1,927 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2021
    1. Don’t Believe The Type!

      Link to session

      Gareth Ford Williams, BBC

      David Bailey, BBC

      Bruno Maag, Typeface designer

      "Emotional accessibility"

      • Is it appealing? Technical and functional aspects are meaningless if no one wants to use your product/tool
      • Typeface = "visual tone of voice" and has a large bearing on emotional a11y

      Readability group survey

      • looking at series of fonts to see which they find most readable (also had people remove reading glasses if they use them)
      • cognitive bias: we might find fonts used in system UIs and commonly used fonts easier to read just because we're used to seeing them
      • 2022 user sessions, every font viewed 16,800 times
      • Segments for participants: confident readers, glasses for reading, pinch-to-zoom user, larger font, colored text, farsightedness, dyslexia & similar characteristics

      Font selection rate: all participants

      • Open dyslexic, Comic Sans, Times new Roman selected least frequently
      • Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto slab, etc did moderately well
      • SF Pr, Segoe UI, BBC Reith Sans, Verdana selected most often
      • But none of the fonts scored more than 70%
      • How do we know people are choosing for readability and not aesthetics? We'd probably see no difference b/t those with dyslexia and those who don't have it

      Font selection rate: Dyslexic traits

      • Open Dyslexic, Dyslexie, Comic Sans MS performed better among dyslexic folks but they were still selected least frequently
      • Helvetica, Roboto, Segoe UI, and SF Pro selected less often (5-10%) among dyslexic people

      Poor near vision group

      • Times New Roman and Helvetica see largest drop

      Letter combos used to find issues

      • "rn"in words like kernel, furnished, surname

      Why some typefaces work better than other

      • Top 4 performers: San Francisco Pro, Segoe UI, Verdana, BBC Reith Sans
      • All sans serif, either grotesque or humanist
      • Grotesque: closed character shapes - stroke terminal loops back into character
      • Humanist: open character shapes - more akin to movement of handwriting (more distinction b/t shapes like c, e, and o)
      • Why does Helvetica not perform well? Probably because of tight letter spacing
      • Why does Ubuntu fall short even though it has hallmarks of humanist design? Font weight is stronger than other similar fonts, maybe just outside acceptable parameters. Or maybe it looks too modern.
      • Why do dyslexic-specific fonts perform poorly? The irregularity claims to be beneficial to dyslexic people but maybe is too much, affecting smoothness of reading and emotional appeal
      • Why does Comic Sans perform poorly, even though it's most used font and thought to be helpful to learning readers? No data to back up this claim, but it's possible the childish appearance is more appealing to young readers. But on the other hand, it could have performed poorly because it's trendy to hate Comic Sans.
      • Is there an unconscious bias toward serif designs? Reading on a computer is more commonplace, and perhaps we associate sans serif with screens and serif with print.
      • Times New Roman has some characteristics of fonts that perform well, but letter spacing is tight.
      • Lower-case g: modern g is not necessarily more accessible, or we'd expect Roboto to perform better
      • x-height impacts perceived size, even at same font-size. Smaller x-height is perceived as "less readable"
    1. System architects: equivalents to architecture and planning for a world of knowledge and data Both government and business need new skills to do this work well. At present the capabilities described in this paper are divided up. Parts sit within data teams; others in knowledge management, product development, research, policy analysis or strategy teams, or in the various professions dotted around government, from economists to statisticians. In governments, for example, the main emphasis of digital teams in recent years has been very much on service design and delivery, not intelligence. This may be one reason why some aspects of government intelligence appear to have declined in recent years – notably the organisation of memory.57 What we need is a skill set analogous to architects. Good architects learn to think in multiple ways – combining engineering, aesthetics, attention to place and politics. Their work necessitates linking awareness of building materials, planning contexts, psychology and design. Architecture sits alongside urban planning which was also created as an integrative discipline, combining awareness of physical design with finance, strategy and law. So we have two very well-developed integrative skills for the material world. But there is very little comparable for the intangibles of data, knowledge and intelligence. What’s needed now is a profession with skills straddling engineering, data and social science – who are adept at understanding, designing and improving intelligent systems that are transparent and self-aware58. Some should also specialise in processes that engage stakeholders in the task of systems mapping and design, and make the most of collective intelligence. As with architecture and urban planning supply and demand need to evolve in tandem, with governments and other funders seeking to recruit ‘systems architects’ or ‘intelligence architects’ while universities put in place new courses to develop them.
    1. Here's the four case: foo.js Load/Require dependencies Concatenate dependencies foo.js.map Load foo.js Currently grabs metadata[:map] from asset to build an asset, need to move that generation somewhere else to accomplish de-coupling map generation foo.debug.js Load foo.js Load foo.js.map Add comment to end of foo.js with path to foo.js.map foo.source.js The raw file on disk, the map file will need to point to source files.
    1. There are plenty of words and acronyms you can put in front of “Designer”. Product, Web, Graphic, UX, UI, IA, etc. The lines between each are blurry, and the titles go in and out of fashion. Depending on the project and team I’m working alongside, I practice them all to varying degrees. I prefer to call myself; “A Designer.”
  2. Feb 2021
    1. The tech takeover corresponds with shrinking possibilities. This evolution has also seen the rise of a seeming aesthetic paradox. Minimalist design reigns now that the corporations have taken over the net. Long seen as anti-consumerist, Minimalism has now become a coded signal for luxury and control. The less control we have over our virtual spaces, the less time we spend considering our relationships with them. 

