth the brain space or the paper space.

Context, Context, Context: Wherever your system lives, tag tasks by the headspace they need (quick-fixes, creative-flow, deep-focus)—because trying to redesign an entire design system when you've only got 15 minutes between meetings is just setting yourself up for pain. Match your tasks to your mental bandwidth.

Dive deeper

STOP REINVENTING THE WHEEL (SERIOUSLY, STOP IT)

The most productive makers of stuff aren't waiting for divine intervention—they're building treasure maps to their best ideas. A swipe file is simply a collection of things you’ve found in the world to use as inspiration. But swipe files aren't just spots full of cool stuff (though they should at least be that)—they're your personal productivity hack for never starting from zero.

THE JUICE

See Something Save Something: The best time to capture inspiration is when you first see it. Build a system so frictionless that saving inspiration takes less time than deciding where to get lunch (unless you’re the type of person where deciding on lunch is impossible, then maybe find a different analogy). Your future self will high-five you when you’re trying to start a new project but don’t know where to look first.

The Dreaded Blank Canvas: Every time you start from scratch, you're burning creative energy on decisions you've probably already made before. Having a curated collection of proven solutions isn't cheating—it's just good resource management.

The Decision Library: Build your swipe file like a design system—not just random cool stuff, but solutions to problems you keep running into. Navigation patterns that work? Save 'em. Error states that don't suck? Keep those too. Color combos that pop? You know someone’s going to ask you about it—might as well be ready.

Searching for Treasure: Wherever your swipe file system lives, make sure you build it in a way that is searchable to you. The more you collect, the more you have to sift through—so make sure you can find what you’re looking for quickly otherwise you won’t want to use it.

Dive deeper

When Perfectionism Makes You a Better Creative, and When It Doesn't

www.itsnicethat.com/features/perfectionism-creative-industry-171024

PERFECTION IS KILLING YOUR PRODUCTIVITY

20px padding on the top and bottom. Wait no, no—actually 16px is better. WAIT LET ME WORK ON IT JUST A LITTLE MORE. If this sounds like the talk track in your brain for every UI decision, it’s time to have an intervention about perfectionism. Not the "I'm just detail-oriented" kind—the paralyzing "I've been sitting on this draft for three weeks and nothing has actually changed" kind that's actually sabotaging your productivity.

THE JUICE

The Creative's Curse: Turns out perfectionists and creatives share a curse: the curse of a vivid imagination. When you can perfectly picture how something should look, every tiny gap between vision and reality feels like a personal failure. No wonder we keep tweaking those pixels—we're not just adjusting padding, we're adjusting our self-worth.

Iteration Over Perfection: Sure, those pixel-perfect details feel important (and maybe they are), but sometimes you need to embrace the messy middle—make mistakes, learn from feedback, and actually ship stuff. Your early work won't be a masterpiece, and that's exactly the point.

Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself: When you're constantly staying up past midnight adjusting button shadows or your friends are glazing over at your 20th deep dive into kerning, it's time for some boundaries. Ask yourself—what are you actually trying to achieve here? Your pixel-perfect design won't matter if you've lost all perspective and friends in the process.

Liberation Through Letting Go: Maybe your perfectionism isn't actually about the work—it's about proving something to yourself (or that one art professor who said “maybe choose a different major,” which I’m totally not speaking from personal experience)… But letting go isn't giving up, it's making space for better things. Like sleep. Or relationships. Or maybe even enjoying the process instead of obsessing over every detail. Sometimes letting go is exactly what makes the work better.

Be A Human: As we trend towards a world full of AI-perfect visuals and writing, maybe flaws are actually the secret sauce. When everyone else is smoothing out their edges, your human touches and happy accidents might be exactly what makes your work stand out.

Powerfully Perfect: Perfectionism can be a productivity killer—but if you learn to control it, maybe it can turn out to be a superpower. Save that obsessive attention to detail for the crucial moments that actually matter.

