giselle.ks@gmail.com
March, 2026

Small Choices, Big Impact: The Environmental Cost of Mobile Design Decisions

When we think about sustainability in technology, we often picture data centers, rare earth minerals, or the carbon footprint of shipping hardware across the globe. An app often feels weightless by comparison. An animation doesn’t look like pollution. A background refresh doesn’t feel like extraction. And yet, when those choices are multiplied across millions of devices, used for hours every day, they quietly accumulate into something far from negligible.

www.createwithswift.com/small-choices-big-impact-the-environmental-cost-of-mobile-design-decisions/

February, 2026

Beyond the Human: Designing with Non-Human Personas in Mobile Apps

Design has always started with people –how they think, move, tap, hesitate, and decide. For years, user-centric design has been repeated like a mantra across teams as a guiding principle. But somewhere along the way, user-centric quietly narrowed into user-only. It became shorthand for a single persona on a board: an age, a job title, and a favorite drink. Helpful at times, occasionally insightful, but ultimately incomplete.

www.createwithswift.com/beyond-the-human-designing-with-non-human-personas-in-mobile-apps

january, 2026

Branding with AI: Superpowers for Indie Creators

In the first wave of AI tools, we learned how to accelerate development. Writing code faster, generating mockups by the dozen, and automating user flows. Speed was the headline. Now, a quieter and more consequential shift is emerging –one more about meaning and less about speed. AI is no longer just a production assistant.

createwithswift.com/branding-with-ai-superpowers-for-indie-creators/

december, 2025

The power of ethics in mobile design

Mobile design is intimate. They are tools people hold in their hands and check hundreds of times a day. That’s why mobile developers hold a quiet kind of power: we don’t just make interfaces, we shape behavior, expectations, and trust –whether we mean to or not.

createwithswift.com/the-power-of-ethics-in-mobile-design

november, 2025

Designing Humanist Data Visualization for Mobile

We generate an astonishing 402.74 million terabytes of data every day. Videos alone account for more than half of global internet traffic. In this vast ecosystem, mobile apps play a dual role: they create data and they help make sense of it. From sharing photos with friends to analyzing where your money goes, mobile experiences turn raw information into understanding.

createwithswift.com/designing-humanist-data-visualization-for-mobile

october, 2025

Building for Love: Creating Authentic Connections

Creating digital products goes beyond functionality; it’s about designing meaningful experiences that emotionally resonate with users. In a world of billions of apps, only a few become essential in users' lives. To build products that stand out, focus on user emotions, intentional design choices, and the pursuit of joy, not just solving problems.

createwithswift.com/building-for-love-creating-authentic-connections

august, 2025

Design as brand: The power of choice and belief

Design is not just about form or function; it’s about purpose. Consumption has become a vehicle for self-expression. It is not just wanting a product, but aligning with a set of values. People choose to support brands that reflect their beliefs, ethics, and aspirations. Choosing a brand has become an act of self-expression.

www.createwithswift.com/design-as-brand-the-power-of-choice-and-belief/

july, 2025

Building for hate: Designing for deception

Creating a new product begins with crafting the "happy path" –the ideal user journey. Designers often approach product development with intentionality and empathy, advocating for users. This is the foundation of user-centric design. Sadly, not all products and companies prioritize the greater good; instead, they create sneaky features.

www.createwithswift.com/building-for-hate-designing-for-deception/

may, 2025

The Future of Design in an AI-Driven World

As Artificial Intelligence reshapes industries, its influence on design reaches a critical moment. Rather than replacing designers, AI is transforming design itself. Moving away from fear to opportunity as AI tools become integrated into creative workflows. It will lead to either a "Golden Age of Creativity" or "algorithmic homogenization".

www.createwithswift.com/the-future-of-design-in-an-ai-driven-world/

march, 2025

The Enshittification of Digitial Services

In a linguistic beat, the Macquarie Dictionary crowned "enshittification" its 2024 Word of the Year. Coined by Cory Doctorow, the term captures the gradual deterioration of services –mainly digital platforms– by prioritizing profits over user experience and societal benefit.

www.createwithswift.com/the-enshittification-of-digitial-services/

january, 2025

Designing for Application States: Creating Seamless User Experiences

An application carries users through different states during their journey –from happy steps to error scenarios. Each transition shapes the overall user experience, much like chapters in a story. A well-designed app anticipates and adjusts user needs in all states, enhancing an app's overall effectiveness and user engagement.

www.createwithswift.com/designing-for-application-states-creating-seamless-user-experiences

january, 2025

Writing better error messages for your apps

Apps are designed taking into consideration a happy path –the flawless journey– but hiccups happen. It could be a connection issue, the server might be down, or maybe the user entered the wrong password.

www.createwithswift.com/writing-better-error-messages-for-your-apps

january, 2025

Designing digital products for a sustainable world

The evolution of product design echoes the human transformation. In the early 1950s, the human-centered design approach revolutionized product development, placing human needs at the core of product creation. For the following decades, that principle guided the development of physical products, redefining what design meant.

www.createwithswift.com/designing-digital-products-for-a-sustainable-world

january, 2025

Understanding Design Systems

A design system is an essential tool for software development teams, enabling creating and maintaining a consistent experience across products and media. For a design system to be effective, it must be thoughtfully structured, with particular attention to decisions made in the product itself. Let’s explore the definition and components of a design system, its differences from a UI Style Guide, and the essential elements that shape a robust and effective design system.

www.createwithswift.com/understanding-design-systems

october, 2024

Humanistic data art visualization for analyzing learner growth in Challenge Based Learning programs

This perspective article investigates the potential of applying artistic or “humanistic” data visualization to improve the understanding of learner’s growth in the context of highly dynamic, learner-centric and experiential educational programs. The article explores the possibility of leveraging a more humanistic or esthetically driven approach to visual learning analytics in the context of programs using Challenge Based Learning (CBL) as a learning framework.

www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389

september, 2024

Navigating digital endings

Offboarding honors the end of a user's journey, closing their experience in an app –for example, a travel app used for a specific trip or a real estate app that becomes irrelevant once a home is found. In these cases, the app becomes unnecessary, and users have the right to request the deletion of their data. Login credentials, saved preferences, and other personal information can reveal a lot about a user, and to ensure privacy, this data should be erased.

www.createwithswift.com/navigating-digital-endings

july, 2024

Writing better copies for your apps

User experience refers to any interaction a user has with a product or service, and one crucial element of this interaction is language. Phrases and verbs are key components in creating communication between services and users. When written correctly, these lines can transform user journeys into delightful experiences. But what should be written? Can it be humorous? Should the app be brutally honest? Learn how to craft consistent and effective wording to enhance the user experience in your app.

www.createwithswift.com/writing-better-copies-for-your-apps