Developing effective agentic AI requires a new research playbook. When systems plan, decide, and act on our behalf, UX moves beyond usability testing into the realm of trust, consent, and accountability. Victor Yocco outlines the research methods needed to design agentic AI systems responsibly.

Amit Sheen takes a hard look at the “Pixel Perfect” legacy concept, explaining why it’s failing us and redefining what “perfection” actually looks like in a multi-device, fluid world.

CSS relative colour values are now widely supported. In this article, pioneering author and web designer [Andy Clarke](https://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/) shares practical techniques for using them to theme and animate SVG graphics.

How to shape your career path for 2026, with decision trees for designers and a UX skills self-assessment matrix. The only limits for tomorrow are the doubts we have today. Brought to you by Smart Interface Design Patterns, a **friendly video course on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.

[Penpot](https://penpot.app/?utm_source=SmashingMagazine&utm_medium=Article&utm_campaign=MCPserver) is experimenting with MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers, which could lead to designers and developers being able to perform tasks in Penpot using AI that’s able to understand and interact with Penpot design files. Daniel Schwarz explains how [Penpot MCP](https://github.com/penpot/penpot-mcp) servers work, what they could mean for creating and managing designs in Penpot, and what you can do to help shape their development.

Most developers spend their days fixing bugs, shipping features, and jumping into the next sprint without even thinking about it. After a while, you begin to ask yourself, “Is this still what I want to be doing?” This article looks at how you can move into a new direction in your career without starting from scratch, and how the skills you already use, like problem-solving, communication, and empathy, can open new doors.

Whether 2026 has already begun as you’re reading this or you’re still waiting for the big countdown to start, how about some new wallpapers to get your desktop ready for the new year? We’ve got you covered.

Practical UX guidelines to keep in mind for 466 million people who experience hearing loss. More design patterns in Smart Interface Design Patterns, a **friendly video course on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.

Turn scattered user research into AI-powered personas that give anyone consolidated multi-perspective feedback from a single question.

Meet TARS — a simple, repeatable, and meaningful UX metric designed specifically to track the performance of product features. Upcoming part of the Measure UX & Design Impact (use the code 🎟 IMPACT to save 20% off today).

In this article, pioneering author and web designer [Andy Clarke](https://stuffandnonsense.co.uk) shows his techniques for creating [Toon Text titles](https://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/toon-text/index.html) using modern CSS and SVG.

We’ve got exciting news! eBook versions of “Accessible UX Research,” a new Smashing Book by Michele A. Williams, are now available for download! Which means soon the book will go to the printer. Order the eBook for instant download now or reserve your print copy at the presale price.

CSS Wrapped 2025 is out! We’re entering a world where CSS can increasingly handle logic, state, and complex interactions once reserved for JavaScript. Here is an unpacking of the standout highlights and how they connect to the bigger evolution of modern CSS.

Lead your organization’s AI strategy before someone else defines it for you. A practical framework for UX professionals to shape AI implementation.

Explainable AI isn’t just a challenge for data scientists. It’s also a design challenge and a core pillar of trustworthy, effective AI products. Victor Yocco offers practical guidance and design patterns for building explainability into real products.

CSS Masonry is almost here! Patrick Brosset takes a deep dive into what this long-awaited feature means for web developers and how you could make use of it in your own work.

With December just around the corner, how about some new desktop wallpapers to welcome the last month of the year — and the holiday season, if you’re celebrating? Our latest edition of monthly wallpapers has got you covered. Enjoy!

CAPTCHAs were meant to keep bots out, but too often, they lock people with disabilities out, too. From image classification to click-based tests, many “human checks” are anything but inclusive. There’s no universal solution, but understanding real user needs is where accessibility truly starts.

We’re so happy to announce that “Maturing Design Systems”—a Smashing book by Ben Callahan — will soon be joining the Smashing Library! Ben’s insights and advice are so powerful, we thought you might like to read an excerpt from the book. Subscribe to our Smashing newsletter to be notified when orders are open.

Practical guidelines on designing time-critical products that prevent errors and improve accuracy. Part of the Measure UX & Design Impact (use the code 🎟 IMPACT to save 20% off today). With a live UX training starting next week.

Animations can be one of the most joyful parts of building interfaces, but without structure, they can also become one of the biggest sources of frustration. By consolidating and standardizing keyframes, you take something that is usually messy and hard to manage and turn it into a clear, predictable system.

