My approach to graphic design draws from my artistic roots. I grew up in Toronto and studied drawing, painting and sculpture at Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts. Play, in contrast to work, evokes a process of experimentation, failure, and innovation. Our hands are our tools to play with, and through them, we meet unconclusion while simultaneously having google maps direct us to a new destination. We can teleport to untouched areas, and although economics often lifeguard the creative process, there can be great value in exploration.

As an artist, I’m an active producer and reader of visual culture. My role as a producer is to visually translate an idea to an audience, and as a reader, I critically observe and analyze the products of others. In a community of producers and readers, there is an exciting dialogue of sharing and learning.

Though I aim to communicate my ideas with clarity, as a walking symbol I understand that I will never have complete agency over them. Everyone will complete my work with their/her/his own bias. As this historical, political and social context occurs, I am diligent in researching an idea. Education ensures that I am sufficiently knowledgeable about a subject, and I can confidently design under a strongly supported thesis.

By collaborating in the discourse of post-post-modernism, I believe that I have a major responsibility concerning the work that I contribute. Designer William McDonough argues in his article A Question of Design that “Poor design on such a scale reaches far beyond our own lifespan… over future generations through the effects of our actions today.” As design itself has the potential to change a culture, it is irresponsible to be careless or unconscious in practice.

After moving to Los Angeles I began dedicating my time to projects that rallied on the social justice side of public health and sexuality. I continue to be dedicated to the equality and responsibility of our communities and I am extremely excited and honoured to be joining the Hypenotic team. I aspire to use graphic design as an educational tool to broaden a dialogue about design as I believe that design is something that should seek to be shared.

Hello from Chris was originally published in Hypenotic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I live in Montreal, Canada and work remotely for a Toronto company. I’ve been doing this for 5 years.

I spend five weeks working from Montreal and one week in the office to spend time with the team.

Every morning I bike to a local “working” cafe. Sit down and check e-mail and log into Slack. At 9:30 am I check-in via video call with the Toronto team to get project updates and the days schedule.

According to research by Regus Canada, 47% of Canadian employees work from outside one of their employer’s main offices for half the week or more.

This aligns with a 2017 Gallup survey that found:

Last year, 43 percent of employed Americans said they spent at least some time working remotely, according to the survey of more than 15,000 adults.

That represents a four percentage point increase since 2012, a shift that meets the demands of many job seekers.

I can back this trend up anecdotally. Within a 5-minute bike ride, there are now over 8 co-working spaces where 5 years ago there were just a couple. More “working” cafes have popped up and from where I’m sitting, there are roughly 20 people on laptops.

In addition to the local Montreal uptick in remote working, there seems to be an increase of those who have their feet in two cities. In this corner of Canada, it happens to be either Montreal and Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa or Toronto and Ottawa. Many people travel to and from these cities on a monthly basis.

Canvassing other remote workers and from my own experience, there are things that can make you a successful tech nomad.

1. Get up, get dressed and get out
   Remote working isn’t about staying in your pj’s, lounging on the couch with your laptop and getting “some” work done. To stay on your game, motivated and productive, you need to simulate going into the office. Get dressed and get out of your home. At the very least, create a separate work environment in the home and close your door. Getting out could be at a cafe, library, event meet-up or co-working space. Co-working spaces are becoming much more than a table and chair. Many have events, pub nights, lectures by industry leaders and guest startups. Whatever it is, your mantra should be — get up and get out.
2. Know thyself
   How do you work best? What keeps you motivated? What keeps you productive? If you’ve never worked remotely, it’s not as easy and relaxing as you might expect. You need to know how you work and each day might be a little different. Sometimes you need isolation. Other times you need the energy from a busy environment to keep you productive. And sometimes you need both. There are many ways to achieve this, but one that is helpful for this is Coffitivity. This service recreates the ambient sounds of a cafe from wherever you are.
3. Communicate, communicate and then communicate
   You need to make your presence known and as tangible as possible. It’s easy to fall into the “island” mentality — like you’re on an island without communication. You need to communicate frequently, at the very least chat via Slack or something else and at the very best by video. Maintain daily communication and don’t fall into the black hole of isolation.
4. Champion or contribute to company culture
   It’s not all about work. It’s easy to feel not part of the company, especially when it’s a colleagues birthday and cake is being passed around. :) Be a part of the company culture or better yet find a way to champion it. Slack about life, text good morning, contribute to Instagram or write an article. Whatever it is, make sure they see your name and photo on a daily basis.
5. Make office time
   Spend time in the office. This not only helps your team keep you on their radar but also helps you stay energized. It also creates flow and adds variety to your weeks and months. Create a regular weekly or monthly schedule for being in the office.