      Interessante laatste zin. Hoe minder we eigen controle hebben, zeggenschap, agency, hoe minder we ons bezighouden met de aard van de relatie. Die relatie kan verschillende vormen hebben.

    1. What is the relationship between design, power, and social justice? “Design justice” is an approach to design that is led by marginalized communities and that aims explicitly to challenge, rather than reproduce, structural inequalities. It has emerged from a growing community of designers in various fields who work closely with social movements and community-based organizations around the world.

      Alles wat niet wordt gedisciplineerd en gestructureerd door natuurwetenschappelijke wetmatigheden hangt samen met de menselijke creativiteit en behoeften. Van de inrichting van steden tot de inrichting van de maatschappij hebben we te maken met het ontwerpactiviteiten. De relatie tussen die inrichting en het gedrag van gebruikers waarvoor die inrichting is bedoeld is een vrij complexe. Of zoals Churchill het eens (1943) verwoordde:

      “We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.”

      Niet veel later (1967) werd een vergelijkbare uitspraak (ten onrechte) toegeschreven aan McLuhan:

      "We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us."

      Degene die deze uitspraak deed, John Culkin, illusteerde dit aan de hand van de intrede van de auto

      Once we have created a car, for example, our society evolves to make the car normal, and our behavior adapts to accommodate this new normal.

      De wederkerige invloed (performativiteit) van al hetgeen de mens creëert (uiteenlopend van gebouwen en apparaten tot 'simme steden' en algoritmes) is een belangrijk om te begrijpen dat een ontwerp meer is dan kenmerk dat het gebruik bevorderd. Ontwerpkenmerken hebben blijkbaar wederkerig effect op het menselijk gedrag. Ze zetten niet alleen aan tot gedrag dat is bedoeld en wordt getriggerd door de affordances van het ontwerp: unieke relatie tussen de kenmerken van een ‘ding’ in samenhang met een gebruiker die beïnvloedt hoe dat ding wordt gebruikt. Een relatie die verder gaat dan een eenzijdige perception-action coupling.

      Met betrekking tot sociale media kunnen we bijvoorbeeld spreken van 'transactional media effects':

      "... outcomes of media use also influence media use. Transactional media-effects models consider media use and media effects as parts of a reciprocal over-time influence process, in which the media effect is also the cause of its change (Früh & Schönbach, 1982)."

      Het gegeven dat ontwerpers vaak alleen de positieve ervaring van gebruikers voor ogen hebben is volgens Danah Abdulla niet constructief.

      "...optimism in design is not always constructive. In fact, it hinders the politicization of designers. If design is going to contribute to tools that can change the world positively, it must begin to embrace pessimism."

    1. A learning design is a creative pathway, with steps along the way, that guides someone from a point of introduction to a permanent change in knowing, doing, or being.

      This is a really interesting definition that I will be chewing on.

    1. provide interfaces so you don’t have to think about them

      Question to myself: Is not having to think about it actually a good goal to have? Is it at odds with making intentional/well-considered decisions?  Obviously there are still many of interesting decisions to make even when using a framework that provides conventions and standardization and makes some decisions for you...

    1. While Trailblazer offers you abstraction layers for all aspects of Ruby On Rails, it does not missionize you. Wherever you want, you may fall back to the "Rails Way" with fat models, monolithic controllers, global helpers, etc. This is not a bad thing, but allows you to step-wise introduce Trailblazer's encapsulation in your app without having to rewrite it.
    1. But what if leadership not only ignores our recommendations but tells us to do something different? I'll never forget one comment. "We're lying to our users," one anguished UX designer told me, explaining that leadership regularly ordered the UX team to create designs that were intentionally misleading. Apparently it helped boost profits.
    1. Set your models free from the accepts_nested_attributes_for helper. Action Form provides an object-oriented approach to represent your forms by building a form object, rather than relying on Active Record internals for doing this.

