Things I Like
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I’ve begun to think of design today as not so much defined by a binary option, but instead as a spectrum or a continuum—I’m fascinated in this space between the networked and un-networked texts.
I suppose that these suggestions all deal with the instability I find when setting text for the web, and I hope to remind myself of this when a new feature replaces an older one in a browser, or a new hack emerges. I want to consider technical implications of my decisions, and I want to ensure that we think about the effects of an unstable network sending an unstable codebase, only to be interpreted by an unstable browsing environment.
Ethan Marcotte talks about the space between in his latest book, Responsive Design: Patterns & Principles, and I too am fascinated by this space. Robin is referring to networks here, but I think there are a lot of spaces in between. Many areas where the interesting work actually happens. I love that Robin references it. The whole post is fantastic, which is why it got two quotes pulled from it.
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I can almost hear the Hacker News comments now, about what a luddite I am for not thinking five paragraphs of static text need to be infested with a thousand lines of script. Well, let me say proactively: fuck all y’all. I think the Web is great, I think interactive dynamic stuff is great, and I think the progress we’ve made in the last decade is great. I also think it’s great that the Web is and always has been inherently customizable by users, and that I can use an extension that lets me decide ahead of time what an arbitrary site can run on my computer.
So much great stuff in this piece, so many awesome points about how using the right tool for the job is the best way to go.
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Have a chat with your designers before they begin work on your next project. Let them know that your product will be tested for contrast, either by you or as part of your standard quality assurance process—and make sure they’re clear on how to pass. That proactive support will go a long way.
Color contast is a really huge issue that gets left behind way too often. I'm always pushing we think more deeply about this on the sites I work on, especially as it's also about less than ideal monitors as much as it is about people with vision problems.
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Pretty soon you’ll find out that every interview is a conversation, and every conversation is an interview.
So. Much. Good. Advice. Here. Even the obvious stuff (don't be late) and the non obvious. When you are speaking with someone about a job, about the possibility of a job, or just wanting to know more about what they do, remember that you asked for the favor and treat it as such. My only add to this would be to buy the coffee too.
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I like to apply the same thinking for the adoption of a design system: be where the creator is.
Lots of good, practical advice on how to get a system to be taken seriously and used by the organization. I especially like that Mark admits this isn't easy, but it can be done.
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These designers do this by engaging with the complex adaptive systems that surround us, by revealing instead of obscuring, by building friction instead of hiding it, and by making clear that every one of us (designers included) are nothing more than participants in systems that have no center to begin with. These are designers of systems that participate – with us and with one another – systems that invite participation instead of demanding interaction.
Everything about this piece is just so great. Lately I've been very interested in and motivated by the things outside of the tech world that are similar or that I can learn from, so I've been reading a lot about art. But architecture is a close second here because I think you can draw a lot of parallels.
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Choose names and classifications that make the most sense for the most people. It can be counter-productive if a team spends more time struggling with the analogy than designing and building the tool itself.
Trent, being all reasonable here, but he really is right.
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The technology/art dichotomy discourages people who might otherwise be interested in one or the other, or forces people who are interested in both to pick one or the other.
The illustrations are great in this piece, but I also really love the point. I spend a lot of time away from the computer doing art and it's nice to see the acknowledgement that the two can actually work in tandem and help you be better at both.
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It’s intimidating to throw yourself into solving problems that you’ve grown up with and around. Most American kids, unless they’ve been raised in a highly sheltered environment, have some sense of how multi-faceted problems like mass incarceration really are. Choosing to work on that issue (one that many countries in the Global South handle far better than we do, by the way) means choosing to nurture a deep, motivating horror at what this country is doing via a long and humble journey of learning. It means studying sentencing reform. The privatization of prisons. Cutting-edge approaches already underway, like restorative justice and rehabilitation. And then synthesizing, from all that studying, a sense of what direction a solution lies in and steadfastly moving toward it.
