It’s midnight. You’re deep in a client project and just can't figure out why the hover animation you’ve created isn't working as expected. Turns out your coding skills are a little more rusty than you remember. A quick refresh with some online coding classes can help. Not to worry—we’ve got you. Here, we put together a list of the best online coding courses for professional web devs and designers like you, both free and paid, so you can get ahead of the coding challenge next time. We’re not judging your preferred time to work, night owls, but at least next time midnight strikes you’ll be able continue full steam ahead without needing a (unless you want one). 01. The Complete Web Developer Course 3.0 Udemy | Paid ($159.99, varies by location) This all-in-one course will teach you everything you need to know to master web coding skills. Learn how to make real web applications using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python and MySQL. Even if you don’t plan to become a full-time web developer, completing this course will give you generalist knowledge in web development, giving you more confidence in your  interactions with front-end developers. Having some baseline webdev knowledge also gives you fact-checking skills. I can tell you from personal experience that this comes in handy for when someone tells you a design isn’t possible. You’ll be able to evaluate the technical feasibility of your design, so that the next time front-end developers tell you that something is hard or even impossible to build, you’ll know if what they’re saying is the real deal. 02. Full stack web development Udacity | Paid ($249/month x 4 months) If you’re building a large-scale website or web service (web apps) that can scale to support hundreds of thousands of users, check out the 4-month full stack web development nanodegree program. This is an advanced course about building web apps. You’ll learn how to do data modeling for scalable websites, develop an API for your web application and deploy web apps to Amazon AWS infrastructure. (Amazon AWS can integrate with your Wix Studio website, btw.) The great thing about this course is that you can join it with basic coding skills (if you want to master your coding skills, look to another course in the list). 03. Advanced JavaScript Pluralsight | Paid ($29) Even in 2024, JavaScript is still one of the core languages for web developers. So if your goal is uplevel your JavaScript development skills, this course is for you. (Try Udemy’s Complete Web Developer Course 3.0 to build a strong foundation.) This course will help hone your coding skills. You’ll gain an advanced understanding of the core mechanics of how JavaScript compiles, optimizes and executes in the browser. And that knowledge will help you write code that will both perform better for the client's users and be more secure. 04. Advanced React Coursera | Free React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It’s built around the concept of components, or pieces of the UI, and a web application's UI is typically made up of many such components. It’s also the go-to choice for web devs who want to build interactive and dynamic web apps. If you want to master your React skills, the Advanced React course from Meta is a popular choice among web designers right now. You’ll learn how to create robust and reusable web components and test React applications seamlessly with the React Testing Library. 05. Web Accessibility Udacity | Free Good design is accessible design, and accessible design requires learning accessibility guidelines like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, and being able to recall them quickly. The fact that there are still so many inaccessible sites that are unusable to people with different abilities shows that this is an ongoing problem—but it’s also easily fixable. Google’s online course takes you through the key foundational knowledge you need to build accessible digital products for your clients. Its teaching quality is top-notch, and it’s rich with interactive quizzes for testing your knowledge as you learn to code. 06. Angular - The Complete Guide Maximilian Schwarzmüller for Udemy | Paid ($159.99) Angular is a JavaScript framework used for creating web applications (most commonly,  single-page applications). Angular The Complete Guide is a comprehensive online coding class for web developers. After finishing this course, you’ll fully understand the architecture behind an Angular application and will be able to use it to create your own web apps. 07. CSS Grid and Flexbox Wes Bos | Free It's not enough to design an aesthetic web layout; it's essential to code it properly. When it comes to coding web layouts, CSS Grid and Flexbox are two crucial tools in a web developer's toolbox. They make it possible to create complex, two-dimensional layouts and align content elements horizontally and vertically. You can create a template for rows and columns, and place elements into these defined areas, giving you precise control over the layout. There are a lot of places to learn these two concepts. I’d first recommend Wes Bos’ free tutorials for CSS Grid and Flexbox—you get access to 45 videos that take you from zero to layout-expert in no time. Once you’ve understood the concepts, you could try your hand at Grid Garden and Flexbox Froggy by Codepip. They gamify the learning process byasking you to write either CSS Grid or Flexbox code to align game elements correctly, which gives you the greenlight you to continue to the next stage. 08. Build a Web App with Firebase Google | Free Firebase is a comprehensive app dev platform that allows the development of web services. It’s like the Swiss-army knife of web tools. You can do a lot with Firebase, including backend infrastructure management, monetization of your application with ads and monitoring user engagement with analytics. This short course will give you all the knowledge required to build your first web app using Firebase. 09. The Complete Node.js Course Mosh | Paid ($15) One of the beauties of learning JavaScript is that it means you can basically work anywhere on the tech stack—you can build intuitive interactions on the front-end, develop APIs to communicate between different layers and write functionality on the back-end. Node.js is an industry-standard for back-end development and JavaScript is at the heart of it. This online coding class for designers will allow you to build, test and deploy complex apps. You’ll also learn how to manipulate data in a database. Hands-on exercise is what makes this course great. I find that the best way to learn coding is by building something yourself, and this course gives you this opportunity to do so. You’ll implement data validation, handle user authentication and authorization and learn how to deploy your Node applications. 10. Introduction to Web Security Stanford Online | Free It’s mission-critical that web devs understand how their own applications could be used against their clients by cyber-attackers. This online coding course from Stanford University introduces you to the threats faced in modern web development and puts you one step ahead in the cloak and dagger world of cybersecurity. You’ll cover topics like password breaching and compression attacks, which can be critical vulnerabilities if not protected against properly. 11. Professional Web Accessibility Auditing The Chang School | Free While not strictly an online coding course, this digital book from The Chang School and Ryerson University is a fit for devs who want to audit websites and applications for accessibility issues. It’s free to download and available in a few formats, so there’s really no reason not to give it a read. 12. Designing RESTful APIs Udacity | Free If you’re comfortable with your knowledge of building APIs (if not, check out the Full stack web development course), the next step in your professional development is understanding and developing RESTful APIs. A RESTful API is a type of API that has an agreed-upon set of characteristics that help standardize how the API works, and make it easier for other developers to understand and use. Udacity offers a free course that explains the concept in more detail and allows you to practice your new skills by building a social foodie application. 13. Python Mega Course Udemy | Paid ($159.99) Python is a super versatile and popular choice for learning how to build dynamic web applications. That’s because both Django and Flask are both popular web frameworks written in Python, so, if you want to use them, yep, you need to master your Python skills. The Python mega course will teach you Python by building 20 real-world apps, like a data science & machine learning app, a chatbot and online recommendation service. All this building help you gain practical Django and Flask skills in real time. This mega course is one of a few online coding classes that’s similar to a university course, in which you learn concepts as part of a bigger picture, rather than cherry-picking what to add to your armory of web dev skills.

Collaboration plays a key role in an efficient, well-managed design process. The reason why is fairly obvious: When team members collaborate effectively, they can build better products faster. But coworking also poses challenges, especially for big teams. The more people who work on a project, the harder it is to organize the work. The right design collaboration tools can help. Building a collaborative infrastructure increases a team's productivity and facilitates better design processes. And as this article explores, there are collaborative tools you can integrate now to improve research and information gathering processes, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing and more. We’ll review the top 20 tools that product teams should use in 2024, their use cases and benefits. Research and information gathering 1. Google Docs 2. Notion Planning and task management 3. Trello 4. Monday Daily communication 5. Slack 6. Zoom 7. Loom Brainstorming & ideation 8. Miro 9. Microsoft Wireframing 10. Balsamiq 11. Moqups 12. Whimsical Prototyping 13. Sketch 14. Figma 15. Wix Studio 16. Protopie Usability testing 17. User testing 18. User Zoom 19. Ruttl 20. Dovetail What is a design collaboration? Design collaboration is a process in which team members with different skill sets come together to create a new product or redesign an existing one. Of course, the design process can vary drastically depending on the project needs—it can be in-person or remote, linear or iterative—but what matters is that the team is working together towards a shared goal. Collaboration in design is not only about sharing expertise but also about sharing the workload. In a strong design process, those involved clearly understand what they need to do, when they need to do it and who will use the results of their work. The most effective design collaboration software makes it easier for teammates to understand the current state of a project, and gives them a sense of connection so that they always feel a part of the team, no matter where they happen to work. The best collaboration tools prevent team members from feeling like they're working alone, and they ultimately have a positive impact on team productivity. The best design collaboration tools, by category Research and information gathering Research is the first step in the design process: The insight collected during this phase creates a foundation of understanding for the end product. The more teams invest in user and market research, the better their understanding will be of the product they're building, who they’re building it for and what purpose it serves. Keep in mind: this information is meant to be shared. So there are three team objectives at this stage: Your team needs to gather information about users and their needs, analyze this information and share insights with all people involved in the design process. It helps everyone on the team understand the user’s needs, wants and expectations about a product. There are a few great tools that can help with organizing information in a clear, logical, and easily accessible way: 1. Google Docs allows you to create a collection of individual documents and share it with your team. Unlike Microsoft Word or Pages, any updates are visible to everyone at once. 2. Notion serves more like local Wikipedia—it acts as a knowledge base that team members can access and contribute to. Notion’s also introduced AI capabilities, so it’s now possible to use AI-powered search features to find information and get questions answered within a workspace. Think of Notion AI as ChatGPT for your Notion knowledge base. You ask a question, and the Notion chatbot provides the answer. Notion serves like a local Wikipedia that team members can contribute to—but also can perform more standard everyday tasks, like to do lists and tasks. Planning and task management The difference between effective and ineffective processes is how well the activities are planned. Use task management tools like Trello and Monday to help define the tasks, assign them to specific team members and set due dates. 