Collecting amazing and interesting things on the web.
June 5, 2014
design / jared spool / journey maps / scenarios / user experience
Using stories behind designs, scenarios behind interactions, and journey maps to show interactions over time – especially aspirational journey maps that show the kind of experience we’d like people to have.
June 5, 2014
content strategy / design / jared spool / usability-testing / user experience
The new thinking is that content creation and management cannot be a separate endeavor from design creation and management. That we need to inseparably integrate the two, structurally and organizationally, to create great experiences.
June 3, 2014
I’m thinking, then, that it might be best for me to say something. Yes, I’m going to teach my children how to drink, because I don’t want them taught by my silence and my jokes. In particular, I want to teach them:
June 3, 2014
design / design teams / peter merholz / user experience
However, in my experience, design is best considered at the level of a design team, and the point of the slide above is that a coordinated team of 5 designers (of varying skill sets) can out perform 5 identically-skilled unicorns working in isolation.
May 31, 2014
data / design / journalism
Big Data is a trendy thing in every industry that has a bunch of data these days, including journalism. But most of us haven’t learned how to be skeptical about all that data yet, and it’s causing problems.
May 29, 2014
a list apart / activism / culture / sexism
A List Apart, and the associated events, books, conferences, authors/speakers, and so on has always struck me as a special part of the web. A more thoughtful part, willing to think on deeper levels about technology and people. This article reminds me of why, exactly, that is.
When I look at those articles that most influenced my career (and probably many of yours), I see our mission, clear as day: to encourage a more thoughtful, curious, and engaged web industry—one that pushes past easy answers and encourages ongoing growth and learning.
Technical skills—and by that I mean everything from JavaScript to typography to taxonomy—will take us part of the way there, but they’re not enough anymore. Not now, not when we’re facing the big, messy problems that come with designing for an increasingly web-connected world.
May 28, 2014
cities / economics / gentrification / race
In cities, gentrifiers have the political clout – and accompanying racial privilege – to reallocate resources and repair infrastructure. The neighbourhood is “cleaned up” through the removal of its residents. Gentrifiers can then bask in “urban life” – the storied history, the selective nostalgia, the carefully sprinkled grit – while avoiding responsibility to those they displaced.
May 28, 2014
One of the best pieces I’ve ever seen about the internet’s relationship to humanity, culture, and politics. It’s impossible to find enough things to quote, but here’s one:
I’ve come to believe that a lot of what’s wrong with the Internet has to do with memory. The Internet somehow contrives to remember too much and too little at the same time, and it maps poorly on our concepts of how memory should work.
May 27, 2014
But there is another form of ignorance which seems to be universal: the inability to understand the concept and role of innovation. The way this is exhibited is in the misuse of the term and the inability to discern the difference between novelty, creation, invention and innovation. The result is a failure to understand the causes of success and failure in business and hence the conditions that lead to economic growth.
May 26, 2014
Nest is a nonprofit dedicated to alleviating poverty, empowering women and promoting peace through the successful creation of artisan businesses.