Server chaos doesn’t have to be the norm. AI-ready infrastructure and automation can bring clarity, performance, and focus back to your web work.

Debugging controllers can be a real pain. Here’s a deep dive into how CSS helps clean it up and how to build a reusable visual debugger for your own projects.

There are many existing web features and technologies in the wild that you may never touch directly in your day-to-day work. Perhaps you’re fairly new to web development and are simply unaware of them because you’re steeped in the abstraction of a specific framework that doesn’t require you to know it deeply, or even at all. Bryan Rasmussen looks specifically at XPath and demonstrates how it can be used alongside CSS to query elements.

There are lots of tips for [improving your website performance](https://www.debugbear.com/blog/improve-website-performance?utm_campaign=sm-10). But even if you follow all of the advice, are you able to maintain an optimized site? And are you targeting the right pages? Matt Zeunert outlines an effective strategy for web performance optimization and explains the roles that different types of data play in it.

SVG is one of those web technologies that’s both elegant and, at times, infuriating. In this article, pioneering author and web designer Andy Clarke explains his technique for animating SVG elements that are hidden in the Shadow DOM.

Let’s dive into the building blocks of UX strategy and see how it speaks the language of product and business strategy to create user value while achieving company goals. Part of the Measure UX & Design Impact (use the code 🎟 IMPACT to save 20% off today).

With component variants, design systems become more flexible, letting you reuse the same component while adapting its look or state with ease. In this article, Daniel Schwarz demonstrates how design tokens can be leveraged to manage components and their variations using Penpot, the open-source tool built for scalable, consistent design.

The new month is just around the corner, and that means: It’s time for some new desktop wallpapers! All of them are designed by the community for the community and can be downloaded for free. Enjoy!

Here is a lesson on Iterators. Iterables implement the iterable iteration interface, and iterators implement the iterator iteration interface. Sounds confusing? Mat breaks it all down in the article.

Motion can be tricky: too much distracts, too little feels flat. Ambient animations sit in the middle. They’re subtle, slow-moving details that add atmosphere without stealing the show. In part two of his series, web design pioneer Andy Clarke shows how ambient animations can add personality to any website design.

A simple but powerful mental model for working with AI: treat it like an enthusiastic intern with no real-world experience. Paul Boag shares lessons learned from real client projects across user research, design, development, and content creation.

Research isn’t everything. Facts alone don’t win arguments, but powerful stories do. Here’s how to turn your research into narratives that inspire trust and influence decisions.

From A/B tests to AI slop, the modern web is bleeding out its colour. Standardized, templated, and overoptimized, it’s starting to feel like a digital Levittown. But it doesn’t have to be.

SVGs, they scale, yes, but how else can you make them adapt even better to several screen sizes? Web design pioneer Andy Clarke explains how he builds what he calls “adaptive SVGs” using ``, ``, and CSS Media Queries.

Ready to move beyond static mockups? Here is a practical, step-by-step guide to Intent Prototyping — a disciplined method that uses AI to turn your design intent (UI sketches, conceptual models, and user flows) directly into a live prototype, making it your primary canvas for ideation.

How about some new wallpapers to get your desktop ready for fall and the upcoming Halloween season? We’ve got you covered! Following our monthly tradition, the wallpapers in this post were created with love by the community for the community and can be downloaded for free. Enjoy!

What if your best AI prompts didn’t disappear into your unorganized chat history, but came back tomorrow as a reliable assistant? In this article, you’ll learn how to turn one-off “aha” prompts into reusable assistants that are tailored to your audience, grounded in your knowledge, and consistent every time, saving you (and your team) from typing the same 448-word prompt ever again.

Yegor Gilyov examines the problem of over-reliance on static high-fidelity mockups, which often leave the conceptual model and user flows dangerously underdeveloped. He then explores whether AI-powered prototyping is the answer, questioning whether the path forward is the popular “vibe coding” approach or a more structured, intent-driven approach.

Creating motion can be tricky. Too much and it’s distracting. Too little and a design feels flat. Ambient animations are the middle ground — subtle, slow-moving details that add atmosphere without stealing the show. In this article, web design pioneer Andy Clarke introduces the concept of ambient animations and explains how to implement them.