The Best Articles in UX
The most useful articles and videos in UX from around the web, curated by thought leaders and our community.
Refind focuses on timeless pieces and updates the list whenever new, must-read articles or videos are discovered.
Top 5 UX Articles
At a glance: these are the articles that have been most read, shared, and saved in UX by Refind users in 2024 so far.
Videos
Watch a video to get a quick overview.
Accessibility for designers, with Stéphanie Walter
We had the honor to collaborate with Stéphanie Walter, UX Researcher and Product Designer, expert in inclusive and accessible design! In this video, Stéphani...
Thinking on ways to solve TOOLTIPS
In today's GUI Challenge, @Adam Argyle builds a tooltip with a custom element (no web component!), :has(), transforms, and logical properties. Besides a smal...
What is ...?
New to UX? These articles make an excellent introduction.
A beginner’s guide to customer journey maps
A look into the makings of and reasoning behind customer journey maps.
How to ...?
How to design delightful dark themes
Dark themes are the latest trend in app design. Here we share how to design dark themes that are readable, balanced, and delightful!
How to evaluate the UX maturity of a company
I was presented with this opportunity in the summer of 2015. Until that point, I had spent two years living in Germany and working for an early-stage startup in Luxembourg. It was the job that I moved…
Trending
These links are currently making the rounds in UX on Refind.
Which is better; Zoom, Teams or Meet?
Three video conferencing tools that are objectively very similar, but that often trigger a cult-like preference. But which has a better UX?
90% of designers are unhirable?
By “linear design process” I mean cookie-cutter case studies that always read the same. The designer learned about a problem, conducted user interviews, cre ...
Is ‘Systems Thinking’ the new buzzword in UX?
UX professionals can successfully add systems thinking into our work, yet we should be willing to do it justice. It will be uncomfortable.
Product Design is overtaking UX, and it’s because we’re in a weak economy
Understanding why UX is not enough and three ways to augment your skills
Board game UX: Including technology
Many board games have started to include apps and other technologies over recent years. How has this been done? What can we learn from it?
Short Articles
Short on time? Check out these useful short articles in UX—all under 10 minutes.
Tesler’s Law
Laws of UX is a collection of best practices that designers can consider when building user interfaces.
A Practical Introduction to Scroll-Driven Animations with CSS scroll() and view()
With just CSS you can add scroll animations that toggle shadows on navbars, reveal images, add scrollytelling, link up carousel elements and much more.
Key takeaways from Airbnb’s winter redesign
Returns of good design, a new UI paradigm and the smart use of AI.
A checkout designed for impulse purchases
Horrible retention rates, dark patterns and incentivising people to abandon their carts. This is a UX analysis of HelloFresh.
Why do we fall for brand illusions?
Deep dive into the Payless “Palessi” experiment to understand the psychology of UX and Design
Long Articles
These are some of the most-read long-form articles in UX.
Table of Contents: The Ultimate Design Guide
Tables of contents provide a page overview and direct access to specific sections. When designing a table of contents, carefully compare different placement and styling options to maximize usability.
The Negative Impact of Mobile-First Web Design on Desktop
Mobile-first web designs cause significant usability issues when viewed on desktop. Content becomes overly dispersed across long scrolling pages with expansive white space and enlarged images and…
Why are Western apps more minimalistic than Asian apps?
The digital behaviour traits of individualism and collectivism
The psychology of site speed and human happiness
If you don't consider time a crucial usability factor, you're missing a fundamental aspect of the user experience
Behind The Curtains Of Wikipedia Redesign — Smashing Magazine
The Wikipedia team shipped a redesign of the ubiquitous and one of the [most visited websites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_visited_websites) on the web. Alex Hollendar and Jon Robson…
Thought Leaders
We monitor hundreds of thought leaders, influencers, and newsletters in UX, including:
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks the most relevant links from around the web for you. Picking only a handful of links means focusing on what’s relevant and useful.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
- In addition, our users save links from around the web using our Save buttons and our extensions.
- Our algorithm processes 100k+ new links every day and uses external signals to find the most relevant ones, focusing on timeless pieces.
- Our community of active users gets the most relevant links every day, tailored to their interests. They provide feedback via implicit and explicit signals: open, read, listen, share, mark as read, read later, «More/less like this», etc.
- Our algorithm uses these internal signals to refine the selection.
- In addition, we have expert curators who manually curate niche topics.
The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
How does Refind detect «timeless» pieces?
We focus on pieces with long shelf-lives—not news. We determine «timelessness» via a number of metrics, for example, the consumption pattern of links over time.
How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Who are the thought leaders in UX?
We follow dozens of thought leaders in UX, including Ryan Singer, Meng To, zeldman, Brad Frost, 🎆 🌸 Samuel Hulick 🌸 🌄.
Missing a thought leader? Submit them here
Can I submit a link?
Indirectly, by using Refind and saving links from outside (e.g., via our extensions).
How can I report a problem?
When you’re logged-in, you can flag any link via the «More» (...) menu. You can also report problems via email to hello@refind.com
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Keep Learning
Learn something new, guided by experts. Deep Dives are carefully hand-curated series of time-tested articles and videos from around the web.
Get the big picture on your favorite topics.