3. Trello is an ideal tool for teams that practice Kanban (i.e., teams that use a board with 'To Do,' 'In progress,' and 'Done' tasks). 4. Monday is effective for teams that practice Scrum, a project management approach that focuses on iterative development and adaptability through fixed-length sprints or time-boxes (which typically last 2-4 weeks), rather than continuous work. The platform was originally designed for Scrum, but has gained enough popularity over the years that it’s used for just about any PM approach, including Kanban. The platform also has a few really effective functions that help you track team productivity at-a-glance, like Gantt and burndown charts, which visually show how your team is progressing on a task with a bar chart. Kanban board with "to do," "doing," and "done" states. Image by Trello. Daily communication Great things in product design are rarely done by one person. Most of the time, they're done by a team of people who share the same goal. Communication is the glue that connects people in a team, but over-communication is also bad. These remote collaboration tools ensure your team keeps up daily communications as efficiently as possible, no matter where they are: 5. Slack is a messaging app for businesses that connects team members through categorized departmental channels (like marketing or design), dm's and audio calls. It’s so common there’s a good chance you used it today. 6.  Zoom is a communication tool that allows people to conduct audio and video conference calls and record meetings. Google Hangouts serves the same function. Both experienced huge growth with the rise of remote work, and are important for collaboration among dispersed teams. You’ve probably used one if not both. 7. Loom is a tool to record quick videos about design solutions and update the team with this information. Loom can minimize the total number of meetings, and create a better context for remaining meetings. Slack web app. Image by Slack. Brainstorming & ideation Idea generation (that’s “ideation” in corporate speak), is crucial to the design process. Once the team has gathered and analyzed target audience research, they’ll use that information to find the best solution possible through brainstorming and ideation. Traditionally, ideation sessions have happened IRL, in a conference room to go over product design challenges and brainstorm solutions together (this was especially common in the IBM-inspired, sticky note-filled design thinking sessions popular in the mid- to late-2010’s). But with so many teams working remotely in 2023, online brainstorming sessions have become a new standard. Tools like Miro or Microsoft Whiteboard can help team members to practice collaborative design thinking. Use these tools to make your brainstorming sessions more productive: 8. Miro is a whiteboarding platform that can be used for creative collaboration needs like brainstorming. It allows multiple people to edit the board at the same time, and has ready-to-use templates so teams don't have to create something from scratch. It’s especially great for the early creative development phase of a new product. It’s pretty common for design teams to use this platform for moodboard creation, and as a way to aggregate and discuss their visual inspo in one place. 9. Microsoft Whiteboard is another creative collaboration tool that offers online whiteboards. The great benefit of using this tool is that integrates with the Microsoft Teams, which allows Teams meeting participants to sketch together on a digital canvas. Miro allows multiple people to brainstorm and edit the board at the same time. Wireframing A wireframe is the most basic possible visualization of a future design. They have limited visual details and use simple, representative graphic symbols, like rectangles, ovals, and a monochrome color scheme (typically, black & white or grayscale). Even though wireframes have a limited number of visual attributes, they’re an effective tool for communicating design decisions without having to get into all the bells and whistles that come later. When it comes to design, it’s much easier to understand what a future screen would look like by reviewing a low-fi visualization, rather than reading a bunch of specs. Another advantage of wireframing is that it's relatively simple. No need for Milton Glaser-level illustrative skills. As long as you can draw simple objects, you can create wireframes. (Its simplicity also makes it easy to do quickly.) 10. Balsamiq utilizes a low-fi UI, with elements that look like they were drawn by hand, to reproduce the experience of sketching on a notepad or whiteboard. The UI also encourages the user to focus on structure and content rather than visual details like color, according to its site. 11. Moqups are tools you can use to create wireframes for websites, desktop and mobile apps. Both tools come with a set of ready-to-use components that you can use to create a wireframe. And both tools are easy to use and accessible to various users, including developers, product managers, and sales & marketing specialists. 12. Whimsical is a wireframing tool that includes a rich library of functional elements like buttons, inputs and checkboxes that will help you create wireframes of mobile apps and websites. The tool really honors co-creation, too—you can have unlimited teammates working in the same wireframe document at the same time. It’s like “Google Docs” but for wireframes. Get collaboration advice straight from top creative directors. Chair of the BFA design program at SVA, Gail Anderson Sunday Afternoon creative director Rich Tu Executive director of the Inneract Project Maurice Woods Google head of product inclusion Annie Jean-Baptiste Wide Eye creative director Chris Montwill A collection of wireframes created using Balsamiq. Image courtesy Nick Babich. Prototyping The team’s original idea becomes a functional model of the future product, so other people can interact with it and share feedback, during the prototyping step of the design process. Depending on the stage in the design process, the team might want to create either a low-fi prototype (like a clickable wireframe), or a high-fidelity prototype, which looks and works almost like a finished product. The vast majority of product teams practice iterative design, meaning that they start with low-fi prototypes, validate them, and after that, turn them into pixel-perfect high-fidelity prototypes. Product teams prefer to use tools that allow them to go from low- to high-fidelity design to prototype. If you’re able to get designers and developers to work together right from the beginning of the design process, it’ll help your team evaluate the feasibility of a future solution early on, and it’ll increase the likelihood that the design will be implemented without many problems. Use these collaboration tools for designers to help these teams work together seamlessly: 13. Sketch makes it easier for developers to join the user interface design process that brings your design system to life with shareable components and frameworks. 14. Figma is a design tool that creates realistic prototypes for quick iteration on flows and states. It’s a creative collaboration software that’s designed to help team members interact more effectively and establish a more fluid co-creation process. Plus, lots of platforms have built-in Figma plug-ins that make the design process seamless (Wix Studio will soon have this capability, too). 15. Wix Studio is Wix’s newest responsive web design platform for professional designers. Use this tool to build a fully-functioning prototype of a future website without code, and give your client the real feel of how their website design will function in real-time. With Wix Studio, your team can also work together on the same website design, in real-time. (Don’t fret; you can also set page editing permissions to control which pages your teammates and collaborators can update.) 16. ProtoPie. ProtoPie is a prototyping tool for creating advanced interactions. Whenever you need to create a complex animated transition or advanced motion effect, you can use ProtoPie for that. ProtoPie allows importing designs from Sketch and Figma, so it is possible to go beyond clickable prototypes and create a design that almost feels like a real app. The collaboration capabilities of Wix Studio, which allow your team to work together in real time to turn a prototype into a final product. Usability testing Designers need to conduct usability testing early and often to build an excellent product. It's the best way to understand how the solution works for real users because it puts the product prototype in their hands, and essentially asks them to try to find its flaws. Usability testing isn't just the prerogative of designers. Everyone involved in product design should be involved in usability testing, or have access to its results, so everyone can understand how the solution performs in the real world. When teams see real user interactions and problems with their product, they're more willing to introduce changes to improve their experience. Here are a few tools to make that process seamless. 17. User Testing allows the team to conduct usability testing with video interviews. 18. UserZoom also allows the team to conduct usability testing, collect testing results and combine the testing results in a report format that all team members can read. 19. Ruttl is a visual feedback tool that helps comment on live websites and web apps. Test participants can provide design feedback by leaving text & video comments on live web products, so the feedback is always contextual and collected from a real user device, without the need for screenshots. 20. Dovetail. Dovetail helps create a research repository of user insights for your product. The tool makes it easier to search the repository to find relevant information about your users. User-friendliness score in User Zoom. Image courtesy Nick Babich. You need more than just good design collaboration tools Tools are essential for design collaboration, but even the best tool set won't guarantee a great outcome when team members don't communicate effectively. Investing in creating good communication and motivating people to work together towards a shared goal is vital. It’s also really important to choose collaboration platforms based on your team’s preferences, work culture and work styles. Otherwise, people will abandon the tool set—no matter how powerful it is.