Dive deeper

The End of Productivity

every.to/thesis/the-end-of-productivity

PRODUCTIVITY IS DEAD, LONG LIVE CREATIVITY

Well now that we spent time going over tools and frameworks to boost productivity. What if I told you maybe we've been thinking about productivity all wrong? What if the future of being more productive is actually about being more creative?
 
While we're over here optimizing our to-do lists and trying to squeeze more tasks into smaller time blocks, maybe we're missing the whole point of why we’re doing this stuff to begin with.

What sort of modern take on a topic would this be if I didn't talk about AI. In our emerging AI world where machines can crank out content faster than your coffee maker can make your next cup of focus juice, speed and efficiency might not be the flex we think they are anymore.

THE JUICE

Not All Info Is Created Equal: There are generally two types of information we save, and how we handle the storage of that stuff should probably be different based on how we execute upon it:

• Admin Info: The boring but necessary stuff (like your dentist appointment details).

• Creative Info: Actually interesting creative sparks (like that random idea you got from listening to a podcast).

Creatively Processing: Making cool stuff happens in three steps:

• Collecting: Gathering ideas (can happen passively or intentionally)

• Connecting: Drawing lines between said ideas

• Creating: Actually making something new

AI Plot Twist: Now that AI can generate infinite mediocre content, why should humans keep doing so? Maybe our job isn't to compete on speed or volume. Our superpower is making things that are weird, wonderful, and authentically human—the stuff no computer could fake. Not yet, at least.

Beyond the Checkbox: The most valuable work often doesn't fit in a task manager. There's no JIRA ticket for "stare at wall until breakthrough happens" or "have random insight in shower." Although I might try to introduce this for next sprint planning 🤔. Sometimes the least productive-looking moments are actually where the real work happens.

Tools Are Not Neutral: The tools we use shape how we think. When every app is screaming "faster, more efficient!" we start treating our brains like machines instead of the weird idea factories they really are. Maybe it's time for tools that encourage wandering instead of just executing. Maybe it’s time to find our inspiration and productivity away from our screens.

Dive deeper

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

If anything in this world is certain, it’s that you have no choice but to make decisions about things. That’s especially true when you’re building stuff for other folks. And at that point, those decisions end up becoming what influences other people's daily decisions 🤯. Talk about pressure.

The best way to prepare for those moments? Equip yourself with the right tools, frameworks, and knowledge to problem-solve in any context. This isn’t the first edition on decision-making, and I’m willing to bet it won’t be the last.

While I probably can't help you decide what toppings to get on your sad desk salad, I can share some frameworks that make the bigger decisions a bit less daunting. Because sometimes the difference between a good decision and a questionable one isn't just experience—it's having the right mental models to break things down.

Here are some links to help you think through the tough stuff.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. Jobs-To-Be-Done

2. Desirability, Viability, Feasibility

3. Six Thinking Hats

4. HEART Framework

5. Business Model Navigator

Jobs-To-Be-Done

www.strategyn.com/jobs-to-be-done

THE JOB BEHIND THE JOB

We've all heard the quote "People don't want a quarter-inch drill; they want a quarter-inch hole." Of course people are buying drills and drill bits, but at the end of the day they're really just trying to hang photos, build shelves, or fix wobbly tables. That's what Jobs-to-be-Done is all about—zooming out from what you're making to ask the real question: "wait, why are they even drilling that hole?"

THE JUICE

The Market Is The Job: It might be time to stop defining your market by demographics, personas, or that really unorganized and never looked at spreadsheet of user characteristics. Instead, focus on the core job people are trying to get done. Think "I need to capture ideas quickly" vs. "I'm building a note-taking app for Gen Z creatives who love dark mode."

Job Anatomy 101: Every job your customers are trying to get done—from sharing vacation photos to managing their finances—generally follows 8 steps. Understanding where they struggle within these steps is your key to building something they actually need:

• Define: What are they actually trying to achieve? ("I want to preserve memories" vs "I need cloud storage")

• Locate: What resources and info do they need to gather?

