Pixels of the Week – April 4, 2021
Every day, I share on Twitter and LinkedIn a list of curated articles I read, resources and tools about UX Design, User Research, UI and mobile design, HTML, CSS, the web industry, some process, some inspiration, etc. This is an archive of everything I shared this week.
#Now – what I’m up to
Honestly, since last week was super busy, so I mostly spend this week’s free time playing League of Legends Wild Rift (drop me an email with you gamer tag I’m trying to go above gold III this season). I got a few things coming soon (like articles and workshops), but first, I needed some rest.
I’m also going to attend “UX Research Live” (a 3 days online program on user research, from 13 to 15 April). I’m currently working within a product team as a UX Researcher (and also working on their design system), since we are super “user driven” so this should be a lot of information to improve even more our current process.
TL;DNR the one you should not miss
#CSS
Handling Text Over Images in CSS by Ahmad Shadeed (@shadeed9) I really like those techniques because they help bring more contrast between text and image
Interesting article
#UXWriting #Inclusive Design
How to write inclusive, accessible digital products – A short introduction to inclusive UX writing with a few examples (by Nick DiLallo)
#DesignThinking #UCD
“Why Design Thinking is hurting User-Centered Design“, interesting thoughts in here about some limits of DT.
#UXmethod
I didn’t know that adding screenshots to a user journey was called “asset mapping” but I liked that method for a while now, especially in enterprise products where it helps understand journeys steps and bring more consistency across those
#CSS
- “Container Queries are actually coming” YEEES yess yessssss!! by Andy Bell (@piccalilli_)
- In case you were wondering: CSS Is, In Fact, Awesome (by @jimniels)
- #Typography” Why should type be fluid, anyway? ” by Elise Hein, yeahy for fluid type and clamp()! Those kind of articles really make me want to rework my blog design with clamp (and some grid layout), I need to make time for that 🙂
#Cowboys
An interesting twitter thread by Michael Harriot on the history of the first cowboys explaining how the first cowboys were Africans in South Carolina
Inspiration, fun experiments and great ideas
#DrumMachine
I’m such a big fan of drum machine experiments and this one brings a whole new design and perspective to those tools using math and shapes
#Cats #Illustrations
Strange cats, a fun video of animated low rez pixel illustrations. Also check kéké’s tumblr for more fun videos, gifs and illustrations.
#Art
Highly satisfying video of someone creating a Marge Simpson portrait with rubik’s cubes.
#ThatShip
A Steer through the Suez Canal simulator to show you how complex is it to navigate that canal, can you manage to not get that ship stuck (I could not but I am bad at those things and zero patience ^^)
#Package
Remember those VHS packaging? This is a tumblr dedicated to the design of retail VHS packaging, for both home & pre-recorded tapes.
News in the industry
#CSS
Videos and podcasts
#Talk #Gender Equality
This is super interesting if you are a recruiting or in HR in general, a teacher and in so many areas: “Iris Bohnet – What Works: Gender Equality by Design”
#Talks #DesignSystems
A repository of talks on Design systems curated by Maurice Timp (sometimes I get a 514 error, you might have to refresh)
#WatchTheTalkReadtheBook
I did a little series of tweets including videos that summarize some book author’s content (in case you don’t have to read the book). Here we go:
- David Dylan Thomas (@movie_pundit)’s webinar on Design for Cognitive Bias (but also really read the book ^^)
- Abby Covert (@Abby_the_IA)’s new keynote “Make More Sense” and of course her amazing book How to Make Sense of Any Mess.
- 18min video of Richard Thaler presenting some of the concepts he developed with Cass R. Sunstein in the book “Nudge“
- “The paradox of choice” a TED talk by Barry Schwartz (and a good introduction to the concepts in his book that has the same name ^^)
#Sushi
This is an awesome video on the origins of sushis but also on how little people double check their sources, I’m amazed at @mynameisandong’s investigation work here, more thorough than most journalists I see those days. But yes, this takes time.
Useful tools and resources that will make your life easy
#Fonts
Fontshare, a free fonts service launched by the Indian Type Foundry (ITF) with a collection of free high quality professional looking fonts for personal and commercial use.
#Algorithm #Echochamber
Split Screen: I am always fascinated by those experiments: snapshots from the Facebook feeds of Biden vs Trump voters, women vs men, millennials vs boomers
#JS
This is going to be useful: 242 Favorite JavaScript Utilities in single line of code! No more! by Phuoc Nguyen (@nghuuphuoc)
