1,379 articles from Smashing Magazine.
Your past shapes who you are as a designer, no matter where your career began or how unexpected your career path may have been. Stephanie Campbell shows how those lessons can sharpen your instincts, strengthen collaboration, and help you become a better designer today.
Prompting isn’t just about writing better instructions, but about designing better thinking. Ilia and Marina explore how advanced prompting can empower different product & design use cases, speeding up your workflow and improving results, from research and brainstorming to testing and beyond. Let’s dive in.
Internationalization isn’t just translation. It’s about formatting dates, pluralizing words, sorting names, and more, all according to specific locales. Instead of relying on heavy third-party libraries, modern JavaScript offers the Intl API — a powerful, native way to handle i18n. A quiet reminder that the web truly is worldwide.
Design systems are more than style guides: they’re made up of workflows, tokens, components, and documentation — all the stuff teams rely on to build consistent products. As projects grow, keeping everything in sync gets tricky fast. In this article, we’ll look at how smart tooling, combined with automation where it makes sense, can speed things up, reduce errors, and help your team focus on desig
Talking points. Smart questions. A compelling story. This guide helps you prepare for your UX job interview. And remember: no act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.
Do you need a little inspiration boost? Well, then our new batch of desktop wallpapers might be for you. The wallpapers are designed with love by the community for the community and can be downloaded for free! Enjoy!
The Core Model is a practical methodology that flips traditional digital development on its head. Instead of starting with solutions or structure, we begin with a hypothesis about what users need and follow a simple framework that brings diverse teams together to create more effective digital experiences. By asking six good questions in the right order, teams align around user tasks and business o
Web Components are more than just Custom Elements. Shadow DOM, HTML Templates, and Custom Elements each play a role. In this article, Russell Beswick demonstrates how Shadow DOM fits into the broader picture, explaining why it matters, when to use it, and how to apply it effectively.
Today, roughly 10% of people are left-handed. Yet most products — digital and physical — aren’t designed with it in mind. Let’s change that. More design patterns in Smart Interface Design Patterns, a **friendly video course on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.
Event listeners are essential for interactivity in JavaScript, but they can quietly cause memory leaks if not removed properly. And what if your event listener needs parameters? That’s where things get interesting. Amejimaobari Ollornwi shares which JavaScript features make handling parameters with event handlers both possible and well-supported.
Ensuring your product communicates clearly to a global audience is not just about localisation. Even for products that have a proper localisation process, English often remains the default language for UI and communications. This article focuses on how you can make English content clear and inclusive for non-native users. Oleksii offers a practical guide based on his own experience as a non-native
Learn why flip phones still matter in 2025, and how you can build and launch web apps for these tiny devices.
Designing a new AI feature? Where do you even begin? Here’s a simple, practical overview with useful design patterns for better AI experiences.
The Wizard of Oz method is a proven UX research tool that simulates real interactions to uncover authentic user behavior. Victor Yocco unpacks the core principles of the WOZ method, explores advanced real-world applications, and highlights its unique value, including its relevance in the emerging field of agentic AI.
Traditional page builders have shaped how we build WordPress sites for years. Let’s take a closer look at [Droip](https://droip.com/), a modern, no-code visual builder, and explore how it redefines the experience with cleaner performance, full design freedom, and zero plugin dependency.
As always in design, timing matters, and so do timely notifications. Let’s explore how we might improve the notifications UX. More design patterns in our Smart Interface Design Patterns, a friendly video course on UX and design patterns by Vitaly — from complex data tables and nested filters to FAQs and error messages.
CSS has evolved from a purely presentational language into one with growing logical powers — thanks to features like container queries, relational pseudo-classes, and the `if()` function. Is it still just for styling, or is it becoming something more? Gabriel Shoyombo explores how smart CSS has become over the years, where it is heading, the challenges it addresses, whether it is becoming too comp
Bridging the gap between user research insights and actual organizational action — with a clear roadmap for impact.
July is just around the corner, and that means it’s time for a new collection of desktop wallpapers. Created with love by artists and designers from across the globe, they are bound to bring some good vibes to your screen. Enjoy!
As online scams become more sophisticated, Carrie Webster explores whether good UX can serve as a frontline defense, particularly for non-tech-savvy older users navigating today’s digital world.
On her quest to teach you how to code vectors by hand, Myriam Frisano’s second installment of a `path` deep dive explores the most complex aspects of SVG’s most powerful element. She’ll help you understand the underlying rules and function of how curves and arcs are constructed. By the end of it, your toolkit is ready to tackle all types of tasks required to draw with code — even if some of the li
Meet “Accessible UX Research,” our upcoming book to make your UX research inclusive. Learn how to recruit, plan, and design with disabled participants in mind. Print edition shipping starting February 2026. eBook now available for download. Pre-order the book.