• Prepare: How do they organize and set everything up?

• Confirm: What do they check before diving in?

• Execute: How do they accomplish their main goal?

• Monitor: How do they track if it's working?

• Modify: What happens when something goes wrong?

• Conclude: How do they wrap things up and move on?

Know Your Crowd: Before you dive into building that next big thing, remember your user isn't always just one person. In B2B especially, you're actually dealing with a whole cast of characters (though in B2C they might all be the same person wearing different hats):

• The Job Executor: The actual do-er, getting stuff done (e.g. a developer writing code)

• The Support Crew: The unsung heroes keeping things running—installing, maintaining, upgrading, and generally preventing chaos (e.g. operations team coordinating schedules and timelines)

• The Buyer: The one with the budget who might never touch your product but needs to be convinced it's worth those precious dollars (e.g. the C-suite asking "but what's the ROI?")

The Game Plan: Understanding the job is one thing—but how do you actually solve it? Here are your five core strategies based on who's using your thing and what they actually need:

• Differentiated: For underserved users willing to pay more. You build something better than what's out there, charge premium prices, and focus on those who'll happily pay for quality.

• Dominant: The rare win where you make something both better AND cheaper. Hard to pull off, but when it works, it works for everyone—from power users to penny pinchers.

• Disruptive: For overserved or priced-out users. Keep it simple, keep it cheap, and focus on nailing the basics that most people actually need.

• Discrete: For neglected markets with few options. Fill those specific gaps where folks have limited or no alternatives.

• Sustaining: Small, steady improvements to what's already working. Best for established products and companies that want to keep current users happy.

Dive deeper

Desirability, Viability, Feasibility

https://makeiterate.com/ideos-desirability-viability-feasibility-framework-a-practical-guide/

THE THREE-LEGGED STOOL OF SUCCESS

Before you run off and build that game-changing product that's been living in your notes app for the past six months—let's talk about a good reality check framework. Because having a brilliant idea is great and all, but if you can't build it, sell it, or get anyone to actually want it... well, you might want to keep your day job.

THE JUICE

The Only Three Questions That Matter:

• Desirability: Do people actually want this thing?

• Feasibility: Can we actually build it?

• Viability: Can we make money without going broke?

When The Stars Align (Or Don’t): When all three align, that's where success happens. Miss one, and it doesn't matter how good the other two are. Cool product no one wants? Great idea you can't build? Amazing demand but no way to profit? All roads lead to nowhere.

Keep It Simple: Use this framework early and often. Rate your ideas against all three criteria. Sometimes the best innovation is knowing when to say no. Start with real human needs, not just cool ideas, and keep iterating until you find that sweet spot where all three meet.

Dive deeper

Six Thinking Hats

untools.co/six-thinking-hats

PUT ON YOUR THINKING HAT(S)

Sometimes the best way to crack a tough problem is to play dress-up with your thinking. Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats is like a costume party for your brain—where changing hats helps you see problems from different angles. Instead of getting trapped in one perspective, you get to try them all on for size.

THE JUICE

The Hat Collection: Put on each of these hats when you’re trying to solve a problem:

• ⚪️ White Hat: Just the facts—what we know and what we need to know

• 🟡 Yellow Hat: Look on the bright side—find value and opportunity

• ⚫️ Black Hat: Spot the risks—identify what could go wrong

• 🔴 Red Hat: Trust your gut—share feelings and intuitions

• 🟢 Green Hat: Get creative—explore new ideas and possibilities

• 🔵 Blue Hat: Stay on track—manage the thinking process

Hat Tricks: Instead of everyone yelling their opinions all at once, take turns wearing different hats. Suddenly that grumpy say no-er is forced to find the upside, and your overly optimistic folks have to consider what could go wrong. Magic.

