Editorial

Nowadays, we can use CSS and SVG to animate and style paths individually, change parts of an image on focus/tap, and use all kinds of filters — even raster graphics inside of SVG to improve performance. What a time to live!

Today, we’d like to celebrate just that. In this issue, you’ll find plenty of SVG freebies, techniques, and useful tools — from favicons, filters, and editors, to all sorts of doodles and optimization strategies. We hope you’ll be inspired!

And because we cannot get enough of CSS and SVG, it’s about time we do another Smashing Meets to celebrate the mighty Style Sheet, and share the excitement we feel. We’ve invited three absolute CSS experts to share their stories, tools, tips, and practices with you, and we can hardly wait!

As usual, we have friendly conferences and online workshops coming up soon on all things frontend and UX:

• Cascading Style Systems: Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
  with Miriam Suzanne. June 2–10
• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Jun 16–30
• The Modern UX Practitioner UX
  with Paul Boag. June 24 – July 2
• Design Patterns For Complex UIs and Enterprise UX UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 2–3
• Naming Design Systems DS
  with Samantha Gordashko. Sep 8–22
• Live UX Training UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 11 – Oct 12
• Accessibility For Designers UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Sep 21–29
• Jump to all workshops →

For now, though, happy SVGing!

— Iris

1. SVG Favicons

With SVG favicons being well-supported now, the days when you had to deal with dozens of files in your head element just to deliver a favicon that works across browsers are finally over. Paweł Grzybek shares a simple SVG favicons setup that solves all the resolution drama, works in most browsers, and adapts to user appearance preferences.

2. SVG Optimization And Accessibility

SVGs are super powerful, and with a few tweaks, you can make them even better. David Bushell wrote a practical guide in which he shares how he optimizes SVGs — both for performance and for accessibility.

If you want to dive deeper into SVG accessibility, also be sure to check out the guide that the A11y Collective team published. It explores WCAG-compliant techniques for making SVGs more inclusive, from choosing the right markup pattern to providing meaningful text alternatives.

3. SVG Doodles

Whether it’s arrows or geometric, organic, and abstract shapes, SVG Doodles is a treasure chest of more than 190 hand-made SVGs. Created by Michael Andreuzza, you can customize the doodles to your liking and, once you’re happy with the result, copy and paste them into your HTML or Figma projects, or use them in your slides and prints.

4. Friendly Introduction To SVG

SVG offers so many possibilities that it’s easy to get overwhelmed, particularly if you’re still at the very beginning of your SVG journey. So, where to begin to not get lost in the rabbit hole? Josh W. Comeau wrote a friendly introduction to SVG that provides a solid foundation for your SVG adventures. It covers everything from basic SVG shapes to animated strokes and cool tricks you can use right away.

5. SVG Filters

You haven’t gotten around to wrapping your head around SVG filters yet? Then Ana Tudor’s beginner-friendly guide is for you. It covers all the things she wishes she had read when she was getting started, from setting up a hidden <svg> element that only contains filters to chaining filter primitives and controlling color handling and filter regions.

6. SVG Editors

There’s probably no better way to learn how SVG code works than by experimenting. A great place to do that is SVG.wtf. Amelia Wattenberger created the visual editor where you can click and drag shapes and use pen and pencil tools to create an SVG. As you do so, you can see the code updating in real time.

Another handy SVG editor is the SVG Filter Maker. Created by Christopher Kirk Nielsen, it lets you build out your SVG filters visually in a node graph editor.

7. Accessible UX Research, Now Shipping 📚

We’ve got exciting news! Our newest Smashing book, Accessible UX Research by Michele A. Williams, is finally shipping worldwide! Get the book right away or order the eBook for instant download.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the book right away.

8. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• Cascading Style Systems: Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
  with Miriam Suzanne. June 2–10
• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Jun 16–30
• The Modern UX Practitioner UX
  with Paul Boag. June 24 – July 2
• Design Patterns For Complex UIs and Enterprise UX UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 2–3
• Naming Design Systems DS
  with Samantha Gordashko. Sep 8–22
• Live UX Training UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 11 – Oct 12
• Accessibility For Designers UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Sep 21–29
• Jump to all workshops →

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).

Editorial

Many experiences on the web are conversations. Not in terms of chat or messaging, but rather conversations between a product and an end user. Words matter, and the way they are chosen, how they are written, and how they are put together all convey something. That something is a notion of kindness, politeness, respect, sincerity — or the opposite of it all.

In this newsletter, we focus on words in digital products — from headlines and calls to action to pronouns, impactful content design, and how it is reflected in design systems.

On our end, we are looking into adding more online workshops on frontend and UX on a variety of topics:

• Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
  with Miriam Suzanne. June 2–10
• Design Patterns For AI 2026 + self-paced video course UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Jun 16–30
• Naming Design Systems DS
  with Samantha Gordashko. Sep 8–22
• Mini-Workshop: Design Patterns For Complex UIs and Enterprise UX UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 2–3
• Interface Design Patterns Live UX Training UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 11 – Oct 12
• Accessibility For Designers UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Sep 21–29
• Jump to all workshops →

Today’s newsletter is kindly powered by our friends at BoldSign, who have built a secure, developer-friendly e-signature platform for embedding signing workflows directly into applications. With its REST eSignature API and SDKs, you cannot only send signature requests, track status in real time, and retrieve signed documents, but also enjoy branded signing experiences for a seamless user journey.

Hats off to the BoldSign team for their hard work and continued support of the web community! 🧡

— Vitaly

1. Headlines For UX Writers

With just a few words to get your message across, writing a good headline can be a challenge. If you’re looking for some inspiration, Websiteheadlines.com showcases great headline examples from across the web. All the headlines in the collection are tagged, and you can filter them by stylistic technique or meaning to narrow down your search.

2. Your Vs. My

Do you usually write “My account” or “Your account” when designing an interface? And does it actually matter? In his guide to shaping personality with pronouns, Vitaly shines a light on the different meanings that pronouns carry so that you can make a more informed decision and choose the one that best matches your product.

3. UX Copy Ecosystem

A UX copy ecosystem is your greatest asset for communicating with your customers. It’s the central place to document and archive your copy to help ensure brand consistency and avoid rework. Now, where to begin, if you want to set up a UX copy ecosystem? Jürgen Zimmermann compiled valuable tips to get you up and running quickly.

4. Join Vs. Register Vs. Sign Up

Sign up, register, join — they all convey the same idea, but with slightly different nuances. Riya Jawandhiya went down the rabbit hole to learn more about what each word reflects under the surface. Based on her insights, she created a cheat sheet to help you match the word to the effort you’re asking from your users when they create an account.

5. Designing Content For Impact

Words matter, but so does the structure of your content. It impacts how easily users can understand and navigate the information presented, and that in turn can improve engagement. Lauren Pope created a matrix to help you choose the right narrative structure for your content, considering complexity and scope.

6. Content Design In Design Systems

You don’t need to be a natural-born writer to write good UX copy. Vitaly summarized practical UX writing guidelines that help anyone take their copy to the next level by avoiding confusion and improving clarity. In addition to these golden rules, the guide also includes real-world examples of how to incorporate content design into design systems.

7. A Practical Guide To Content Design

Content design goes much deeper than a message in a pop-up or a set of docs. And it goes far beyond words and other obvious pieces of content like videos, infographics, or images. Linette Voller explores what’s beyond the surface of content design to help you create experiences that are more intuitive and cater better to users’ needs.

8. Writing As Prototyping

UI wireframes made from text? That’s exactly what Wiretext does. Created by Daniel Howells, the tool lets you create wireframes, diagrams, and mockups as Unicode box-drawing characters, then export them as clean text. Perfect for docs, issues, PRs, or pasting into a text prompt.

9. Accessible UX Research, Now Shipping 📚

We’ve got exciting news! Our newest Smashing book, Accessible UX Research by Michele A. Williams, is finally shipping worldwide! Get the book right away or order the eBook for instant download.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the book right away.

10. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
  with Miriam Suzanne. June 2–10
• Design Patterns For AI 2026 + self-paced video course UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Jun 16–30
• Naming Design Systems Design Systems
  with Samantha Gordashko. Sep 8–22
• Mini-Workshop: Design Patterns For Complex UIs and Enterprise UX UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 2–3
• Interface Design Patterns Live UX Training UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 11 – Oct 12
• Measure UX and Design Impact + self-paced video course UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 15ndash;29
• Accessibility For Designers UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Sep 21–29
• Jump to all workshops →

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).

Editorial

In times when we can build anything with AI, we need to clearly understand what we actually want to build. It’s not the idea, but rather the context around it — from problems to solve and features to design, all the way to how we build confidence and trust.

AI can’t resolve years of accumulated debt in code, design or content. If anything, it only surfaces underlying inconsistencies and amplifies them in its responses. To prevent it from happening, we need to apply a healthy dose of critical thinking. And that’s what this newsletter is all about.

Let’s dive into how to design for human oversight, how to establish design principles, how to design for trust — and for different modes of AI prompting.

Just last week, we wrapped up our lovely first SmashingConf in Amsterdam, and it was a truly magical and lovely experience with 450 people in attendance.

If you missed it, join SmashingConf Antwerp 2026 🍫 — focused all around UX, design, research, complex UIs, and design patterns for AI. With waffles, chocolates, and quite a bit of UX. Jump to all topics →

Also, here are a few upcoming online workshops, and some of them are launching this week:

• UX Leadership and Influence UX
  with Joe Natoli. Apr 23 – May 7
• Cascading Style Systems: Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
  with Miriam Suzanne. June 2–10
• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Jun 16–30
• Naming Design Systems Design Systems
  with Samantha Gordashko. Sep 8–22
• Live UX Training UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 11 – Oct 12
• Accessibility For Designers UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Sep 21–29
• Jump to all workshops →

Thanks for being smashing, everyone!

— Vitaly

1. Four Modes Of AI Prompting

What are you actually trying to get done? That’s the crucial question we need to consider when we want to work smarter with AI tools. To help us address it, Tey Bannerman created the Four Modes framework. Whether it’s analyzing competitor activity, brainstorming ideas, or checking if a strategy actually holds together, the framework provides principles, prompts, and examples to effectively tackle different scenarios with the help of AI.

2. Designing For Trust

Trust in AI is a tricky topic. Some people are so skeptical of AI that they refuse to use it even when it could be genuinely helpful, while others follow AI recommendations on autopilot. So, how can we design for trust, without pushing people in either direction? According to Kristine K., the keyword is “calibrated trust.”

If you want to dive deeper into how to design, build, calibrate, and maintain user trust, be sure to also check out Vitaly’s free lesson on Maven and the accompanying Google doc with lots of resources for designing for trust and confidence in AI.

3. The Atlas Of AI Interaction

How can we create AI systems that are genuinely human-centered? The AI Interaction Atlas explores over 100 patterns, visual elements, and reusable components for crafting effective human-AI interactions. By giving teams a shared vocabulary to map roles, responsibilities, and decision points within AI systems, it helps uncover gaps and clarify responsibilities when designing complex, multi-step AI experiences.

4. UX And Product Design Challenges

Working through a design challenge on your own before turning to AI to quickly generate ideas and concepts sharpens your critical point of view and your design skills. If you want to stretch your problem-solving muscles a bit — or prepare for your next UX interview — Vitaly compiled UX challenges and product design exercises, as well as tips for working through them.

5. Practical Guide To Design Principles

“Design should not be a matter of taste; it must be guided by our goals and values.” Design principles help us achieve exactly that. As Vitaly argues, they avoid endless discussions and rally a team around a shared purpose. In his practical guide to design principles, he dives deeper into why design principles matter and how to run a workshop to establish your own set of principles.

6. Five Levels Of Context Engineering

Context is key to reducing the hallucinations and broad assumptions that AI is known for. So, how can we “onboard” AI in a way that gives it just enough context to tackle a task effectively? Matthew Alverson suggests five levels of context engineering to help construct a model’s context window and thereby enhance its output.

7. Designing Human-AI Oversight

Whether it’s job applications that get rejected by algorithms before recruiters ever see promising candidates or customer service bots that frustrate instead of giving agents the context to actually solve problems, a lot of AI implementations fail at giving humans the authority, time, and understanding they need to be genuinely effective. To help us do better, Tey Bannerman shares a framework for designing human-AI oversight that actually works.

8. Accessible UX Research, Now Shipping 📚

We’ve got exciting news! Our newest Smashing book, Accessible UX Research by Michele A. Williams, is finally shipping worldwide! Get the book right away or order the eBook for instant download.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the book right away.

9. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• UX Leadership and Influence UX
  with Joe Natoli. Apr 23 – May 7
• Cascading Style Systems: Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
  with Miriam Suzanne. June 2–10
• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Jun 16–30
• Naming Design Systems Design Systems
  with Samantha Gordashko. Sep 8–22
• Live UX Training UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 11 – Oct 12
• Accessibility For Designers UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Sep 21–29
• Jump to all workshops →

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).

Editorial

In times of limited attention, the one skill that becomes more valuable is how we communicate that thing that we want to say. Communication, however, depends on how we put words together and on the typefaces we use to convey them more effectively. And in this newsletter, we look into how to do exactly that — from UI typography and mixing typefaces to dyslexia-friendly fonts.

We are currently in Amsterdam for our very first SmashingConf Amsterdam, and you can still tune in and get an online ticket. We’ve also been working on the next conferences — in mysterious Freiburg, or perhaps charming Antwerp.

And, of course, we have new online workshops coming up soon as well:

• Naming Design Systems Design Systems
  with Samantha Gordashko. Apr 20 – May 4
• UX Leadership and Influence UX
  with Joe Natoli. Apr 23 – May 7
• Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
  with Miriam Suzanne. June 2–10
• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Jun 16–30
• How To Measure UX & Design Impact UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Video course + live UX training/li>
• Jump to all workshops →

We hope to see you there!

— Vitaly

1. Self-Hosting Fonts

Self-hosting fonts has quite some benefits compared to loading fonts from a third-party CDN, particularly for EU-based sites, where loading fonts from Google’s servers violates GDPR. If you plan to self-host your fonts, be sure to check out FontSelf. The site lets you browse more than 1,400 font families and, once you know which one you want to self-host, it provides you with the necessary assets to get everything up and running.

2. Free UI Typography eBook

What do you need to consider to create good UI typography? That’s exactly the question that Alex Baranov explores in his book User Interface Typography. It covers everything from readability and choosing typefaces to modular scale, vertical rhythm, responsive typography, and tables. You can read the first edition of the book online, for free.

3. Dyslexia-Friendly Fonts

Fonts like Open Dyslexic or Lexie Readable were designed to improve the reading experience for people with dyslexia. However, as many studies show, they don’t offer an advantage. In his conversation with Eleni Beveratou, Oliver Schöndorfer debunks the myths around dyslexia-friendly fonts and what you can do instead to improve readability for everyone, without harming the aesthetic of your project.

4. Fonts Knowledge Hub

Whether you’re new to typography or an experienced designer who wants to get up-to-date on current trends, Fonts Knowledge is a treasure chest of typography wisdom. Produced by the Google Fonts team in collaboration with experts from around the world, the library covers everything from typographic history to variable fonts, accessibility, and more to enable designers and developers of all skill sets to choose and use type with purpose.

5. Fonts In Use

Looking for some font inspiration? Fonts In Use is always a trusty resource when you want to discover new fonts or font pairings. The archive features typographic artifacts of all kinds — from packaging and posters to editorial design, brand design, movie title sequences, and much more. You can browse and filter the collection by topics, formats, and typefaces.

