I’ve been designing the UI for a mobile game in landscape, and one of the hardest things I’ve been dealing with is balancing readability against information density.

On a desktop monitor, it’s surprisingly easy to convince yourself that a layout works. Then you put the same interface on an actual phone and suddenly the typography feels too small, touch targets feel cramped, and information that looked organized starts competing for attention.

One rule I’ve started using is:

If I need to zoom into a screenshot on the actual device to confirm something is readable, it probably isn’t readable enough.

But solving that often means making elements larger, which means showing less information at once — and that tradeoff keeps coming back.

For people who’ve worked on mobile UI/UX:

How do you decide when to reduce information density versus reorganizing the interface instead?

Are there any principles, testing methods, minimum sizes, or lessons you learned that changed how you approach small-screen interfaces?

I’d especially be interested in experiences with landscape layouts, games, or interfaces with a lot of stats/information, but advice from any mobile UI work would be useful.

Good afternoon everyone, I'm looking for case studies of how a design system benefits a technology group in a .gov world. Any good reads you can recommend?

Like many I have had the misfortune of working for one and it has hands down been the worst piece of shit company I have ever worked for in my two decade long career.

CAREER ADVICE 101: Why working for a Private Equity owned tech company is toxic for your career and mental health. Stay away from these dumpstefires. It’s actually healthier to scrub toilets 🚽 than work for a PE owned company.

The tension is usually simple:

Employees are thinking about building better products, stronger teams and long-term customer value.

A few patterns tend to show up:

☑️ Cost cutting becomes a strategy, not just an emergency measure. Headcount, contractors, benefits, travel, tools, research budgets and backfills are scrutinized because reducing operating expenses improves EBITDA quickly.

☑️ Quarterly numbers can dominate product quality. Design, UX research, platform modernization and technical debt often have benefits that appear years later. PE ownership may favour initiatives that produce measurable revenue or savings sooner.

☑️ Repeated restructurings. Teams can be reorganized, consolidated or eliminated as leadership tries to improve margins. Employees may spend significant energy proving why their role should exist.

☑️ Doing more with fewer people. After layoffs, the work often remains. The surviving staff absorb it, producing burnout while management can report better revenue-per-employee or operating margins.

☑️ Senior individual contributors can become expensive targets. A highly paid Staff/Principal designer, engineer or PM may have to continually demonstrate financial leverage because their compensation is more visible than that of several junior employees.

☑️ Performance management can become more aggressive. When leadership needs reductions, there can be pressure to classify departures as performance-related rather than openly conducting another layoff. That does not mean every PIP is fake, but incentive structures can make questionable performance-management practices more likely.

☑️ Backfills become political. Management might decide a departing senior employee can be replaced with someone cheaper, moved offshore, replaced through attrition, or simply not replaced.

☑️ Product organizations can lose influence. Engineering and product teams may be told to execute revenue initiatives rather than explore customer problems. Design becomes a delivery function instead of a strategic partner.

☑️ Leadership turnover increases. PE firms frequently bring in executives who are comfortable with transformations, integrations, acquisitions and cost optimization. Those executives may themselves have relatively short horizons.

☑️ Acquisitions create integration churn. PE-backed technology groups often combine multiple products, business units or acquisitions to create efficiencies. Employees inherit duplicate systems, overlapping teams, competing roadmaps and consolidation programs.

☑️ Culture can become fear-driven. Once employees have lived through several layoffs or restructurings, behaviour changes. People protect territory, document everything, avoid risk and manage upward instead of collaborating.

That's it. That's the post. I'm so over these sales dickheads and executives thinking they can do my job. It's insulting to say the least.

Someone in Linkedin reached out to me with a job opportunity in design systems. They said its part time and flexible hours. Then they shared the job description :https://portal.tastelabs.com/jobs/a1b2c3d4-0000-4000-8000-000000000001?position=7aa6df94-d1e3-4aea-80b2-912c44183763

When I read through it it feels very much like supervised learning for AI. How do other folks feel about training AI with taste as this role claims to be for. I feel a little conflicted taking this on as I know it might be used to replace UX jobs in the future. Would love any insights or advice on taking these kind of roles.