      It seems that the primary/only goal/purpose was to provide a better alternative to ActiveRecord's accepts_nested_attributes_for.

      Unfortunately, this appears to be abandoned.

    1. In object-oriented programming, information hiding (by way of nesting of types) reduces software development risk by shifting the code's dependency on an uncertain implementation (design decision) onto a well-defined interface. Clients of the interface perform operations purely through it so if the implementation changes, the clients do not have to change.
    1. The reason Reform does updating attributes and validation in the same step is because I wanna reduce public methods. This is to save users from having to remember state.

      I see what he means, but what would you call this (tag)? "have to remember state"? maybe "have to remember" is close enough

      Or maybe order is important / do things in the right order is all we need to describe the problem/need.

    1. Verani, J. R., Baqui, A. H., Broome, C. V., Cherian, T., Cohen, C., Farrar, J. L., Feikin, D. R., Groome, M. J., Hajjeh, R. A., Johnson, H. L., Madhi, S. A., Mulholland, K., O’Brien, K. L., Parashar, U. D., Patel, M. M., Rodrigues, L. C., Santosham, M., Scott, J. A., Smith, P. G., … Zell, E. R. (2017). Case-control vaccine effectiveness studies: Preparation, design, and enrollment of cases and controls. Vaccine, 35(25), 3295–3302. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2017.04.037

  3. Jan 2021
    1. that's by design:

      Can't upgrade from EOL version

      Supposed to upgrade from it while it is still supported...

      I can see calling this upgrade path "unsupported", but isn't "by design" going a bit too far?

      It seems like it's not so much an intentional design choice to disallow it as it is an inadvertent side effect of ending support for it, and of only developing support for specific version upgrade paths.

    1. https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.archdaily.com%2F627654%2Fthe-computer-vs-the-hand-in-architectural-drawing-archdaily-readers-respond&group=__world__

      I came across this article about the tension between computer drawing and hand drawing in architecture when I replied to an annotation by another user @onion - very interesting read and I would be curious to see this issue revisited in another ten years...how may opinions have changed?

    1. Designers also trade in storytelling. The elements we must master are not the content narratives but the devices of the telling: typography, line, form, color, contrast, scale, weight. We speak through our assignment, literally between the lines.

      We tell stories not through words, but through our portrayal of them: visuals.

    1. Material is the metaphor The metaphor of material defines the relationship between space and motion. The idea is that the technology is inspired by paper and ink and is utilized to facilitate creativity and innovation. Surfaces and edges provide familiar visual cues that allow users to quickly understand the technology beyond the physical world.
  4. Dec 2020
    1. We recommend the following changes to the default settings when designing ddPCR assays:

      Primer3 : designing primers and probes for ddPCR

      In the General Settings window, change “Concentration of divalent cations” to 3.8, “Concentration of dNTPs” to 0.8, and “Mispriming/Repeat Library” to the correct organism ■In the Advanced Settings window, change both the “Table of thermodynamic parameters” and “Salt correction formula” to SantaLucia 1998 ■In the Internal Oligo window, we recommend setting 15 for the minimum number of bases for the oligo. We recommend 64°C as the minimum Tm for the probe, 65°C as the optimal Tm for the probe, and 70°C as the maximum Tm for the probe. These parameters can be relaxed to allow for smaller/larger oligos, which may be necessary for high GC or low GC targets. Oligo size should be no smaller than 13 and no larger than 30 nucleotides

      Note: After you have made the desired changes in Primer3Plus, select Save Settings under General Settings and save these parameters in a file. To apply these settings in the future, upload them by selecting Browse in the General Settings tab, find this file, and click Activate Settings.

    1. page is a { host, path, params, query } object where host is the URL's host, path is its pathname, params is derived from path and the route filename, and query is an object of values in the query string.

      I like that we don't have to manually parse params/query out of the full request URI. It provides the data that you are most likely to need, in an readily/easily-usable form.

