I concur:
Just because a user interface uses 3D-buttons and some shading doesn’t mean that it has to look tacky. In fact, if you have to make the choice between tacky-but-usable and minimalistic-but-hard-to-use, tacky is the way to go. You don’t have to make that choice though: It’s perfectly possible to create something that is both good-looking and easy to use.
I was content-buddying with one of my colleagues yesterday so Bobbie’s experience resonates.
I’m 100% convinced that working demo-to-demo is the secret formula to making successful creative products.
We can’t control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them!
- Get the beat.
- Listen to the wisdom of the system.
- Expose your mental models to the open air.
- Stay humble. Stay a learner.
- Honor and protect information.
- Locate responsibility in the system.
- Make feedback policies for feedback systems.
- Pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable.
- Go for the good of the whole.
- Expand time horizons.
- Expand thought horizons.
- Expand the boundary of caring.
- Celebrate complexity.
- Hold fast to the goal of goodness.
Ambient reassurance is the experience of small, unplanned moments of interaction with colleagues that provide reassurance that you’re on the right track. They provide encouragement and they help us to maintain self belief in those moments where we are liable to lapse into unproductive self doubt or imposter syndrome.
In hindsight I realise, these moments flowed naturally in an office environment.
What would Wiener think of the current human use of human beings? He would be amazed by the power of computers and the internet. He would be happy that the early neural nets in which he played a role have spawned powerful deep-learning systems that exhibit the perceptual ability he demanded of them—although he might not be impressed that one of the most prominent examples of such computerized Gestalt is the ability to recognize photos of kittens on the World Wide Web.
Some useful lessons here for strengthening a culture of sustained work on a design system.
Creating and maintaining a design system is like planting a tree—it has to be nurtured and cared for to reap the benefits. The seed of our design system has been planted, and now our teams are working together to maintain and grow it. Our new way of working supports gives people recognition, facilitates trust, and creates strong partnerships.
A history of buttons …and the moral panic and outrage that accompanies them.
By looking at the subtexts behind complaints about buttons, whether historically or in the present moment, it becomes clear that manufacturers, designers and users alike must pay attention to why buttons persistently engender critiques. Such negativity tends to involve one of three primary themes: fears over deskilling; frustration about lack of user agency/control; or anger due to perceptions of unequal power relations.
Dave is liking the word “telepresence”:
On social media we broadcast our presence and thoughts over radio and wire and I likewise consume your projections as they echo back to me. We commune over TCP/IP.
Just wait until he discovers the related neologism coined by Ted Nelson.
An interesting idea from Ruth—using subtle sounds to augment inline form validation.
There aren’t any extremely established best practices for this stuff. The best we can do is make tasteful choices and do user research. Which is to say, the examples in this post are ideas, not gospel.
A look at the feedback needed for a slider control that feels “right”.
You can get most of the behavioural (though not styling) suggestions in HTML by doing this:
<form>
<input type="range" min="0" max="100" value="50"
onchange="amount.value=this.value"
onmousemove="amount.value=this.value">
<output name="amount">50</output>
</form>
Jake has written up the notes from the most recent gathering to discuss service workers. If you have any feedback on any of the proposed changes or additions to the spec, please add them. This proposal is the biggie:
We’re considering allowing the browser to run multiple concurrent instances of a service worker.
I love this back and forth between Brad and Jonathon. I think they’ve both got some good ideas:
If you’re planning on giving Fractal a test drive, jump into this Slack channel. Mark and others will be able to help you out with any questions that aren’t covered in the docs.
Shamefully, I haven’t been doing one-to-ones with my front-end dev colleagues at Clearleft, but I’m planning to change that. This short list of starter questions from Lara will prove very useful indeed.
Online discourse:
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had an x-ray that could peer into the true intention behind words on a screen? Sadly we don’t have that x-ray yet (for most of humanity’s existence, we had body language to enrich our words and enhance understanding, but we live in interesting times where so much, perhaps even the majority, of our communication lacks body language) and so we have to be mindful of how our words might be perceived, and what the ramifications of publishing them might be. That’s not to say we should hold off completely, but it does mean we should be mindful if we’re to be most effective.
‘Sfunny, I was just discussing this with Clare and Charlotte at work: how our office space (and culture) lends itself well to spontaneous exchanges of feedback and opinions.
The existential angst of unfeeling feedback.
Andy’s talk from the Smashing Conference in Freiburg.
A jQuery plug-in inspired by the interaction feedback on Huffduffer, which was in turn inspired by retro games.