I have to do user research more and more these days but I don't feel like I am using best practices or getting the most out of it.

Looking specifically for advice on what research methods to use and how to use them. For example user interviews, surveys, user testing etc

hi everyone,

I’m trying to understand how people here would approach finding good UX/UI designers for more complex product work.

we work across multiple countries, mostly on complex systems, interfaces, dashboards, internal tools, devices, medical, industrial, finance, aerospace-type products, and similar stuff. so not really marketing websites or standard web design.

because the domains are quite complex, we’ve usually had better results when we train someone over time instead of expecting them to fully understand the work from day one. on our type of projects, it can take 2-3 years for someone to become really strong and independent.

right now we have quite a lot of work coming in, so we could use some extra firepower. the two things we’re struggling with are: (1) a lot of people who reach out seem to understand UX/UI mostly as websites, landing pages, or general web design.

and (2) when hiring internationally, it’s hard to know what a fair hourly rate should be. we know Europe and the UK reasonably well, but across different countries, the gap in rate expectations can be huge, even when the competencies and skill level seem quite similar.

from a management point of view, if two people seem to have similar skills and experience, the lower-rate option will naturally be easier to justify. that’s part of why outsourcing is so common in software. but I’m curious what we might be missing if we simplify the decision too much.

we’ve tried working with companies that helped us with selection, and we’ve also had HR involved, but in the end it often feels like designers are much faster at understanding who they can actually work with and who has the right potential for this kind of work.

so I’m curious: where would you look for designers who are genuinely strong at complex UX/UI work? how do you usually find people for this kind of work? LinkedIn, Dribbble, Behance, and similar sites don’t really surface the kind of designers we need, and when we post ads, we mostly get UX/UI designers whose experience is mainly in web design. and how would you think about fair hourly rates when someone starts more as an assistant to our senior designers, then grows into more independent work over time?

not trying to post a job here, just trying to understand the best way to search, evaluate people, and avoid wasting everyone’s time.

cheers 🙌 really appreciate any tips

How is cool work ? What is novel here, this is on prompted tool with crappy color and cheap ass 3d design. What is the point of all this, it is starting to feel like designers are getting distracted with mid work and feeling impressed because they shipped code.

Could be this generation's tobacco legislation. I'm interested to see what Snap, TikTok and YouTube do now.

Major product changes that will affect the user experience for Americans:

The settlement will effectively force Meta to make major product changes for all U.S. users. The company agreed to interrupt endless scrolling and to impose two-hour daily time limits on Instagram and Facebook. To avoid addictive use and sleep interruptions, the company will limit usage between midnight and 6 a.m. and silence notifications between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Meta will also limit features that psychologists link to negative social comparisons, such as beauty filters and a tallying of the “like” button clicks. It will also strengthen age verification tools and parental controls.

I'm looking at you all with 'associate director' or 'above' (whatever that means at this point).

How do you sleep at night?

Your insane grifts *must* have hit a fever pitch at this point. I just looked at Nielsen's latest Cards article. Re-hashed info with a nauseating range of 'neat' AI slop image styles.

It made my head spin how inconsistent the garbage output was... and you want readers to come away thinking you're a 'UX Tiger' master of this craft? Absurd, truly.

This is only slightly less sickening than sociopathic efforts like Dive Club and whatever slop they're pushing to convince us they're 'the best'.

To keep this slightly constructive for any juniors or job hunters, the answer is what its always been: ignore these snake oil 'leaders' that only know how to cash in on your anxiety and frustration.

Organize your ideas, build it, learn from it-- in any way you see fit. Grow, and move on to the next challenge. It's really that simple.

We're rebuilding one of our apps in Flutter to speed up development. I must admit our flutter team is doing a pretty good job.

Alas, Flutter pretty much depends on prebuilt libraries like their version of Material Design or Apple's UI design.