User experience (UX) design—the field responsible for a platform’s smooth (and hopefully, delightful) functionality—is evolving at a rapid clip. New specializations are emerging all the time in areas like user research, design, copywriting and product strategy. Should things continue the way they’re headed, these opportunities will only continue to grow. In the AI era, UX design is fast becoming one of the most sought-after professions. In fact, it’s looking like the AI takeover could be a good thing for UX designers: it creates demand for people who can build sophisticated, AI-powered digital products. (I should know, I’m a product and UX designer myself.) As a result, expect talent battles for top product designers to be hyper competitive—and that could mean an increase in both hourly rates and total compensation. If you're a seasoned UX’er and want to see where you can take your career next, this guide is for you. It outlines the top six careers within the UX world, their tasks and salary expectations, and has practical tips on leveraging your AI skills and getting a better UX design salary for your next gig. See the day-to-day tasks and salaries of these UX design jobs: 1. UX designer 2. UI designer 3. UX/UI designer 4. UX writer 5. UX researcher 6. UX strategist 7. Skip to the salary tips 1. UX designer Legendary designer and researcher Don Norman first coined the term "user experience" in the 1990s to describe all aspects of the user's interaction with the company and its products. But more specifically, a UX designer is responsible for creating a smooth interaction between the user and the product. The goal of user experience design is fundamental to any product: to create functional, reliable, usable and enjoyable products. UX designers need to find the sweet spot between user needs and business needs, and they have to consider all elements that make up the user experience in order to make that happen. As a result, they often bridge the gap between the product team and stakeholders. Typically, UX designers report to design directors or a chief design officer. Daily tasks of UX designer include: Learning the business requirements of a product. Learn the business goals and conduct competitor analysis to understand the product niche and identify opportunities. Conduct user research. Find out who the target users are and understand what their needs are in relation to a product that is designed. Defining the information architecture of a future product. Label content and create meaningful content structures for users. Designing scenarios of interaction. When UX designers solve a particular design problem, they need to consider the user’s entire journey. It helps them better understand how a product fits in the user's daily life and define more realistic scenarios of interaction, or user personas. Creating wireframes or low-fidelity mockups. Set out the bare-bones blueprints for the future product, and help guide UI designers so that they can turn the low-fidelity design into a pixel-perfect mockup. Conducting usability testing. Collect feedback from actual or potential users on how easy or hard it is to use a product and find areas of improvement. Salary As with most jobs on our list, a UX designer salary varies based on how much experience you have and the company you work for and your location. If you have a senior UX designer role (i.e., 3-5 years experience) and work in large tech companies, you can negotiate a better salary. The average salary for a UX Designer is $116k per year in the United States, according to Glassdoor, with a salary range between $81k and $165k per year. Zip Recruiter shows a $98,816 per year salary, ranging between $45k to $155k. 2. UI designer A UI designer defines a product's look and feel and creates its user interface—the point of interaction between the user and a product. This medium can be visual (like a graphical user interface), vocal (like a voice-based user interface) or haptic (like a tactile user interface). When it comes to websites and mobile apps, UI designers design the actual screen or page layouts and interactive elements, like animated effects. If you’re wowed by a site design, you have them to thank. UI designers typically work closely with UX designers. UX designers prepare low-fidelity wireframes, and UI designers turn them into high-fidelity designs that are both consistent and aesthetic. UI designers also work closely with developers to turn mockups or prototypes into fully-fledged products. Daily tasks of UI designer include: Conducting design research. Look into the design solutions already available on the market to find the design direction for the future product. Crafting high-fidelity mockups for individual screens. Create the pixel-perfect design of future pages and screens and turn them into working prototypes by adding any needed animated effects and visual transitions. Creating responsive design. Adapt the final design to various screens and resolutions. Handing off design to the development team. Support developers with the implementation of the design, and create style guides and design systems. How can UI designers use AI to become more lucrative candidates? You’ll have to master your generative design skills for a competitive advantage over other UI designers. You’ve likely heard of generative AI at this point; generative design is an emerging UI design field that uses AI tools like Midjourney and Open AI’s Dall-E 3 to generate graphic assets like images, graphics, icons and UI designs. (I’ve used tools like these to generate code for user registration forms, for instance.) Wix Studio has AI tools like an image, text and code creator available in its editor. Generative design is super valuable during ideation: it can help clear mental blocks and speed up the process at the same time. You can use AI to create variations of a design by inputting specific prompts, and then use these designs as inspiration in the product ideation stage. Salary The average salary for a UI Designer is $99k per year in the United States, ranging from $76k and $129k, according to Glassdoor. As you can see, it's slightly less than UX designer salary, but it's vital to mention that design-driven companies like Apple are willing to pay more than average for UI designers. Indeed shows slightly lower average salary for UI designers— $89k per year. 3. UX/UI designer To create the best possible product, UX and UI design need to go hand-in-hand and complement each other. But with two different people responsible for two domains, it can be really hard to find a balance between them. At first glance, a UX/UI designer role seems like an obvious solution, since this person has a versatile skill set that could, in theory, tackle both roles in a cohesive way. But both UX and UI design are complex fields, and in real life, it’s hard to find someone who has the same level of expertise in both areas. So while most UX/UI designers will have some of the daily tasks of both roles, their expertise will lean more towards one or the other. Salary According to Glassdoor, the average salary for a UX/UI designer is $93k per year in the United States (ranging between $72k and $122k). You may wonder why UX/UI designers earn less than UX designers (despite the fact that UX/UI designers have more responsibilities). That’s because UX/UI designers tend to be more popular within small and mid-sized companies, because larger companies tend to separate the UX and UI design roles. And that means a UX/UI designer salary is limited by the budgets of smaller companies. But the role is a good stepping stone if you want to gain more practical experience in two different specializations. If you continue to build on this experience, you can become a strong candidate for a senior UX or senior UI designer role a few years down the road. 4. UX writer In Bill Gates’ now-famous 1996 essay, "Content is King," the computer programmer put his chips on the written word. "Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet," Gates wrote. It's still relevant today. The quality of content defines the quality of the user experience, and the quality of user experience defines whether or not the users will want to use your product again. The UX writer role is relatively new; it emerged in response to a growing need for user-focused content in digital products. UX writers are responsible for in-product text that’s clear, easy to understand, and that significantly improves a user’s product experience. They should use plain language, avoid jargon, simplify complex concepts, and make sure there’s a consistent tone of voice. Put simply, write text that you’d like to read. Sometimes the role of UX writer overlaps with marketing writer roles, so you should know the difference. A UX writer creates content for people who already use a product (like writing content to improve the experience of existing customers). A marketing writer writes promo copy for potential customers (like writing text for ad campaigns). The UX writer role is most relevant to large companies with dedicated design departments. In small and midsize companies, UX designers also tend to work on content. Daily tasks of UX writer include: Conducting user research. Understand who the user is, what they read and how they speak. This information helps UX writers find the relevant tone and voice. Defining the product tone of voice. Define the product’s communication style. A proper tone of voice improves user experience, since it feels more natural for the target audience. Managing content development. Write both microcopy (like short sentences such as labels and help text) and macrocopy (like informational messages in products and non-promo text on website pages). Salary According to Glassdoor, the average UX writer salary in the US is $91k (ranging between $69K and $124k). Interestingly, the UX/UI designer salary is almost equal to the UX writer salary. Zip recruiter gives a slightly different average salary—$81k per year. The salary ranges from $28k to $137k. That’s an incredibly huge range, so be sure to check the salary for your specific area and level of expertise. Will ChatGPT and other AI chatbots kill the UX writer role? There’s a worry in the design world that AI tools will make some roles redundant, and that AI chill is especially strong among UX writers. It’s easy to see why this segment of the industry might see tools like ChatGPT as a threat— AI chatbots can generate text in no time. And it’s true, ChatGPT can be a helpful resource. But I don’t see it replacing UX writers any time soon. That’s because a UX writer doesn’t just generate text. Seasoned UX writers understand the subtle nuances of the product they're working on. The role is strategic. It requires understanding user needs, creating a cohesive and engaging user experience and adapting content based on user feedback. Like UI designers, UX writers should add AI tools to their toolboxes. Tools like ChatGPT can help UX writers work faster and find new ways to communicate with users. And if there’s generated text you don’t like, modify it with a follow-up prompt, or simply leave it in the dustbin of chatbot history. 5. UX researcher Research is a cornerstone of product design: it's pretty much impossible to create a product that will perform well in the market if you don't invest in it. That’s where UX researchers come in. They dedicate their entire time to researching the functionality of a product; learning user behavior and finding out what kinds of problems and pain points users come up against and how to solve them. Successful UX researchers typically have strong data analysis skills, and might have a background in psychology (or a similar field) so they can conduct research and analyze data to the letter, helping the team reach critical product design decisions. UX researchers work closely with all other team members, including UX designers, UI designers and UX writers, and share insights about user behavior with them. Daily tasks of UX researcher include: Mapping user research. Conduct rich research to identify target users and the problems they face. User interviews, usability testing and online surveys are just a few tools that UX researchers use to better learn about users. Competitor analysis. Conduct market research by analyzing the experience of other products available on the market, and identifying their strengths and weaknesses. They then use that information to create a more compelling experience for their own users. Mapping out user journey. Help the team consider all aspects of the user's journey, including all channels, aka where interactions between a user and the product takes place. (If your product is a website, for instance, then a channel would be a mobile phone with a browser). Creating reports and conducting presentations. Analyze findings and distill them into actionable suggestions. Salary UX researcher salary in the US ranges from $96K to $145k with an average of $117k per year (according to Glassdoor). Indeed gives $76k as an average salary for UX researcher in the US. How can UX researchers differentiate themselves using AI? Time to market is a critical metric in product design. The faster you bring your concept to market, the higher the chance you’ll acquire large customer segments. One new way UX researchers can decrease that time is by using AI tools to analyze large data segments, which speeds up the analysis process and helps find product insights faster. My favorite tool for this is Claude. You can upload up to 150,000 words, or 500 pages, of text content. That means you could upload a novel-sized document, like hundreds of user interview transcripts, to an AI chatbot and ask it to summarize the document. It can be a huge time-saver. 6. UX strategist The role of the UX strategist varies drastically depending on the organization. Generally, the UX strategist position is a multi-faceted role that combines product design and project management. Like UX designers, UX strategists work at the intersection of user needs and business goals. Typically, a UX strategist has a UX design background, and can act as a user advocate: communicating user needs to business stakeholders at the company, so that they better understand how important it is to have great UX. Daily tasks of UX strategist include: Work closely with stakeholders to define product goals. The UX strategist understands business goals and connects them to users' needs through product design. Collaboration and communication with product team members. The UX strategist builds bridges between different departments, like development and design, and communicates product design decisions. Planning design activities. These could include user research, UI design, prototyping and usability testing to name a few. Salary A UX strategist salary ranges from $99K to $148K, with an average of $121k per year, according to Glassdoor. Ziprecruiter is a smidge higher, with $139k per year as the average salary for UX strategists. Tips for getting the UX design salary you want Now when you have a better understanding of UX design fields, let’s get into some practical tips to help you get a better UX design salary. Use these actionable tips to negotiate a better salary: Research salaries in your area. The salary you can expect will depend largely on where you live. Large metropolitan areas or tech hubs like San Francisco or New York offer more career opportunities and larger salaries. Look at several different sources. Review Glassdoor, Indeed, Zip Recruiter and LinkedIn to get a richer sense of the competitive salary range in your area. Diversify your skill set. Your level of expertise plays a tremendous role in how much money you can expect. Generally, the more experience you have in across design disciplines, the more valuable as a professional you become for a company that will hire you, especially if it is looking for versatile and adaptable designers. Gain practical experience working with AI. AI tools are quickly becoming an essential part of designers' tookit. You need to bake AI tools in your design process and practice prompt engineering (the art and craft of writing effective prompts). If you're working as a UX writer, try ChatGPT and Claude. If practicing UI design, try Midjourney and Dall-e 3 for idea generation. Create a strong portfolio. Think of your portfolio as an investment you make in yourself. The better you showcase your projects, the better your opportunity for a higher salary. Now, the format. A website is easy to share and makes your work searchable—potential clients can come to you. A PDF of your work can be curated for specific clients or interviews. It doesn’t hurt to have both. Improve your communication and organizational skills. Both are essential tools of a UX professional's toolkit. Communication defines the success (or failure) of any design process. Try a free course, like this one by Coursera, to get started.