Happy remote working! :)

5 Insights from 5 Years of Working Remotely was originally published in Hypenotic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There are many obstacles to doing this well, and in the end, the effect may not even be desirable.

The Walkthrough

You could have the videos just play and then pause on the last frame.

The contrast of motion vs stillness is jarring, even if it is just a person standing there and blinking. One second they are shuffling, swaying, and blinking semi-regularly, and then the next, they never shuffle or sway again.

Like they looked at Medusa or something.

You could loop the videos.

The video clip could play, looping over and over again, having the clip jump from the last frame to the first frame. If you think the jump wouldn’t be too jarring, that’s great and you should definitely do that.

To get a seamless looping video of a human being, its often easiest to play the video and then play the video backwards to get back to the starting frame.

The first problem presents itself when motion is reversed while the subject is already moving — they will seem to be jumpy and move unnaturally.

A possible fix: the subject has to stop moving for at least a couple of frames. This is called easing, and is a fundamental part of the vocabulary of motion. There should be deceleration before the clip is reversed and re-accelerated backwards.

Doing this in After Effects, you can use time remapping to ramp down the frame rate before reversing directions, but this would mean also slowing down the frame rate past the lower threshold for persistence of vision to take effect, breaking the illusion of motion. Filming in higher framerate wouldn’t help either, since you need to slow the framerate to 0 in order to play the footage backwards. Good places to ramp down are when the subject is standing the most still, as changes between frames at a slower frame rate will be less noticeable. It still won’t be perfect though. And frame interpolation is “good”, but isn’t good enough at speeds where you can make out all the detail in each frame.

The second problem is that when video is reversed, it creates a temporal symmetry, which becomes incredibly obvious to humans, who are keen to non-verbal cues and really pick up on body language and facial expression. You can really tell if a video is being played forth and back, and back and forth, over and over again.

Like Boomerang for Instagram.

A possible fix: have the subject pause multiple times and/or remap the video so the playback forward is at a different rate than the playback backward. Check out these graphs in After Effects depicting time (real world time) on the x-axis vs frame (playback time) on the y-axis:

Humans don’t loop (and humans don’t randomly stop moving)

In the end, in my nit-picky opinion, both of these methods of showing living, moving human beings look kind of weird.

The issue boils down to these videos not seeming naturally human. It almost seems naturally human — it’s very close, but it’s just a bit off. This is an example of something that falls into the uncanny valley.

The moving pictures show human subjects, but the motion (looping or not) does not accurately represent a person, making the picture unfamiliar, unsettling, and probably less fit for effective communication than a video that loops but makes no attempt to appear seamless.

Regardless, some people have made real good looping images of human beings. Cinemagraphs.com (Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck) made one that features a dude driving a car with real smooth and lifelike motion. I like this one and I’m not bothered by it, as it is life-like enough to hold its own (keep in mind though, cinemagraphs are their own thing and are used to communicate things that are different to our needs).

At the end of the day, if you watch a video of a human being on loop for a significant amount of time, you will notice, and it will seem a bit off.

Conclusion — What I’m going to do from now on

No more looping. No more strange small motions.

The next time I use animated profile photos as a presentation strategy, I will transition between a candid, lifelike video and an obviously stylized still image. For example, the video would be in full colour and would have the subject making a pose or action, but the still image is black and white and would have the subject doing a different pose/action. After the video is done playing, it can move out of the way to reveal a still portrait of the subject.

It’s hard making animated profile images/videos lifelike was originally published in Hypenotic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

They spoke about the same thing but from different perspectives. Writing and communication.

The first source was a newsletter from Dan at Real Python which I get every week. The newsletter has lots of good bits related to Python and general programming. In his latest, he wrote about scrolling through Quora and coming across someone who asked if beginner programmers should write out code by hand.

Many readers said no, but as Dan remarked, perhaps they misinterpreted what the asker meant or the question was poorly worded. First, to answer the question, no, programmers don’t need to write out code by hand. Secondly, and more importantly, Dan used the question as a launching pad to talk about the need for programmers to write out what the program is going to do before actually coding it.