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The moment that tied it all together for me was when I asked a mother in my research study why it was important to train her children to behave properly in public. She simply replied, “Because if they know how to behave properly, they will know how to adapt and get along with people. And that will give them pleasure.” Adhering to social rules is a means to greater pleasure. You have to give up something to gain something greater.
This article is somewhat about parenting, but I think it's broader topic is how we live life in America versus how they do so in France. And it's taken me a long time to feel OK and good about taking time off, doing things I enjoy, and not living to work but rather working to live and do the things I enjoy.
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The expectations for a Facebook experience are shaped by the cultural expectations brought to the table. No farmer we spoke to had explicit or calcified expectations—they had not joined Facebook ten years ago or five years ago or even two years ago. They had not been indoctrinated into whatever it is Facebook thinks it is. Or what Facebook wants us to think it is. For them, it is a malleable tool. And they have made it into what they want: Largely a news reader. A relatively bandwidth efficient way to read about topics that interest them (the weather, Buddhism, pretty girls in swimsuits).
This is a really lovely look at how an application can vary in how it's used and what it means. And the key to the Facebook popularity is the low data usage. We often forget these things as we consume data in gargantuan amounts because it's cheap for us.
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There’s a tendency for human beings to interface with things that are pleasant to us. It’s taken 600 years, from Gutenberg to now, for the book to achieve the shape that seems to be optimal for our eyes and hands. Everything that is electronic will achieve the same standard. It will be a different substrate, but there is obviously something in it. Otherwise it wouldn’t have survived for 500 years. The same goes for the screen. I knew it wasn’t going to stay as bad as that. In ’91, Adobe published ATM, Adobe Type Manager, when some of the bitmaps went smooth and there was anti-aliasing. I know it has taken 20 years, but now it’s as good if not better.
Learn as much about our culture as you possibly can, by reading, by traveling, by involving yourself in things that go on. But don’t become an artist. Don’t think, “I’ll do it intuitively.” You have to learn if not to code at least to appreciate code, to understand code. Because code is what nuts and bolts were a hundred years ago.
Had to do two quotes here, it's a great interview, especially his life story at the beginning.
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That anger explains a lot, but the question still remains: how do folks continue to ignore facts? How have people’s viewpoints become so insular and isolated that any contradictory information never even penetrates the bubble? How did we get to a point where dialogue is impossible? And I’m not just referring to this presidential race, but to many other areas of discussion as well. Am I imagining this or has the echo chamber, where one only hears what one agrees with, expanded in scope and at the same time had the effect of increasing that anger and the inability to have a dialogue?
This entire thing is awesome. I had no idea David Byrne had a newsletter, but I'm glad I know now and I'm subscribed.
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Unlike the web of today, where more or less everything exists at a particular address and, if that server goes offline, the content is lost, connected copies ensure that even if one person or company ceases to pay their hosting bills, many other copies persist. Caulfield compares it to a run of books: one library can burn, but odds are every book in its stacks exists elsewhere, so the loss to collective human knowledge is minimal. I couldn’t help but think of this in context of the rising era of platforms on the web and the increasingly dire consequences if (when) some of these systems eventually shut down. It’s very likely that our next Octavia Butler is today writing on WattPad or Tumblr or Facebook. When those servers cease to respond, what will we lose? More than the past is at stake—all our imagined futures are at risk, too.
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But accessibility should be a baseline, not the sum of it all. And I want more from a feed than basic accessibility. I want to fucking learn something. I want to challenge my perception of the world. And, yeah, I want to see pandas rolling in the snow, too, but a panda-only web would be pretty dull. At some point, a feed that you never leave is going to feel like a prison. Platform designers should take heed.
Well, as usual, Mandy has written another great letter. And what I love about this letter so much is that final conclusion. I'm not on very many of the usual networks, and I have people in my life that get upset with me about it, but there are reasons for that, very good ones, and one of them is that I want to discover way more than just what those networks decide I should discover. I want the web, the open web, filled with links.