Running a successful web agency requires attention to detail, and you’ll find it’s often subtle decisions that help win your client’s approval. On the surface, choosing a platform to build your client’s site may seem like a simple decision. After all, it's usually one of the first details you discuss with them. They may even suggest using a particular platform due to their previous experiences. But if you’re a web developer, especially one making technical design decisions, you understand that this choice goes beyond the advertised cost and features of a platform. Your goal is not just to meet current business requirements but to also foresee and mitigate future technical issues that may arise. This is where the concept of technical debt comes in. Just like financial debt, technical debt can accumulate over time, and if not managed properly, can lead to increased costs, decreased resources and unhappy clients. But as we’ll see, the right technical decisions can be the difference between a smooth client handover and a total headache. Wait, what is technical debt? Technical debt refers to suboptimal decisions made in the development of your software that require additional resources to either maintain or refactor code in the future. At their worst, these technical decisions can impact your organization’s productivity, as they demand extra resources to support clients if unanticipated requirements or critical issues arise after handing off your software. But technical debt isn’t always a result of “bad code.” Often, it arises from decisions made even before any code is written. For instance, choosing to self host your site using on premise infrastructure can have long-term consequences. This decision can greatly increase the maintenance required to keep a site live, especially as the business scales up and demands more robust technical requirements. Alternatively, opting for a cloud platform like Wix Studio, known for its out-of-the-box secure, reliable and performant managed hosting, decreases the need for developer maintenance, making it easier to maintain and scale your client’s sites in the future. How to manage technical debt To effectively manage technical debt and boost your developer’s productivity, consider these strategies: Leverage existing solutions Embrace new technologies Prioritize developer velocity 01. Leverage existing solutions Developers are natural problem solvers, turning feature requests into elegant solutions using code. Thing is, they can likely leverage existing packages, libraries or plugins for most client requests. Take authentication systems, a commonly requested feature. They’re popular because clients often want their customers to be able to log in into private user accounts to manage their access to a site's services. While it’s possible to “roll your own auth,” namely implement your own authentication system, this may introduce hidden costs related to maintaining the solution in the long-term. For example, if the user wants to add another feature or third party login provider, it might introduce the need to implement additional complex code that wouldn’t be necessary when using a complete auth solution such as the Wix Members Area App. Not only does this free up your developer’s valuable time, but it also reduces your agency’s responsibility regarding support of systems as critical as authentication. Instead, you can focus on developing unique features tailored to your client’s specific needs. You generally want to avoid over engineered solutions, especially when there are existing alternatives that can increase developer productivity. It’s equally important to carefully consider each client’s requirements separately, as you’ll see next. 02. Embrace new technologies If you join any developer circle on social media, you’ll quickly find yourself in the middle of lively debates about which technologies are the best and why. In web development, the concept of web stack is defined as a set of technologies used together to create websites and web apps. Web stacks are popular among developers because they aim to provide the ideal blend of technologies needed to create solutions in specific scopes. This introduces the potential for developers to get comfortable with their existing tools or design patterns. While this level of specialization is great for helping developers become more productive over time, it introduces the potential of creating solutions using tools that are not suited for the problem they currently face. Let’s say your team got a contract to build a website for a multinational corporation that needs to handle a global volume of eCommerce transactions, but in the past you had worked with smaller clients. While it might be tempting to resort to familiar tools and website architectures, sometimes the best solution is to use platforms designed for enterprise scale rather than hacking together a suboptimal solution. This also works as a great way of minimizing the possibility of unanticipated technical debt as the platform you use as the base of your client’s site will be ready for the level of scalability required from the start. 03. Prioritize developer velocity In software engineering, most costs are a result of maintenance rather than the initial development, which makes sense when you think about a business’s need to continuously innovate. This means web apps should be built in a way that prioritizes developer velocity,  allowing developers to continuously improve a product in an agile manner. If a web app is developed with an unscalable architecture, this can introduce issues when new features are required by the end user. When this happens, not only will your software become obsolete as demands change, but it will decrease your team's productivity since additional resources will be required to develop new features. This can mean a decrease in revenue, as customers often expect web apps to innovate rapidly based on their feedback. At the same time, while most platforms aim to prioritize developer velocity, concerns outside of the core features of web apps often take up a lot of developer time. These are known as non-functional requirements and can be defined as features that are indirectly essential to the needs of a product. Luckily, Wix Studio allows you to quickly ship web apps without ignoring non-functional requirement considerations such as accessibility, data protection laws (such as GDPR), SEO, performance and security. By integrating these ideas into your engineering culture, you not only mitigate the risks associated with technical debt but also position your agency as a forward-thinking tech leader that’s able to deliver.

This time last year the world’s leading brands fired up ChatGPT to write their marketing predictions. It didn’t work. The copy felt stale and generic, and more importantly, OpenAI’s promised child wasn’t able to peer into the future: it simply didn’t have enough data to forecast what would come next. Humans: 1. AI: 0. A year later, things are different. That doesn’t mean AI can suddenly predict the future, but it’s only getting smarter and more deeply embedded in our world. And this time, it’s personal. When brands can produce bespoke content at an unheard of scale, meaningful interactions are poised to become more important than ever. So yes, we’ll all be working with AI in 2024—that’s not a shocking prediction—and this will present opportunities to improve our workflow, operations and marketing strategies, especially for those who tap into Wix Studio's AI. But we’ll also see more human-focused trends emerge as a result. Here’s how AI will leave its mark on the marketing world in 2024. 01. Tech will get talkative Conversational commerce is poised to redefine customer engagement in 2024. The integration of advanced chatbots and messaging platforms facilitates seamless interactions between brands and consumers. This personalized, real-time communication not only enhances the customer experience but also streamlines the path to purchase. In early November of 2023, OpenAI announced the launch of custom GPTs, meaning you can now make your own branded chatbots (no code required). The internet went off, creating bots for everything you can think of: a programmer chatbot, one that provides alt-text descriptions for images, another that optimizes prompts for other GPTs, and even a GPT for finding other GPTs. Brands such as Amazon’s Alexa are leveraging AI to integrate shopping assistant features into their product for eCommerce purchases, and WhatsApp and Facebook messenger are also poised to add a layer of social commerce to the tech giant’s repertoire. How can agencies capitalize on this trend? Voiceflow is one such no-code collaborative tool for designing, prototyping and building virtual conversational assistants you can integrate with your client’s Wix Studio websites. 02. Virtual Influencers will serve looks 2023’s marketing campaign of the year was Snoop Dogg’s smokeless fire pit, but most brands don’t have access to celebrity influencers to promote a campaign that big. Instead, smaller brands and startups are turning to virtual influencers—branded avatars, if you will—to own their narratives. The influencer marketing landscape is undergoing a futuristic transformation as these computer-generated personalities become powerful brand ambassadors. Look no further than Lu do Magalu and Lil Miquela as examples of virtual influencers in the wild. With 6.7 million and 2.6 million Instagram followers respectively, these digital humans have more reach than many of their real influencer counterparts. Another notable example is Aitana, an AI influencer from Spain who makes over $10K dollars a week in brand contracts. And of course, brands with long-standing mascots are also seizing the opportunity to virtualize their characters, including but not limited to: Barbie, the Geico Gecko, and KFC’s Colonel Sanders. The rise of virtual influencers marks a departure from traditional brand partnerships, as companies are now able to make their own influencers and fully control the creative process. And for those with longstanding characters, an opportunity to round out their personalities will bring brands to life in unexpected ways. 03. UGC content will take over your feed People still like learning from other people. In response to the surge in AI content, brands are turning to User-Generated Content (UGC) to tap the power of the crowd’s collective creativity. Consumers actively participate in brand storytelling by creating and sharing content as well as helping brands garner social proof and build community. This shift empowers brands to build authentic connections with their audience, tapping into the unique perspective and advocacy of their customer base for compelling, trust-building narratives. Doritos launched Doritos Legion of Creators, a site where users can create branded images and videos that Doritos shares on its social media accounts. And let’s not forget GoPro’s crown jewel: the Million Dollar Challenge. Since 2018, the company has encouraged customers to purchase the newest GoPro model and use it to capture “life’s epic moments.” The 2023 edition awarded 55 creators a share of the $1 million—that’s $18,181.81 for the lucky winners and thousands of social assets for GoPro. We expect to see more of this in 2024. 04. Gen AI will smash your cookie jar Though the cookie-pocalypse isn’t new, it’s finally taking effect this upcoming year. In 2024, the demise of third-party cookies will usher in the prominence of first-party data. Brands are focusing on building direct relationships with consumers, emphasizing transparency and consent to gather valuable insights without leaving a trail of privacy concerns behind them. As of now, about 80 percent of advertisers rely on third-party cookies and must explore new ways to engage with customers. Apple’s iOS 14 app tracking permission requirement has been disastrous for adtech companies, with Facebook, Snap, Twitter and YouTube losing a combined $10 billion in revenue during the two quarters following the change. It’s no wonder the use of data is rising: not only because cookies are going extinct, but also because first-party data is particularly valuable for targeting. A study by Google and Boston Consulting Group found that brands leveraging first-party data for key marketing functions are seeing up to 2.9X revenue uplift and a 1.5X increase in cost savings. Generative AI, combined with first-party data sources, will empower brands to deliver custom messages to their most engaged customers. This will generate a loyalty effect, rewarding the most active customers with increasingly customized content. The same holds true in reverse. Intuit leverages first-party data using its Gen Z customers’ reactions to Gen AI content. In October, the company launched its ‘Automagical Aura Generator,’ which gives users their own Gen AI pic of their financial horoscope. 05. Longer-form video will make a comeback In the age of short-form content, long-form video is making a notable comeback in 2024. Platforms are evolving to accommodate extended storytelling, allowing brands to convey complex narratives and engage audiences on a deeper level. This resurgence reflects a shift toward more immersive and substantive content experiences that’s more difficult for Gen AI to produce at scale and implicitly requires the human touch to succeed. Recently, Instagram has been testing longer reels to directly challenge YouTube shorts. And webinars, which initially skyrocketed during the pandemic, have remained a best-practice among brands looking to reach customers for longer periods of time. 06. AI will go from tool to coworker In 2024, generative AI will become more accessible to broader audience groups. Though the technology is no longer new (and it's advancing at an accelerated pace), larger, more powerful models built on larger datasets, along with autonomous agents and multimodal functionality will give way to AI with closer to human level of understanding and reasoning. This includes proactive decision-making, collaborative creativity and dynamic learning and adaptability. We’re seeing this trend take shape in many forms, such as Google Gemini, the company’s most powerful, multimodal AI model to date, as well as our very own AI assistant in Wix Studio, where you can generate code based on prompts/descriptions, fix existing code and look up documentation. Imagine how robust your client’s websites will be when AI takes the guesswork (and gruntwork) out of coding from scratch. 07. Zero-click and voice search will change SEO for good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is undergoing a transformative evolution in 2024 due to the rise of zero-click and voice search. There will be new things to consider: how to develop a brand when CTR drops, how to take tone, accents and more conversational  searches into account, and how to refine your current SEO strategy to play to this new reality. It’s estimated that by 2025, 50 percent of all searches online will be completed through voice search. Consider this: if more people surf the web on screenless devices like Alexa, what might that mean for your business? And how might your company rank at the top of the SERP? Check out the Wix SEO Learning Hub for answers to all of your SEO questions. But remember: the best resource will always be your audience. Agencies will need to engage their audiences in conversation to understand what they’re looking for (and how), both on and off the SERP. If 2024 is the year AI connects with consumers, the only question is: how will you as a marketer? Next up: Wix Studio’s AI capabilities will change the way you work. Here’s how.

