July 21, 2026 Smashing Newsletter: Issue #568

Editorial

How do people think? How do we make decisions? How quick are we to jump to assumptions? And how do we prevent cognitive biases from getting in the way? In this newsletter, we dive into just that — a beautiful cross-over between UX, psychology and human behavior.

We do have online workshops on UX and front-end coming up — on design systems, accessibility, Figma, CSS, and enterprise UX.

• Spotting Accessibility Issues Early Free
  with Stéphanie Walter. Sep 1
• 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
• Interface Design Patterns Live UX Training UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 11 – Oct 12
• Figma MCP Masterclass Design
  with Christine Vallaure. Sep 14
• Accessibility For Designers UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Sep 21–29
• Figma Workflow Masterclass Design
  with Christine Vallaure. Sep 23–29
• Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
  with Miriam Suzanne. Oct 1–15
• Jump to all workshops →

Friendly reminder: SmashingConf Freiburg 2026 🇩🇪 takes place this September, bringing together designers and engineers for 4 inspiring days of talks and workshops.

With two conference days, hands-on workshops, and plenty of opportunities to connect. You’ll leave with fresh ideas, new skills, and hopefully incredible new friends! Get your ticket →

Now let’s dive deep into good ol’ UX!

— Vitaly

1. Emotions Explorer

We often think about emotions being static and isolated. But emotions often exist in relationship with other emotions, and they evolve over time. We can be sad and hopeful at the same time. We can be nervous but also very excited ahead of a big challenge.

Emotion Explorer is a helpful little tool to explore emotions and improve our emotional literacy — how we speak of and express our emotions, what exactly we mean beyond “fine”, “OK” and “sad”. With 100 emotions plotted on a grid, and grouped into families. A neat vocabulary to better understand what another person is going through, and help them articulate their emotions in a way that we can better understand, and perhaps even help.

2. Design Psychology

We often speak about cognitive biases and behavioral patterns, but not too much about how they apply to product designers who shape the UX of the product. Product Design Psychology is a wonderful free book on how people think, judge, trust, remember, and make decisions — but also how UI mechanics shape perception and behavior and how the system you work inside shapes what gets shipped. Neatly and kindly put together by Wouter de Bres.

A very refreshing, approachable and practical read — to understand the minds you’re designing for and the mind you’re designing with. Free for everyone — no strings attached! You can also support Wouter for publishing the book, and get an eBook and printed version soon.

3. Nudges, Biases, Heuristics And AI Phenomena

Nudges and Biases For AI is a fantastic set of 43 field cards organized into heuristics (shortcuts), biases (systematic errors), nudges (design responses) and AI phenomena (new cognitive effects) — a working reference with examples for designers, researchers and product builders. Put together by Sudha Broslawsky.

Each card includes notes and design guidelines to keep in mind in the age of AI — especially when trust and confidence are low, and there is little positive perception of AI, especially with newer generations (and for good reasons). A neat little helper to keep close.

4. The Cognitive Biases Gap (Cards)

In large organizations, well-intended initiatives often produce short-term improvements that eventually get offset by negative consequences of that initiative. What looks like bias is often a rational response to incentives and constraints, and to make changes, we must be aware of these responses.

The Cognitive Bias Gap is a lovely free tool that helps identify biases and raise questions to ask, and patterns to watch out for — to make a sustainable change that makes an impact. A useful reference to keep nearby, neatly put together by Robert Meza.

5. Psychology Insights Cookbook

Do you apply behavioral science to your design files? This may sound like a random question, but it really isn’t. We can document why certain design decisions are expected to influence user behavior, using established findings from psychology and behavioral economics. Meet Coglode Cookbook, built for product designers and UX teams.

On top of that, Coglode’s Figma library connects behavioral insights and demonstrates how to use them to solve problems. You can use the free Figma design system to help you apply behavioral science directly inside your design files. The toolkit contains 50+ behavioral science “Nuggets” that are all worth checking out! (il)

6. 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.

7. 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:

• Spotting Accessibility Issues Early Free
  with Stéphanie Walter. Sep 1
• 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
• Interface Design Patterns Live UX Training UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Sep 11 – Oct 12
• Figma MCP Masterclass Design
  with Christine Vallaure. Sep 14
• Accessibility For Designers UX
  with Stéphanie Walter. Sep 21–29
• Figma Workflow Masterclass Design
  with Christine Vallaure. Sep 23–29
• Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
  with Miriam Suzanne. Oct 1–15
• How To Measure UX and Design Impact UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Video course + live workshop
• Design Patterns For AI Products in 2026 UX
  with Vitaly Friedman. Video course + live workshop
• 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).