📑INTERESTING UX READS

• Stuck on your UX portfolio? Try the Text-first approach (article link)

Have you heard of SOS? In my world, it means shiny object syndrome. SOS strikes the hearts of every designer working on her portfolio - tweaking colors,  switching themes, perfecting the visuals.

These trivial details often stop designers from making progress or even starting, because there seems like a million things to do. In truth, these shiny objects distract from the most important thing: writing the damn case study. In the Text-First portfolio, I show you how to do just that, with an example outline and structure you can use. 

• Chat about content strategy (podcast link)

I had the pleasure of chatting with Yuval, the founder of UX Writing Hub, about content strategy. This conversation formalized a lot of my thoughts on how CS is part of UX ("content experience!"), and what working as a content strategist at a larger enterprise is like.

Give it a listen and let me know what you think. 

• 2 years later, how's Shopify's design system holding up? (article link)

If you want to nerd out to design systems, Shopify's UX team is at the bleeding edge of this practice. Two years ago, they introduced Polaris to the public, showing off extensive documentation of their style guide, components, and patterns.

While Polaris helped them build features and products faster, it also brought along unexpected problems, such as over-reliance on the system (should the office sofa be purple too?) and needing to maintain and engagement their development community around the thing they built.

💩BAD UX EXAMPLE
Discount store discounts UX
A friend recommended that AliExpress is the place to shop for hard-to-find-yet-cheap items. Think light up shoes or one-time use whacky costumes. So I visited AliExpress and found some strange UX.

1. The search box randomly generates a query for you, like "sexy bra" (that was my first result) and "shower head." Talk about hijacking user intent. 



2. Ironically, entering a search or selecting a category forces a log-in to see results. In my opinion this is terrible for their linking strategy/SEO to gate their product pages.   

3. The toolbar on the right is icon-based, and requires a hover to see the name of each item. However, these categories (e.g. "Home and Garden") allow you to browse some product pages without logging in. 

Overall, I find AliExpress a weird and inconsistent experience. (Maybe it works for the Chinese audience though.) This site is ripe for UX designer to do a case study on. 

🌎 UX CONFERENCE
RightsCon, a conference for digital rights
If you sometimes feel jaded about the state of technology, reading about RightsCon might un-jade you a bit.

Since 2011, RightsCon has been the premier "event on human rights in the digital age." Lots of rights-focused projects launch, or find their roots at RightsCon, such as The Playbook for Gender Equality in the Digital Age and the Toronto declaration on non-discrimination in machine learning.

RightsCon recently wrapped up their annual event in Tunisia; here's a summary of the digital rights topics they covered. Check them out if you're interested in the ethical implications of technology.

💎UX TOOL HIGHLIGHT
Voices by Mozilla (link)
Got a spare 30 gb of storage and an interesting in conversational design / voice UI? Mozilla has created a , an extensive voice dataset called Common Voice that includes almost 40,000 voices in mp3 format across 28 languages. 

I believe in the internet again when I see incredible works like this. And Mozilla makes it easy to give back - you can listen to voices and help validate them here.

📖 UX COURSE RECOMMENDATION
Speaking of Voice UI, there's a course for that

Voice UI and conversational interfaces are growing in popularity, and enterprising designers (or those looking to break into the field) are noticing. Out of all my searches, there's no better beginner class than Introduction to Voice Interface Design, by Jana Bergant: 


This course covers how to design for voice interfaces and how to design conversations using chatbots. If you want to be the hit at the next UX party (nerds!), this fun and practical course will onramp you to the exciting world of conversational design. 

> Read my full list of recommended UX courses

Iubenda is a legal tech company looking for a  UX Designer to design software that help businesses manage international privacy laws. The company is based in Italy, so they're probably keen on someone EU based. The team is self funded and experiencing steady growth, making this a top remote UX job. 

UWorld is one of the biggest test prep companies for medical school exams (think USMLE). They're have a 6 month contract for a remote UX Designer to create online learning products. If you hated taking tests, have your revenge and design them instead. 

I constantly cite Baymard, which is the undisputed UX research company for eCommerce. They're looking for a remote UI Designer to help them design their site, cusotmer portal, and UX reports that clients will end up reading to improve their UX. A little meta, eh? 

Conifer, a division of Tenet Health, helps healthcare groups and companies "transition from volume to value-based care" which, if true, is a pretty awesome mission. They need a UI Designer who can work independently and design clean, beautiful apps.

Headway is a newer digital agency, which is why I'm surprised at its amazing benefits package (22 days of PTO, available from start). These goodies don't come without hard work - they vet their applicants rigorously, and the  Senior Product Designer role is no exception.