Just today UXmatters published an article I've been slowly pondering for a year or two, on being Flatly Authentic. If you read all my works, you'll notice that I reused some of the ideas and images, and some of you may have also seen a presentation with the same title and many of the same words.
The gist is that we need to stop thinking that it's flat or skeuomorphic. We need to stop thinking that we can only inherit design cues from paper and physical spaces. Digital domains have shape, space and dimension themselves. They have layering. They are used by people. And we can leverage these to make designs that work for people, and work not in affected, fake ways but authentically digital ways.
Other articles of note, mostly with my comments:
The “C” Word I yell at the radio/internet a lot as the tech press waxes poetic about the brilliance of Apple and Jobs. Much is lies, retconning, cherrypicking, etc. But this thing, all but hidden in another article, is truly brilliant. Sadly, it shouldn't be, but the way business works today it is. Apple (well, Jobs) banned departments from P&L statements. I run into this all the time, where a department has to turn a profit, so charges other departments or just refuses to work with them. Instead at Apple, traditionally at least, competition internally doesn't exist. That's how you make an innovative organization that focuses on users and the overall enterprise.
ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct We have a code of ethics. Note the date, 1992! Bryan Rieger pointed this out recently. ACM is legit, and I like a lot of this.
Do we really need strong passwords? Don't try to improve how you display password requirements, but make passwords less stupid. There are many better ways (one-time codes, saving...) but if you must, try sharing this with the IT Security team. Not just good info on how better is not important, but that most breaches are not the user's fault and "If your passwords are stored badly – for example, in plain text, as unsalted hashes, or encrypted and then left with their encryption keys – then your password’s resistance to guessing is moot." That's just as much the user experience as the UI layer. Make them do it right.
Progressive web apps – let’s not repeat the errors from the beginning of responsive web design... Don’t use iOS meta tags irresponsibly in your Progressive Web Apps
Research with blind users on mobile devices Nothing really new if you have watched my accessibility presentation, but good to see it in practice, and have some actual examples to prove it out again, since so few of us get to do actual research to test our accessibility work.
We're Just Temporarily Abled : Designing for the Future Interesting opposition to my love for Christopherson's temporary disability concept. My accessibility deck talks about this a lot though from existing data, so I am surprised this is the first time anyone said it so well; that we're all slowly dying or moments from injury, and can all expect to live something like a quarter of our lives with a disability.
HyperCard: What Could Have Been Hypercard could have been the Web, years earlier and with scripting and data integral. Why didn't it? "Atkinson recalled engineers at Apple drawing network schematics in the form of a bunch of boxes linked together. Sun engineers, however, first drew the network's backbone and then hung boxes off of it. It's a critical difference, and he feels it hindered him." Yeah, how you think about a technology, and how you choose to draw it matters. Understanding and communicating, even just to yourself, is critical...
9 Actions Content Marketers Need to Do Right Now Officially written as tips for Marketing Jerks but they are totally solid tips, and consider the audience and their needs. Really good list of how to address content to the audience, generally. Also, nice and short. Check it out.
Let's Fix It: The Rest of the World Is Rising With or Without the West Weird title, but it means digital, mobile, etc. is growing whether we know or support it. All sorts of key data but the point as I see it is that it doesn't matter how much we think we're in charge. The South Bay, or City of SF, or NYC is not where all innovation comes from no matter how much we spend our time writing about that. And our internal focus, our assumptions that the third world (e.g. the rest of the world) is backwards and needs us to fix their problems means we're quite likely to get left behind or get overtaken by someone or everyone else.
We’re using our phone camera in different ways and photo apps aren’t keeping up As UXers, some of us at least, we like to observe people working today to find their needs or problems. I for one like to find the root value in legacy systems and ways of thinking. But there are limits. This post very, very well defines how photography has changed with every mobile having a connected camera. And not in availability but in the totally different types of photos we take. How they are not keepsake photos, but new ways of documenting, proving, remembering, demonstrating. Interesting not just for photos, but to think of what else we're doing that's in no way like the old way of doing it, and is being hampered by the tools we have.
http://www.propertyguru.com.sg/ I really do not try to be this guy and just send out links to crappy websites, but man this is worth a look. Okay, perfectly reasonable and quite compact masthead (on desktop/tablet) but now scroll. The masthead changes as is the current style... to remove the menu items and hide them behind a menu. There's NO space saving. Absolutely pointless. Make sure whatever you do has meaning, utility and intent. Don't be that guy.
The History of the URL: Domain, Protocol, and Port This is super, super nerd-tastic, but I think worth a skim for anyone who works with the Web. It goes deep into protocols, but does it in an oral history mode, so is easy to read and tells you why it happened, not just how they work today.
Ericsson Mobility Report So much to say about this. Just enormous amounts of data and even pretty graphs to steal for your presentations.