When I started my first job working remotely as a software engineer, I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I was always a “gifted kid” and landed competitive scholarships and internships while I was a student. Yet, when thrust into the workforce, the scaffoldings of my work ethic seemed to have crumbled. I could never focus and struggled intensely with procrastination. It turns out, my difficulty with work stemmed from my executive dysfunction. I thrived under the pressure and rigid structure of an institution like school. Each day I was regulated by a clear schedule, meticulous syllabi, and the immense pressure to succeed as a first generation immigrant. But without these factors in place, I lost the driving force I needed to persist. When I was diagnosed with severe ADHD, many aspects of my life made much more sense. I learned that my nervous system was intrinsically motivated by a different set of criteria than what’s typical. My brain is most motivated to do what’s interesting, challenging, novel and urgent. Before my diagnosis, I would read countless self-help and productivity books yet nothing seemed to work. But after I was formally diagnosed, I began tailoring my life to my needs as a neurodivergent individual and programmer. This knowledge has been the greatest asset to my career and I love sharing the impact of neurodiversity with others. Back up: what does “neurodiversity” mean? Neurodiversity describes the neurological differences humans have that result in unique variations in the way we think and process information. This can include differences in cognition, sensory perception and emotions. These differences contribute to vast diversity in the innovation and creativity we see in the world. So why does neurodiversity need our attention? Up to 20 percent of Americans are estimated to be “neurodivergent,” encompassing those with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, PTSD and other neurological differences that affect learning and mental health. Despite their strengths, they are severely underemployed; some experts say over 80 percent of those on the autism spectrum may be unemployed. The benefits of fostering a neurodiverse team at your agency Some brains function differently, but they are not at all less capable. Neurodivergent employees have different needs to accommodate how their brains work. Forward-thinking agencies that can adequately support these needs and hire neurodiverse employees will be able to experience many benefits, including the ones here. Non-linear thinking contributes to different perspectives: Research indicates that individuals with greater ADHD traits score higher in divergent thinking, which is characterized by fluency, flexibility and originality. Studies have also found that people with dyslexia tend to score higher in nonverbal creativity. Many neurodivergent people are more sensitive to social justice issues and equity: Their empathy and attention to fairness can help guide your agency to be more equitable. Plus, a neurodiverse team will be more sensitive to accessibility issues; certain visual elements can be distracting for those with ADHD or autism, poor font choices can confuse those with dyslexia, and unclear checkout pages may mislead those with dyscalculia. Passion can drive success: People with ADHD love challenges and novel problems and programming is the perfect incorporation of those traits. A Small Business Economics study found that those with ADHD traits are 60 to 80 percent more likely to have entrepreneurial intentions, and are “almost two times more likely to initiate entrepreneurial action.” How to support neurodiversity at work Educate your team on neurodiversity Awareness is key to understanding neurodiversity. Neurodivergent traits are highly stigmatized in many cultures and are victim to widespread misinformation. It’s important to understand different neurodivergent conditions and how they manifest so we can gain insight into others’ experiences. This might include incorporating sensitivity training to the onboarding process, or inviting neurodivergent people to speak about their experiences in webinars. Unfortunately, many neurodivergent people remain undiagnosed due to diagnostic bias. Because men are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with autism, many women never receive diagnosis despite meeting clinical criteria. Social stigma and misinformation in many cultures can also prevent individuals from seeking diagnosis. Proper awareness will help debunk misconceptions and stereotypes, and can also destigmatize seeking professional help. Create a psychologically safe workplace Due to the negative stigma surrounding neurodivergence, most people will never disclose their conditions to employers in fear of discrimination. Many neurodivergent people suffer from trauma or rejection sensitive dysphoria, which can make them less likely to share their struggles. This makes it difficult to request accommodations and be open about any problems they face at work. To help relieve this fear, make sure your team is aware that their workplace is psychologically safe, and that they will not be discriminated against for sharing their experiences. Create a workplace where everyone is comfortable being open about who they are. Understand that people’s needs may also change over time, and may vary depending on conditions in one’s health or personal life. Find a regular cadence for employees to have one-on-one meetings with someone they’re comfortable being honest with. Be flexible with providing accommodations When employees become comfortable with sharing their needs, it’s important to be receptive to their requests without judgment. Each individual has a unique set of needs when working. Some people require absolute silence, while others may be more productive working in a busy office. Workplace accommodations can help support those with physical sensitivities, such as by providing noise-canceling headphones and flexible work environments. Others may require additional mental health resources or career support and coaching services. Some employees may need to be given clearer actionable steps, and some employees need explicit feedback which avoids implicit messages from social cues. Offer regular evaluation and clear feedback to employees to help them reach their personal career goals. Hiring for neurodiversity Frequently, the unique ways in which neurodivergent candidates present themselves socially or tackle problems can be perceived negatively during the hiring process. Because of this, the recruitment process can be especially difficult for many neurodivergent candidates. Some companies have created in-house neurodiversity hiring programs, including SAP, Microsoft, EY, JPMorgan Chase and Ford Motor Company. At Microsoft, neurodivergent candidates undergo a special skills assessment tailored to those who thrive in non-conventional interview settings. When the candidate is hired, they receive mentorship from an employee volunteer, and are also connected with a job coach who specializes in supporting workers with disabilities. Of course, not all companies have the resources to provide extensive neurodiversity hiring initiatives. In the United States, there are over 40 neurodiversity workforce intermediaries, such as Potentia and Autism Workforce, which aim to partner with employers to implement protocols to support a neurodiverse workforce. Benefits for the entire team My performance at work has drastically improved since receiving professional treatment and learning more about my brain, and it helps that my manager is understanding of my needs and works with me to ensure I can do my best. Neurodivergent workers will be able to thrive at work when equipped with the right support, which in turn benefits the entire agency.

