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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) 1 week 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) 1 week 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) 2 weeks 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) 2 weeks 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) 3 weeks 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) 3 weeks 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) 4 weeks 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) 1 month 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) 1 month 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) 1 month 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) 1 month 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) 1 month ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Human Strategy In An AI-Accelerated Workflow

UX design is entering a new phase, with designers shifting from makers of outputs to directors of intent. AI can now generate wireframes, prototypes, and even design systems in minutes, but UX has never been only about creating interfaces. It’s about navigating ambiguity, advocating for humans in sy...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Carrie Webster) 1 month ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Now Shipping: Accessible UX Research, A New Smashing Book By Michele Williams

Our newest Smashing Book, “Accessible UX Research” by Michele Williams, is finally shipping worldwide — and we couldn’t be happier! This book is about research, but you’ll also learn about assistive technology, different types of disability, and how to build accessibility into the entire design proc...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Ari Stiles) 1 month ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Getting Started With The Popover API

What happens if you rebuild a single tooltip using the browser’s native model without the aid of a library? The Popover API turns tooltips from something you simulate into something the browser actually understands. Opening and closing, keyboard interaction, Escape handling, and much of the accessib...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Godstime Aburu) 1 month ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Fresh Energy In March (2026 Wallpapers Edition)

Do you need a little inspiration boost? Well, then our new batch of desktop wallpapers is for you. Designed by the community for the community, the wallpapers in this collection are the perfect opportunity to get your desktop ready for spring — and, who knows, maybe they’ll spark some new ideas, too...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Cosima Mielke) 1 month ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Say Cheese! Meet SmashingConf Amsterdam 🇳🇱

Meet our brand new conference for designers and UI engineers who love the web. That’s [SmashingConf Amsterdam](https://smashingconf.com/amsterdam-2026), taking place in the legendary Pathé Tuschinski, on April 13–16, 2026.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Iris Lješnjanin) 1 month ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

A Designer’s Guide To Eco-Friendly Interfaces

Every high-resolution hero image, autoplay video, and complex JavaScript animation carries a cost. Sustainable UX challenges the era of “unlimited pixels” and reframes performance as responsibility. In 2026, truly sophisticated design is defined not by how much it adds, but by how thoughtfully it re...

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Carrie Webster) 1 month ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Designing A Streak System: The UX And Psychology Of Streaks

What makes streaks so powerful and addictive? To design them well, you need to understand how they align with human psychology. Victor Ayomipo breaks down the UX and design principles behind effective streak systems.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Victor Ayomipo) 1 month ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Building Digital Trust: An Empathy-Centred UX Framework For Mental Health Apps

Designing for mental health means designing for vulnerability. Empathy-Centred UX becomes not a “nice to have” but a fundamental design requirement. Here’s a practical framework for building trust-first mental health products.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Kat Homan) 2 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Designing For Agentic AI: Practical UX Patterns For Control, Consent, And Accountability

Autonomy is an output of a technical system. Trustworthiness is an output of a design process. Here are concrete design patterns, operational frameworks, and organizational practices for building agentic systems that are not only powerful but also transparent, controllable, and trustworthy.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Victor Yocco) 2 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

CSS <code>@scope</code>: An Alternative To Naming Conventions And Heavy Abstractions

Prescriptive class name conventions are no longer enough to keep CSS maintainable in a world of increasingly complex interfaces. Can the new `@scope` rule finally give developers the confidence to write CSS that can keep up with modern front ends?

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Blake Lundquist) 2 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Combobox vs. Multiselect vs. Listbox: How To Choose The Right One

Combobox vs. Multi-Select vs. Listbox vs. Dual Listbox? How they are different, what purpose they serve, and how to choose the right one. Brought to you by Design Patterns For AI Interfaces, **friendly video courses on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Vitaly Friedman) 2 months ago

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Smashing Magazine · Design

Short Month, Big Ideas (February 2026 Wallpapers Edition)

Let’s make the most of the shortest month of the year with a new collection of desktop wallpapers that are sure to bring a smile to your face — and maybe spark your creativity, too. All of them were designed with love by the community for the community and can be downloaded for free. Happy February!

hello@smashingmagazine.com (Cosima Mielke) 2 months ago

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