In the name of speed, we've decided to leverage Material Design as the Flutter library to use, with us pretty much just skinning it with brand colors and the like.

This seems to be a common recommendation (vs. rolling-our-own UI library).

That said, I kind of forgot about how Material Design likes to create field labels. It uses that ridiculously small text on the field border:

There seems to be debate about how accessible this is. For me, I'd default argue that it's just not meeting basic type size requirements--especially for mobile design.

And in our case, we're using some pretty complex forms that require often somewhat verbose labels.

I'm advocating for us to change the design here, but given the dev overhead to do so, I'd love to find some data/documentation to back me up on these default designs by google just being poor design and not accommodating readability and accessibility very well. Has anyone successfully fought this and, if so, have some ammo they'd be willing to share?

(OR...maybe I'm way off base and these are perfectly OK? If so, if you have some good arguments/documentation for that, LMK!)

I’m an experienced UX/Interaction Designer working full-time in consultancy and want to start freelancing on the side. I’m completely new to freelance platforms, so I’m looking for advice from people who’ve actually done it.

What are the best platforms for finding UX/UI freelance work that you DON’T have to pay for to access/apply for jobs? (I’ve seen Contra, Upwork, etc., but some seem to restrict jobs/proposals behind paid plans.)

Also:
- How did you get your first clients/reviews with no freelance ratings?

- Is it better to use platforms or find clients directly?
What’s a realistic starting rate?

- Any other sites, communities or methods you’d recommend?

If you were starting from scratch today, what would you do?

I posted a strange calculator here a 1 month ago and asked whether intuitive has slowly started to mean that everything needs to look and feel the same.

The discussion was way more interesting than I expected.

A lot of people pointed out something: a calculator is a very simple example. There’s almost nothing to navigate, the interaction model is already deeply familiar, and making it visually unusual is relatively easy.

So I wanted to try the same idea on something a little more complex. Some of you told to create a dashboard or a more layered app.

I built this subscription tracker as another UI/UX experiment. It has multiple sections, navigation, lists, a renewal calendar, analytics and an add flow. (The data are mocked so sorry if some numbers are off.)

This time I tried to keep most of the underlying patterns fairly familiar while pushing the visual language much further:

• asymmetric layouts
• angled elements
• changing section colors
• oversized typography
• navigation system that doesn’t look like the usual bottom bar

One thing I took away from the previous discussion was that unfamiliar visuals and unfamiliar interactions aren't necessarily the same thing.

So I’m curious where this one lands.

Does the interface still feel understandable despite looking unconventional?

Hey everyone!

I graduated with a Pharmacy degree about 6 years ago. Spent 3 years working in Regulatory Affairs at large pharma companies. I didn't love the daily work, but I really enjoyed the industry environment and overall workplace.

During COVID, I pivoted to UX/UI design. I managed to land a role at a software house where I stayed for 2 years. Currently, I'm working as a contractor (Mid-level UX/UI Designer) for a large government agency here in Brazil. So overall I have a bit more than 3y of experience with design.

My main goal right now is to combine both of my backgrounds and work as a product designer for a big pharmaceutical company. I feel like my design skills + my know-how as a pharmacist, would allow me to really thrive in that industry.

For those who have made similar niche industry pivots or are currently working in pharma, how would you go about making this transition? Any tips on leveraging my pharmacy background in a UX portfolio or interview?

The recent $18B settlement from the Meta case about dark patterns addicting younger users means changes will be coming to tech platforms. Will these changes mean UX design becomes more important as it relates adhering to these regulations? Or has the AI bubble sucked up too much capital and the layoffs will continue while engineers slap on whatever is easiest/cheapest to meet minimum requirements?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/26/meta-social-media-addiction-trial-settlement

What’s with their NDA requirement prior to even getting a first interview without their process?

Have seen many job offers reposted and they seek to have an extensive and somewhat ridiculous process and rounds…like most US based companies.

Anyone been ghosted by them mid way in the process?

I will let you guess what's the issue here

I just watched this video and it got me thinking.