It feels like just about everything ramped up or broke down in 2023. Online trends accelerated, the economy began its rebound, AI took over, Twitter became X (and more chaotic), and brands still needed to break through all that noise. Web design trends responded to the cultural temp: a maximalist design approach solidified its place on our screens, users continued to lean into Y2K and early web nostalgia in search of more connection; designers took on AI tools and questioned how soon it will change just about everything. With this in mind, we’re making a few predictions: on both big, stylistic trends, and the individual web design elements you can expect more of in 2024. 2024’s top web design trends 01. Maximalism 02. Heritage revivalism 03. '80s excess 04. Brand worldbuilding 05. AI tools 06. Dial-up design 07. Retrofuture femme 08. Gen Z brand speak 09. Bentobox layouting 10. Toggle switch 11. Gigantic buttons 12.  Loop scrolling 13. XXL footers and titles 1. Maximalism Dieter Rams famously said that “good design is as little design as possible.” Well, maximalism is pretty much in direct opposition to that approach. If there was one overarching web design trend that was big on the internet in 2023—and will continue to be in 2024—it’s maximalism. Think: loud graphics, dopamine colors, expressive typography, and overall, a strong visual point of view. We keep waiting for maximalism to reach peak market saturation, but so far, clients and their consumers can’t seem to get enough of the more-is-more approach. It has appeal across categories, but especially for the web presence of CPG, F&B and emerging brands catering to younger audiences. Consider JKR’s super well-received rebrand of mass-market soda Fanta, the playful primary colors and chubby, all-caps sans branding of celeb chef Molly Baz's website (and new book designed by Playlab Inc., aptly called More is More); or Collins’ new take on Disney-owned streaming service Freeform. Maximalism has also spawned a variety of smaller identifiable sub-trends, including heritage revivalism and ‘80s-inspired retro glamor (more on those below), showing up in individual site elements as well as entire brand worlds. In 2024, maximalism will continue to evolve as it saturates the market, and designers will find new stylistic expressions of this more-is-more approach to break through the noise and meet the demands of their clients. 2. Heritage revivalism This maximalist web design subtrend borrows from the excess, ornamentation and teeny tiny details of the 17th and 18th century Baroque and Rococo artistic movements, but more broadly, from a less blanded, digitally-optimized visual heritage. This revival is possible, partly, because of improved tech, which can now support more visual details due to higher resolutions and bigger screen sizes. Burberry’s February rebrand, which revived its cobalt blue serif wordmark and 122-year-old equestrian knight motif and broke through a crowd of luxury fashion sans serifs, was perhaps one of the most talked about things on design Twitter (now X), this year. On TV, Plains of Yonder’s White Lotus title sequence fittingly evoked the murals of 16th century, sun-drenched Italian villas. That sense of luxury, escapism, and timeless bespoke craftsmanship appeared on sites for perfume, tinned fish, even dog shampoo, and was a welcome respite from the san-serif sameness that’s dominated screen design for years. It’s also an early sign that we're seeing new takes on maximalism as the aesthetic continues to increase in popularity across devices through 2024. 3. '80s excess Another maximalism spinoff channels the visuals related to ‘80s and early ‘90s excess and exclusivity, exemplified by successful startups  like suncare brand Vacation, “members-only” winery Rochambeau Club and design-friendly $1,500 wine cooler brand Rocco, for the Ghia-drinking, Issey Miyake-wearing professional set. This approach uses a few common callbacks, like grainy background textures, soft single-color gradients and heavy use of vintage photography and styling. It also uses old-school magazine layouting techniques, like thin-line motifs and bordered images. Of course, the type choices are retro, too: look for neutral semi serifs or thin serifs paired with secondary scripts. But retroglam doesn't just embody ‘80s print media. Pepsi embraced the design approach with a reboot of its mid-’80s visual identity featuring vintage clips of Madonna in honor of its 125th anniversary, while bodycare brand Billie leaned into the kitschy, over-the-top infomercials of the past for its recent digital campaign. 4. Brand worldbuilding Brands adopted a holistic design approach this year, moving beyond mood boards to create entire immersive, fictional brand universes across their websites, social channels and packaging. The strategy is about more than just selling a product; it’s about inviting individuals to become a part of a rich story and creating a community that feels playful, imaginative and authentic—wherever a potential customer encounters the brand. Skincare startups like Futurewise, Starface and Dieux Skin all excelled in creating visually cohesive brand worlds, as did Flamingo Estate, while Vacation makes our list a second time for expanding their universe of retro leisure to include clever collabs with tennis ball brand Prince and the iconic AriZona Beverage Company. We’ll see worldbuilding as a more common omnichannel design and marketing solution for brand clients in 2024, as the ways consumers enter a brand funnel continue to broaden in 2024 and beyond. 5. AI tools It’s only been a little over a year since ChatGPT launched, and it's obviously changed the way we work and create. AI tools have quickly integrated into many of our design workflows to help with ideation, content, lorem ipsum filler text, wireframes, image and video creation. Sites like Synesthesia let you create custom AI video avatars and voiceovers, while text-to-image generators like Midjourney and Dall-E have given rise to entire AI creative studios, like Maison Meta, which produces AI-generated ad campaigns like this one for Revolve’s IRL billboards. The tech is also available for the first time in website builders: Wix Studio has AI web design capabilities available in its editor. Getty Images and Adobe Firefly released their own text-to-image generators trained on stock photo datasets; which they claim prevents possible  copyright infringement (some creatives say otherwise). Despite the exploding popularity of these tools, many designers are still cautious about downloading every new free AI app. There are a lot of unknowns as to how this technology will  evolve in 2024, though one thing is for sure—it'll continue to dominate design and tech discourse. 6. Dial-up design There’s a nostalgia for the early web, when there were more niche online communities, tech limitations and fewer brand guidelines. Today, web designers are tapping into the spirit of experimentation from the early, Geocities era of the internet by utilizing low-fi social assets like memes and Y2K callbacks, like MS Paint and word art in their work. Look to the social collateral of major agencies like Droga5 and Wieden + Kennedy, the recently launched internet culture site Byline, the new Gen Z myspace app, NoSpace, the female-run media startup for the “chronically online,” BoysClub, and BusinessWeek as a few examples. It’s all part of the Y2K craze and points to the continued dominance of this design approach moving into next year. A solid meme also qualifies as an acceptable—if not preferred—design asset these days, especially for those clients targeting younger millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Look to social media accounts for popular communities Seamoss Girlies (Gen Z’s anti-Goop?), the previously mentioned Boys Club, new-to-market, exceptionally-branded morning after pill Julie, and messenger app Ghost for starters—but all you’ve got to do is scroll Instagram to see this trend in the wild. Brands also utilized low-fi assets in order to respond to the fast pace of ephemeral, of-the-moment internet trends, like #tomatogirl (Hunts’ impressive collab with cool girl boutique Lisa Says Gah), and lean into an audience that’s chronically online. One unexpected brand to get in on the trend is Celestial Seasonings, the classic ‘90s tea company whose Sleepytime Bear mascot, organically became a meme this year, which the brand is now capitalizing on by blanketing its own official account with the internet-famous icon. 7. Retrofuture femme This one’s for the Dollz. The internet is getting cuter, thanks to web designs inspired by Kawaii, an endearingly cute Japanese aesthetic. Consider this the kid sister of dial-up design. This web design trend is hyper femme and glittery (see trendy agency for it-girl brands Air Milkshake), and covered in hearts (Studio Nari for Coach), bows and butterflies. This overlaps with fashion trends like balletcore and coquettecore, and it’s gaining traction at the same time as girly, feminine fashions from designers like the sell-out-level popular Sandy Liang. Girly, femme design emerged with force in 2023 as yet another counterpoint to traditional corporate web design tropes, another indication that consumers—especially younger ones—are tired of the same old sans. As creative consultancy Digital Fairy explains,  the creative expression of the early internet, as found on sites like Myspace, Tumblr and Blingee, still resonates with designers today, and they’ll continue to repurpose the cute aesthetic moving into 2024 for clients looking to cater to younger, fluently online audiences. 8. Gen Z brand speak Gen Z has had serious buying power for a few years now, and just like millennials before them, a distinct aesthetic has emerged and will become a generational design shorthand in 2024. The Gen Z look embodies vibrancy, eclecticism and digital fluency, blending retro influences with modern styles, and features bold colors, nostalgic nods to the '90s and early 2000s and tech-savvy maximalism. Y2K zine effects, stickers, sparkle icons, fisheye photo lenses and gender-neutral colors like yellow, lilac purple and vivid green, are all Gen Z visual signifiers that have been synthesized by brands appealing to Gen Z consumers who now possess considerable power of the purse. Nike’s doing it, as are makeup and skincare brands like Billie and Good Weird, and social search engine Diem; even grocery services like Superette (a solid design counterpoint to the millennial-oriented Snaxshot) are riding the Gen Z aesthetic wave all the way to the (virtual) bank. 9. Bentobox layouting The bentobox was built for organized meals, and online, designers and their clients are eating it up. That makes sense: the UI is a versatile compartmentalized design layout, organizing digital elements into discrete, functional sections. This user-friendly structure enhances the user experience by presenting information in an easy to digest, visually appealing format that feels like a step beyond a standard grid. Sites like the Workshop Survival Guide and Prowl Studio are neatly organized with minimal spacing in between, but the web design trend can also incorporate playful elements. Consider creative studio Schoooool’s and Vogue-approved brand for new parents Swehl’s slightly rounded corners, or Mode Analytics’ refreshing color combinations. This trend is likely to hit its peak soon, but expect to see more of it in 2024. 10. Toggle switch While toggle switches have traditionally appeared on mobile sites, designers have been integrating them into desktop experiences, too. There’s a playfulness to the function, like on the soundtrack site for the Barbie movie, which switches from Barbie’s to Ken’s view of the special edition vinyl album gift set for sale with the click of a CTA. Toggle switches also serve a functional purpose—Lusion Lab’s list or grid mode, Contra’s dark or light—and that flexibility allows a site to adapt to different audiences, adding to its overall accessibility as well as its interactivity. In 2024, we’re going to see even more of this, as part of a broader web design trend in which desktop interfaces adopt design elements users typically see on mobile. 11. Gigantic buttons One of the smallest maximalist elements to take center stage this year was the use of gigantic buttons. Take Lovers magazine’s massive ‘join the waitlist’ button, or Rekki’s download button that nearly occupies the entire expanse of the screens. This web design trend could be a response to users’ diminishing attention spans that require larger visual calls to action, or it's related to how desktop interfaces are starting to use more and more mobile features. Whatever the reason, these in-your-face buttons certainly can’t be ignored. And if user behavior is any indication, this will continue to be a design solution for encouraging click-throughs moving into 2024. 12. Loop scrolling That mental burnout feeling of living in an endless loop has made its way to the screen. Websites are being designed with a looping scroll, seeming to go on without beginning or end. While loop scrolling allows for seamless and continuous navigation through content, this perpetual loop (as seen on sites like Lusion Lab and Nobel Foods) feels so unnerving you start to long for the footer. Lacoste’s brand history site strikes a good balance in its design, with a hefty amount of narrative content to scroll through that’s finally punctuated by an oversized footer, a satisfying visual destination at the end of a long narrative journey. The jury’s still out on whether loop scrolling will be embraced by blue-chip brands in 2024 or stay relegated to more creative sectors, like fashion and smaller DTC sites, but we kinda wish this trend would’ve stayed looping in 2023. 13. XXL footers and titles For years, footers and titles have been a design afterthought, relegated to the far corners of a website. But designers are subverting visual hierarchies that they once considered default in order to give lesser-known brands unmissable name recognition. See creative studio Sturdy RCA’s dynamic video header, Powell-Studio and design studio Atio, which all have titles that occupy the entire screen above the fold. This web design trend has trickled down to mass-market brands, too: Hailey Bieber’s skincare brand Rhode, Gen Z pimple patch brand Starface and large CPG brand Twice. This could be a side effect of all that expressive, bespoke type we're seeing—if you have a decorative custom typeface, you're gonna want real estate to show it off. With big type and even bigger footers and headers, we’re seeing web design’s forgotten elements become main characters, and in 2024, they’ll have even more screen time.

