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Interaction design demands more than visual creativity

Our field has changed; update yourself.

Filipe Nzongo
UX Collective
Published in
8 min readFeb 17, 2025

Two people are standing on opposite sides of a number drawn on the ground. One sees it as a 6, while the other sees it as a 9. They are discussing their different perspectives.
Who is right? who is wrong? Source: Neil Rosenblum

I promise this will be a short article. I want to point out some concerns about how certain designers still don’t grasp what our field is about.

The evolution of digital design

I’ve been working in the human-computer interaction design field for a while and have had the opportunity to work on several projects in different sectors. I appreciate visual design. I started my career as a graphic designer, and I believe in the power of visual design to communicate ideas — before you crucify me.

I’ve seen many visual designers complaining about the homogenization of digital products’ visual design, but this was inevitable — it would happen sooner or later. The same happened in industrial design and architecture: at some point, functionalism and purism concepts prevailed because designers and architects were tired of excessive ornamentation.

From wild west to standardization

In the beginning, the web was almost vernacular, and technology imposed clear restrictions — internet speed in some places was only 56Kb. Today, a single button created in Figma can weigh more than that. Technology not only limits but also defines how…

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Written by Filipe Nzongo

Designer • Author • Lecturer • PhD. Fellow. BS in Software Engineering, MBA in Experience Design, HCI Researcher and Polyglot "I Like Doing Complex Things"

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I’ve seen many visual designers complaining about the homogenization of digital products’ visual design, but this was inevitable — it would happen sooner or later. The same happened in ...

"You've made me reconsider my stance on this article."