This doesn’t mean writing it out exactly as in a text editor. It means writing out the logic of your code in plain English as either a list of steps or full sentences. If you can’t write out the program in simple English, then you probably don’t understand what is going on. If you are unable to describe the problem, then how will you find the solution.

As one Quora commentator stated,

Too many undisciplined programmers today code by the seat of their pants experimentation and end up with undebuggable, unmaintainable messes.

The second source came from Tim Ferris’s podcast with Jason Fried of Basecamp. This two hour plus interview had some great bytes of wisdom, but the most memorable was Fried’s comments on writing. Part of Basecamp’s interview process is for potential hires to do a one week paid project. For example, let’s say there are several designers gunning for the same position. Each would receive the same design project to work on for one week. After the week, they would provide a written report of what they did, their process and why they made certain decisions.

Part of Fried’s rationale is that if you are a programmer, designer or other creative, you will eventually need to express a thought, defend an opinion or communicate with a client using written communication. If you can’t write clearly, then how will you do this?

Writing is rarely highlighted as a core skill for designers or programmers. Neither is it part of all the programming boot camps sprouting out there. A quick look at HackerYou’s course list (one of Toronto premier coding colleges), finds some amazing program material, but no writing or communication course.

Whether writing out programming logic for yourself or another programmer, writing an email to a client or Slacking, we do a lot of it on a daily basis. It’s one of those skills we take for granted. But in the digital creative industry, everything we do is in part communication and being able to write clearly and effectively should be at the heart of it.

Thoughts on writing was originally published in Hypenotic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Everyone at Hypenotic’s excited that the B Corp Champion Retreat has come to Toronto (October 3–5).

Each year the global B Corp Community comes together, and this year’s theme is interdependence. We’re on this planet together, so it’s important that we recognize our interconnectedness and collaborate with other movements fighting for social, environmental and economic justice.

A big part of the retreat are the B Inspired Talks — where you can hear how leaders use business as a way to create positive social and environmental impact.

I’m personally excited to hear about Onia Harris’ story. She’s the 2nd Shift Production Operations Lead for People Against Dirty Manufacturing (method) in the Pullman neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, IL. method creates powerful, planet-friendly cleaning products.

As someone who likes looking into company supply chains, I’m interested to learn how method approaches each step of its process.

We hope to see some of you there!

2017 B Inspired Talks was originally published in Hypenotic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Want to make your users less angry — maybe even gleeful? Get comfortable with feedback. Be responsive. Iterate (with haste). Rinse and repeat.

One morning I walked down some stairs amongst a crowd of people and into my typical subway station. Since my body’s usually on autopilot at 6am, it’s used to seeing a lane of turnstiles. But on this particular morning, my brow furrowed in confusion and my body halted at the presence of a gaping empty entrance. The station was under construction — things were in flux.

I looked around to where others were tapping their Presto cards (the transit payment system in Toronto), but everyone was in a bit of a kerfuffle. After a few seconds, we all saw a small green box attached to the brick wall off in the corner of the station.

A communal nod of understanding ensued. Our journeys continued.

The morning after everyone was met with a paper sign pointing to the Presto machine which had been moved to a wall closer to the station entrance.

The simple way-finding change made transit users’ experience much less confusing.

Recently, we ran into a change-related issue on one of our projects — Farmlink, a place to find or share farm opportunities & resources.

We needed to make more of the user profile fields mandatory to fill out.
If a user did not have these fields completed, their account would be temporarily paused, but there would be a notification to let them know they needed to fill in more fields.

We pushed the code up to the live server…and then the complaints started coming in.

The general theme was:

“I’ve filled out all the required fields and I’m still not able to activate my account.”

Hmm.

Was our code working and submitting the correct info to the database? Yup.
Alright, so are all the required fields actually filled out by the users? Nope.
Hmm, so what’s going on? We’ve gotten a couple emails, so something’s up?

When we get even a single email from a user or client we’re quick to jump in to help, so the fact that multiple users emailed in was an alarm for sure.

Here’s what the form’s error message looked like at first:

So, we added a list of questions that when clicked on, jumped to the empty fields.

But another user email came in — same problem. We still weren’t being clear enough.

So, we made the backgrounds of the empty fields red too.