Agencies who balance working on multiple projects with complex code understand: doing more with less is critical. That's where developer velocity comes in. As a quick refresher, developer velocity measures how fast your developers can complete a project. It looks at the speed, quality and efficiency of their coding, debugging and overall project delivery within a given time period. The benefits of increased velocity are pretty clear: a faster development team ultimately makes you a more successful agency. But developer velocity is more than just a performance indicator; it’s a way of empowering developers to improve their workflows and ability to collaborate interdepartmentally. Related: 7 ways to become a better programmer from top devs who know How to accelerate your team's development velocity There are four main factors that contribute to developer velocity: tools, culture, project management and technical debt. Improvements to any of these elements can help you work more efficiently at scale. Start here: Use the right tools Create a collaborative environment Put the "pro" in project management Don't let technical debt pile on 01. Use the right tools Using the right tools to meet the unique demands of each project can boost your team’s developer velocity. If you’re building a new site, this could mean using tools like Wix Studio’s development platform that enables developers to quickly ship features while allowing them to integrate their choice of native and third party APIs. With Wix Studio, you have all the tools you need at your disposal to significantly reduce time to development and significantly enhance the opps for collaboration. Key features that support developer velocity include: Collaborative platform tools that allow your developers work on tasks simultaneously with their choice of a cloud based or local IDE DevOps tools to track, manage and suggest performance improvements Low-or-no code options to develop simple apps and websites Automation/AI-assistance to speed up code development and strengthen the ideation process (read more about Wix Studio’s AI capabilities) 02. Create a collaborative environment To truly improve dev velocity, you’ll need to foster a developer-centric culture at your agency. This means providing your developers with adequate support, resources and the autonomy to complete their tasks quickly and efficiently. So, in a sense, dev velocity starts at the top. You’ll need to hire people who are on board with your approach to software development, educate employees about your company values and goals, and provide ongoing support and opportunities for growth. Once the team is aligned, consider adopting an agile style of managing your development cycles. This approach emphasizes shorter, tighter cycles of feature development comprised of seven stages: planning, designing, developing, testing, deploying, reviewing, then either returning to a stage or proceeding to launch (in that order). Of course, this doesn't necessarily need to be a formal process but instead a culture of continuous improvement based on observation and feedback. Use post-mortems and regular user testing to close the loop faster. 03. Put the "pro" in project management Your project management process should focus on speed to market, but also on giving your customers the best experience possible. Those two things can sometimes be at odds, which is why having an organized, streamlined and integrated approach to product development that prioritizes innovation, technology adoption and continuing education are the ingredients that help you achieve better developer velocity. Wix Studio empowers developers to work on the same client projects simultaneously in their workspace (get a behind-the-scenes look at how the Wix Partners product and UX teams built the new Studio workspace). You can also leverage Wix Studio’s CRM tools for seamless communication with clients: capture leads, manage your inbox, set up marketing automations and capture new leads via submission forms. 04. Don’t let technical debt pile on Technical debt is a velocity killer. As complexity scales, legacy systems and tools can slow down developer workflows since developers often need to create workarounds that hinder productivity. To manage this, equip your dev team with the right tools and support experimentation. Note: Experimentation will inevitably lead to failure from time to time, and that’s okay. Introduce processes such as controlled releases, version rollbacks and team post-mortems to understand what went wrong and improve your workflow in the future. An all-in approach to dev velocity While improving developer velocity is a process that requires dedication and commitment from the entire team, it should be driven by leadership that's supportive and consistent. It’s important to recognize that dev velocity isn’t just a metric for developers; it’s an indication of agency performance. And it’s just one of many. Leadership must also take into account elements such as team dynamics, employee and client satisfaction, ‘planned-to-done’ ratios (how much work is still left on the table) and workload balance among team members. Collectively, this creates a supportive environment that emphasizes collaboration and creativity, making it everyone’s job to get projects done as efficiently as possible.

You expect obstacles when you’re trying to get your agency off the ground, but the challenges of running an agency don’t disappear once you’re well established; they just change. You need to deliver high-quality work at high-frequency intervals. You have more clients, a bigger team and a wider set of strategic and tactical considerations. It’s a lot to manage. And all of these demands can lead to inefficiencies in your agency, presenting even more challenges as you continue to grow. That’s why we built Wix Studio: to help you take on bigger clients and deliver stellar work with tools that help you do your job better and faster, starting with the ones below. Use them to take your ops to the next level. 01. A workspace that’s set up for scale Wix Studio’s workspace is packed with features that help agencies and freelancers manage their projects and teams seamlessly. As your agency grows, you’ll especially appreciate the ability to house all of your client websites within a singular dashboard. The workspace empowers agencies to: seamlessly switch between multiple projects provide a client kit complete with website logins, tutorial videos, FAQs (no need to email back and forth) and relevant attachments. generate automated reports for clients manage sites, client subscriptions, invoices, reusable assets and support tickets Read more: Exactly how the Wix Partners product & UX teams designed the new Studio workspace 02. A modular design system Build design systems that are easily replicated but afford space to make each design its own. With Wix Studio’s templates, you’ll have the structural components of your next clients’ website taken care of before they even sign their contract. Select from different options based on your clients’ industry and unique business needs (or start with a wireframe if you’ve got more customizing to do). From there, you can populate the site with design elements instead of adjusting the layout, information architecture and larger UX strategy all day. Even more exciting for agencies increasing their creative output, you can create your own custom templates suited for each business you work with to save time as requests start piling on from clients in similar industries. Read more about creating and using custom templates here. 03. Advanced AI capabilities Artificial intelligence is much more than a buzzword. AI is a coworker that augments your capabilities, and agencies who embrace it will enjoy more clients without sacrificing quality by catering to them all. You can use AI to design creative, strengthen copy and reach new prospects. Exhibit A: Wix Studio’s AI tools can help you produce faster work at a higher quality. Responsive AI adjusts sections to fit all screen sizes with the click of a button, the AI Meta Tag Creator generates title tags and meta descriptions tailored to every page, and the Wix AI Assistant helps write (and fix) your code. Combined, these tools can save you hours of work, leaving time for innovation and expansion. An AI strategy is no longer optional; it’s necessary for agencies who want to stay competitive in a demanding market. (Read more: Generative AI is taking over work processes. Where does that leave humans?) 04. Time-saving automations An understated part of scaling an agency is prioritizing the areas that need extra attention and delegating the more straightforward tasks. This often means leadership grows increasingly strategic as the rest of the workforce handles the tactical efforts. That’s where automation comes in. Some automations that you can use with Wix Studio: email your customers after they’ve made a purchase with a receipt and a thank you note send data to a Google Sheets such as form submissions or invoices check on clients who haven’t attended live-stream sessions use Wix’s free invoice generator to send requests for payment send shoppers email and SMS reminders using Klaviyo 05. Wix Blocks and apps Wix Blocks allows you to build widgets that you can integrate—and customize—across multiple websites, instead of starting from scratch every single time. Once you’ve created your app, you can save it and use it on future client projects, or even publish it for others to purchase on the App Market. Isn’t passive income the ultimate in efficiency? 06. Smart business solutions Wix Studio has native business solutions—like eCommerce, bookings, events and blog software—that can meet any client’s complex and evolving business needs, whether the business is a hotel, online store, restaurant or gym. You can also combine these solutions for a unique on-site experience for your clients. Think: gym clients going beyond class bookings with an eCommerce section for fitness gear. Or, perhaps your client already sells products, and wants to gain additional visibility by starting a blog. Whatever the case, Wix Studio’s business solutions will save you time and energy because you won’t need to start from scratch to suit every single business need. 07. Awesome collaboration opportunities With Wix Studio, you can set the roles and permissions of each and every client and employee (as well as contractors should your agency work with any external service providers). Save time on client back-and-forth by determining exactly what they can control on their own, so they can make appropriate changes as they see fit (without crashing the site in the process). You can even work on the same projects at the same time as your colleagues, leaving on-page comments that transform asynchronous collaboration to seamless real-time editing. With Wix Studio, the work is centralized, unified and easy to manage. Of course, each agency will have different styles for working and handing over the keys to a client’s shiny new website, so define that process ahead of time and stick to it as you scale. Since no two agencies will have the same processes, it’s important to define for yourself what smart work looks like as your brand and team grow together.

Smart agencies know they should have a marketing funnel that warms leads with equally smart content. That’s because each lead is a chance at bat, an opportunity to score a new client. This is where a strategic welcome email sequence comes in, says Brad Hussey, web designer and founder of Creative Crew, a global community where web design agencies share insights for growth. As Hussey explains, offering ongoing education via newsletters and webinars is one of the most effective ways to convert newly warm leads into paying clients, and the first five days of your new relationship are the most important. “Nurturing the leads you capture is a must, otherwise they’ll forget you,” says Hussey. “In that first Monday through Friday stretch, tell stories that point to problems you’ve had and how you’ve solved them.” (Check out the Wix Studio Community for more expert advice.) Importantly, the goal is to position yourself as a problem solver, not a salesperson. “Pack your emails with actionable insights they can start applying immediately, and they’ll remember you next week,” Hussey says. (Related reading: How to nail your thought leadership strategy in 6 steps) Like all marketing strategies, you’ll need to plot out your welcome email sequence to make the most of the practice. Check out some ways to build your content archive in a way that converts leads into clients—and, even better, you can use the same strategy to help clients with their own welcome email sequences once you’ve signed them, along with these welcome email examples. How to write a welcome email sequence that converts leads into clients Create a year’s worth of evergreen content Determine who will represent your communications Lead with personality Customize your email sequence with unique stories Create a year’s worth of evergreen content “Think of evergreen content as a machine that sends your target audience directly to your inbox,” says Hussey. You can write a blog post, record a podcast or film a YouTube video in 2024 that gets you new clients in 2025. You can write evergreen emails, too. “I generally ask my clients for 52 pieces of content (at least one piece of content a week) when we first start working together,” he says. Then, he builds out the funnel and schedules out the email sequence. Determine who will represent your communications It’s important for agencies to determine the face of their communications. You can choose to send emails under the brand itself, or as an employee or executive. “There are pros and cons to each approach, so it’s largely contextual,” Hussey says. “If you send emails as a company, you lose that personal touch. But if you assign it to someone in the agency, then all that brand equity goes with them if they leave.” That’s why for most agencies Hussey recommends starting with the founder’s voice. Attach the owner’s story to the brand’s mission statement, and communicate that in your onboarding email sequence. Lead with personality “If your email says, ‘I want to thank you for joining our mailing list,’ well, nobody cares, that’s going straight to trash,” Hussey says. “But if instead it says, ‘we’re going to make sure this is your favorite newsletter every single week and here’s a little backstory of how I got into this crazy world,’ well, I’d read that.” Ultimately, Hussey says you should let audience expectations determine who writes your content. “If your emails come from different people on your team, but they’ve got a playful, perhaps even a ragtag motley crew vibe, that’s okay as long as it plays to what your audience wants to get out of working with you.” So, whether you send five emails from the CEO in the first week, or five emails from five different execs in the company, be strategic about how you want to be seen. Who your clients communicate with is as important as what’s being said. Customize your email sequence with unique stories Of course, just because you sent prospects a welcome sequence doesn’t mean they’ve read each email. Retargeting emails can reach people in your audience who might’ve missed your initial outreach. By resending unopened emails after a day or two, you increase your total readership, strengthening your odds of conversion. Take it a step further by segmenting emails based on particular audiences: perhaps one group fits the bill (and need) for premium services, or you want to tell different stories to different geographical locations. The more you build out the flow of email communications, the more granular you can get with each one. “You need to know who you’re talking to, what they’re going through and why they signed up, then nurture the relationship accordingly,” Hussey says. Yes, it’s more involved than sending an email that says, “buy my stuff,” but the right story delivered at the right time can be the key to unlocking new client relationships.