6. Combining Typefaces

Combining typefaces might sometimes feel like an art that is hard to master, but with the right strategy, it doesn’t have to be. Tim Brown’s Pocket Guide to Combining Typefaces is a wonderful resource that helps you take the guesswork out of your type decisions. Available as a free PDF, the book equips you with a framework for efficiently combining typefaces and the know-how you need to judge the work you see, including your own.

Also be sure to check out Connary Fagen’s Font Pairing Guide that dives into all the aspects you need to consider to create great font combinations and the Google Fonts Pairings Figma file featuring nine templates with hand-picked font pairings that you can use instantly.

7. Precise Type

A smooth, consistent type scale brings rhythm and balance to a design, and, well, if you plan to create one, Precise Type does the heavy lifting for you. With simple yet precise models for font size, line height, and letter spacing, the tool offers a complete solution for designing type scales and type systems, with just a few clicks.

8. Accessible UX Research, Now Shipping 📚

We’ve got exciting news! Our newest Smashing book, Accessible UX Research by Michele A. Williams, is finally shipping worldwide! Get the book right away or order the eBook for instant download.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the book right away.

9. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• Naming Design Systems Design Systems
  with Samantha Gordashko. Apr 20 – May 4
• UX Leadership and Influence UX
  with Joe Natoli. Apr 23 – May 7
• Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
  with Miriam Suzanne. June 2–10
• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Jun 16–30
• How To Measure UX & Design Impact UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Video course + live UX training/li>
• Jump to all workshops →

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).

Editorial

Have you used light-dark() in CSS already? What about CSS compression dictionaries, focus group, masonry layout, and scroll state queries? Well, in this newsletter we’ll explore all of them, with new CSS features and techniques — and with useful pointers to keep in mind when writing CSS.

CSS will also be an important part of SmashingConf Amsterdam 2026 🇳🇱 — our very first conference in lovely Amsterdam on April 13–16. On design systems, UX, frontend and complex UIs — and practical workshops as well:

• Figma Deep Dive 💎 by Christine Vallaure
• Accessible Frontend Patterns 👓 by Manuel Matuzović
• Context-Based Design Systems 🧱 by TJ Pitre
• Designing For Complex UIs, 2026 🕹️ by Vitaly Friedman
• Jump to all workshops ↗

We are looking forward to seeing you in-person again, everyone — and thank you so much for reading throughout all these years! 🎉🥳

— Vitaly

1. CSS contrast-color

With CSS contrast-color newly available in all modern browsers, dynamic color systems and theming have reached the next level. The new function enables CSS to detect contrast colors and choose white or black as the contrasted value for text on a background. Una Kravets summarized what you need to know about the API and how you can take it even further and go beyond black and white.

2. CSS Compression Dictionaries

A fast first page or fast navigation, what’s your priority? With compression dictionaries, loading CSS is not an either/or question anymore. They enable the browser to load only the CSS needed for the current page, and, while the user reads, it downloads a dictionary file that contains all the styles used across the site. Lionel Péramo explains in detail how it works and what you need to watch out for when using the technique.

3. Clip-Path Animations

Let’s say you have a round trigger button and want to display a WorkCard detail panel when it is clicked. Instead of fading it in from the center, Karl Koch came up with a different approach: it opens the detail layer with a circular clip-path from the same point as the trigger, making the interaction feel like one component with a physical center. Nice!

4. Details That Make UIs Better

There isn’t that one single thing that makes a great interface. It’s rather a combination of small details that add up to a great experience. Jakub Krehel shares the small details he uses to enhance his interfaces — and not only that, but he has also turned his tips into an open-source agent skill to teach them to AI coding assistants.

5. Deep-Dive Into visually-hidden

Is there still any point to most styles in visually-hidden classes in 2026? David Bushell set out on a mission to find an answer to the question, and, well, as it turns out, the rabbit hole is deep, and the answer is not obvious. David summarized his findings and thoughts in a comprehensive post that dives deep into the history of visually-hidden, why something as hacky was normalized, and why there’s no native solution yet.

6. The Great CSS Expansion

From anchor positioning and select customization to scroll-driven animations and view transitions, a new wave of long-requested CSS features is finally landing in browsers. In his post “The Great CSS Expansion,” Pavel Laptev gives an overview of what is shipping, what it replaces, how much JavaScript you can delete, and what the platform still has not figured out.

Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• Naming Design Systems Design Systems
  with Samantha Gordashko. Apr 20 – May 4
• UX Leadership and Influence UX
  with Joe Natoli. Apr 23 – May 7
• Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
  with Miriam Suzanne. June 2–10
• Design Patterns For AI 2026 + video course UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Jun 16–30
• Live UX Training 2026 + video course UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Jun 16–30
• Jump to all workshops →

7. Light-Dark Mode For Images

The light-dark() function has been a game-changer for colors, enabling developers to adapt colors to a user’s preferences, without the need for repeating media query blocks. Now, light-dark() is being extended to images, which means you can use it to set a background image, mask, or logo based on a user’s color scheme. Bramus Van Damme explains how it works and how to provide a fallback for non-supporting browsers.

8. Accessible UX Research, Now Shipping 📚

We’ve got exciting news! Our newest Smashing book, Accessible UX Research by Michele A. Williams, is finally shipping worldwide! Get the book right away or order the eBook for instant download.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the book right away.

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).

Editorial

How do we make design systems work at scale? How do we organize at scale, prevent poor outcomes, and expose design systems to LLMs? And how do we establish design principles and underlying foundations to encourage stability and consistency?

In this newsletter, we look at some of the new challenges with design systems — from principles to workflows to prototyping to a lovely podcast to listen to. Happy reading!

On our end, we are up to the last stretch for SmashingConf Amsterdam 2026 🇳🇱 — our lovely new conference diving into all the fine details of design systems, accessibility, design and UX. With hands-on workshops to attend. Jump to details.

As usual, you can learn online, too: here’s a quick overview of our online workshops on UX and front-end:

• How To Measure UX & Design Impact + video courseUX (starting today!)
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 31 – Apr 10
• Naming Design Systems Design Systems
  with Samantha Gordashko. Apr 20 – May 4
• UX Leadership and Influence UX
  with Joe Natoli. Apr 23 – May 7
• Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
  with Miriam Suzanne. June 2–10
• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces + video course UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Jun 16–30
• Jump to all workshops →

And this week, we wish you a calm, kind, and mindful week, perhaps with fewer meetings and a bit more time to do what you truly love working on most.

— Vitaly

1. Design Principles

Design principles are a powerful tool to align teams and inform decision-making. A wonderful resource comes from Ben Brignell: Principles.design. The growing library currently features more than 230 real-world design principles and methods, searchable and tagged, from hardware and infrastructure to language and organizations.

If you’re looking for more useful examples of design principles, including design principles in design systems, Vitaly compiled a list of further resources.

2. Launching Design System Components

How to launch design system components? Rama Krushna Behera from the Razorpay team wrote a comprehensive guide on how to add a new component to a design system. It covers the complete process from auditing and proof of concept to review, variants, organization, accessibility, and launch.

Also be sure to check out Vitaly’s writeup, in which he shares tips, templates, and resources on launching and organizing components.

3. Organizing Design Systems At Scale

Multi-brand design systems, multi-platform design systems, or design systems involving hundreds of shared components — how to organize and manage design systems at scale? Vitaly summarized valuable tips and resources to help you master the challenge of keeping things organized, while preventing secondary design systems from emerging.

4. Content Design System

Words matter. They help shape your brand’s identity, improve clarity, reduce errors, and streamline flows. And since they are so powerful, they deserve a place in your design system to keep everyone who contributes copy to your product or service on the same page. The Intuit Content Design System is a great example of what a comprehensive system for content designers, UX writers, and IA architects can look like.

If you’d like to dive deeper into embedding content design in a design system, Vitaly’s post has got you covered, with real-world examples, language guidelines, and worksheets.