Note the change from Oops to Sorry as well. We thought the newer copy was less alarming, and didn’t make it look like we were pointing a finger at the user.

After this iteration, the emails stopped. Success.

If we ever make another significant change to profiles again, we’d probably alert users upon login. Maybe with a cute and helpful “Hey, something’s-changed-since-you-last-visited…” annotation/bubble. It’s all a learning process.

We use tools like TrackDuck to allow users to give us feedback about their experience. Realistically you can’t have your eyes on every single pixel of your site, or every single person using it (also, that’s creepy and problematic for clear legal reasons…). Also, it’s nice to hear what your user community has to say — each piece of feedback is informative, and only helps to refine your product.

Help your users with change was originally published in Hypenotic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ever consider reducing your meat intake? Brian Kateman’s new book gives you many reasons why changing the way you eat affects more than your life alone.

Back in high school I entertained the thought of vegetarianism. But as I’ve grown older and started to feel the effects of aging, the thought comes to mind more often. Raising animals for food is one of the major sources of pollution and environmental degradation. As mentioned in my previous post about the fashion industry, thinking about the future of my nephews and other kids has made me take many more second glances at my choices.

I recently picked up Brian Kateman’s newest book The Reducetarian Solution. It’s a book of mini essays chunked into three categories: mind, body, and planet. In some way, they all make the case that cutting down at least 10 % of the amount of meat you eat can transform the lives of yourself, animals, and the planet that we share.

Here are several of the many essays that stuck out for me:

Effective Reducetarian — William MacAskill
This piece revolves around the question: How can I make the biggest difference possible in my current situation? “…[I]f you are only reducing the amount of animal products you consume, rather than going entirely vegetarian or vegan, the most effective way to reduce animal suffering is to stop eating chicken, then eggs, then pork.”

An Anthropologic Survey of Carnovory and Morality — Avi Tuschman
Tuschman thinks eating meat tears at the conscience of our species. That we’re torn between our hunger and humility.

Three Mental Hacks to Help You Be a Reducetarian — Nick Cooney
Humans hold so many biases. One is the status quo bias: thinking that the way things are right now is the way they should be. Cooney tries to help old habits die.

Replenishing a Thirsty Planet — Wendy Pabich
The meat on our plates takes a huge amount of water to produce. Period.

It’s about much more than meat — Joan Dye Gussow
Gussow believes it’s not really about meat, but a lack of mindfulness about our impact on the planet — about our overconsumption.

Making the Invisible Visible: Exploitation of Livestock Workers Supports the Meat Industry — Molly Anderson
Today’s meat industry would not be able to sell meat at its current prices without exploiting workers.

The Food Desert Phenomenon — Hillary Shaw
A food dessert is defined as a place where there is an absence of affordable healthy food in poverty-stricken areas. In a food dessert, food may be plentiful — but not nutritious.

I’ve already been trying to reduce the amount of meat that I eat, but reading this book only made me want to manifest the thought into my daily actions even more. You can apply reducetarian thinking to different areas of your life as well. We should all buy less material things that we end up not being entertained by a week after. We should all be mindful about our consumption patterns. We should all think about our actions’ impact.

Some people think of reducetarianism as a new type of diet. However, I never liked the term diet. So, I like to think of this all as the following quotation states — as a bit or reorganizing.

“Reducing doesn’t automatically mean suffering, it just means reorganizing, often in ways that ultimately pay dividends.”
 — Naomi Oreskes

The Reducetarian Solution was originally published in Hypenotic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Looking back on a moment

At this point I’ve resorted to positive self-talk to keep me going. Just two more places — you can do this. I want to find the nearest exit…but I came to this place on a mission and can’t procrastinate any longer. Beads of sweat are dripping down various body parts. No doubt due to the massive collection of people, the mistake of wearing a heavy jacket, and the rapid pace at which I’m walking. The lights are bright. The signs shout at me with their bold colours and big type. I make a bee-line to a just-vacated couch and plop down. Several bags in my hands fan out around me as if in protection against the chaos.

It is 2pm on Christmas Eve 2016 at the major mall in town.

In my exhaustion-laden stupor, things starts to slow. Some people look happy. A bunch of people seem frustrated. Eyes are glazed over. There are a lot of bags.

A slew of questions invade my consciousness: What are all these people doing here? What am I doing here — stressing out over buying things? How did I get here? How did we get here? What. Is. Going. On?

