Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
I thought my eyesight was beginning to go. It turns out, I’m suffering from design. It’s been getting harder for me to read things on my phone and my laptop. I’ve caught myself squinting and holding the screen closer to my face. I’ve worried that my eyesight is starting to go. These hurdles have made me grumpier…
“Asian women are not” is an installation displaying 100 posters that read “Asian women are not” followed by whatever online submissions were received by 100 different women. The army of posters served to list and communicate disgusting Asian woman stereotypes to passerbyers and drivers. Source: Olivia Park Asian Women Are Not
Last Tuesday we released our first three themes, and this will be the first post in a series that will explain what themes should and should not have. These posts will also explain why we made certain choices regarding our themes. With the release came a storm of reactions, some downright negative, but most of…
In years to come, conversations will breathe new life into software — particularly the boring enterprise tools millions of knowledge workers begrudgingly use every day. Conversational user interfaces (CUIs) work because of our familiarity with messaging. Even the most technically complex interactions can look as simple as getting an SMS text when presented as a conversation. There…
Summary: These two overly demanding website design patterns aimed at driving engagement are in conflict with how people utilize browser tabs. In UX design, “dark patterns” are deceptive strategies used by designers to trick users into doing potentially harmful things that support their organization’s goals. For example, sites that automatically add extra items into users’…
10 things you need to learn in design school if you’re tired of wasting your money I hope everyone had a good summer. It’s hard to believe it’s over, yet here we are. Still feeling the summer breeze of warm ocean wind. Still smelling the sunscreen, the taste of cotton candy, the mind still wandering…
Untold-stories.net (Courtesy of Ruben Pater) There’s an interesting trend in Web design these days: Making websites that look, well … bad. Look at Hacker News. Pinboard. The Drudge Report. Adult Swim. Bloomberg Businessweek features. All of these sites — some years old, some built recently — and hundreds more like them, eschew the templated, user-friendly…
There are a lot ways to go wrong in building a website, but this one is just unbelievable. So unbelievable that when designer Stelian Firez stumbed on it, all he could do is throw a screenshot up on Twitter with an “oh. my. god.” What madness is this? Yep, instead of a text field for…
if content is empty, don’t append this div. This helps with checking whether we need a lede or not British engineer George Carwardine designed the first balanced-arm lamp, the 1227 Anglepoise, in the early 1930s. But it’s the the Luxo L-1, created by Norwegian designer Jac Jacobsen in 1937, that everyone remembers. Its exposed springs, jointed armature, and bulbous…
What is the best UX pattern to display products on an e-commerce website: pagination, a “Load more” button or infinite scrolling? At Baymard Institute, we’ve conducted several year-long large-scale usability studies of more than 50+ leading e-commerce websites. We tested (among other things) these three design patterns for loading products, both on desktop and mobile….