5. Prototyping With AI

What are the best ways to use AI to prototype with your design system? In a recent episode of the Dive Club podcast, Lewis Healey and Kylor Hall share insights into how they scaled AI prototyping at Atlassian. They share their vision for a truly AI-native design system, ways to help AI make sense of your design system, and how the role of design system designers is changing with AI.

6. Making Design Systems LLM-Readable

LLMs can’t use a design system properly when vibe coding. They fabricate token names, guess values, and lose context between sessions, making your prototype feel off. Hardik Pandya shares a method for restructuring your design system into a format LLMs can reliably consume. It constraints the LLM at every point where it would otherwise guess, ensuring that your 10th AI session produces the same visual quality as your first.

7. The Question Podcast

Sparking deeper conversations in the design system community, that’s the goal of Ben Callahan’s collaborative learning show The Question. Each Monday, you’ll receive an email from Ben with a design-system-related question and, if you respond, an invite to a deep-dive session later that week where you’ll discuss the answers together with Ben, a co-host from the design system community, and fellow participants. A wonderful opportunity to dig deeper and learn from each other.

8. Accessible UX Research, Now Shipping 📚

We’ve got exciting news! Our newest Smashing book, Accessible UX Research by Michele A. Williams, is finally shipping worldwide! Get the book right away or order the eBook for instant download.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the book right away.

9. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• How To Measure UX & Design Impact + video courseUX (starting today!)
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 31 – Apr 10
• Naming Design Systems Design Systems
  with Samantha Gordashko. Apr 20 – May 4
• UX Leadership and Influence UX
  with Joe Natoli. Apr 23 – May 7
• Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
  with Miriam Suzanne. June 2–10
• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces + video course UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Jun 16–30
• Jump to all workshops →

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).

Editorial

How do we map out users’ experiences in digital products? Well, it might seem like an obvious question: after all, we’ve been using journey maps and service blueprints for years! But depending on the journey at hand, we will need to adjust how we put them together — and this newsletter is just about that.

We’ll look into UX mapping methods, service blueprint layering, templates, examples, and a practical guide to experience blueprinting. But keep in mind that we may need to rethink mapping when dealing with non-linear workflows, multi-actor experiences, and many points of entry. There, event storming and causal loops might help.

We are getting ready for SmashingConf Amsterdam 2026 🇳🇱, our very first conference in Amsterdam for designers and UI engineers, focused on design systems, accessibility, AI, complex products, and frontend. Jump to details →

Also coming up are online workshops — a friendly way to learn practical, actionable insights from experts:

• Measure UX & Design Impact UX + video course
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 31 – Apr 10
• Naming Design Systems Design Systems
  with Samantha Gordashko. Apr 20 – May 4
• UX Leadership and Influence UX
  with Joe Natoli. Apr 23 – May 7
• Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
  with Miriam Suzanne. June 2–10
• Design Patterns For AI 2026 UX + video course
  with Vitaly Friedman. Jun 16–30
• Smart Interface Design Patterns UX + live UX training
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 11–Oct 12
• Jump to all workshops →

Until next time,
— Vitaly

1. Service Blueprint Layering

How to turn messy research insights into a neatly organized service blueprint? The Exploded View framework can serve as a structural backbone. Marco Torrente explains how to use it to map the customer and organizational perspective across different layers, allowing teams to identify the impact, challenges, and ideas on a single layer while also seeing them in context.

2. AirBnB And Spotify Journey Maps

If you’re looking for practical examples of how a customer experience can be visualized, be sure to check out AirBnB’s Customer Journey Blueprint. It visualizes the customer experience for two personas, across eight touch points, with user policies, UI screens, and all interactions with the customer service — all in one page.

Spotify has been following a similar approach, mapping user profiles and journeys, but also including single desktop and mobile screens and problematic areas that need fixing.

3. Journey Map Vs. Service Blueprint

What does the person using your service experience? And what went on in the background to make the experience happen? Journey maps and service blueprints deliver valuable insights to better understand both sides of a service. If you want to dive deeper into why they matter, the differences between the two, and when to use which, Morgan Miller and Erika Flowers have got you covered.

4. UX Mapping Methods

Empathy maps, customer journey maps, experience maps, service blueprints — which one delivers the insights you need? Sarah Gibbon’s UX mapping methods cheat sheet compares all four types of mapping, their defining characteristics, and when to use which. It also includes a simple, three-step framework with decisions that need to be made before you begin your mapping effort.

5. Service Blueprint Figma Templates

Looking for a service blueprint template? Then you might want to give the Service Blueprint System that Jacopo Sironi created a try. With components and examples of how to use them, it makes building dynamic and flexible visualizations easier.

Another useful service blueprint template comes from the Telepass Team. It also includes components to build your own blueprint, as well as examples to better understand how you can use the tool.

6. Guide To Experience Blueprinting

How to prepare and facilitate blueprinting with your organization? When is the right time to blueprint? And how to turn your blueprint into actionable insights? Morgan Miller and Erika Flowers answer all of this in their book Your Guide to Blueprinting the Practical Way. The eBook can be downloaded for free. A print version is also available.

On their site Practical by Design, Morgan and Erika also share templates for current- and future-state blueprinting that are bound to help teams develop actionable insights in a matter of hours.

7. Guide To Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping gives us a better understanding of the client experience, with emotions, frustrations, and pain points. To help us create insightful journey maps, Taras Bakusevych distilled his learnings from creating customer journey maps into a template.

You can download it as a PDF, and in the accompanying guide, Taras explains step by step how to use it in a workshop.

8. Accessible UX Research, Now Shipping 📚

We’ve got exciting news! Our newest Smashing book, Accessible UX Research by Michele A. Williams, is finally shipping worldwide! Get the book right away or order the eBook for instant download.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the book right away.

9. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

For years now, we’ve been running online workshops on frontend and UX, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought again that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• Measure UX & Design Impact UX + video course
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 31 – Apr 10
• Naming Design Systems Design Systems
  with Samantha Gordashko. Apr 20 – May 4
• UX Leadership and Influence UX
  with Joe Natoli. Apr 23 – May 7
• Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
  with Miriam Suzanne. June 2–10
• Design Patterns For AI 2026 UX + video course
  with Vitaly Friedman. Jun 16–30
• Smart Interface Design Patterns UX + live UX training
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 11–Oct 12
• Jump to all workshops →

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).

Editorial

How do we design voice interfaces? Compared to typing, voice is often faster and more expressive. But navigating a voice conversation is more difficult, and we need our digital products to hit just the right tones at the right time — from being supportive when needed to being concise when desired.

In today’s newsletter issue, we dive into voice UX — from voice principles and tone mapping to voice UX in B2B to designing a voice interface from scratch.

On another note, it’s really quite amazing to see all the things we can do with CSS nowadays. We’ve invited three absolute CSS experts for our upcoming Meets Style Sheets session to share their stories, tools, tips, and practices with all of us. Tickets are free for our community, so why not join and spread the love!

We’re also exploring different topics in our online workshops, including designing better products and UX experiences:

• Figma Workflow Masterclass UX
  with Christine Vallaure. Mar 18–24
• UX Design Leadership Masterclass UX
  with Paul Boag. Mar 18–26
• Designing Better Products Masterclass UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Mar 23 – Apr 6
• How To Measure UX & Design Impact UX + video course
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 31 – Apr 10
• Jump to all workshops →

That’s all for now, dear folks! Wishing you a tremendous rest of the week ahead.

Yours truly,
— Vitaly

1. Voice Design Principles

Whether you’re still at the very beginning of your voice design journey or already working on a voice interface, Ben Sauer’s summary of voice design principles sure will come in handy. To help you design engaging, user-friendly voice interfaces, he compiled the main takeaways from articles, books, and other useful resources into a master list of voice design principles, guidelines, and best practices.

2. Voice Design System

How to include voice design in a design system? The Orange Design System is a great example of how it can be done. It defines Orange’s voice identity and qualities that must be present in dialogue, and offers linguistic guidance to form the conversation, handle users’ natural forms of expression, and structure and personalize interactions.