Beyond Meetings: Use it solo when stuck on a problem, or get your whole team to play along. It's like forcing your brain to stop being a one-trick pony and actually consider all sides of an issue.

Remove The Drama: When emotions are running high, switching hats can cool things down. It's harder to get defensive when everyone knows it's just their turn wearing the black hat.

Dive deeper

HEART Framework

www.heartframework.com

(USER) PAIN THROWS YOUR HEART TO THE GROUND

Ever wonder if people actually like using your product, or if they’re just stuck with it? Google's HEART framework breaks down user experience into five measurable chunks that actually make sense. Because nothing should make you shudder more than the question “so... what is this thing supposed to be doing again?”

THE JUICE

The Five Vitals: These metrics will get you started in understanding where you may need some improvement:

• Happiness: How satisfied are users? (Not just "do they use it?")

• Engagement: Are they actually sticking around?

• Adoption: Can you convince new folks to try it?

• Retention: Do they keep coming back for more?

• Task Success: Can they do what they came to do?

The Recipe for Good Metrics: Once you've picked your vitals, run them through the Goals > Signals > Metrics funnel:

• Goals: Define what success actually looks like (your critical user tasks)

• Signals: Find the breadcrumbs that show you're on track (channels where user behavior lives)

• Metrics: Turn those signals into numbers you can track (actual quantifiable stuff)

Make It Actionable: Good metrics answer questions that help you make decisions. If you're tracking something just because it's "interesting," you're probably wasting your time.

Decision Paralysis: You don't need to track everything at once. Pick one or two categories that matter most for your current phase. Your dashboard (and sanity) will thank you later.

Dive deeper

Business Model Navigator

businessmodelnavigator.com

BUSINESS IN THE FRONT, PARTY IN THE BACK

Everyone's got an app idea these days. If you’re ready to dive in and build it, you might be asking: how's this thing gonna make money? With so many proven business models to choose from, success isn’t just about creating something cool—it’s about choosing the right strategy to bring your vision to life.

THE JUICE

More Than Monetization: A business model isn't just your pricing strategy—it's the entire blueprint for how your product creates and delivers value. Think of it as your game plan for turning "wouldn't it be cool if..." into "here's how we actually do it."

Design With Intent: Every model changes how you should approach design. Building a Freemium product? Your free tier needs to be good enough to hook users but limited enough to drive upgrades (but don’t be shady about it). Going for Hidden Revenue? Your UX needs to balance user experience with advertiser needs.

Follow The Value Chain: Most successful products mix and match multiple models. Sometimes the magic isn't in picking one pattern, but in combining them in clever ways that make sense for your users and your bottom line.

Pattern Recognition: Business model innovation isn't always about inventing something new—it's about remixing what works in clever ways. As with most things in design—once you know these patterns, you'll start to understand that the real innovation often comes from applying proven patterns in fresh contexts.

Dive deeper

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

Oof, what a week. After spending way too much time navigating the maze of car insurance, I've been thinking a lot about ethical design and its real impact on people's lives. When poorly designed systems create friction, it's not just annoying—it can actually harm folks who are already dealing with enough stress.

Enough about my woes though, here are some links to help think about designing with intention and responsibility. Because in a world where dark patterns might sometimes feel like the default and thinking about long term sustainability feels optional, maybe it's time to take a step back and actually think about the people we're really designing for.

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. Design Principles

2. The Business Case for Responsible Design

3. Can’t Stop Adding to Cart? Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy Will Tell You Why

4. IBM Design for Sustainability

5. Humane by Design

Design Principles

principles.design

PRINCIPLES OF PRINCIPLE-ING

One of the biggest ways to make an impact with your designs? Understand what they stand for. Some folks might want to rush straight to shiny solutions, but good principles are your compass for staying true to what matters. Design principles aren't just guidelines—they're the backbone of every decision you'll make. They're your north star when stakeholders start throwing "can we just…" your way.