Apple’s first iPhone released to the public over 15 years ago, on June 29, 2007. The first-of-its-kind product would combine the iPod, a phone and the internet (gasp!) all in one hand-held device. Hopefuls waited in lines for hours on the first day of sales. The atmosphere—if this clip of a fictionalized Elizabeth Homes vying for one in The Dropout gives you any indication—was frenzied, to say the least. In its evolution so far, the iPhone has consistently pushed the limits of what smartphones can do. It is a technological and cultural juggernaut that influences not only its competitors but also the functioning of industries globally. And loyal fans await each new product launch with the kind of fervor usually reserved for pop stars and superhero movies. We’re not getting into the detail of every iPhone model here; consider this article a highlight reel. Here, we’ve rounded up some of the most revolutionary moments in the history of Apple iPhones, with a focus on the large-scale changes each set in motion. Apple's latest iPhone model, the iPhone 15. Image courtesy Apple. 1. Launch The iPhone was the smartphone that changed the world. In January 2007, Steve Jobs unveiled the first-ever Apple iPhone, with a 3.5-inch screen and 2-megapixel camera, calling it “revolutionary,” and a “breakthrough Internet communications device.” It wasn’t the first smartphone, but it was definitely the most groundbreaking—its sleek, multi-touch display and futuristic, intuitively-designed user interface put design firmly at the forefront of Apple’s product ethos, and revolutionized how people would use their devices. Video of the big reveal of the first-ever iPhone in Apple history. 2. App Store For all its technical brilliance, the iPhone as we know it today would be nothing without the Apple App Store, the innovation that arguably redefined the course of personal computing. Launched with the iPhone 3G in 2008, the App Store became a hub where users could download apps from third-party developers to do everything from playing games, scrolling through social media to calling a taxi. In its first weekend, it reached 10 million downloads; the numbers today exceed over 50 billion downloads. This was a major moment in the history of the Apple iPhone: the App Store transformed the way software was designed, used, and distributed. The announcement of the app store. 3. Advanced camera & retina display Apple’s popular “Shot with iPhone” ad campaign owes its roots to the iPhone 4, launched in 2010. This phone came with Apple’s most powerful camera, its first front-facing camera, and its now-signature Retina Display screen with higher pixel density than traditional screens, features that made high-quality yet extremely simple smartphone photography a part of everyday life and turned every iPhone user into a photographer. (Apple just ran a “shot with iPhone” campaign for pop star Olivia Rodrigo’s “Get Him Back!” video, shot with iPhone 15.) Coupled with these innovations in camera technology and screen resolution came FaceTime and HD video recording—and the near-obsoletion of digital cameras. Apple's most recent "Shot on iPhone" ad campaign, for the iPhone 15. 4. Siri Apple introduced Siri, its smartphone voice assistant, in 2011 with the iPhone 4S. With a simple “Hey, Siri,” the voice assistant can be summoned to search the internet, set reminders, identify songs or tell a joke—a manifestation of the fantasy that one day we’d be able to talk to technology. While Siri has been criticized for sometimes being clunky, it was radical at the time of launch—The Verge called it “probably one of the most novel applications Apple has ever produced”—and set the ground for competitors like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant. Siri enters the chat. 5. Skeuomorphism to flat design Early iPhones featured expressive, three-dimensional textures and designs that mimicked real-life objects (remember the pinewood iBooks shelf?) known in the design world as skeuomorphism. But in 2013, with the launch of iOS 7, Apple introduced a new visual language: flat design. Not only was this a major moment in the history of Apple’s iphone, it was a major moment in design history. This new style was simple, two-dimensional, and evoked the modernity of Swiss design—the primary typeface was Helvetica Neue Ultra Light—and would go on to define the next decade of user interface design. Apple introduced flat design with iOS 7, changing their design style and, soon, everyone else's. 6. Face ID The iPhone X replaced the fingerprint scan-based Touch ID and home button with Face ID, a facial recognition system used to access and unlock the phone, in 2017. Through Apple's TrueDepth camera system, the iPhone creates a three-dimensional map of the user’s face, which is then used to not only unlock the phone but also create animated Animoji and Memoji characters. Apple has also modified its Face ID technology to recognize users while they are wearing face masks, a design relic of the pandemic era. Apple introduced Face ID with iPhone X in 2017. 7. Augmented Reality Apple claims to have the world’s largest AR platform, positioning the company and its newest model, the iPhone 15, as the platform of choice for the slew of AR apps on the market. This capability has led to a spate of AR-enabled iOS apps like AR spaces, and IKEA Place, which lets you virtually place true-to-scale 3D models in visualizations of your spaces. A combination of Apple’s lidar-based 3D scanning, innovations in tools for capturing realistic visuals, and the AirPod Pro’s spatial audio technology could indicate future uses of the iPhone as a world-building powerhouse. AR in Pokémon Go. Image courtesy The Pokémon Company International. 8. Virtual reality Of course the biggest news when it comes to Apple and new tech doesn’t really have to do with the iPhone, it’s the Apple Vision Pro—the company’s splashy, wearable AR/VR device to be released next year. In the history of Apple iPhones, though, this is still major–it shows that the iPhone, as a concept and as the company’s original smart device—could really evolve to be just about anything.

We’re all familiar with the typical industry holiday cards sent out to client lists, which clutter our mantels, offices and inboxes this time of year: script fonts, red and green colorways, glittering snowflakes. As a designer, visuals like these can all feel a bit expected. So, we asked the Wix Studio design team to offer up some holiday card design reinventions that stand out from the clichés. The results are anything but ordinary, featuring unexpected contrasts, rich design dimensionality and entrancing animated features—with the added bonus of web design best practices you can apply all year long. 01. Create unexpected contrasts These two cards are built to stand out. While both cards nod to traditional holiday symbols, colors and motifs, like the Hanukkah dreidel and Christmas tree, they’re reinterpreted as flat design icons—in this case, old school rear view mirror air fresheners. Look closely, and they’re rendered ever so slightly as 3D elements, evoking the soft texture of the real deal. The copy is also traditional and nostalgic, but the all-caps sans letterforms definitely aren’t. This interplay of styles gives the holiday cards a contrasting, modern feel. “The aim was to create visual imagery that relies on playful contrast with a bold and clear typographic message,” says Wix Studio designer Ashger Zamana. “The graphic twist of the holiday symbols adds depth and humor, and creates hints of joy.” In an ever-more mobile-first world, the vertical orientation of these holiday card designs makes the most of a mobile screen’s available real estate, so it catches recipients’ full attention whether they read it in their inbox on their way to holiday festivities, or in a close friend’s Instagram story. (Leaning into vertical orientation is a gold standard for digital assets year-round, btw.) These vivid holiday cards make the case for breaking with expected type choices. 2. Give your design some dimension One clear way to make your e-card design stand out is to lean into digital design techniques that aren’t possible with their snail mail counterparts. This e-card design celebrates the Chinese New Year by doing just that, and adding a sense of dimensionality and contemporary newness to traditional motifs. Here, the dragon illustration honors traditional visuals with a classic style, but uses a translucent effect that gives the illustration a sense of playfulness and newness. “Working with a classic representation of a dragon and more contemporary, eclectic letters creates a sense of depth and 3d illusion,” explains Zamana. You’re an expert after all, so find ways to push your design and impress your client list in ways standard evite services can’t. Here, Zamana heightens the visual interest by making this static illustration more interactive with other design elements in the card: in this case, by using layering to weave the dragon through bold type. Want to push this effect even further? Try animating it, as Zamana does with the next holiday card design. Heighten visual interest by designing elements to interact with each other within a composition. 3. Add eye-catching animated elements If you’re going the e-card design route, why not go all in? This card features a flower as the primary motif, but with a twist: it blooms right before your eyes. “The design approach revolved around the idea of longings, and expressing that in a visual way,” says Zamana. To do that, he used “a soft, grainy animation with minimal colors to create a sense of breath and air.” As for type, Zamana softens a more standard, low-contrast serif Grotesk font with slants and backslants on select letters. Great design visually translates your central idea across composition elements, and this design captures that well, whether for a holiday card design or anything else you create for a client in the future. As a web designer, your tool chest isn’t limited to a static page, so don’t be afraid to keep things festive year-round with thoughtful animated elements, like lottie animations, that draw the eye in your next project. Add animated elements for a fresh take on traditional motifs.