Hello, and welcome! Happy New Year 🎉 and happy lockdown! I hope you are well regardless of the restrictions and all the difficulties.

So many things are happening lately that looks like 2021 is just like 2020 with a different haircut.

I wanted to start the year with this first edition to be a positive one, avoid nagging and moaning about all the things; I’ll use social media for this. Instead, I want to share with you a list of “designer resolutions” I’d like to set for myself for this year.

1. Design is political.

2. Don’t lock your thinking in design norms.

3. The only certainty is change.

4. Avoid “like” and “don’t like” in design reviews.

5. User’s gender is irrelevant.

6. Think beyond the user.

7. Consider if the product is worth the waste.

8. Engage more with the community.

9. Work officeless but avoid loneliness.

10. Keep it up!

Let’s make this an amazing year!

Further reading

🧠 Speaking of New Year’s Resolution, Oliver Burkeman‘s “Wisdom for 2021”includes some nice thoughts. Consider subscribing to his newsletter as well.

📝 Everyone is full of ideas they’re not aware of. You don’t talk about these ideas, even in your own head, because you’ve never put them into words. They’re gut feelings. Intuitions. Like phantom intelligence. This is why I agree with Morgan Housel‘s “Why Everyone Should Write”.

💻 From Xerox, Adobe and Apple, to Flash, WC3, contemporary design tools, and bridging the gap between design and development. Read more about these in “A Brief History of Web Design Tools”.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Certainly, we will not be on lockdown forever, but we are all finding new ways to live. Is your empathy muscle in tune with the new realities your customers and users are facing? 2021 could not be the best year to turn into one of the best empathy tools a team can use to do that: Personas. Jesús R’s “2021: The year to revisit Personas” is a great read on the matter.

🖊 Design sprints have become enormously popular. In 2021, this will not change. They are a staple offering for all design agencies and in-house design teams. A big part of the design sprint’s success is due to its elegant and easy-to-understand format. That’s exactly what design needed. If you’re interested, you’ll love Alen Faljic’s “Strategy Design Sprint” guide.

🔮 How is User Experience Design going to change as a profession by 2030? Of course, no one can say – and civilization could come end in 🔥, 💣 or 🌊 by then. The Field of UX Design by 2030 is a good place to start thinking about it.