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Smashing Magazine · Design

Four Levels Of Customer Understanding

What people say, feel, think, and do are often very different things. To understand the underlying reasons for user behavior, it helps to look beyond the surface and explore hidden motivations, root causes, and the different layers of reality that shape how people act. Brought to you by Measuring UX...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Vitaly Friedman) 3 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Advanced Tree Counting: Mathematical Layouts With `sibling-index()` And `sibling-count()`

Meet `sibling-index()` and `sibling-count()`. Staggered cascade effect in one line of CSS without `:nth-child()` rules or JS workarounds. Works for 5 items or 5,000.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Durgesh Pawar) 3 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Ten Data-Backed Truths Of User Experience ROI

Every extra second of friction has a measurable business cost. Carrie Webster shares ten data-backed UX facts that link user experience directly to revenue, retention, and long-term growth.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Carrie Webster) 3 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Practical Interface Patterns For AI Transparency (Part 2)

Why traditional loading patterns like spinners fail in agentic AI experiences, and how interface patterns that reveal the system’s process, status, and decision-making can improve transparency and build user trust.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Victor Yocco) 3 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

The Architecture Of Local-First Web Development

An honest perspective on building local-first web apps in 2026, written for developers who’ve been doing this long enough to be skeptical of silver bullets.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Durgesh Pawar) 3 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Rethinking The Experience Of System Tools

Design always starts with function — function shapes form. But if that function can’t be made completely invisible and people still have to interact with it, it inevitably becomes part of their experience. In this article, Kyrylo Levashov shares four common software design assumptions.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Kyrylo Levashov) 3 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Designing Stable Interfaces For Streaming Content

Streaming UIs are an easy concept on the surface, but are quite complicated in practice. There are many considerations that need to be accounted for, from layout shifts and motion preferences to proper markup and various states, that may not be instantly obvious. What happens if the stream is interr...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Joas Pambou) 3 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

A Fresh View In May (2026 Wallpapers Edition)

Let’s welcome May with a new collection of desktop wallpapers! Following our monthly tradition, the wallpapers were created by the community for the community and can be downloaded for free. Enjoy!

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Cosima Mielke) 3 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Designing Stable Interfaces For Streaming Content

Streaming UIs are an easy concept on the surface, but are quite complicated in practice. There are many considerations that need to be accounted for, from layout shifts and motion preferences to proper markup and various states, that may not be instantly obvious. What happens if the stream is interr...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Joas Pambou) 3 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

The “Bug-Free” Workforce: How AI Efficiency Is Subtly Disrupting The Interactions That Build Strong Teams

AI tools are eliminating the need to “bug” colleagues for help, but the informal interactions they replace are the very scaffolding that builds team trust, belonging, and innovation. Casey Hudetz and Eric Olive explore the research and potential impacts behind that risk and offer practical strategie...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Casey Hudetz and Eric Olive) 3 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

The UX Designer’s Nightmare: When “Production-Ready” Becomes A Design Deliverable

In a rush to embrace AI, the industry is redefining what it means to be a UX designer, blurring the line between design and engineering. Carrie Webster explores what’s gained, what’s lost, and why designers need to remain the guardians of the user experience.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Carrie Webster) 4 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Session Timeouts: The Overlooked Accessibility Barrier In Authentication Design

Poorly handled session timeouts are more than a technical inconvenience. They can become serious accessibility barriers that interrupt essential online tasks, especially for people with disabilities. Here is how to implement thoughtful session management that improves usability, reduces frustration,...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Eleanor Hecks) 4 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

How To Improve UX In Legacy Systems

Practical guidelines for driving UX impact in organizations with legacy systems and broken processes. Brought to you by Measuring UX Impact, **friendly video course on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Vitaly Friedman) 4 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Identifying Necessary Transparency Moments In Agentic AI (Part 1)

Designing for agentic AI requires attention to both the system’s behavior and the transparency of its actions. Between the black box and the data dump lies a more thoughtful approach. Victor Yocco explores how to map decision points and reveal the right moments to build trust through clarity, not no...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Victor Yocco) 4 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

A Practical Guide To Design Principles

Design principles with references, examples, and methods for quick look-up. Brought to you by Design Patterns For AI Interfaces, **friendly video courses on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Vitaly Friedman) 4 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

The Joy Of A Fresh Beginning (April 2026 Wallpapers Edition)

With the new month just around the corner, could there be a better occasion to freshen up your desktop? If you’re looking for some unique and inspiring wallpapers to accompany you on all those adventures that April may bring — and maybe spark some new ideas, too — well, this post has got you covered...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Cosima Mielke) 4 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

The Site-Search Paradox: Why The Big Box Always Wins

Success in modern UX isn’t about having the most content. It’s about having the most findable content. Yet even with more data and better tools than ever, internal search often fails, leaving users to rely on global search engines to find a single page on a local site. Why does the “Big Box” still w...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Carrie Webster) 4 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Testing Font Scaling For Accessibility With Figma Variables

Accessibility works best when it blends into everyday design workflows. The goal isn’t a big transformation, but simple work processes that fit naturally into a team’s routine. With Figma variables, testing font size increases becomes part of the design flow itself, making accessibility feel almost...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Ruben Ferreira Duarte) 4 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Modal vs. Separate Page: UX Decision Tree

How to choose between modals and pages, when to avoid modals, and how to determine the right level of interruption or navigation. Brought to you by Smart Interface Design Patterns, a **friendly video course on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Vitaly Friedman) 5 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Anime vs. Marvel/DC: Designing Digital Products With Emotion In Flow

Design is about pacing and feelings as much as pixels and patterns. Alan Cohen explores Emotion in Flow and Emotion in Conflict, showing how anime like Dan Da Dan and superhero films like James Gunn’s Superman manage emotional shifts and translating those ideas into practical patterns for product de...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Alan Cohen) 5 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Moving From Moment.js To The JS Temporal API

The way JavaScript handles time has evolved significantly, from the built-in `Date` API to Moment.js and now Temporal. The new standard fills gaps in the original `Date` API while addressing limitations found in Moment and other libraries. Joe Attardi shares practical “recipes” for migrating Moment-...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Joe Attardi) 5 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Beyond `border-radius`: What The CSS `corner-shape` Property Unlocks For Everyday UI

For years, developers have been hacking around the limitations of `border-radius`, using clip-path, SVG masks, and fragile workarounds just to get anything other than round corners. The new `corner-shape` property finally changes that, opening the door to beveled, scooped, and squircle corners.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Brecht De Ruyte) 5 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Building Dynamic Forms In React And Next.js

Some forms stay UI, while others quietly become rule engines. Here’s why these two different approaches exist and how to choose between them.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Sunil Sandhu) 5 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Persuasive Design: Ten Years Later

Many product teams still lean on usability improvements and isolated behavioral tweaks to address weak activation, drop-offs, and low retention – only to see results plateau or slip into shallow gamification. Anders Toxboe updates persuasive design for today’s reality, clarifying what has actually h...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Anders Toxboe) 5 months ago

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