Now, this may all sound blown out of proportion and a bit too existential for a shopping trip, so let me bring some context to it all…

Breaking out of a loop

I watched the documentary The True Cost almost a year after Barry had recommended it in July 2015. It’s about the fashion industry. The things we wear, the people who make them, and the impact the industry is having on our society and planet.

So, why did you wait so long after the recommendation? As Clare Press mentions in Wardrobe Crisis, I think part of it had to do with “the sheer scale” of the industry and the problems entangled with it. The largeness of it all caused “ostrich behaviour” — ostriches hide from danger by burying their head in the sand. So, in other words, I was turning a blind eye.

I forget the exact environment and state of mind I was in, but I kept thinking about the documentary (note: hadn’t watched it yet…), the photo I saw at the 2014 World Press Photo exhibit at Brookfield Place in Toronto titled “Final Embrace”, and the wardrobes of myself and people I knew.

So, I finally watched the documentary (in 2016) — and since then it’s been a lot of researching and asking questions.

I don’t think you can watch a film like The True Cost and not be affected in some way.

If you look in my closet you’ll find big brands like Gap, Zara, and Topshop. I worked for a fast-fashion retailer for over a year. I too fawned over the ‘it’ bag Mulberry released in 2010 named Alexa. It caused sales to increase by a massive 35%¹.

I get the fascination with clothes. They’re fun to look at, and clothes can be a huge part of human expression/identity. But clothes don’t just magically appear on the racks we shop from — there’s a whole lot that goes on before they end up in our hands.

The road to your closet…and beyond

Each of these topics warrant their own posts — and books. But here are tidbits about each.

Materials

Everybody talks about natural vs. synthetic fibres, and how we should lean towards the ‘good’ eco-materials like cotton and linen. However, various studies have suggested that cotton has a greater environmental impact than nylon or polyester. Two sides to every story, right?

In a Cambridge University study, scientists calculated that it took 11 megajoules of energy to manufacture a viscose blouse, and a cotton shirt required 24. Similarly, a black organic cotton top is worth 28 EDUs (Environmental Damage Units), and a polyester 19 EDUs — mainly because polyester yarn is dyed while it’s formed, so you can skip the dyeing process².

This doesn’t mean everyone should run out and buy synthetics…there’s plenty of studies that argue against them as well.

Garment Workers

As Lucy Siegle, The Observer’s ‘Ethical Living’ columnist, says in a TEDx Talk, there’s this “terrible dichotomy…of how we’re hiding…slave labour in the fashion industry.”

When companies tell factory owners that they want garments at cheaper price (to one-up their competition), or else they’ll choose a different factory, owners often agree to the lower price. But how do they make clothes at a cheaper cost? The cut usually comes from a worker’s paycheque, which is already small to begin with as many workers do not, or barely, receive a living wage.

Or when a company needs a huge order (say 500 000 units) in a small amount of time — how does that work? The workers work gruelling hours to get it done. These people often “do not have formal employment contracts, leaving them completely vulnerable to exploitation and abuse” ³.

Waste

Fashion Revolution estimates that 20% of global industrial water pollution is caused by the treatment and dyeing of textiles.These textiles have been bleached, dyed, printed on, submerged in chemical baths. These chemicals can leach from the clothes/trimmings that end up in landfills and into groundwater. Burning textiles can release those toxins into the air. In the same vein, synthetics are essentially a type of plastic made from petroleum, and will take hundreds of years, if not a thousand, to biodegrade.

What are your boundaries?

There’s a mindlessness with which we go about our lives sometimes. But taking stock of your current state, and the state around you is incredibly eye-opening.

I was reading the first issue of Peeps magazine while thinking about writing this post, and in it there’s an interview with Sam Ladner — a sociologist, ethnographer, and UX researcher.

She said this:

“I have determined a set of lines I will not cross. I don’t market to children because they cannot tell advertising from content. I don’t contribute to the objectification of women. I don’t sell tobacco. Those are the firm lines I have, but I audit myself frequently. This means I’m always conscious about what I say and how it could potentially affect people.”

What are your ‘set of lines’? What are your boundaries? When’s the last time you took some time to reflect on your thoughts, words, and actions — are they in sync? And what do those three things say about you to the world, or more importantly, do to the world?

All this is to say — don’t be the ostrich with your head in the sand.

