September 22, 2026 Smashing Newsletter: Issue #577
This newsletter issue was sent out to 174,670 subscribers on Tuesday, September 22, 2026.
Editorial
Design patterns are often perceived as off-the-shelf solutions, but they are a great conversation starter to avoid starting from scratch every single time. In this newsletter, we look at just that — from contextual menus and nested tables to patterns for designing for mental health.
And if you’d like to take some of those conversations further, we have plenty coming up! There are new upcoming online workshops, including two happening this week:
- Figma Workflow Masterclass Design
with Christine Vallaure. Sep 23–29 - Live Accessibility Testing Free!
with Manuel Matuzović. Sep 24
There are more workshops planned throughout October, covering many practical topics to help you sharpen your skills, explore new approaches and learn with designers:
- Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
with Miriam Suzanne. Oct 1–15 - Designing Websites That Convert UX
with Paul Boag. Oct 7 - Accessible Frontend Patterns Dev
with Manuel Matuzović. Oct 12 – Nov 2 - How To Measure UX And Design Impact UX
with Vitaly Friedman. Oct 20 – Nov 3 - Building Modern HTML Emails Dev
with Rémi Parmentier. Oct 26 –29 - Deep Dive On Accessibility Testing Dev
with Manuel Matuzović. Nov 9–23 - Design Patterns For AI Interfaces + video course UX
with Vitaly Friedman. Nov 16–24 - AI-Ready Design Systems UX
with Christine Vallaure. Nov 30–Dec 4 - Jump to all workshops →
We hope to see you there!
— Vitaly
1. Voice AI UX Patterns
From avatar calls to voice-augmented chat, voice-to-text dictation, and co-pilot transcripts, AI has unlocked new use cases and interaction patterns for voice. Sharang Sharma explores emerging Voice AI UX patterns, the perceived role of the AI agent within each, and the key design decisions and limitations that shape them.
For more AI patterns, experiments, ideas, and tools, also be sure to check out Sharang’s site AgenticPath.
2. Design Patterns For Mental Health
Mental health and wellbeing apps have seen a boom in recent years. If you’re involved in developing, designing, or delivering mental health products or services, the Mental Health Patterns Library is for you. Designed to encourage best practices in the field, it shares principles, patterns, and examples that help you ensure your mental health digital services work for people.
3. Better Context Menus
Most web and desktop-based applications offer context menus, i.e., the “pop-up” menu when you right-click with your mouse. The team at Linear added an invisible detail to their context menu that makes the interaction faster and more intuitive: a React component creates a safe area where the mouse can move along the shortest path without triggering the sub-menu to close. Andreas Eldh explains in detail how it works.
A different solution to the problem comes from Costa Alexoglou. He uses SVG and tracking of the user’s mouse position to prevent the menu from closing inadvertently.
4. Visualizing Systems Behind Designs
Every design decision has a ripple effect in the ecosystem we operate in, but we are often so focused on our own product domain that we miss the bigger picture. Justin Farrugia shares a collection of system diagramming tools that enable you to zoom out and see how things connect. Fantastic little helpers to align viewpoints, understand causality, generate options, and simulate design decisions.
5. User-Friendly Nested Tables
Nested tables are often seen as messy and overwhelming. However, if done right, they can actually help users make sense of complex information, without jumping between screens. Damilola Bamgbelu wrote a practical step-by-step guide to designing nested tables that support scanning and enable fast decisions.
6. Bulk Upload UX
Many bulk upload features are lacking, so how can we do better? Drawing on her experience from improving bulk upload in an online recruiting tool, Livinda Christy shares solutions to common issues and challenges. She walks you step by step through the process of creating a hassle-free file import and shares tips for defending your design decisions in front of stakeholders.
7. 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.
8. 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:
- Figma Workflow Masterclass Design
with Christine Vallaure. Sep 23–29 - Live Accessibility Testing Free
with Manuel Matuzović. Sep 24 - Cascading Style Systems: Resilient & Maintainable CSS Dev
with Miriam Suzanne. Oct 1–15 - Designing Websites That Convert UX
with Paul Boag. Oct 7 - Accessible Frontend Patterns Dev
with Manuel Matuzović. Oct 12 – Nov 2 - How To Measure UX And Design Impact UX
with Vitaly Friedman. Oct 20 – Nov 3 - Building Modern HTML Emails Dev
with Rémi Parmentier. Oct 26 –29 - Deep Dive On Accessibility Testing Dev
with Manuel Matuzović. Nov 9–23 - Design Patterns For AI Interfaces + video course UX
with Vitaly Friedman. Nov 16–24 - 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).
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