Tabs in HTML?
I’ve been having some really interesting chats with Brian about tabs, markup, progressive enhancement and accessibility. Here’s a braindump of his current thinking which is well worth perusing.
Link tags: design
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Whatever Happened to UI Affordances? – Terence Eden’s Blog
Flat, minimalist, clean, material - whatever you want to call it - is an annoying antipattern. Computers are here to make life easier for humans. Removing affordances is just a nasty thing to do to your users.
A Lifetime of Systems Thinking - The Systems Thinker
I don’t agree with all of the mythbusting in this litany of life lessons, but this one is spot on:
The best thing that can be done to a problem is to solve it. False. The best thing that can be done to a problem is to dissolve it, to redesign the entity that has it or its environment so as to eliminate the problem.
Remember that next time you’re tempted to solve a problem by throwing more code at it.
Design System Day, Thursday 22 July 2021
This looks interesting: a free one-day Barcamp-like event online all about design systems for the public sector, organised by the Gov.uk design system team:
If you work on public sector services and work with design systems, you’re welcome to attend. We even have some tickets for people who do not work in the public sector. If you love design systems, we’re happy to have you!
UXLondon 2021
Here’s a great write-up (with sketch notes) of last week’s conference portion of UX Fest:
There was a through-line of ethics through the whole conference that I enjoyed. The “design is the underdog” is tired and no longer true. I think that asking ourselves “now that we are here, how do we avoid causing harm?” is a much more mature conversation.
Bringing Dark Patterns to Light. Transcript of the speech I gave at the… | by Harry Brignull | Jun, 2021 | Medium
Harry gave a speech at the Federal Trade Commission’s Dark Patterns workshop in April. Here’s the transcript, posted to Ev’s blog.
When I first worked on Dark Patterns in 2010, I was quite naive. I thought that they could be eradicated by shaming the companies that used them, and by encouraging designers to use a code of ethics.
The fact that we’re here today means that approach didn’t work.
Let’s talk about failure
Denise shares a cautionary tale of service design gone wrong.
Our Favourite Uses of Typography in Watches
The typography of horology.
I helped pioneer UX design. What I see today horrifies me
Jesse has his Oppenheimer moment, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
What got lost along the way was a view of UX as something deeper and more significant than a step in the software delivery pipeline: an approach that grounds product design in a broad contextual understanding of the problem and goes beyond the line-item requirements of individual components. Also lost along the way were many of the more holistic and exploratory practices that enabled UX to deliver that kind of foundational value.
Faster Integration with Web Components - Cloud Four
It’s good to hear stories like this—makes me feel like the slow-burn of the theoretical benefits of web components is starting to spark and flame up.
Pixelhop new website walk through
A case study with equal emphasis on animation and performance.
The web we choose to build. Principles for user-centred front-end development by Colin Oakley
I was really chuffed to see some posts of mine referenced in this rather excellent piece about design principles for front-end development.
Episode 012 - Designing Resilience with Jeremy Keith by The Object-Oriented UX Podcast
I enjoyed this conversation with Sophia (our chat starts around the 11 minute mark) prompted by Resilient Web Design.
Full Stack Service Design – Sarah Drummond
Katie shared this (very good) piece about service design on Slack at work today, and when I got to the bit about different levels, my brain immediately went “pace layers!”
- The Service
- The Infrastructure
- The Organisation
- The Intent
- The Culture
Midweight Design Engineer | Clearleft
Want to work with me? If so, come and be a design engineer at Clearleft!
What’s a design engineer? A front-end developer at the front of the front end who values accessibility, performance, and progressive enhancement.
We’re looking for a design-friendly front-end developer with demonstrable skills in pattern-based prototyping and production to join our friendly and supportive team in the heart of Brighton.
Even if this isn’t for you, please spread the word …especially to potential candidates who aren’t mediocre middle-aged white dudes (I’ve already got that demographic covered).
GrilloPress - Don’t let your design system seem complete
The level of authority and professionalism in a design system helps sell it so teams use it. But increases the perception things are fixed. Done. And not open to change.
Swipey image grids.
This is how you write up a technique! Cassie takes an SVG pattern she used on the Clearleft “services” page and explains it in step-by-step detail, complete with explanatory animated diagrams.
National Security Agency (NSA) security/motivational posters from the 1950s and 1960s [PDF]
This responds to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which was received by this office on 5 February 2016 for “A digital/electronic copy of the NSA old security posters from the 1950s and 1960s.”
The graphic design is …um, mixed.
Guarding Against Disposable Design — Smashing Magazine
Always refreshing to see some long-term thinking applied to the web.
Meet Utopia: Designing And Building With Fluid Type And Space Scales — Smashing Magazine
An excellent explainer from Trys and James of their supersmart Utopia approach:
Utopia encourages the curation of a system small enough to be held in short-term memory, rather than one so sprawling it must be constantly referred to.