    1. The best solution that I found while trying to build a masonry component was to package up a pair of components and place child components inside a wrapper - I chose CardLayout and Card such that users would write something like: <CardLayout> <Card><MyBeautifulCard /></Card> <Card><AnotherCard /></Card> </CardLayout>
    2. Hm, React-way is really hacky... When we talking about lists, masonry, or any other table-style components, first of all, we talk about arrays and iteration through them. If you iterate over the children in the Masonry component, somewhere (in parent component I guess) you also iterate over the actual items. Over and over again, in all places you use this component, you perform almost the same iteration twice. Why we should do this? I believe the interface of this kind of components should look like this: <Masonry {items} {colsNum} let:item> <SomeItemComponent>{item}</SomeItemComponent> </Masonry>
    1. Sometimes, systems just scale the problemA UI design system is more than the code of a component library. It’s more than the colors, styles, and margins of your elements. It’s an ever-growing and ever-evolving creature that entails your brand and your user’s feelings.

      If you don't understand the problem - you can [[scale the problem instead of solve the problem]], and it's important to remember that a [[design system is more than a component library]]

    1. Instead of publishing a single one-size-fits package for components, we create an ecosystem where everyone works together yet deliver independently. The design system’s team role is to facilitate and regulate, not block or enforce.

      I think this is a really important point - the design system's team is to facilitate, not gatekeep.

    2. What you see here is a page composed of shared components. However, these are independent components developed and owned by different teams and published from different projects, which are mixed and integrated together.

      the move towards single page applications, component centric frameworks, etc has shifted how we view building webpages.

      It is not so much that we are building a page, but we are building components that we assemble into a page.

      We’re not designing pages, we’re designing systems of components.—Stephen Hay via atomic design

    3. The design of your system is not ready until you have two assets:a) A style-guide that defines the styling and implementation of your UI. This is usually a rather long document with a lot of text and typography.b) A set of reusable visual elements that bring together both visual (UI) and functional (UX) consistency through components. This is usually a rather large canvas with elements drawn on Figma or Sketch etc (we use both).

      there are two [[primary assets of a design system[[

      • the style guide
      • the reusable elements - an implementation of the style guide
    4. The benefits of our system go way beyond UI/UX consistency. We greatly accelerated and scaled our development, improved our product quality, and greatly improved work between developers, designers, and everyone else.

      Design systems enable faster development and delivery, and help teams scale - and have value beyond UI/UX consistency.

  5. Nov 2020
    1. hub.cards allows you to create and design your next modern business card for free. Our newly developed editor is like no other on the web and makes all your creative dreams come true. If you're not a creative genius, you can choose from thousands of templates to create an appealing card.

      Best free editor for creating business cards. Digital & physical ones.

  6. Oct 2020
    1. BTech in design engineering or BTech engineering design: Design thinking is a popular concept that spans multiple industries and there are courses, independent of any branch purely focussing on designing products. This is also often referred to as an engineering design course or design engineering course. The idea is to teach how to not just bring in design to develop great products that are aesthetically perfect and ergonomically usable and consumer-focused but also to introduce design as a tool for innovative thinking. The curriculum develops design thinking concepts in a manner basis which students can conceptualise and develop products that are innovative while also boasting of high aesthetic value. These graduates are sought after by all manufacturing industries.

      Design thinking fosters innovative thinking.

      It involes designing user focused, highly utilitarian and aesthetic products.

    1. “Outdoor adult learning can be an antidote and complement to the digital world . . . offering holistic, mentally and physically challenging learning experiences.”

      Adult Learning often takes place within walls or in front of a computer screen this can lead to health problems. This article offers reasons and methods for getting adults outdoors and using Universal Design. Outdoor learning can be used to complement digital learning.

    1. Adult learning theories are not just a collection of jargons, concepts, and ideas about how adults learn. These theories help you plan your course during conception, development, and execution, in a way that will facilitate the learning process.

      Outlines adult learning "theories": Andragogy, Transformational Learning, and Experiential Learning, and states that they are important to educational designers, but doesn't really connect them to instructional design, let alone e-design. 3/10

    1. Handbook of Research on Student-Centered Strategies in Online Adult Learning Environments

      This article showcases a framework for course design using theory and research in the learning sciences. It defines student-centered learning and explains how it can/ should be used in the creation of the course and when establishing which theories and methods to structure the course around. 9/10, very detailed source.

