Things I Like
-
But what's good for Panipat and its customers is bad news for donors and the environment. Even if Panipat were producing shoddy at its peak, it probably couldn't manage the growing flood of used clothing entering the market in search of a second life. Between 2000 and 2015, global clothing production doubled, while the average number of times that a garment was worn before disposal declined by 36 percent. In China, it declined by 70 percent.
We've been going back to using up and wearing out things, climate change is a huge motivator. In the past six month I've had a pair of shorts and a pair of jeans both rip beyond repair because I'm wearing out the things I have. But reading this article brought home that I want to keep doing that. The amount of trash we're creating because we "tire" of things is startling.
-
In fact, it takes a lot of time to design robust systems that can scale across every part of a UI/product and doing all that work weirdly enough doesn’t feel like work, instead it’s more akin to unnecessary hassle and stress. But I can’t help think that this is what should differentiate the work of product designers from the work of graphic or print designers—and orgs should really incentivize simple and perhaps even boring additions to a system or a product.
I find this idea really intriguing, the different incentives for developers versus designers and how that's reflected in their work.
-
Messing around with a stand mixer or a sewing machine is fun for me because it’s not work. Personal pleasure is what makes a hobby a hobby.
I really love this piece because it perfectly captures the answer I've given to many who've told me I should sell the things I do for relaxation.
-
Since I wrote that over half a decade ago, things have just gotten worse in America, and as steady jobs keep disappearing and the market continues to gobble up the culture, the “free time” activities which used to soothe us and take our minds off work and add meaning to our lives are now presented to us as potential income streams.
A follow-up to the The Cut piece I posted, but Kleon clearly understands that many side projects become hustle due to economic circumstances, but that does change it from what it was intended to be, a hobby lives in the realm of pleasure and not work.
-
With my newfound free time, I’m looking forward to reading some books, playing some games, and listening to some podcasts. But this is an endless conquest, there will be more things to click tomorrow. So I’ll stand waist-deep and punch fiercely at the waves crashing on the shore.
I'm with Dave, I've been putting things away after work and focusing on hobbies, books, and the TV shows I enjoy rather than the latest post and outrage online.
-
It’s not the frameworks that are a problem but the architectural model of the applications we use them to make. Maybe frameworks will come up with some revolutionary solution that solves or makes up for the downsides.
This is a super varied post, but full of really interesting ideas and thoughts. I don't agree with all of them, but I'm thinking on several and that's what good writing should do.
-
It’s hard to imagine this Chrome-only situation getting any better, though. Google moved away from WebKit and towards its Blink rendering engine years ago, and there have been lots of optimizations to open source libraries, frameworks, and other parts of the engine that cause bugs in other browsers. You’ll notice this if you try and use Safari, Firefox, or Edge in certain sites where developers have initially targeted Chrome, and its easier for website support staff to simply recommend downloading Chrome than rewrite parts of their code. Developers have also spent years optimizing for Chrome, and working around some of its quirks with Chrome-only fixes or changes.
I've seen this article linked in quite a few places and it's well written, going over the history of the dominance of Internet Explorer 6 and how Chrome is now mimicking that. I use three browsers throughout the day and deliberately don't use Chrome as my main development browser to get a different perspective, but I think I'm in the minority of web developers.
-
The work sometimes involves tedium, drudgery, and, yes, repetition. But if we expect it from the beginning—if we acknowledge that retracing our steps is part and parcel to the project—then we move from redundancy to iteration.
Knowing that you may make mistakes, you may have to start over, you may have to redo work is a valuable mindset; this is how you learn. And just yesterday when I had to rip out several rows of crochet I reminded myself of this piece.
-
When we’ve reached a place where good Christian folk think it’s a matter of major theological principle not to sell pastries to gay people but are willing to give pedophiles a pass, I think it’s safe to say that American Christianity today — white American Christianity in particular — is in a pretty sorry state.
I've studied theology and, at times in my life, been heavily involved in the church, so it's with a heavy heart that I've watched how sideways things have become within the Christian world, particularly as it pertains to politics. This piece points out so many of the problems so well and it was nice to see someone speaking up using thoughtful arguments (which are sorely missing in many of our public debates these days). (Also of note: the fights highlighted here aren't the only reason this group is upset, I realize, but there are well thought out things in here.)
-
So just as Americans don’t get how bad their lives really are, comparatively speaking — which is to say how good they could be — so too Europeans don’t fully understand how good their lives are — and how bad, if they continue to follow in America’s footsteps, austerity by austerity, they could be. Both appear to be blind to one another’s mistakes and successes.
There are many of us in the US who do look to other countries (especially when it comes to healthcare) on how to do things, unfortunately none of them are in positions of power. And with the passage the the tax bill today, we are moving further away from realizing that if we want to be in a society together, we must pay for things together and care for the least of us.
-
I used to find it odd that these hypothetical AIs were supposed to be smart enough to solve problems that no human could, yet they were incapable of doing something most every adult has done: taking a step back and asking whether their current course of action is really a good idea. Then I realized that we are already surrounded by machines that demonstrate a complete lack of insight, we just call them corporations. Corporations don’t operate autonomously, of course, and the humans in charge of them are presumably capable of insight, but capitalism doesn’t reward them for using it. On the contrary, capitalism actively erodes this capacity in people by demanding that they replace their own judgment of what “good” means with “whatever the market decides.”
I saw this linked several places and it's getting passed around for good reason. We need to start worrying more about corporations and their insatiable need for growth and profitability. And the comparison to runaway AI was a great way to point out how similar they are.
-
But if your design system is complicated and over-engineered, they may find it frustrating to use and go back to what they know, even if its not the best solution. If you’re a Sass expert, and base your system on complex mixins and functions, you better hope your user (the developer) is also a Sass expert, or wants to learn. This is often not the case, however. You need to talk to your audience.
I really love how this article talks about who the audience of your design system is, because just as any other thing we make, we should make sure we're meeting our users needs. And for design systems that could be developers, designers, product managers, or stakeholders, and they should all be able to work with and use it.
-
It seems the thinking these days is that when we let users pick colors, the user is responsible for any contrast issues.
I don’t think that’s fair to neither the user picking the color nor the end users. A sentence like “but does the color validate against white?” is meaningless to most people.
This is cool, and super interesting how they implemented it. Kudos to that team for allowing for flexibility with colors but keeping things accessible.
-
My third concern is that with all this talk about design systems, there’s very little talk about the real problem in digital design, which is processes and tools. Designers love making design manuals, but any design system will completely and utterly fail if it doesn’t help people in the organization produce faster and better products.
This is a great write up of a talk and has had me thinking a lot. I'm currently working on a design system and trying to figure out how best to do this. And I think the process is where many systems fail. Taking into account how designers do their work, what developers need to do their jobs, and more. I have a lot of thinking left to do, but I'm grateful that this articulates so many of the problems I see with systems so well.
-
It’s easy for us to fall into the trap of believing that artifacts are the design. I’ve seen situations where stakeholders specify upfront the types and quantity of “deliverables” for a design project, with no regard for what they will be used for. Designers willingly comply because they, too, tend to measure their progress based on the wireframes, sketches, prototypes or whatever else they’ve produced. This is a mistake. Artifacts are communication tools.
Well said. This also feeds into my thinking about design systems and how designers and developers work in and around them. How are we communicating design, but then also having a process and tools that work for us to do design (and implement it).