THE JUICE

Stop Writing Useless Principles: Design principles shouldn't read like corporate fortune cookies. If your principle could apply to literally any company or product ("make it user-friendly!") you don’t have a principle—you have a platitude.

Principles That Do Work:

• Frame trade-offs, not truisms ("Embrace weird over safe" not just "be creative")

• Give specific, actionable guidance ("Write like you're explaining to a friend" not "clear communication")

• Actually influence day-to-day decisions ("Start with mobile" not "make responsive designs")

• Reflect what makes your product unique ("Trust teachers' judgment" not "empower users")

The Documentation Trap: Writing principles isn't necessarily the hard part (though, it is an art)—it's getting folks to actually use them. Without regular reference and reinforcement, even great principles become that one paper you shoved in your desk three years ago that you will definitely remember to reference.

Build them into your process and culture or be prepared to whip out the duster every quarter trying to get these things to stick. When talking about your designs to stakeholders, reference what principles you’re adhering to and what decisions were made based on them.

Go to the resource to dive deeper

The Business Case for Responsible Design

www.ideo.com/journal/the-business-case-for-responsible-design

THE BUSINESS OF BEING GOOD

Turns out doing the right thing isn't just good karma—it's good business. As companies scramble to stay relevant in a world where Gen Z has the receipts and emerging markets are where the real growth is happening, responsible design isn't just a nice-to-have anymore. It's becoming a survival strategy.

THE JUICE

Virtue BS Detector: The most diverse generations in history aren’t buying what you're selling unless you're actually walking the walk. When 70% of Gen Z only buys from companies they consider ethical & 75% of Millennials will literally change their buying habits in favor of environmentally-friendly products—your "commitment to diversity" better be more than a black square on Instagram.

Regulation Reality Check: Whether it's sustainability goals or AI ethics, the rules are coming. Smart companies aren't waiting for regulations to force their hand—they're getting ahead of the curve and turning responsibility into competitive advantage.

The ROI of Doing Right: Companies like Patagonia and Kasha aren't succeeding despite their values—they're winning because of them. When you actually solve real problems for underserved markets, turns out people will pay for that.

Go to the resource to dive deeper

Can’t Stop Adding to Cart? Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy Will Tell You Why

www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/buy-now-shopping-conspiracy-release-date-news

BUY NOW—OR ELSE!

Netflix's documentary "Buy Now" isn't just exposing shady business tactics—it's revealing how we as designers might be unwitting accomplices in manipulating users. Before you add that countdown timer to checkout, let's talk about the real cost of conversion optimization.

THE JUICE

The Ethics of Engagement: We all want higher conversion rates, but at what cost? When your "limited time offer" has been running for three years or your "only 2 spots left!" message is pure fiction, you're not designing experiences—you're designing lies.

Dark Patterns Are Bad Business: Quick wins through manipulation might boost short-term metrics, but they destroy long-term trust. Every fake urgency prompt or hidden unsubscribe button is a time bomb of user resentment waiting to explode.

Beyond Binary Choices: "Good design" isn't just about making things easy to buy—it's about empowering genuine decisions. That means showing real stock levels, actual price comparisons, and clear paths to both purchase and reconsideration.

The Sustainability Tax: Those impulse-optimized shopping experiences? They're not just cluttering users' closets—they're filling landfills. As designers, we're either part of the solution or part of the problem. There's no neutral ground anymore.

Go to the resource to dive deeper

IBM Design for Sustainability

www.ibm.com/design/practices/design-for-sustainability/design-for-sustainability-positionpaper.pdf

GREEN BY DESIGN

Fun fact: 80% of a product's environmental impact is determined in the design phase. But IBM's sustainability checklist isn't just about saving trees—it's about rethinking how we build digital experiences from the ground up. Good design and sustainable design might actually just be the same thing.

THE JUICE

Design is Just the Start: Sustainable design goes beyond recycling icons and earth-tone color palettes. It's about creating experiences that reduce resource usage while increasing usability for everyone.