When you learn more, the blinders get pulled up inch by inch (it’s very much like The Matrix). Then you ask yourself, ‘How in the world did I miss all this?!’.

Good vs Bad

“On the surface, the choice seems simple: ‘good clothes’ or ‘evil clothes’. If you choose the ‘good’ clothing you are virtuous; if you choose the ‘evil’ clothing you are evil. Whilst it makes sense to buy the least harmful option when purchasing any product, what about the myriad factors that determine ‘choice’? Class is the primary factor. You buy what you can afford. If you cannot afford a £16 pair of knickers, then it does not matter that they are handcrafted in Britain from organic cotton; you will have to buy five pairs for £3 from Primark — and will probably feel guilty and ashamed for doing so.”

– Stitched Up

As stated above, products considered ethical are often the most expensive, so class plays a huge role. When someone lacks the ability to even choose ethical products, it’s hard to blame them for the destruction of the planet or the existence of sweatshops. There are many factors in play.

I am clearly in a place of privilege since I am able to choose how I go about my consumer habits. I’m not here to be that person that makes low-key-judgey-eyes while you shop, but I am here to ask us to be mindful of our choices in whatever capacity possible.

Let’s go further up the chain

“With the growth of the internet, has come a growth of awareness, and the need for transparency — people are simply more aware of what they’re buying, who they’re buying from, and how the profits are being spent by the companies that they’re investing their money in. Businesses are adapting in response to this global community of conscious consumers.”

– Ethos Magazine, Issue 1

I think we’re all starting to take more second glances these days.

Alain de Botton makes a valid point when he says that we “opt for certain kinds of ease and excitement over others….[i]t’s not companies that primarily degrade the world. It is our appetites, which they merely serve.” ⁴

But there’s a mind-boggling amount of facets involved in this issue — a whole system that has been built up for decades. Everything is connected.

Yes, of course we should curb our appetites. But let’s also ask — why aren’t all products ethically made? Why does responsibility not lie further up the chain? As Mark Browne asks, “Why can’t we have a productive, accountable textile industry that operates like the medical industry, whereby we have a policy in place that says you are not allowed to put a product to market until it has been adequately tested? That’s what I mean by benign by design.”

On moving forward

“It’s not only about policing your own area because that can turn into its own ego trip. ‘Look at me I’m doing something for the environment!’ Rather than saying, ‘It’s something I have to do because it’s necessary.’ I think we gotta stop being so prideful about the fact that we are doing something that the world needs. It’s not a matter of pride, it’s a matter of dire necessity.”

– Alan Arkin in Wisdom

There are other moments aside from the Christmas mall bonanza of 2016 that cause me to pause and take stock of everything.

Like when I look at my nephews and get that sinking feeling of worry.

I worry about what kind of world they (and all kids) are going to be living in because of what we’re all doing right now. I worry about if my actions are a model of ‘good’ behaviour, of values that I hope they’ll take note of.

This week is Fashion Revolution Week. It was created in remembrance of the Rana Plaza factory collapse, which killed 1138 people and injured many more on April 24th, 2013. This week is all about uniting people and organizations, so we can change “the way our clothes are sourced, produced and consumed, so that our clothing is made in a safe, clean and fair way”. Of course, it isn’t just about this week — it’s about being aware and asking questions and taking action in our daily lives.

This entire article has been a condensed brain-vomit of what I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’m still uncertain about exactly how I want to be more involved in this issue, but this ostrich has her head out of the sand. On a daily basis I’m taking a lot more long and hard looks at things I come across, asking a lot more questions, and seeking out a lot more answers.

Beyond this article

Here are some resources to check out if you want to learn more:

Websites

• Fashion Revolution
• Clean Clothes Campaign
• Asia Floor Wage

Books/Magazines

• To Die For by Lucy Siegle
• Wisdom by Andrew Zuckerman (also in video format)
• Wardrobe Crisis by Clare Press
• Stitched Up by Tansy E Hoskins
• Slave to Fashion by Safia Minney
• B Corp Magazine

Videos/Film

• The True Cost
• Illusionists
• RiverBlue
• The Wardrobe To Die For — Lucy Siegle
• Benign by Design — Mark Anthony Browne
• The High Cost of Our Cheap Fashion — Maxine Bédat
• Fast Fashion’s Effect on People, The Planet, & You — Patrick Woodyard
• You are what you wear — Christina Dean

1. L. Siegle, To Die For (Fourth Estate, 2011), p.95
2. L. Siegle, To Die For (Fourth Estate, 2011), p.109
3. C. Press, Wardrobe Crisis (Nero, 2016)
4. http://www.thebookoflife.org/culprit-found-in-mcdonalds-outrage-you/

A call for more mindful second glances was originally published in Hypenotic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Last week I read an article about how in Finland, kids learn computer science without computers.

