UND - Episode 5

Unrequested design news

You should check out WikiTok—Wikipedia meets TikTok. Addicting scrolling, but for good.

Would you trust two robots to organize your groceries?

Unrequested UX/UI mini-lessons

The Dunning-Kruger effect and how it shapes UX/UI design

Have you ever felt completely confident about something, only to later realize you didn’t know as much as you thought? That’s the essence of the Dunning–Kruger effect—a fascinating psychological phenomenon where people with limited skills in a particular area tend to overestimate their abilities. On the flip side, those who are highly skilled often underestimate their expertise, assuming everyone else is just as capable.

The effect, first described in 1999 by David Dunning and Justin Kruger, isn’t about intelligence but how we assess our competence. For example, those who score poorly on tests like grammar or logic tend to think they did better than they did because they lack enough knowledge to recognize what “good” looks like.

In UX design, this effect is a human bias that can be particularly dangerous. Overconfidence in poorly skilled designers can lead to poor user experiences, while highly skilled designers may downplay their abilities, missing opportunities to advocate for user-centered design. Being aware of this bias helps us improve by staying open to feedback and continuing to learn.

The key lesson here is to strike a balance between confidence and humility. Constantly reassessing our abilities and being open to learning will keep us grounded and help us create better designs. Humility allows us to approach design challenges with fresh perspectives, benefiting both users and our growth as professionals.

Unrequested UX/UI design services

Unrequested UX/UI design discounts

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Unrequested UX/UI design job offers

Senior Product Designer, N8N, Finland (work from anywhere in the world), Remote → link

User researcher, Temu, Germany, Remote → link

Product Designer, Spotify, London/Stockholm, Remote → link

Digital Product Designer, Nestlé Nespresso SA, Esplugues de Llobregat, Catalonia, Spain, Hybrid → link

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I'm Alessandra Stagno, a Lead Product Designer from Italy, now based in the Netherlands, with over 10 years of experience in Product Design – not the physical kind, though. The UX and UI kind. Yes, because in Italy, people think you make chairs if you say you’re a Product Designer. Never made chairs – unfortunately. But give me a horrible website or software with a questionable user experience, and you’ll find me in a room fixing it, saying: “Oooh! Now it’s clean, and I understand what I’m supposed to do, let’s test it!”