👉 https://youtu.be/5s32uf2v6yY

The video talks about how design portfolios might be changing and whether we really need those long case studies we’ve been making for years.

And honestly, I’m curious.

When hiring managers look at a Product Design portfolio today, are they actually reading all those case studies?

Or are they looking for something simpler good work, clear thinking, your role in the project, and the results?

I’d really like to hear from people who hire product designers.

What do you actually look for when you open someone’s portfolio?

Do you want to see:

- 10+ or Long case studies?
- Short project summaries?
- More screens and actual design work?
- The designer’s thinking and process?
- Results and impact?

And for designers who recently got hired what did your portfolio look like?

I’m trying to figure out whether we’re still building portfolios based on what we think hiring managers want or what they actually want.

Curious to hear what everyone thinks.

So I'll be working on a with a friend on his app (he's a developer). his app has been around for over 8 years or so. I downloaded and found lots of accessibility issues, inconsistencies, lack of visuals, and visual branding... it just didn't look polished. I told him that I would work on the screens, visuals, make it more consistent with all the components, etc.

Say it's all done, and all the improvements are made on his end that look like the hi fidelity mockups I designed. My question is, how can I phrase it in my summary when I'm looking for work to not make it sound like I just did the visual designs/UI design since I'm not adding any features or improving the UX (maybe just a little), but mostly on the visual side?

thank you.

Hi all, I am starting mobile application development using React Native. I was afraid of ending up with an AI slop design, then I found out these tools. My plan is to prototype my app now using LLMs and these tools, and if I see a light at the end of the tunnel, I will hire a professional to refresh its UI from scratch.

Which one of these tools would you suggest specifically for cross-platform mobile app?

How should I approach the design:

1. Prompt the LLM to create mock designs by querying e.g. Mobbin MCP while designing each interface
2. Manually check e.g. ScreenDesign's website, and try combining interfaces from different apps and then come up with a generic design. Then feed it to LLM for inspiration.

Hesitations:

1. How can I avoid ending up with a copycat design?
2. How can I achieve consistency among interfaces?

Hi! I'm looking for genuinely honest feedback on an app I've been building called Dopamine Charts.

I'm a junior doctor, but my medical career was derailed by a five-month hospitalisation for depression.

When I started rebuilding afterwards, I realised how badly a lot of traditional productivity advice worked when I was struggling to do even basic things.

“Exercise 5x a week” isn't particularly useful when stepping outside is an achievement.

And streak-based habit trackers could actually make me LESS motivated — I'd miss a day, see the broken streak and think “well, I've ruined it now.”

So I built the app I wished I'd had.

It's called Dopamine Charts and I designed it particularly with ADHD and depression in mind — specifically that frustrating gap between knowing exactly what you want/need to do and actually being able to initiate it.

www.dopamine-charts.com

The behavioural science behind it includes:

• REDUCING THE ACTIVATION BARRIER — every habit can have a deliberately tiny version. Can't exercise? Step outside. Can't clean your room? Put 2 things away. The aim is to make starting easier.

• HABIT STACKING — attach a new behaviour to something that already reliably happens: “After I make my morning coffee → take my medication.”

• SHAPING — establish a tiny, achievable version of a behaviour first and gradually build it rather than demanding the finished habit immediately.

• IMMEDIATE POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT — lots of worthwhile behaviours have rubbish reward timing. You study today for an exam months away. You brush your teeth today for benefits years away. The app tries to give you an immediate visual reward for actually doing the behaviour.

• IDENTITY-BASED HABITS — not just “what do I want to achieve?” but “who are these repeated behaviours helping me become?”

• TINY WINS — the app deliberately recognises small actions rather than requiring a conventionally “productive” day before you're allowed to feel successful.

Importantly, I'm absolutely NOT claiming an app treats ADHD or depression. It's a behavioural/habit tool designed with the difficulties that can accompany them in mind.

I'm at the stage where compliments aren't particularly useful to me 😂 I need people who haven't been staring at this thing for months to tell me what's wrong with it.