3. Designing A Persona For An Assistant

Designing a character for your virtual assistant helps create a consistent, trustworthy experience. So, what do you need to consider when doing so? James Walsh shares the design principles and best practices that guide the IBM team in building their conversation and voice user interfaces.

4. Voice UI Guide

How can you guide users effectively through a voice interface? How can you support voice with visual elements? And how does a user’s environment influence the interface? The VUI Guide helps you solve the challenges that designing for voice brings along. It is an open-source, living style guide filled with useful tips, tools, and a checklist that takes you step by step through the process of designing a voice user interface.

5. Voice Principles And Tone Mapping

Fun or serious, concise or detailed — the voice and tone of your user interface shape how people perceive your brand. To help you be consistent in your messaging, whether it’s in UX writing or when designing a voice assistant, Paavan Buddhdev wrote a practical guide to voice and tone. In it, he shares tips for developing voice principles and creating a tone map to keep your communication on brand.

6. Voice UX For B2B

Whether it’s in hospitals, control rooms, or logistics hubs, voice interfaces in high-stakes environments must go far beyond basic commands. The team at Koru UX has published a comprehensive guide to designing voice UX for B2B. It includes a framework for designing voice interactions in high-trust settings and explores real-world examples, along with tool and tech stack recommendations.

7. Designing A Voice Interface

Designing a voice user interface is easier than you may think, argues Darek Bittner, since the design process remains largely the same as that of a visual UI. In his blog post on the topic, he explores some of the key nuances specific to designing voice user interfaces and provides a roadmap you can follow to prototype and test your VUI.

8. Accessible UX Research, Now Shipping 📚

We’ve got exciting news! Our newest Smashing book, Accessible UX Research by Michele A. Williams, is finally shipping worldwide! Get the book right away or order the eBook for instant download.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the book right away.

9. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• Figma Workflow Masterclass UX
  with Christine Vallaure. Mar 18–24
• UX Design Leadership Masterclass UX
  with Paul Boag. Mar 18–26
• Designing Better Products Masterclass UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Mar 23 – Apr 6
• How To Measure UX & Design Impact UX + video course
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 31 – Apr 10
• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Video course + UX Training
• Jump to all workshops →

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).

Editorial

Ahh, the shiny new world of CSS! In today’s newsletter, we look at the fine, delicate new features and techniques for CSS — from CSS scroll state and typographic scale to customizing bullet points and linear timing function. Plus a dash of accessibility and fast-loading CSS.

We are also getting closer and closer to our very first SmashingConf Amsterdam 2026 🇳🇱, taking place in the magical Pathé Tuschinski on April 13–16. With a fantastic community and practical deep-dives all around CSS, accessibility, design, and UX — plus friendly workshops on CSS, AI, design, and complex UIs.

Later this month, we are also starting a few new online workshops that might be relevant for you as well:

• Figma Workflow Masterclass Figma
  with Christine Vallaure. Mar 18–24
• UX Design Leadership Masterclass UX
  with Paul Boag. Mar 18–26
• Designing Better Products Masterclass UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Mar 23 – Apr 6
• How To Measure UX & Impact + video course UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 31 – Apr 10
• Resilient and Maintainable CSS CSS
  with Miriam Suzanne. Jun 2–10
• Jump to all upcoming workshops →

Happy learning and wishing you a fantastic rest of the week!

— Vitaly

1. CSS Scroll State

Whether you want to fade headers, slide elements, or trigger transitions as users scroll, scroll-state queries make it possible to style elements based on how a container is scrolled. CSS observes the container, and when it is scrolled or a certain position is reached, the styles update automatically. Be cautious, though. The feature is still experimental.

2. Typographic Scale CSS

Do you know the high-precision technical pens that draw very fine and precise lines? They inspired Rob Weychert to create a typographic scale with a limited set of stroke widths. What might sound rather simple becomes a bit more complicated when you consider contrast and size. Rob takes you step by step through the process of creating the scale system and how he uses CSS to do the math.

3. Accessible Faux-Nested Controls

Let’s say you want to build a list of items, with each item containing both a primary action and one or more secondary actions. Nesting one interactive control inside another is an accessibility no-go, but Eric Bailey’s faux-nested interactive controls provide an accessible solution to the problem. It creates the appearance of nested controls without having to do so in the DOM.

4. Customizing Bullet Points

Modern CSS brings new styling capabilities to ordered and unordered lists. If you’re looking for an overview of what’s possible, Richard Rutter takes you on a deep dive into the world of customized lists. Whether you want to change font and color, use emojis, or define your own numbering sequence, the guide has got you covered.

5. Linear Timing Function

Bézier curves are super powerful, but there’s something they can’t do: spring and bounce effects. That’s where the linear() timing function comes in. It allows you to draw an easing curve to model your desired kind of motion, including realistic springs and bounces. Josh W. Comeau explains how linear() works and shares tools you can use to get started right away.

6. Perfect Pie Chart

Pulling in a whole JavaScript library just to display a couple of simple pie charts? If that feels overkill to you, you might want to give Juan Diego Rodríguez’s approach a try. He challenged himself to design a perfect pie chart with CSS — one that is screen-reader-accessible, HTML-customizable, and only employs a minimum of JavaScript.

7. How To Load CSS Fast

Embedding critical inline styles for every page (or creating an external style sheet for every page) or loading the full CSS up front are the two options we usually turn to to load CSS. However, neither of them is optimal for performance. Compression dictionaries are here to change that. Already supported in Chromium browsers, they avoid the tradeoffs of traditional CSS loading techniques and reduce costs significantly.

8. Accessible UX Research, Now Shipping 📚

We’ve got exciting news! Our newest Smashing book, Accessible UX Research by Michele A. Williams, is finally shipping worldwide! Get the book right away or order the eBook for instant download.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the book right away.

9. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• Figma Workflow Masterclass UX
  with Christine Vallaure. Mar 18–24
• UX Design Leadership Masterclass UX
  with Paul Boag. Mar 18–26
• Designing Better Products Masterclass UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Mar 23 – Apr 6
• How To Measure UX & Impact + video course UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 31 – Apr 10
• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Video course + live UX training.
• Jump to all workshops →

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).

Editorial

The real world is messy, non-linear, and incredibly complex. When we design digital products, we must match that complexity effectively to help people manage it. The worst thing we can do is to oversimplify the product.

So, how do we do that? In this newsletter, we look at designing for complex UIs — from dashboards and data visualization to complex design systems and UX strategy. We also have a deep-dive online workshop on complex UIs starting this week.

If you have time in March to boost your skills, we highly recommend signing up for an online workshop:

• Building Interactive, Accessible Components with Modern CSS & JS Dev
  with Stephanie Eckles. Mar 5–13
• Figma Workflow Masterclass UX
  with Christine Vallaure. Mar 18–24
• UX Design Leadership Masterclass UX
  with Paul Boag. Mar 18–26
• Designing Better Products Masterclass UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Mar 23 – Apr 6
• Interface Design Live UX Training UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Apr 3 – May 11
• How To Measure UX Impact + video course UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Apr 21 – May 1
• Jump to all workshops →

Wishing you a wonderful week ahead, everyone!

— Vitaly

1. Strategy Cheatsheets

How to gain a strategic advantage with your business? According to Alex M. H. Smith, the key lies in doing things differently. To help you get clear on your business strategy, he published the Cheatsheet Library, a collection of 15 free cheatsheets and quick guides covering everything from understanding value to creating a strategic culture and growing your business.

2. Dashboard Design Patterns

What makes a dashboard effective? How do you present complex data without overwhelming users? The interdisciplinary research lab VisHub at the University of Edinburgh published a set of dashboard design patterns that explore every aspect of good dashboard design.

From components and metadata to visual representation, interaction, page layout, and color — everything put together neatly in one single place. For the bookmarks!

3. Open Visualization Academy

Having taught visualization design to thousands of students in more than 30 countries, Alberto Cairo has long dreamed of creating an online platform where everyone can learn about information design and data visualization, for free.