CSS can be unpredictable — and specificity is often the culprit. Victor Ayomipo breaks down how and why your styles might not behave as expected, and why understanding specificity is better than relying on `!important`.
[Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA)](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/aria/) is an inevitability when working on web accessibility. That said, it’s everyone’s first time learning about ARIA at some point.
In this tutorial, Blake Lundquist walks us through two methods of creating the “moving-highlight” navigation pattern using only plain JavaScript and CSS. The first technique uses the `getBoundingClientRect` method to explicitly animate the border between navigation bar items when they are clicked. The second approach achieves the same functionality using the new View Transition API.
SVG is easy — until you meet `path`. However, it’s not as confusing as it initially looks. In this first installment of a pair of articles, Myriam Frisano aims to teach you the basics of `` and its sometimes mystifying commands. With simple examples and visualizations, she’ll help you understand the easy syntax and underlying rules of SVG’s most powerful element so that by the end, you’re fully ab
We often spotlight wireframes, research, or tools like Figma, but none of that moves the needle if we can’t collaborate well. Great UX doesn’t happen in isolation. It takes conversations with engineers, alignment with product, sales, and other stakeholders, and the ability to listen, adapt, and co-create. That’s where design becomes a team sport, and when your ability to capture the outcomes multi
What’s the best way to make your SVGs faster, simpler, and more manageable? In this article, pioneering author and web designer Andy Clarke explains the process he relies on *to* prepare, optimise, and structure SVGs for animation and beyond.
Designers love to craft, but polishing pixels before the problem is solved is a time-sink. This article pinpoints the five traps that lure us into premature detail — being afraid to show rough work, fixing symptoms instead of causes, solving the wrong problem, drowning in unactionable feedback, and plain fatigue — then hands you a four-step rescue plan to refocus on goals, ship faster, and keep yo
Designing for neurodiversity means recognizing that people aren’t edge cases but individuals with varied ways of thinking and navigating the web. So, how can we create more inclusive experiences that work better for everyone?
Let’s kick off June — and the beginning of summer — with some fresh inspiration! Artists and designers from across the globe once again tickled their creativity to welcome the new month with a new collection of desktop wallpapers. Enjoy!
The web is mired in a struggle to eliminate third-party cookies, with the World Wide Web Consortium Technical Architecture Group leading the charge. But there are obstacles preventing this from happening, and, as a result, many essential web features continue to rely on cookies to function properly. That’s why detecting third-party cookie blocking isn’t just good technical hygiene but a frontline
What’s the difference between data, findings, and UX insights? And how do you argue for statistical significance in your UX research? Let’s unpack it.
Road-tripping along the line between engineering and spirituality, Robert M. Pirsig’s musings on the arts, sciences, and Quality ring as true now as they ever have.
While there are plenty of ways that CSS animations can bring designs to life, adding simple SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) animations in SVG can help them do much more. Andy Clarke explains where SMIL animations in SVG take over where CSS leaves off.
Helpful PDF worksheets and tools to get the design system effort up and running — and adopted! Kindly powered by How To Measure UX and Design Impact, a friendly course on how to show the impact of your incredible UX work on business.
Learn how to create and implement a UX strategy framework that shapes work and drives real business value.
Remember that last team brainstorming session where you were supposed to generate a long list of brilliant ideas? How many of those ideas actually stuck? Did leadership act on any of those ideas? In this article, Eric Olive challenges the value of exercises like brainstorming and explores more effective methods for sparking creativity to improve design and enhance the user’s experience.
What if you could take your CSS animations beyond simple fades and slides — adding an extra dimension and a bit of old-school animation magic? In this article, pioneering author and web designer [Andy Clarke](https://stuffandnonsense.co.uk) will show you how masking can unlock new creative possibilities for CSS animations, making them feel more fluid, layered, and cinematic.
Learn how two designers tackled the challenges of building a localization-ready design system for a global audience. This case study dives into how Rebecca and Mark combined Figma Variables and design tokens to address multilingual design issues, such as text overflow, RTL layouts, and font inconsistencies.
The Penpot team is not slowing down on its mission to build a free design tool that not only offers powerful design features but is also well-integrated with code and modern development practices. In its latest release, Penpot, as the first design tool ever, introduces support for native design tokens. Let’s take a closer look at this concept and how you can employ it in your process.
