Back to News Working in tech and design requires constantly keeping up with the latest techniques, tools, technologies, and industry news. Here are a few of the things our team found useful over the last week.
Design
10 resources for unique illustration collections
uxdesign.cc
An excellent free illustration resource pack that introduces collections that are diverse, highly applicable to projects, and customizable. In situations where custom illustrations are too expensive to design, this list helps to see what’s already available!
— Adam P
10 ways to improve dropdowns in UI & UX Design
uxdesign.cc
Here are some simple tips for making smarter dropdown menus. Interestingly, sometimes the best option may be to use radio buttons or a slider instead.
— Anne
32 design differences between iOS and Android apps
medium.com
A very detailed coverage of the differences between modern UI design practices and frameworks on iOS and Android. Worth a read for anyone working with mobile. Number one is also my first piece of advice to anyone getting started with app design.
— Mark
How Spotify organises work in Figma to improve collaboration
spotify.design
The Spotify team share the story of their recent move to Figma, and how it helped increase visibility of design work across the company, resulting in more collaboration.
— Mark
Popups: 10 problematic trends and alternatives
nngroup.com
This article summarizes various types of popups and when to use them. Surprisingly, there’re still many services that handle this badly. This article also proves that doing what others are doing is not always the right way to do it.
— Junta
Times New Arial
timesnewarial.liebermannkiepereddemann.de
A rather cool variable font concept using two of the most iconic fonts of all time. Fun to play with for a few moments.
— Mark
Unbridged knowledge gaps hurt UX
nngroup.com
People tend to only care what users are doing on the site they created, but this article shows why it’s important to analyze the user’s thought process holistically not only about the user’s behavior on the site.
— Junta
Tech
A quick introduction to Stimulus Reflex
gorails.com
The Phoenix framework has been getting a lot of attention thanks to its LiveView system which allows you to build real-time features on the server-side rather than using a JS framework like React. Rails now has its own version of LiveView called StimulusReflex and you can see it in action in this short introductory video.
— Adam A
Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming
byorgey.wordpress.com
A nice little story about teaching a youngling the basics of functional programming by making it into a game.
— Mark
Ethical software
nateberkopec.com
A thoughtful read on what being a more ethical consumer of software might mean and what sort of stack that could entail.
— Ian
Single-direction margin declarations
csswizardry.com
This is an older article and concept, but one I wasn’t familiar with. I’ve started implementing this in my own hobby projects and am finding it a much cleaner solution that also results in more predictability for my components—always a good thing!
— Ian