Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.

“This photographic series slips into the hours after the badge comes off — the unbranded life where designers become someone the job never meets.”
Five to nine →
By Will Sertório

Design with real imagery, without leaving Figma →
[Sponsored] With the Stills Figma plugin, you can search, test, and insert curated imagery from real artists — without ever leaving Figma.
Editor picks
- Lonely at a lower latency →
Everything got faster, closer, more certain.
By Wira Indra Kusuma - The brainstorm that couldn’t storm →
On the small delay that makes a brainstorm actually storm.
By Hiroshi Sato - Questions every tool should answer (even Figma) →
Understanding AI training model usage.
By Patrick Neeman
The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

What do America’s earliest restaurant menus teach us about America? →
Make me think
- Against design system federation →
“Design systems operate under one of the following governance models: centralised, federated, or hybrid. All approaches have different benefits and drawbacks, swaying the decision-making scales depending on organisational priorities, maturity, size, and resourcing. (…) What if federating is a panacea to the most pressing tech landscape challenges?” - AI mania is eviscerating global decision-making →
“The people in charge either have no plan, or see no path forwards other than keeping their heads down. Not at banks, not at hospitals, not in our government institutions. The world’s organisations have been captured by people in the throes of frothing excitement, and saner people who now live in a state of constant commingled fear and frustration.” - Earning taste and judgment →
“Over time, I learned to handle increasingly complex abstractions and tradeoffs. That’s how a junior developer matures into a senior one. But agents will automate all of these reps. This will fundamentally change the path from junior to senior.”
Little gems this week

The aggressively mediocre fight →
By Chris R Becker

Steal this UX framework from Dubai’s most over-the-top hotel →
By Slava Polonski, PhD

The screens are getting demoted →
By Serg Zorin
Tools and resources
- AI can fake your portfolio →
But it can’t fake the second question.
By Vlad Derdeicea - Nir Eyal’s Hook Model for AI products →
How to apply them safely.
By Patrick Neeman - The case for monochrome data visualization →
Less color, more reading.
By Kay
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AI can fake your portfolio, Lower latency, 5-to-9, Monochrome dataviz was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
