How schools and education could be more student-centric

Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.

I remember the first time I heard these words. Me and my dad had just sat down to eat lunch at a restaurant at a local hotel in my hometown. I was home visiting for the summer. My dad and I started talking about creativity. The ups and downs of it all. My dad is a musician and writer and at the time, he was working on his latest music project. I was in the midst of my early career years in the advertising world.

As I explained my frustration to my dad, he looked at me and said the words that have become somewhat of a personal motto for me.

If you want to be creative, you can’t be certain →
By Ida Persson

Editor picks

• Design is not really a thing →
  Design is a force at the intersection of constraints.
  By Shamsi Brinn
• Immersion and influence →
  The work of the modern UX researcher.
  By Nick Stiles
• Where UX Research is working →
  Hooking into the organization in new ways.
  By Dave Hora

The UX Collective is an independent design publication that elevates unheard design voices and helps designers think more critically about their work.

4,000 of my closest friends →

Make me think

• AI art is the new stock image →
  “AI images are quick and easy to make. They look great at first sight, and they quickly replaced the use of stock images. But, like everything cheap and easy, they come with trade-offs. A short critique of the pure AI image.”
• The eight golden rules of interface design →
  “These principles, derived from experience and refined over three decades, require validation and tuning for specific design domains. No list such as this can be complete, but even the original list from 1985, has been well received as a useful guide to students and designers.”
• Putting value on design time →
  “Sometimes it’s hard to put a value on ‘design time’. Those few hours of work were incredibly valuable because they were the output of a much more significant process. That work being much more than the execution of an idea and the final outputs.”

Little gems this week

Why voice input is flawed as a primary interface input mode →
By Chris Ashby

AI interactions: not a copilot, but a coach →
By Philip Grabenhorst

The designer’s guide to social computing →
By Jon Upshaw

Tools and resources

• Interview advice →
  Are you boring your interviewer by over-explaining context?
• Using AI for 3D rendering →
  A practical guide for designers.
• The 3 secrets to font pairing →
  Considering emotion vs job.

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Design is not a thing, the R1 flaw, interview advice, social computing was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.