D&T Issue 5 [10-June-2020]
Punishing Bad UX, Spacesuits and the Fourth Unlock
Hey there! Hope this week went well for you! There have been things happening in the design and tech world here and there, nothing ground shaking in terms of innovation, to be honest, but I suppose these days our threshold for surprises has gone way up.
By the way, if you know of anyone who would be interested to hear from us weekly via this compilation, please feel free to tell them and let us know, so we can send them this weekly bulletin as well.
Here are some things for this week that you might find interesting:
Google will punish your site for bad UX
This was coming, we all knew. Google has established a set of factors they call “Core Web Vitals” which are critical to user experience on the web as they suggest. This includes factors like loading experience, interactivity, and visual stability of page content. Here are some technical details around the method behind this as well.
The radical new aesthetics of space travel
While the challenges and dangers relating to space travel haven’t changed a bit, the experience and aesthetics have. The Atlantic talks about the sleek and spacious interiors of the Dragon and how the usability of the space vehicle changed through the years, most radically in this recent flight.
The sanitized supply chain and the fourth unlock
Take a look into Amazons first few steps into a “sanitized supply chain” post being under fire for multiple people in their warehouses falling sick to Covid-19. Here is a related incredible read(came in earlier than the NYT piece) by the famous Prof Scott Galloway on how this could also be historically “the fourth unlock” in the last 20yrs in business. An unlock as he defines is essentially discovering an accelerant for a brand, product or service, otherwise invisible in plain sight.
Embracing shitty first drafts
Ex Pentagram dev talking about the philosophy of the first draft of any design or strategy. The problem with chasing an assumed output is that the process and what happens in the middle is devalued. In domains that essentially are about problem-solving the first draft is critical, often wrong and needs the right treatment by reviewers.
AI for kids
This homegrown startup is setting the bar fairly high by offering AI and tech education for very young users. It’s really cool how they are implementing programming principles using visual blocks (something a lot of adults use as well in ETL pipes). Additionally, they are allowing these kids to build games and program robots with basic code!
Animate SVG character using webcam videos
We’ve been following this for a bit on Github. Pose animator maps an actual person’s video feed into an SVG illustration and mirrors the source video into an avg animation of the character. It’s amazing.
The value of Sound in good design
Adobe XD has a lot to say about all sorts of design considering they are they built design suite almost all designers use. Here’s their two cents on sound in product design from the Wireframe Podcast.
Snooping startup of the day
Small, nondescript Indian tech company get under fire for tracking info on some very high profile people worldwide
The chaotic world of Zoom (fun)
New yorker regular contributes, Naomi Fry talks about the wonderful chaos that Zoom calls bring up and the subtle beauty of this chaos in our new-fangled lifestyles. (this one has an audio version of the article for easy listening)
Using Video for Design Feedback
I suppose some of us have done video walkthroughs of design concepts lately, haven’t we? Well here’s a nicely written note on the experience of making this a regular thing, especially while using Loom (I think I wrote to you about this earlier). Short read, but solid.
A’ight! I’ll see you 7 days later. Please write back to me if you have any improvements to suggest.