Children are taught to think about coding in relation to everyday actions, like how a loop (essentially a sequence) can be explained by repeating a series of dance steps (think about the party-favourite Macarena).

I shared the article on Twitter, and a follower messaged me saying, “See! If coding was taught to me like this in high school, maybe I would have actually understood and liked it.” This lead me to think: how often are people deterred from learning new concepts because they are taught in a way that doesn’t speak to them/isn’t digestible by them?

I mean, it makes sense — this chain of events. First we don’t understand something, or it’s not presented to us in a relatable way, then we are disinterested, or just give up.

Inaccessibility = cutting off your audience. Of course, you can’t cater to everyone, and your analogies won’t make sense to everyone. But chances are that more folks who are just getting introduced to your ideas will catch on quicker with a comparison to everyday concepts.

I’ve started to dig into ReactJS, and would like to be able to pass down some of my knowledge to friends, and strangers. Taking from a talk I had with Lionel about ‘rubber duck debugging’ — I like the idea of forcing myself to explain code, line-by-line — knowing what is going on at every step. I’m not there yet, but we know that comparing new/complex concept to everyday human tasks helps with making things click.

So, I thought it would be a good idea to do this for three key concepts in React: components, props and state. I start off with definitions because I love etymology taking a concept’s basic definition/origin is often telling about it’s purpose. This isn’t going to be an in-depth explanation of each concept, but a way to think of them in everyday terms.

Let’s get started!

Components

component |kəmˈpōnənt|
noun

• a part or element of a larger whole, especially a part of a machine or vehicle: ex. stereo components.

As the word’s plain definition states, a component in React is a piece of a whole, your app. I like to think of components like individual lego pieces, that when combined create larger structures.

var LegoPiece = React.createClass({
      render: function() {
        return <h1>Hello World</h1>;
      }
    });

    ReactDOM.render(
      <LegoPiece />,
      document.getElementById('main-container')
    );

Props

property |ˈpräpərtē|
noun (pl. properties)

• an attribute, quality, or characteristic of something: ex. the property of heat to expand metal at uniform rates.

Props (short for properties) are similar to arguments in a regular function. In a component, props are immutable and top-down — props of a component are passed from parent component to a child.

So, let’s think of props like genetic traits. In this basic example we are creating a child component, and trait-wise, we’re passing down ‘brown eyes’.

var Child = React.createClass({
  render: function() {
    return <p>This child has {this.props.trait}</p>;
  }
});

ReactDOM.render(
  <Child trait="brown eyes" />,
  document.getElementById('main-container')
);

State

state |stāt|
noun

• the particular condition that someone or something is in at a specific time: ex. being worried about someone’s state of mind.

Component state changes over time in response to actions — like a click. To get state we have to implement class-based components by extending React.Component. Here’s a bit more info about the example below from ReactJS docs.

“The constructor for a React component is called before it is mounted. When implementing the constructor for a React.Component subclass, you should call super(props) before any other statement. Otherwise, this.props will be undefined in the constructor, which can lead to bugs.

The constructor is the right place to initialize state. If you don’t initialize state and you don’t bind methods, you don’t need to implement a constructor for your React component.”

Let’s talk about hugs. Hugs are pretty great, and have many benefits.

In this example, the action that affects state is a click, and that in turn affects the state’s ‘hugs’ count. So, when the You component is rendered, there’s a button for the user to click. Every time a user clicks the button, You (the component) has a change in state — in the numbers of hugs. And maybe you can code it so that when the hugs count reaches 10, the button becomes disabled, because You has had enough hugs (but is there really a case of too many hugs?).

class You from React.Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
    this.state = {hugs: 0 };
  }

  onClick() {
    this.setState({hugs: this.state.hugs + 1});
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <div>count:{this.state.hugs}</div>
        <button onClick={this.onClick}>Click for hugs!</button>
      </div>
    );
  }
};
ReactDOM.render(<You />, document.getElementById("main-container"));

Conclusions

So, we touched upon lego, genes, and a hug’s effect on emotion! But you can think of these ReactJS concepts in any way you want — in any way that makes most sense to you. Use whatever schemas you have in place to really let new ideas sink in.