Have you ever thought about how the limitations of early cartoon animations might relate to web design today? From looping backgrounds to minimal frame changes, these retro animation techniques have surprising parallels to modern CSS. In this article, pioneering author and web designer [Andy Clarke](https://stuffandnonsense.co.uk) shows how he applied these principles to Emmy-winning composer Mike
There were duelling proposals floating around for adding support for masonry-style layouts in CSS. In one corner is a proposal that extends the existing CSS Grid specification. In the other corner is a second proposal that sets up masonry as a standalone module. Well, not until recently. Now, there are three proposals with Apple WebKit’s “Item Flow” as the third option. The first two sides make st
When was the last time your project wrapped up smoothly — no delays, no surprises, no last-minute compromises? In reality, most UX projects drift as timelines slip, budgets stretch, and features morph. How do we get better at navigating the chaos? An upcoming part of How To Measure UX and Design Impact by yours truly.
WCAG is evolving. Since 1999, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines have defined accessibility in binary terms: either a success criterion is met or not. But real user experience is rarely that simple. WCAG 3.0 rethinks the model — prioritizing usability over compliance and shifting the focus toward the quality of access rather than the mere presence of features. Could this be the start of a ne
The new month is just around the corner, and that means: It’s time for some new desktop wallpapers! All of them are designed with love by the community for the community and can be downloaded for free. Enjoy!
As designers, it’s important to be able to transform visual ideas into concepts within minutes and into fully functional products within hours. Well, today we’re bringing you closer to AnimaApp, an app designed to make your life easier — whether you’re a designer, developer, product team member or entrepreneur.
Lost in a sea of UX files, docs, PDFs, and scattered decisions across Slack, Dropbox, Notion, and Figma? We talk a lot about organizing Figma, but what about a sensible folder structure for all UX assets? Let’s fix that. Kindly powered by [Smart Interface Design Patterns](https://smart-interface-design-patterns.com).
It starts with good intentions — a quick fix here, a shiny feature there — and suddenly, your product portfolio’s bursting at the seams. In this guide, Talke Hoppmann-Walton walks you through a “Product Kondo” exercise to declutter, realign, and spark some serious product joy for both your business and your customers.
While it is clear that creativity is driven by both the left and right hemispheres, an important question remains: how can we boost creativity while keeping the process enjoyable? It may not be obvious, but non-design-related activities can, in fact, be an opportunity to enhance creativity.
Poor internet connectivity doesn’t have to mean poor UX. With PWA technologies like `IndexedDB`, service workers, and the Background Sync API, you can build an offline-friendly image upload system that queues uploads and retries them automatically — so your users can upload stress-free, even when offline.
Keyboard navigation is a vital aspect of accessible web design, and a detail-oriented approach is crucial. Prioritizing keyboard navigation prioritizes the user experience for a diverse audience, extending your reach while simultaneously fostering a more inclusive web environment.
While there’s no definitive playbook for building an accessibility culture, Dani shares lessons from his experience in shaping it through habits rather than mandates.
Dark mode isn’t just a trendy aesthetic. It’s a gateway to more inclusive digital experiences, but only if designed thoughtfully. Discover how to craft dark modes that don’t just look good but work for everyone, from those with light sensitivity to machine learning algorithms.
“Gilding the lily” isn’t always bad. In design, a touch of metaphorical gold — a subtle animated transition, a hint of color, or added depth in a drop shadow — can help communicate a level of care and attention that builds trust. But first? You need a lily. Nail the fundamentals. Then, gild it carefully.
Animation makes things clearer, especially for designers and front-end developers working on UI, prototypes, or interactive visuals. Manim is a tool that lets you create smooth and dynamic animations, not just for the design field but also in math, coding, and beyond, to explain complex ideas or simply make everything a little bit more interactive.
When passion for accessibility meets business indifference, what bridges the gap? Gloria Diaz Alonso shares how she turned frustration into strategy — by learning to speak the language of business.
In this article, Edoardo Dusi shares the engineering and architectural choices made by the team at Storyblok and how real-world migration challenges were addressed using modern PHP practices.
The beginning of the new month is the perfect opportunity to give your desktop a makeover. If you’re looking for some beautiful and unique wallpapers to cater for a bit of inspiration this April, well, this post has got you covered.
Companies have been turning their attention to “synthetic,” AI-driven user testing. However, as convenient as it might seem, it’s dangerous, expensive, and usually diminishes user value. Let’s take a closer look at why exactly it is problematic and how we can argue against it to make a case for UX research with real users. Part of [Smart Interface Design Patterns](https://smart-interface-design-pa
