The five best design links, every weekday

Tuesday12/30

1

smashingmagazine.com

How to design for (and with) Deaf people

Practical UX guidelines to keep in mind for 466 million people who experience hearing loss.

2

world.hey.com

Back to the starting line

Programming with AI is still in its infancy, and yet it has already redefined what programming will be about in the immediate future.

3

youtube.com

Why are people starting to sound like ChatGPT?

Algorithms and AI don't just show us reality — they warp it in ways that benefit platforms built to exploit people for profit.

4

uxdesign.cc

What I learned from Don Norman

Reflections on the 2025 DNDA Summit and Don Norman’s vision for the next era of design, community, and artificiality.

5

balajmarius.com

Vibe coding a bookshelf with Claude Code

A side project that went viral on Hacker News recently.

The Sidebar Newsletter

5 Design Links in Your Inbox Every Weekday

Monday12/29

1

alearningaday.blog

Fall in love with your new reality

Sometimes our role in life isn’t to judge something—it is to figure out how to fall in love with it.

2

maurycyz.com

What an unprocessed photo looks like

Different renditions of the same data.

3

thegreatestbooks.org

The greatest nonfiction books of all time

An aggregate of 715 'best of' book lists to form a definitive guide to the world's most acclaimed books.

4

miguelcarranza.es

My role as a founder CTO

If a normal year as a startup founder already feels like four or five regular years, this one felt closer to a full decade.

5

implications.com

12 outlooks for the future: 2026+

From talent arbitrage and “proof of craft” to hardware moats, ambient listening, homegrown software, and the end of waste.

Friday12/26

1

seangoedecke.com

Nobody knows how large software products work

Sometimes there are zero people at the organization who can answer complex questions about how the product works.

2

blog.khanacademy.org

Rebuilding graphs for accessibility

How Khan Academy rebuilt its graphing tools to be accessible for all learners—including those using screen readers, keyboards, and assistive tech.

3

medium.com

The designer’s playbook for AI products

Research, case studies, and experiments to figure out what actually works when it comes to AI.

4

wordstotime.com

Convert words to time

Quickly convert the number of words in a talk, presentation, or speech to how many minutes it will take to read.

5

laike9m.com

Avoid mini-frameworks

One pattern comes along again and again, causing endless pain for developers, that is, creating mini-frameworks.

Thursday12/25

1

creativeboom.com

Six surprising illustration trends for 2026

Creative Boom asked a selection of artists and their representatives to cast their minds ahead and visualize what’s in store for the next 12 months.

2

wallpaper.com

Can design make you healthier?

Our built environment can have a direct impact on physical and mental wellbeing. How are architects creating spaces that support health and humanity?

3

piccalil.li

Programming principles for self taught front-end developers

The majority of us are a bunch of self taught people with rather spotty knowledge and that’s fine. What's missing?

4

medienbaecker.com

Dialog view transitions

Combining view transitions and the dialog element—possible?

5

thomwolf.substack.com

What jobs are made of

Judgment, agency, and the limits of AI benchmarks.

Wednesday12/24

1

uxdesign.cc

A product manager’s 48 reflections on 2025

The year when AI stopped feeling like just a tool and started to feel more like a mirror.

2

thecreativeindependent.com

Managing creative highs and lows

Musician Carlyn Bezic discusses the power of an alter-ego, deriving liberation from near-death experiences, and anticipating limitations.

3

lucumr.pocoo.org

A year of vibes

A personal recap of 2025 and a year of a new style of engineering.

4

vale.rocks

You can’t opt-out of accessibility

Shiny exclusion all the way down.

5

thealgorithmicbridge.com

The shape of artificial intelligence

They say the shape of things only becomes legible at a distance.

Tuesday12/23

1

linear.app

Design is more than code

Design as a search, not a pipeline. How tools carry opinions, and how those opinions shape what feels “reasonable” to attempt.

2

activisthandbook.org

Activist handbook

Learn how to become a social activist, plan a political campaign strategy, and start a grassroots movement.

3

the-brandidentity.com

Case study: Maple’s voice AI research

HEX builds a sound wave typography system for Maple’s voice AI research.

4

libraryoftime.xyz

Library of time

All of the unique ways different people chose to satisfy one of humanity's most universal curiosities.

5

epochai.substack.com

The changing drivers of LLM adoption

Public data as well as our original polling suggest LLM adoption is roughly on trend, but the underlying drivers are shifting.

Monday12/22

1

bit.ly

Big Files, Beautiful Delivery—50% Off ForeverSponsored

Stop fighting email limits. Send big files with FileSplash and showcase your brand on every delivery. Use code SIDEBAR50 for 50% off.

2

anildash.com

They have to be able to talk about us without us

Is it simply impossible to effectively tell a story at scale if you don’t have massive resources?

3

figma.com

Hard problems are still hard

Figma designer–turned–product manager Nikolas Klein worked on building prototyping tools for seven years. Then AI changed the game.

4

varchive.ai

V-archive

Varchive is a showcase of AI-assisted builds, inspiration, and how-tos. Itself assisted by AI.

5

smashingmagazine.com

How to measure the impact of features

A simple, repeatable, and meaningful UX metric designed specifically to track the performance of product features.

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