A page worth getting lost on
People rarely remember finding the right page, but they'll often remember how your website handled the wrong one.
Design
30 Articles
Thankful for text-wrap: pretty
Two CSS properties, a decade of orphaned-word complaints, and some mild embarrassment of learning something this useful this late.
Taste is a practice
Nobody is born with the eye. Taste is what accumulates when you look closely, say why out loud, and kill the work…
Loading is a moment, not a gap
People don't hate waiting nearly as much as they hate not knowing. The difference between a pause and a void is information.
Icons are not a language
A handful of symbols have earned universal meaning. The rest are decoration wearing a job title.
Redesigning without user amnesia
Every interface trains the hands that use it. A redesign that ignores the training doesn't feel new to those people. It feels…
Contrast is kindness
Light gray on white looks refined in the portfolio shot and dissolves in a parking lot. Legibility is how a design shows…
The best interface is a good default
Settings pages are where hard decisions go to be avoided. Four myths about options, and the quiet kindness of choosing well on…
Empty states are first impressions
Products get designed full and shipped empty. The zero-data screen is where every new user actually starts, and most teams have never…
Every pixel is an argument
Nothing on a screen is neutral. Every element is making a case for somebody's attention, and most pages are losing the argument…
Design systems are promises
A component library isn't a toolbox. It's a stack of commitments about how things will behave, and every deviation is a promise…
The fold is dead. Scrolling isn’t.
The fold was a fact about paper, not people. Two decades later we're still designing like the bottom half of the page…