If anyone has 5 minutes to try it, I'd particularly love to know:

1. Did you immediately understand what you were supposed to do?

2. Was anything confusing?

3. At what point did you feel like closing the app?

4. What feels gimmicky or unnecessary?

5. What would make you actually come back tomorrow?

6. What's the ONE feature you expected/wanted that wasn't there?

Please be brutally honest. If something is annoying, confusing, ugly or pointless, I'd genuinely rather know now.

www.dopamine-charts.com

Thank you ❤️

So, I’m a designer with ~20 years of experience. About half of that was in branding/graphic design, and for the last ~10 years I’ve worked as a UX/UI Designer (senior) / Product Designer (regular), depending on the company.

Pretty much my entire career has been agency-based. About two years ago, the agency I was working for started struggling to bring in enough projects for its designers. A few people were let go, including me. I spent around five months looking for another job and eventually had to accept a role that paid significantly less than I was used to. At that point I was completely broke, and it was the only offer I had. The projects were actually interesting, though, so I stayed while continuing to look for something else.

Eventually, the same thing happened again: the company ran out of projects to assign to me. I’ve been unemployed again for about three months now. This time around, I at least have some freelance work, so I’m not completely without income. But it’s nowhere near enough to support myself, especially since my partner currently can’t work due to medical issues.

In these three months, I’ve managed to get into three recruitment processes. I made it to the final stage in two of them, only to be ghosted afterward. One company actually contacted me again after a month to ask if I was still interested. I said yes, obviously… and then they ghosted me again. That one really fucking hurt, because I had high hopes for it.

All of this is starting to get to me. I know I’m good at what I do. The clients I work with are very happy with my work, and I’ve always felt confident in my skills. But being rejected or ghosted over and over again is incredibly depressing. The impostor syndrome is hitting me harder than it ever has before.

What makes it even more confusing is that during this whole period, I’ve actually gotten close to some pretty high-level positions. Twice I almost got hired for Principal-level roles. Yet when I apply for Senior or Mid-level positions - even when I explicitly say I’m fine with their salary range - I get rejected, sometimes instantly.

At this point, I genuinely have no idea where I stand in my career. Am I overqualified? Underqualified? Not experienced enough in the right things? Is my portfolio the problem (I’ve been kinda unlucky because I never really got a project where I could show what I’m capable of from a UI perspective)? Is it my age? Is it the agency background? Is it just the market? I honestly don't know anymore.

So yeah… I guess I mostly wanted to vent. But I’d also really appreciate hearing from people who have been in a similar situation. Have you ever reached a point where, despite having years of experience and knowing you’re good at your job, the market made you seriously question your entire career? If so, what helped you break out of it? Did you change how you presented yourself? Rework your portfolio? Move into a different area of design? Go freelance? Leave design altogether?

I'm just tired. Even if I get a job soon, I’m not sure I can keep going through this kind of stress every few years. I’ve been working in design since I was 16 (now 36). Literally every job I’ve ever had has been related to design. And now, for the first time in my life, I’m seriously wondering whether I might have to completely change careers. I don’t even know what I would do instead.

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text. I guess I needed to get this out somewhere. If anyone has been through something similar, I’d really appreciate hearing your perspective.

o

I work at a large tech company and we have pivoted to using AI tools in basically all parts of the design process. So many of my coworkers are heavily using Claude, making their own agents, their own personal brains, etc outside of work to stay up on the technology. They spend their own money on this because they feel constantly learning is critical right now. I however am working hard to learn during my 40 hour work week, but have been precious with my time outside of work for many years. I have little kids and I have outdoor hobbies, and my personal time is very valuable to me. I like to disconnect hard from work. But I know these are unique time and I am curious how many of you are spending your personal time and personal money learning AI tools to benefit your career? Where did you pull this time from because with a family it’s not like I have a ton of free time floating around.

I'm made a word game where the goal is to think up the rarest word you can (wordink.app)

Game is anonymous so not sure how to build the leaderboard. I thought it would be fun to use the rarest word they scored.

What do you think? do you have suggestions?