Efficiency Squared: The best sustainable designs pull double duty—they make things faster for users and lighter on the planet. When your site loads quickly, you're not just making users happy, you're cutting carbon emissions.

Small Changes, Big Impact: Every design decision has a sustainability angle:

• Fewer unnecessary assets = less server load

• Simpler interfaces = faster task completion

• Reusable components = reduced development waste

• Inclusive design = better access with fewer resources

Build For Tomorrow: Building sustainability isn't about checking boxes—it's a culture shift (okay, yeah this resource is technically a checklist for checking boxes, but I digress). From choosing diverse teams to measuring environmental impact, every part of the design process needs to consider its long-term effects. Because the most sustainable code is the code you don't have to rewrite.

Go to the resource to dive deeper

Humane by Design

humanebydesign.com

PUTTING THE HUMAN BACK IN HUMAN-CENTERED

We talk about human-centered design all day, but how often do we actually design for human wellbeing? Between dopamine-driven feeds and anxiety-inducing notifications, maybe it's time we asked ourselves: are we designing experiences that make lives better, or just metrics bigger?

THE JUICE

Respect > Engagement: Stop optimizing for time spent and start optimizing for time well spent. Your users aren't data points to be maximized—they're humans with limited time and mental energy.

Design for Agency: Give users real control, not the illusion of it. That means clear settings, genuine choices, and the ability to say "actually, I don't want any of this."

The Ethics of Attention: Every notification, alert, and "engagement feature" is asking for a piece of someone's life. Make sure you're giving something valuable in return.

Mental Models Matter: Design with human psychology in mind, not against it. Use patterns that reduce cognitive load instead of exploiting cognitive biases. Your dark patterns might boost short-term metrics, but they're burning long-term trust.

Go to the resource to dive deeper

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

In the meantime, feel free to:

1. Forward this email or share this link with your friends if you feel they need some links for thinks: https://www.linksforthinks.com/subscribe

2. Reach out with any suggestions or questions for the newsletter.

3. Send me some of your favorite links and takeaways.

Cheers, Jake

As we gear up for holiday food comas, thankful for our time away from screens—I've been thinking about how much of my best thinking happens away from the keyboard. (Sweet, sweet irony.)

Last week we looked at research through the lens of atomic design—so this week, let's apply that same atomic thinking to everything from your desk setup to city spaces to timeless masterpieces. Think of it as component-based design, just with more concrete and less Figma anxiety.

Turns out some of the best digital inspiration can come from decidedly analog places. While we're busy perfecting hover states, the physical world’s been quietly mastering user experience for centuries.

Take a peek at these links—they might just change how you see the world. (But right after you peek, get outside.)

— Jake

TODAY'S EDITION

1. Workspaces and Desk Setups

2. Dezeen Lookbooks

3. Divisare — Atlas of Architecture

4. Art Movements — Google Arts & Culture

5. Color Palette Inspiration from Nature

Workspaces and Desk Setups

www.makerstations.io

THE ANATOMY OF A WORKSPACE

If you’re reading this newsletter, I'd be willing to bet you spend a fair amount of time at a desk. Whether you're a home office hermit, coffee shop nomad, or just got called back into an open office plan wondering who tf thought it was a good idea—when's the last time you actually audited your space?

THE JUICE

Your Space as a Design System:

• Design your space like you'd build a component library—every zone should have a clear purpose

• Create distinct areas for different brain modes—deep work, quick tasks, your favorite hobbies, staring at a wall filling with existential dread

• Small changes create big habits (putting your phone in another room isn't avoidance, it's flow architecture)

The Roommate Agreement: Your brain and your space are basically roommates—and like any shared living situation, it's all about boundaries. When your space is chaos, your brain's that passive-aggressive roomie leaving post-it notes everywhere about their "concerns."

Design for Reality: The best workspace isn't the one with the fanciest standing desk you'll never use—it's the one that actually matches how you work. Build a system you'll stick with, not one for your imaginary productive self.