The ambitious project called Open Visualization Academy launched just a few weeks ago. With video master classes and software tutorials created by top experts, it is a treasure chest of knowledge.

4. Journey Map Vs. Service Blueprint

Journey maps and service blueprints help us understand both sides of our services: what the person using it experiences, and what went on in the background to make the experience happen. Morgan Miller and Erika Flowers wrote a comprehensive guide to journey maps and service blueprints, why they matter, the differences between the two, and when to use which.

Another practical guide on the topic comes from Marco Torrente. In it, he explores how to turn research insights into a service blueprint, covering roles, processes, systems, and data.

5. Organizing Complex Design Systems

How can we manage complex Figma libraries without any friction? How to keep them clean, well-organized, and easily accessible for everyone involved? Jérôme Benoit shares valuable insights into how the team at Doctolib manages their design system with 900 shared components and more than 40 people involved.

6. Mapping Unintended Impact

Every design decision we make can have consequences that were not foreseen. For example, a feature that drives short-term retention might, in the long term, drive churn or abandonment. So how can we deal with unintended consequences of UX decisions? Vitaly summarized practical tips and resources for exploring the direct and indirect impact of changes.

7. Dealing With Conflicting Data

Maybe you’ve been there before: you’ve conducted UX research, and the quantitative and qualitative data showed different results. This doesn’t mean that either of them is wrong, but that different types of research reveal different parts of a bigger story. To help you resolve data conflicts, Vitaly shares practical techniques for triangulating and reconciling data with mixed-method research.

8. Accessible UX Research, Now Shipping 📚

We’ve got exciting news! Our newest Smashing book, Accessible UX Research by Michele A. Williams, is finally shipping worldwide! Get the book right away or order the eBook for instant download.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the book right away.

9. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• Building Interactive, Accessible Components with Modern CSS & JS Dev
  with Stephanie Eckles. Mar 5–13
• Figma Workflow Masterclass UX
  with Christine Vallaure. Mar 18–24
• UX Design Leadership Masterclass UX
  with Paul Boag. Mar 18–26
• Designing Better Products Masterclass UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Mar 23 – Apr 6
• How To Measure UX Impact + video course UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Apr 21 – May 1
• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Video course + UX training
• Jump to all workshops →

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).

Editorial

The Web is full of beautiful hidden gems. It has become an incredibly noisy and busy place, but people still experiment, play, bring useful little helpers together, and release lovely little tools for everyone to use and benefit from.

This newsletter issue is dedicated to just that — little hidden gems, kindly shared by people who are curious, who are passionate, and who are happy to share what they’ve learned with everyone to benefit from.

That’s also the spirit of our upcoming SmashingConf Amsterdam 2026 🇳🇱, our shiny new event for designers and UI engineers, with focus on design systems, accessibility, AI, designing for complex products and front-end. Jump to details →

And we also have a few online workshops coming up:

• Designing For Complex UI Masterclass Design
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 3–17
• Building Interactive, Accessible Components with Modern CSS & JS Dev
  with Stephanie Eckles. Mar 5–13
• Figma Workflow Masterclass UX
  with Christine Vallaure. Mar 18–24
• UX Design Leadership Masterclass UX
  with Paul Boag. Mar 18–26
• Designing Better Products Masterclass UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Mar 23 – Apr 6
• Interface Design Patterns Live UX Training UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Apr 3 – May 11
• Jump to all workshops →

And now let’s dive into the magical world of hidden gems on the web!

— Vitaly

1. Searching For Birds

Do you have a soft spot for birds? Nadieh Bremer created a wonderful project that not only captures the hearts of bird lovers but also leaves everyone interested in data visualization, illustration, or storytelling awe-inspired. “Searching for Birds” is an interactive, dataviz-driven story that connects humans with birds by exploring how we search for them.

2. Public Work Search Engine

Featuring more than 100,000 public domain works such as scans, prints, and images from The MET, New York Public Library, and other sources, Cosmos’ Public Work search engine is a treasure chest for anyone looking for historical artifacts. The artifacts are grouped by similarity and topic, perfect for researching themes, various points of view, and detailed drawings of objects, people, and nature.

3. New Ways Of Working Playbook

How can we create a workplace where everyone on the team thrives? Mark Eddleston’s New Ways Of Working Playbook helps teams explore and experiment with collaboration patterns found in progressive organizations. It covers everything from meetings and feedback to decision-making and conflict engagement.

4. AI Interaction Atlas

What do you need to consider to design a human-centered AI system? “The Atlas of AI Interaction Design” explores more than 100 interaction patterns for designing human-AI interactions. By equipping teams with a shared vocabulary for mapping roles, responsibilities, and decision points in AI systems, it helps identify gaps and responsibilities when designing complex, multi-step AI experiences.

5. Accessibility For Everyone

Accessibility seems daunting? It doesn’t have to be. To help you navigate the accessibility landscape, Laura Kalbag offers her book Accessibility For Everyone for free reading. From understanding impairment challenges to learning how to plan for, evaluate, and test accessible design, it helps you build a solid set of accessibility best practices.

6. Design System Tactics

No matter where on your design system journey you might be, Design System Tactics helps you tackle all those big and small challenges you might encounter. Created by Ness Grixti, the site guides you through the complete design system process, from getting alignment and setting up a system to scaling up, improving adoption, and working with AI.

7. Design Token Naming Guide

Design system tokens are the building blocks of a design language, helping you make your design consistent and easy to scale. But how to name your tokens properly? The Design Token Naming Guide summarizes everything you need to know to master naming conventions in six short, interactive lessons. And once you’re familiar with the theory, you can use the naming tool to build your design token system right away.

8. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• Designing For Complex UI Masterclass Design
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 3–17
• Building Interactive, Accessible Components with Modern CSS & JS Dev
  with Stephanie Eckles. Mar 5–13
• Figma Workflow Masterclass UX
  with Christine Vallaure. Mar 18–24
• UX Design Leadership Masterclass UX
  with Paul Boag. Mar 18–26
• Designing Better Products Masterclass UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Mar 23 – Apr 6
• Interface Design Patterns Live UX Training UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Apr 3 – May 11
• How To Measure UX & Design Impact UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Video Course + UX Training
• Jump to all workshops →

9. Accessible UX Research, Now Shipping 📚

We’ve got exciting news! Printed copies of Accessible UX Research, a new Smashing book by Michele A. Williams, are now shipping. Get the book right away or order the eBook for instant download.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the book right away.

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).

Editorial

It’s web performance time! What’s the state of web performance today? How do we boost the performance of JavaScript-heavy applications? And what tools can we use to diagnose and improve performance?

In this newsletter, we look at helpful practices and techniques across web performance — from the shiny new Web Perf Almanac to Performance tooling in 2026 to optimizing React performance.

As always, you can connect with us in the online world: here’s a quick overview of our upcoming online workshops:

• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Feb 16–March 2
• Designing For Complex UI Masterclass Design
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 3–17
• Building Interactive, Accessible Components with Modern CSS & JS Dev
  with Stephanie Eckles. Mar 5–13
• Figma Workflow Masterclass UX
  with Christine Vallaure. Mar 18–24
• UX Design Leadership Masterclass UX
  with Paul Boag. Mar 18–26
• Designing Better Products Masterclass UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Mar 23 – Apr 6
• Jump to all workshops →

Also, meet our friendly, practical and fun SmashingConfs 2026:

• SmashingConf Amsterdam 🇳🇱 (Apr 13–16, 2026)
• SmashingConf Freiburg 🇩🇪 (Sep 7–10, 2026)
• SmashingConf Antwerp 🇧🇪 (Oct 12–15, 2026)

Wishing you a truly smashing week ahead!

—Vitaly

1. Mitigating Third-Party Impact

In December, Facebook shipped an update that reintroduced the unload event, so if your site uses Facebook, you might have noticed performance or UX issues because unload breaks the browser’s instant bfcache on desktop. Erwin Hofman shares a fix to limit the damage that third parties have on your site’s performance and user experience.

