Toptal Design Blog

The Toptal Design Blog is a hub for advanced design studies by professional designers in the Toptal network on all facets of digital design, ranging from detailed design tutorials to in-depth coverage of new design trends, techniques, and technologies.

authors are vetted experts in their fields and write on topics in which they have demonstrated experience. All of our content is peer reviewed and validated by Toptal experts in the same field.

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authors are vetted experts in their fields and write on topics in which they have demonstrated experience. All of our content is peer reviewed and validated by Toptal experts in the same field.

5 Signs Your Product Strategy Is Broken—and How Designers Can Help Fix It

A good product strategy aligns team efforts, cuts costs, and encourages long-lasting conflict resolution. Three Toptal product design experts discuss how product strategies get derailed and what designers can do to help get things back on track.

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Christian Adolphus

Christian is a product designer, product owner, user researcher, and Webflow developer. He led the design team at Chaka, a financial solutions platform, and worked as the founding product designer at SquadPal. His product experience spans B2B, B2C, and SaaS enterprise software.

Designing VR Games Worth Playing: 6 Key Considerations

Despite decades of hype, virtual reality gaming has failed to be widely adopted. Better design can reduce player frustration, increase comfort, and make games more immersive.

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Edward Moore

Edward is a veteran UX designer with a résumé of award-winning projects for Google, Sony, Electronic Arts, and Sega. He’s worked on iconic gaming franchises like Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and Sonic. In 2014, he launched a company to contribute strategic gamification and UX services to nongaming companies seeking to leverage AR/VR technology.

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Shopping for Apparel in an Online World: UI/UX Design for Virtual Clothing Try-on

How is technology changing the way people shop for clothes? Designers explain how to use AR and VR to drive conversions and minimize returns.

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Laurence Brothers

Laurence is Toptal’s Senior Writer for Technology and Software. A former analyst at Google and ITA Software and researcher at Bell Communications Research and Verizon Laboratories, he now writes about the intersection of technology, business, and design. Laurence has five patents for AI and internet applications and a master’s degree in computer science from Columbia University.

Play Is the Point: How UX Designers Can Break Into the Gaming Industry

There are many ways for game UX designers to break into this multibillion-dollar industry. Using her 14 years of video game UX expertise, designer Pam Nicholls shares how.

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Pam Nicholls

Pam is a UX designer who specializes in video games, augmented reality, SaaS, and web applications. She has a master’s degree in industrial design and has worked on projects for high-profile clients such as Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, DreamWorks Animation, Scrabble, the NBA, and the NHL.

Improve the Product Development Process With This Simple, But Powerful, User Flow Analysis

Apply the four steps in this user flow analysis method to make your product development process more efficient—and improve UX for activities like app onboarding and checkout.

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Khatia Gagnidze

Khatia is a product designer and researcher who has created and enhanced user flows for banking, fintech, and e-commerce products. Her clients include the Bank of Georgia, the payment processing software HitPay, and Mymarket, the largest e-commerce platform in the country of Georgia.

Can Designers Make the Metaverse Less Awkward?

UX designer Pam Nicholls has created video games and augmented reality experiences for companies like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and DreamWorks Animation. Here she explores designing for the metaverse and reveals innovative ways to make the user experience more intuitive and accessible.

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Pam Nicholls

Pam is a UX designer who specializes in video games, augmented reality, SaaS, and web applications. She has worked on projects for high-profile clients such as Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, DreamWorks Animation, Scrabble, the NBA, and the NHL.

Push Notification Best Practices: 7 Questions Designers Should Ask

Mobile app push notifications are powerful engagement tools, but they can be intrusive if not handled correctly. Don’t hit send on your push notification strategy before asking yourself these questions.

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Shoaib Mahmud

Shoaib is a product designer with seven years of experience in mobile UX design for products in the freight and transportation sector, HR solutions, edtech, and logistics. He has worked with numerous startups in the US, Bangladesh, and Singapore overseeing project life cycles, including user research, wireframes, UIs, and prototypes.

Toptal Design Expert

Osandi Sekoú Robinson

Mentored at Apple, Osandi has spent over ten years helping teams create human-centered products that delight customers. After a product role at Square, he led and directed a remote team of five engineers, built and grew a lifestyle brand, and cut his teeth as a designer in a founder role. As one of Toptal's elites, he's changed the way organizations solve problems for their users, as well as produced world-class interfaces across B2B/B2C markets. Osandi is currently innovating crypto fintech.