Dezeen Lookbooks

www.dezeen.com/lookbooks

USABILITY BEFORE IT WAS COOL

While we're all obsessing over whether or not to round our corners, there's an entire world of physical interfaces that have been testing these same patterns for way longer than we have. That restaurant that just feels right? The store layout that guides you exactly where you need to go? That's not accident—that's interface design minus the hover states. Because you’ll only find those on a screen.

THE JUICE

IRL Patterns Worth Stealing:

• Desire paths are just organic usability tests (turns out humans knew about user flows before we had flowcharts)

• Context switching didn't start with browser tabs—study how spaces transition between areas

• Lighting creates hierarchy better than your drop shadows ever will

The Silent Guide: Physical spaces are the ultimate invisible interface. Good interior design guides without signage, delights without popups, and onboards without tutorials. If you need in depth documentation, you might be doing it wrong.

Research in 3D: Every retail space is a UX case study in disguise:

• Museums are master classes in information architecture

• Hotels are experiments in universal design

• Restaurants are labs for environmental psychology

Divisare — Atlas of Architecture

divisare.com

THINKING IN SYSTEMS

While we're fussing over 8px vs 12px spacing, architects have been solving human problems on much larger scales for centuries. And they can't just push a hotfix when something goes wrong. Architecture isn't just about making big beautiful buildings—it's about creating systems that actually work for humans.

THE JUICE

Space Psychology: Good architecture shapes behavior without saying a word. No tooltips, no onboarding flow—just intuitive design that guides you exactly where you need to go. Study the buildings that don't need "You are here" maps.

The Form/Function Tango: Architecture is a delicate dance between vision and reality. You can't hide bad decisions behind a modal. That stunning design choice either works or it doesn't—and the consequences are a bit more serious than a dip in conversion rates. Turns out rule-breaking hits different when the rules involve gravity.

Context is King: A perfect solution in one space can fail spectacularly in another. What works for a cozy café would be chaos in an airport terminal. Good architects don't just design spaces—they design for specific humans in specific situations.

Art Movements — Google Arts & Culture

artsandculture.google.com/category/art-movement

NOTHING IS NEW (AND THAT'S OKAY)

Before you dive into your next "revolutionary" design, take a quick trip to the past. Everything we think is innovative today probably has a cooler grandparent in a museum somewhere. And that's not a bad thing—it turns out studying art history isn't just for impressing people at parties (spoiler: no one will be impressed). It's about understanding what worked, what didn't, and why. That way, when you're "borrowing" ideas, at least you're borrowing good ones.

THE JUICE

Art History's Greatest Hits: The design principles you swear by? They've been tested by centuries of artists. From grid systems that predate computers to color theories older than electricity, we're all standing on the shoulders of very stylish giants.

Everything is a Remix: That mind-blowing interface pattern you saw on Dribbble? Probably started life as a 1920s theater poster. Your revolutionary layout? A Bauhaus student definitely sketched it on a napkin. Great designers don't just copy the past—they understand why it worked.

Color Palette Inspiration from Nature

colorpalettes.earth

NATURE THE OG DESIGN SYSTEM

When you’re tired of what humans have to offer, maybe it's time to go touch grass. Nature's been quietly (sometimes not so quietly) running the most successful design system ever created. No A/B tests needed when you've got 4.5 billion years of iterations backing your color choices.

THE JUICE

Evolution of Style:

• Find color combinations that survived natural selection

• Patterns that don't need drop shadows to create depth

Beyond Surface Level: Natural interfaces feel "right" because they've been user tested by literal survival. That's not randomness you're seeing—it's iterations you can count in millennia.

Copying Nature's Homework: It's called biomimicry—the art of solving human problems by studying nature's solutions. When Velcro copied burrs or bullet trains borrowed kingfisher beaks, they weren't just finding inspiration—they were tapping into billions of years of R&D.

THANKS FOR READING—SEE YOU NEXT MONDAY

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