2. Optimizing Video Embeds

Lazy-loading videos on interaction, without any JavaScript, even above the fold, and with only native HTML and CSS? It’s possible, as Stefan Bauer shows. Whether you want to embed a YouTube or Vimeo video, a CodePen, or even a map, the solution works with any heavy embed, delivering faster initial load and a clean user experience.

3. Throttling Individual Network Requests

Let’s say you want to test how your application handles a third-party API struggling with latency or a large hero image loading on a slow connection. Starting with Chrome 145, DevTools allows you to throttle individual network requests to test scenarios like these, without having to slow down the entire page.

4. Diagnosing Discrepancies

Maybe you’ve experienced it before: You’ve run a Lighthouse audit, and the same URL got different Performance scores, depending on whether you’ve run Lighthouse locally on your computer, on PageSpeed Insights, or in a web performance monitoring tool. Matt Zeunert explains why these discrepancies happen and how to identify what’s causing them.

5. CrUX, RUM, And Synthetic Monitoring

CrUX, RUM, or synthetic monitoring — which one should you use? Mark Zeman summarized the strengths and limitations of each monitoring tool and what each of them is best used for. A handy overview to help you make the right choice so you don’t miss any valuable insights.

6. Optimizing React Performance

Whether it’s unnecessary re-renders, bloated bundles, or lagging interactions, React applications tend to slow down as they grow. To help you identify performance bottlenecks in your React app, Anna Monus wrote a practical guide to measuring and optimizing React performance.

7. Web Performance Almanac

What’s the current state of web performance? For its Performance chapter, the Web Almanac analyzed real-world data (both lab-based measurements and real-user performance data) to find out. The report highlights where the web is improving, where challenges remain, and which patterns are associated with better user experiences.

8. Web Performance Tooling 2026

With AI-powered tools available, the web performance tooling landscape has evolved significantly. Dan Gayle from the Performance team at Shopify distilled Shopify’s internal web performance workflow into steps you can run yourself. The guide is aimed at merchants, partners, and agencies looking to improve storefront performance, but even if you’re not using Shopify, it gives you a good overview of the tools available.

9. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces + video course UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Feb 16–March 2
• Designing For Complex UI Masterclass Design
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 3–17
• Building Interactive, Accessible Components with Modern CSS & JS Dev
  with Stephanie Eckles. Mar 5–13
• Figma Workflow Masterclass UX
  with Christine Vallaure. Mar 18–24
• UX Design Leadership Masterclass UX
  with Paul Boag. Mar 18–26
• Designing Better Products Masterclass UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Mar 23 – Apr 6
• How To Measure UX & Design Impact (video course + UX training), with Vitaly Friedman.
• Jump to all workshops →

10. Accessible UX Research, eBook Now Available For Download 📚

We’ve got exciting news! eBook versions of Accessible UX Research, a new Smashing Book by Michele A. Williams, are now available for download, and shipping will start soon. Order the eBook for instant download now or reserve your print copy at the presale price.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the eBook right away.

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).

Editorial

Many surveys are biased, misleading, and not particularly actionable. People often don’t give true answers, or can’t answer truthfully. And then, what people answer, think, and feel are often very different things.

Surveys aim to uncover what many people think or feel. But often it’s what many people think they think or feel. However, they do help learn where users struggle and what users’ expectations are. So how do we design surveys to be more useful? Well, that’s what this newsletter is all about!

Set up your alarm clock for SmashingConf Amsterdam 2026 🇳🇱 — a friendly conference for designers and UI engineers all around UX and front-end. With design systems, accessibility, Figma, CSS, and AI — while enjoying the best views, fun, and gezelligheid! Jump to the schedule.

We put our heart into crafting inclusive, valuable events (online and offline!) for all of us to learn and grow. We have scholarships, volunteering options, and discounts for large groups, schools, and students. Just email us and we’ll sort it out.

Today’s newsletter is kindly powered by our friends at SurveyJS, who build powerful open-source form libraries for secure form creation and data collection in JS applications. You can build a fully custom form and survey management for your app — with full control over form UI, logic, and your users’ data, no external data storage, and no SaaS limits.

Hats off to the SurveyJS team for their hard work and continued support of the web community! 🧡

— Vitaly

1. Measuring UX in B2B

“How likely would you be to recommend our product to friends, family, or colleagues?” Survey questions like this have quite some drawbacks when you want to analyze what customers think of your product. Instead of relying on a single question, Anna Debenham recommends a combination of feedback scoring and gap analysis to gather user feedback and gain deeper insights into how users perceive your product.

2. Survey Design Cheatsheet

We create surveys to understand how people experience a product or feature, but they often reveal only the narratives people construct about their experience, not what they truly think or feel. To help you get the most out of your surveys, Vitaly created a survey design cheatsheet with practical techniques to reduce bias, increase completion rates, and uncover reliable insights.

3. UX Research Without Access To Users

Whether it’s strict NDAs, privacy regulations, or the fact that your product is still in an early phase, there are plenty of situations where you don’t have access to users to conduct UX research. Vitaly looks into workarounds that help you better understand user pain points and issues and shares tips for making a strong case for UX research when stakeholders are reluctant.

4. Overcoming Survey Challenges

Response biases make it difficult to create surveys that deliver reliable data. Tanner Kohler examines ten common ways in which survey participants tend to misinterpret their true thoughts and feelings. As he points out, it’s impossible to fully mitigate the effects of these tendencies, but there are preventive measures you can take to at least lessen them.

5. Writing Better Survey Questions

Finding just the right balance when writing survey questions can be challenging. You don’t want them to be too specific to not influence your respondents’ answers, but not all closed either, to give people the possibility to answer truthfully. Nikki Anderson shares a framework for writing survey questions that find just the sweet spot to deliver the insights you need.

Another fantastic guide on the topic comes from Maddie Brown. In it, she explores the ten most common and dangerous errors that can be made when designing a survey and how to avoid them.

6. Survey Design Guide

The team at Maze published a comprehensive guide that helps you maximize the potential of your UX surveys. It takes you through the complete process, from outlining the scope of your survey and writing survey questions to analyzing the results. Tips for choosing the right tools for your user research and survey best practices from UX leaders are also included.

7. Survey Response Scales

For a successful UX survey, the survey scale matters just as much as the language you use and the order of your questions. So, how to choose the right default values and ranges for your questionnaire? Alex Birkett wrote a practical guide that covers all the fine little details of designing survey rating scales.

8. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces (or video) UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Feb 16 – Mar 2
• Designing For Complex UI Masterclass Design
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 3–17
• Building Interactive, Accessible Components with Modern CSS & JS Dev
  with Stephanie Eckles. Mar 5–13
• Figma Workflow Masterclass UX
  with Christine Vallaure. Mar 18–24
• Measure UX and Design Impact UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Video + Live UX Training
• Smart Interface Design Patterns UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Video + Live UX Training
• Jump to all workshops →

9. Accessible UX Research, eBook Now Available For Download 📚

We’ve got exciting news! eBook versions of Accessible UX Research, a new Smashing Book by Michele A. Williams, are now available for download, and shipping will start soon. Order the eBook for instant download now or reserve your print copy at the presale price.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the eBook right away.

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).

Editorial

Design is often an exercise in resilience. Our products must work for people in any life situation they find themselves in. The path forward always lies in accessible, inclusive design — making mistakes harder to make.

In this newsletter, we explore accessibility and inclusive design: how to design for an aging population, ADHD, autism, deafness, dyscalculia, dementia, and neurodiversity, with practical and actionable UX guidelines.

On another note, design systems have been with us for a while, and they are here to stay. If done well, they make our work lives better and easier. Join Meets Design Systems next week with our three fantastic experts to hear their stories, tools, tips, and practices. Join in and share yours, too!

