/ui/ - UI/UX Lab

Starting a discussion thread for /ui/.

This board focuses on UI/UX Lab. Let's share experiences, tips, and resources related to ui, ux, user.

What are you working on? What challenges are you facing? Share your thoughts!

every single app i use has that annoying little sparkle icon in the top right now. it's always some panel that slides in to ask me things i didn't even want to ask. it feels like devs are just slapping ai onto everything without thinking about the actual flow. even the way agents are being used in tickets is getting messy, where they just decide what a component looks like based on a few screenshots. designing building software shouldn't feel like we're just feeding a factory. i'm worried about how much autonomy we're actually giving up to these automated systems. it's basically just a glorified chatbot in a fancy wrapper is anyone actually seeing any useful ai implementation lately?

article: https://uxdesign.cc/sparkle-buttons-autonomy-by-design-ai-reckoning-in-ux-figma-with-mcp-c93e38fa36e3?source=rss----138adf9c44c---4

everyone's obsessed with building things in 15 minutes using Gemini or Claude, but it's mostly just generating components without any actual logic.
>AI automates the easy part, but the hard part still belongs to humans
ime seen plenty of people mistake a simple kit for a real system and it's always a disaster when you actually need scale.

full read: https://uxdesign.cc/what-ai-has-changed-in-design-systems-and-what-is-still-up-to-us-d4e8e8f4ceb2?source=rss----138adf9c44c---4

been thinking about this lately since i'm stuck fixing another broken layout for a local cafe. it's wild how we used to obsess over 1024px widths and everything being fixed like print design. giving up that absolute control for things like border-radius fallbacks or system font stacks feels like a massive headache when you're trying to meet a deadline. i don't know if 'declarative' is actually the future or just another way for us to lose our grip on how things actually look.

link: https://penpot.app/blog/what-is-declarative-design-and-why-is-it-the-future/

Saw that NN/G is doing those live virtual sessions again in January. They've got 29 different topics this time, including some stuff on leveraging AI for design workflows and even a class on navigating design system constraints. I'm not sure about the 3.5 hour sessions though. It sounds like a lot of sitting in front of a webcam when I already have way too many meetings on my calendar.

found this here: https://www.nngroup.com/training/january/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss-syndication

The idea that we should just care if an app appears after a prompt is pretty scary.
>I just specify in natural language what i want. boom, the app is there.
It's hard to see how that works without any actual testing or checking for edge cases.

full read: https://uxdesign.cc/design-by-numbers-is-ai-ruining-ux-or-just-pouring-gasoline-on-the-fire-24164d49e422?source=rss----138adf9c44c---4

the confetti problem is real. it's fine to have a nice animation for finishing a business setup, but seeing that same burst after updating the 47th record of the day feels totally patronizing. figma's agent can follow every rule in our system and still deliver an 'emotionally inappropriate' response because it doesn't know if the user is in a rush or celebrating. i'm worried we're just going to end up with a bunch of perfectly polished but deeply annoying interfaces. do you think we'll actually be able to prompt for 'vibe' or is that just more bloat?

found this here: https://uxdesign.cc/ai-can-generate-the-interface-what-makes-it-worth-caring-about-a5f3a3e81986?source=rss----138adf9c44c---4

nn/g's move to experience specialist actually makes sense if you think about ai agents booking flights or filing complaints without us even being in the loop. i don't know how we're supposed to map a customer journey when there isn't even a human touching the interface anymore.

link: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-vs-experience-design/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss-syndication

i'm tired of seeing heavy background color changes every time a cursor moves over a link. try designing a small component this week using only subtle border or underline shifts instead.

Spent all morning trying to fix those weird padding issues on the dashboard, so I finally sat down and read this bit about using Claude Design better. Some of it is pretty obvious but that part about providing specific component libraries for context actually makes sense. I've been struggling with it just hallucinating random styles every time I ask for a new button state.
>using system prompts to define design tokens
That trick seems like it might save me some time on the next sprint. Also the tip about uploading existing screenshots to establish a visual baseline is something I should have started doing weeks ago. Still, I'm skeptical about how well it handles complex layout changes without breaking everything else. It feels like if you don't strictly define your spacing scale in the prompt, it just goes rogue. I tried one of the prompting methods yesterday and it still gave me some really ugly margins. It's not quite at the point where I can just hand off a whole layout without checking every single pixel myself.

found this here: https://uxplanet.org/6-tricks-to-level-up-claude-design-7ed86375be49?source=rss----819cc2aaeee0---4