As always — heres a GIF!

Relating ReactJS to everyday concepts was originally published in Hypenotic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’m constantly on an ‘efficiency kick’ — looking for ways to augment/streamline time-spent. Like how I code, how I commute (thank you podcasts), and most recently, how I use my weekends.

Look up ‘efficient’ in the dictionary and you’ll find a definition like this:

• achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense
• working in a well-organized and competent way
• preventing the wasteful use of a particular resource

(From Apple’s Dictionary app)

Whenever the weekend approaches, a lot of folks have an inner dialogue along the lines of: I just want to do nothing. Or, I’ll play it by ear.

Then Saturday morning rolls around, and they end up taking a substantial chunk of weekend time to plan out what they want to do. Sound familiar?

Time is finite. That’s a chunk of your weekend that you’re not going to get back.

So, why not think about what to do on your weekend in advance?

You may be thinking: Plan. My. Weekends? But where’s the spontaneity? Why would I want to work on laying out my weekends?

I’m not saying to spend a huge amount of time blocking out your weekend in 15 minute intervals. That’s rigid scheduling. But what about taking time earlier in the week to choose three activities? Three activities you can do during the weekend that will bring you joy. Just three.

Laura Vanderkam calls these ‘anchor activities’ in her book, What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast — And Two Other Short Guides to Achieving More at Work and at Home.

These activities are anything that you, personally, are going to look forward to — actions that, when thought about, evoke a ‘hell yes’ and a huge metaphorical checkmark on your soul’s invisible checklist.

Vanderkam suggest tying the activities to certain times, and choosing something social, something active and something spiritual — but whatever floats your boat will do. She also recommends doing something special Sunday night to ease into Monday on a high note.

For example, for me this may look like:

• Social: Dinner with a friend on Friday night at one of our favourite spots.
• Active: A walk early Saturday morning (6am), taking the long way to the 24-hour grocery store, so I can shop the aisles in peace and avoid long checkout lines.
• Spiritual: Meditating in the morning for 10 minutes.

Besides the actions themselves inducing joy, the act of planning them out in advance has a benefit as well: anticipation.

When anticipation comes from a positive place (booking of a vacation, dinner with friends, signing up for that coding course you’ve been eyeing for forever) we experience some of the same pleasure that will come from the future event itself. In a Psychology Today article, Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project says, “by having something to look forward to, no matter what your circumstances, you bring happiness into your life well before the event actually takes place. In fact, sometimes the happiness in anticipation is greater than the happiness actually experienced in the moment.”

Part of this anticipatory effect is visualization — picturing yourself in a situation.

When you think about that breakfast with your family or that early morning jog, you subconsciously cause sensations associated with that situation to bubble to the surface. Calmness. Excitement. Joy.

So, fast-forward a bit, and by Sunday evening you’ll have at least done three things that you genuinely enjoy — but I have one more preposition. Bring Monday into your Sunday. Think about what you want to tackle. You can lose a large chunk of your Monday to figuring things out, and the rustling of a typical office environment probably won’t help this process. Maybe choose your Most Important Task(s) (MIT) — something that, when completed, will make you feel a strong sense of accomplishment, regardless of what happens throughout the day. Kind of like those aforementioned ‘anchor’ activities. Most people say to tackle your MIT first thing in the morning, but you can revise this model.

All that said — give thought to your weekend (and Mondays) a shot in advance. You might find that it’s the type of work that you enjoy doing.

TL;DR

• Add some efficiency to your weekend, and plan to do three ‘anchor’ activities that will bring you joy.
• Anticipating pleasurable planned events adds more happiness to your life, in part because we’re able to visualize/trigger some of the feelings we’ll experience when the event actually takes place.
• Think about Monday’s goals — without knowing where you’re going, you end up lost.

Side Notes

• Here’s the TED Talk that introduced me to Vanderkam’s work — How to Gain Control of Your Free Time. It changed the way I thought about the phrase “I’m busy”.
• Get some Headspace. I use this app to help me with meditation.

And of course — a GIF!

Work on your weekends was originally published in Hypenotic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.