We’re also exploring different topics in our online workshops, including shiny new design patterns for better AI experiences:

• SmashingConf Amsterdam 2026 🇳🇱🧀
  UX and Front-End. Apr 13–16, 2026
• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Feb 16 – Mar 2
• Designing For Complex UI Masterclass Design
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 3–17
• Building Interactive, Accessible Components with Modern CSS & JS Dev
  with Stephanie Eckles. Mar 5–13
• Figma Workflow Masterclass UX
  with Christine Vallaure. Mar 18–24
• Jump to all workshops →

We’d love to see you there! 🧡 Until then, off we go, designing better user experiences everywhere!

— Vitaly

1. ADHD

Product designer Eva Katharina Wolf was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD and combines her personal experience and UX knowledge to shine a light on typical ADHD symptoms, as well as practical examples of how good design can help mitigate ADHD effects. Small changes that not only improve the experience for neurodivergent people but, as so often when it comes to accessibility, create a better experience for everyone.

2. Dementia

The number of people living with dementia is expected to increase significantly in the coming years. To enable designers, researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs to collaborate in a meaningful way with people affected by dementia, Alzheimer’s Society released the free “Dementia and co-creation” guide. It provides practical tools and methods for co-creating effectively, best-practice guidelines for digital accessibility, and case studies.

3. Older Adults

How can designers respond to the needs of an aging population? Matthew Stevens wrote a helpful guide with best practices for improving usability for older audiences, and in effect, for everyone else, too.

Another great read with practical tips to help older adults use your products comes from Dr. Michal Halperin Ben Zvi and Kinneret Yifrah. They share guidelines and examples for writing microcopy that is clear, supportive, and trustworthy.

4. Autism

Every person on the autistic spectrum experiences the world differently, which makes it difficult to design an experience that fits everyone perfectly. However, there are a few things we can keep in mind to improve the experience for autistic users. Vitaly summarized practical tips you can apply right away.

Drawing on experiences from the autistic community, Irina Rusakova outlines core principles of designing for autistic people. By incorporating them into your product, you’ll not only improve usability for autistic users but also reduce cognitive load for everyone.

5. Deafness

What’s to consider when designing for deaf people? Marie van Driessche, a Dutch designer, who herself is deaf since birth, gave an insightful talk at Awwwards Conference in Amsterdam a few years ago in which she shines a light on deafness, sign language, the deaf community, what’s important when designing for deaf people, and how others can benefit, too.

6. Dyscalculia

Whether it’s managing money, arranging appointments, or doing calculations, numbers are everywhere. So, how can we present numbers and data so that everyone can make sense of them, no matter their math skills or level of numeracy? Accessible Numbers explores how small tweaks like rounding up or leaving space around numbers improve the usability of your product or service.

7. Neurodiversity

To raise awareness for designing for neurodiverse users, Stéphanie Walter compiled a list of essential resources that help you understand and design for dyslexia, dyscalculia, autism, and ADHD. It includes technical accessibility considerations, personal accounts and lived experiences, as well as guidance for creating more inclusive products.

8. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Feb 16 – Mar 2
• Designing For Complex UI Masterclass Design
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 3–17
• Building Interactive, Accessible Components with Modern CSS & JS Dev
  with Stephanie Eckles. Mar 5–13
• Figma Workflow Masterclass UX
  with Christine Vallaure. Mar 18–24
• Jump to all workshops →

9. Accessible UX Research, eBook Now Available For Download 📚

We’ve got exciting news! eBook versions of Accessible UX Research, a new Smashing Book by Michele A. Williams, are now available for download! Which means soon the book will go to the printer. Order the eBook for instant download now or reserve your print copy at the presale price.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the eBook right away.

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).

Editorial

Designing for complex interfaces is challenging. There are plenty of dependencies, entry points, volumes of data, nested filters, bulk operations — and often with a sprinkle of legacy and opinionated stakeholders.

In this newsletter, we look at some of the UX challenges and design patterns to deal with complex navigation, icon labels, modals, toasts — and make them a bit easier to use, and a bit harder to make mistakes with. And if you‘d like to dive deeper, we have a video course and online workshops on just that.

We’re also getting ready for a new round of workshops and SmashingConfs 2026:

• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Feb 16 – Mar 2
• Designing For Complex UIs Masterclass Design
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 3–17
• Building Interactive, Accessible Components with Modern CSS & JS Dev
  with Stephanie Eckles. Mar 5–13
• Figma Workflow Masterclass UX
  with Christine Vallaure. Mar 18–24
• Jump to all workshops →

Sending a lot of positive energy and optimism your way, everyone — and let’s explore interface design patterns in the meantime!

— Vitaly

1. Bulk Upload

Many bulk upload features are lacking, so how can we do better? Drawing on her experience from improving bulk upload in an online recruiting tool, Livinda Christy shares solutions to common issues and challenges. She walks you step by step through the process of creating a hassle-free file import and also offers tips for defending your design decisions in front of stakeholders.

2. Effective Maps UX

What’s to consider when designing a user experience around maps? Michael Gaigg wrote a comprehensive guide to effective maps UX. From selecting the right layout and interacting with the map to dealing with complex data and designing for mobile devices, it highlights practical design patterns, as well as common mistakes and how to avoid them.

3. Icon Labels

When you use icons in an interface, do you usually add text labels? If not, you might want to reconsider your approach. As Christopher Butler points out in his post “In Defense of Text Labels,” even the simplest icons can create ambiguity, slowing down users’ orientation within an interface. By combining text labels and icons, you create clearer affordances than either element could on its own.

4. Top Vs. Side Navigation

Top navigation or side navigation — which is the best choice for your context? Taras Bakusevych compares both to find out where each of them performs best. As he concludes, top navigation uses little space and works well when there aren’t too many navigation items, whereas side navigation is a good fit for products with a large number of navigation links, as it is easily scalable and configurable.

5. Redesigning Complex Navigation

Maybe you’ve been there before: your product grew, and the information architecture struggled to keep pace. Pranava Tandra shares valuable insights and lessons learned from how the Intercom team tackled this challenge and restructured their IA, with clarity becoming the guiding principle behind every design decision.

6. Toast Messages UX

Toast messages gently remind users about a successful event or change of state, without interrupting them from their main task. However, there are also some things we need to watch out for when designing toasts and snackbars. Vitaly summarized what you need to know to avoid common usability issues and make your toast messages effective.

7. Onboarding

How can we create a pleasant, seamless onboarding experience? In her Product Onboarding Playbook, Eleana Gkogka shares tips and best practices to help you offer just the right amount of guidance and support to keep users engaged.

A handy little tool to help you choose the best onboarding methods and components for your feature or service comes from the NewsKit Design System team. It asks you four questions to determine your onboarding strategy.

8. Modal Vs. Page

Let’s say you’re designing a registration flow, and one of the steps requires some more information. Do you add an additional page or use a modal overlay? Ryan Neufeld synthesized guidelines, heuristics, and recommendations into a flowchart that helps you assess which component best suits your project’s needs.

9. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences

That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.

As always, here’s a quick overview:

• Design Patterns For AI Interfaces + video course UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Feb 16 – Mar 2
• Designing For Complex UI Masterclass Design
  with Vitaly Friedman. Mar 3–17
• Building Interactive, Accessible Components with Modern CSS & JS Dev
  with Stephanie Eckles. Mar 5–13
• Figma Workflow Masterclass UX
  with Christine Vallaure. Mar 18–24
• How To Measure UX and Design Impact UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Video course + UX training
• Jump to all workshops →

10. Accessible UX Research, eBook Now Available For Download 📚

We’ve got exciting news! eBook versions of Accessible UX Research, a new Smashing Book by Michele A. Williams, are now available for download! Which means soon the book will go to the printer. Order the eBook for instant download now or reserve your print copy at the presale price.

Accessible UX Research is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Download a free sample (PDF, 2.3MB) or get the eBook right away.

That’s All, Folks!

Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!

This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).