    1. Blended learning: Efficient, timely and cost effective

      (Click Download full-text PDF to read.) In this article, the authors discuss the blended learning instructional delivery method. Through case study, the authors demonstrate the benefits of blended course design. Furthermore, the article addresses potential detriments (financial, instructional design) of a blended course design. A brief review of considerations and recommendations for a blended design was provided. Though this article focuses on the relationship to forensic science, the information is applicable across disciplines and delivery venues (corporate, academic). (6/10)

    1. Considering that one of the most significant factors of online course quality is instructor presence and interpersonal interaction,4 one of the benefits video can offer is creating faculty presence in an online environment. In the interviews, students cited faculty presence as a key factor related to their engagement and perceived learning from videos. Humor and wit were described positively. Participants also mentioned the benefits of adding personable context to a subject; for instance, faculty members giving examples from their professional experiences about subject material. As one student explained, "The reading is very didactic or academic, but the videos are very real-case scenarios. The instructor narrates: 'How do you take that academic learning into the real world? What does that mean when you're looking at these financial statements?'" Another participant offered: "[The videos] are better than just reading the material because it has more of that human element."

      Melanie Hibbert, the Director of Instructional Media & Technology and Media Center at Barnard College in New York City, writes about what is necessary for good online instructional videos. Hibbert discusses media at Columbia University, methods for creating videos, an what analytics tell us. She concludes by describing the importance of instructor presence more so than the production quality of videos.

      Rating: 9/10

    1. Good instructional design is based on the industry-standard Instructional System Design (ISD) model. The ISD model comprises five stages—analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation—and is a systems approach to instructional design in that it views “human organizations and activities as systems in which inputs, outputs, processes (throughputs), and feedback and control elements are the salient features.”

      This article discusses visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles and the importance of communicating in ways that appeal each style. It then outlines what this means for the Instructional System Design (ISD) model. The author concludes by outlining learning outcomes, organization, interactive instruction, and content versus connection versus application. The author proposes that "good instructional design is based on the industry-standard Instructional System Design (ISD) model" (p 5).

      Rating: 7/10

    1. Data shall be normalized between the organization and its customers and within the organization itself Data shall be easy to transfer and be reusable within the organization and within the partner network Wherever possible data entry shall be avoided and be replaced by data lookup, selection and confirmation utilities instead
    2. Work groups are to be organized so that they match the processes and the competencies required Individual workers will be given sufficient autonomy to make useful decisions Work will take place in a location where it is done with the most efficiency

      Organizational Design Principles for Service Design

    3. Any activity that fails to add value for the customer should be eliminated or minimized Work is always structured around processes and not around internal constructs such as functions, geography, product, etc. Work shall not be fragmented unless absolutely necessary. This enables accountability and responsibility from a single individual and reduces delays, rework, etc. It encourages creativity, innovation and ownership of work. Processes should be as simple as possible. Focus on reducing process steps, hand overs, rules and controls. Wherever possible the owner of the process should have control over how it is delivered. Processes should reflect customer needs and many versions of a process are acceptable if customers have different needs. Process variation should be kept to a minimum. Process dependencies should be kept to a minimum. (I.e. process in parallel) Processes should be internalized rather than overly decomposed (e.g. training is better than work instructions) Process breaks and delays must be kept to a minimum Reconciliation, controls and inspection of process must be kept to a minimum KPIs for processes will only measure things that matter

      Process design principles for service design

    1. Doctoral programs are often highly unstructured learning and training environments, where individual autonomy and freedom are highly valued. Decisions as to what counts as a good idea, a worthwhile project, or adequate progress are often left to the discretion of professors, and criteria for success can be opaque for students. This is even more so for those who are not already “in the know.”
    1. Most of the tech news we get barraged with is about algorithms, AI, robots, and self-driving cars, all of which fit this pattern. I am not saying that such developments are not efficient and convenient; this is not a judgment. I am simply noticing a pattern and wondering if, in recognizing that pattern, we might realize that it is only one trajectory of many. There are other possible roads we could be going down, and the one we’re on is not inevitable or the only one; it has been (possibly unconsciously) chosen.
    1. The path must not twist so much that visitors think they are being led astray, nor be so slow that visitors give up and strike cross-country through search engines. Nevertheless, twists and detours can help designers give their readers more than they expect.

      This makes me wonder if there are interesting major features or patterns we've not created for the web in general. Upsell, crosssell, alternatives, etc... are all corporate features. What about some interesting new artistic features perhaps?

      Almost no websites I run across are designed like this simple garden example. It's as if the website idea has been so rigidly crystalized that there's no room for exploration anymore.

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    1. The attention of the audience is a writer's most precious possession, and the value of audience attention is seldom more clear than in writing for the Web. The time, care, and expense devoted to creating and promoting a hypertext are lost if readers arrive, glance around, and click elsewhere. How can the craft of hypertext invite readers to stay, to explore, and to reflect?

      A very early statement about what was about to become the "attention economy"