Russ Morris | UX Designer & Product Architect |

The Essential Guide to Microcopy and Becoming a More Literate Designer Designers should not be mere decorators, but understand language and microcopy, which is a crucial design skill, now more than ever.

My best advice for young product designers:

» spend way less time messing with drop shadows and animations

» spend way more time getting good at writing copy and microcopy for your app

Lots of scummy sites out there about microcopy, but this one seems good: uxmag.com/articles/the...

Ha, that contact form is so fun!

Preach! I dislike discord for many reasons. Not only because it makes me feel old, but as you say, *everything* is a Discord now. Even the smallest of communities gets pushed behind a discord wall.

Last week I did my first full-fat UX design interview since deciding to focus on UX.

I felt it went well and today I got the call offering me the position. Beyond chuffed!

a group of people in orange jackets are standing in a dark room ALT: a group of people in orange jackets are standing in a dark room

and the best recreation of polaroid processing I've ever seen!

a man in a red suit is holding a guitar ALT: a man in a red suit is holding a guitar

a protagonist that uses what looks like an electric keytar as a weapon.

a puppet is giving a thumbs up with a heart in his mouth ALT: a puppet is giving a thumbs up with a heart in his mouth

It also has Dollman - who is animated on 2s!

Music in DS2 is key. After difficult sections you'll get a new song - camera pulls out to reveal more of the landscape in front of you. It's a nice 'cinematic' moment, but it's also the moment to signify to the player that they are 'safe'. It's a reward - telling the player to keep moving forward.

That emotional connection, and the general 'vibe', is really enhanced by an excellent soundtrack. Desolate, melancholy - it feels like music from the time 'before' all the Death Stranding happened. It fits the vibe and world perfectly.

DS2 is a full ensemble effort to focus on telling the human stories within that world. The main narrative and pay offs are surprisingly good! I enjoy Kojima's story telling but I never expect the narrative to be as emotionally affecting as how some of DS2 made me feel.

I finally got around to playing Death Stranding 2 towards the end of 2025 and finished off the main story recently.

It's bonkers in the exact way that you'd expect from a Kojima game. The first game relied upon the world to tell the story, with only a few characters for key narrative beats.

I just really like oasis.

omg, this is the best skeet/tweet you've ever sent.
Get it in my veins.

I could 'pin' it, which removes the close icons, but it also adjusts my tab layout order - and it also removes any sort of preview of what the tabs contain.

...however, I'm regularly closing split view tabs when I don't want to. That split tab is so small with the 'X' icon appearing on both tabs that it makes it hard to avoid.

I'd like a way to 'lock' the split view tabs in some way, removing the possibility of accidentally closing a tab.

I really like the split view that they've added to Google Chrome - I use it quite a lot have Notion open on the side of a project I'm working on or a video I want to take notes on...

My main goals is to showcase the process behind designing an app such as this - rather than the overall visual design. It's about thinking through the building blocks of UX, IA and UI so each part holistically supports the other.

Had a slight delay in finishing off the 'Scorecard' app case study I'm working on due to freelance and interview prep, but I've got almost all the key components in place now to properly document the process of building and designing an app based on a heritage news format.

I realised today that I've not opened up Unity or considered any sort of game development related activity for over 6 months now.

I first read 'inmates' last summer - and I'm reading it again, for me it's such a perfect summary of how UX forever grows but the fundamental values stay the same.

'UX team of one' is a new one for me. Thoroughly enjoying the unforgivingly practical advice and approach to working in this field

Also on the UX side, I'd like to reccomend 2 books that are probably 'classics' of the field.

'The inmates are running the asylum' by Alan Cooper and 'UX team of one' by Leah Buley and Joe Natoli.

Feels good to say that I've started the year off positively.

I've acquired some freelance work doing UX research and design for a learning platform and I've also secured an interview for a full-time role.

I’m diving into the "engine room" to show how I architected a parameterised design system in Figma. Moving from Primitives to Semantic Tokens to get Dark Mode for "free."

Read it here: www.therussmorris.com/post/the-sco...

#DesignSystems #UX #Figma

How do you blend broadsheet-style authority with dense cricket statistics? 🏏

I’m documenting my process for ‘The Scorecard,’ a hybrid news/sports app design. Part 1 covers the research, mental models, and lo-fi prototyping.

Read more here: www.therussmorris.com/post/the-sco...

#UXDesign #UX #UXUI

YouTube video by Russ Morris Apples Podcast UX Fail #UX #UXDesign #apple #applepodcasts

I’m genuinely confused by the Apple Podcasts update.

The persistent nav bar is gone. Now, it plays musical chairs with the "Now Playing" bar the moment you start scrolling.

It’s distracting, adds extra taps, and breaks the visual hierarchy for no clear benefit. What is the goal here? 🍎🤨

#UX

My efforts now focus on finding employment. Other than a few contract roles in 2025 - it's coming up to 12 months since being made redundant and not working full-time. Some of that was due to choosing to move away from programming and focussing on design - but I'm itching to get back out there!

Officially finished my UX Design certification from the UX Design Institute now.

Having the oppertunity to focus on learning for a few months has been really rewarding - whilst we might think we know enough, there are always new things to learn, discover and grow from.

My kids are officially out of the ‘Father Christmas’ phase. It’s been a rocky couple of years of subtle hints, nods and winks - but this year they were like “can we just not do the whole Santa thing? We know it’s fake”.

You really need them to say it out loud.

I'm so confused - this is on a flat screen? It looks like the rails and everything are 3D!

My struggle with colors Demystifying colors for accessible digital experiences

I've really enjoyed reading these 2 articles regarding colours in design and UX. It approaches an accessible colour system in a systematic way that really helps focus on creating a reliable system.

uxdesign.cc/my-struggle-...
and
uxdesign.cc/my-struggle-...

#UXUI #Design #Accessibility