Pixels of the Week – August 4, 2024

Collecting UI buttons, Questions about the European Accessibility Act and amazing illustrations

My curated weekly-ish online newsletter, where I share interesting articles, tools, and resources I found during the week. You can expect content about UX, design, user research, accessibility & tech, but also some processes, some inspiration, sometimes books, and a couple of videos and podcasts. Also, don’t forget to, subscribe to the newsletter to get notified, you will get the weekly links directly in your mailbox, and be notified when I publish other articles.

Now: what I’m currently up to

This week, I put some items on Facebook market. I think I discovered a whole new part of hell. I haven’t used Facebook in years, I had to fish back an old account I kept open just because I used it to log into a video game. The interface is a mess, and the number of scams is impressive. My advice: refuse any non-cash only transactions.

Most popular content this week

Button Stealer: a fun chrome extension that “steals” and creates a collection of buttons for every site you open. It’s fun, useless, and free! By Anatoly Zenkov

Interesting articles that caught my attention

UX research and design

  • The Perceived Value of Good Design (5min) “Good design is a strategic investment, not a frivolous expense. By reframing the conversation around value, data, and clear problem-solving, you can turn design from a want-to-have to a powerful driver of success for your clients and your business” By John St. Aïmond Banson
  • Breaking bad news: how to present negative UX research findings (6min) by jim mccool. It’s not easy to tell a team that their product isn’t working. The key is to balance negative feedback with constructive recommendations, to show people how to turn those into opportunities for improvement, and be more user centric.
  • Content Strategy vs. UX Writing (10min) Content strategy focuses on content-related processes, while UX writing shapes user experiences through text. The two disciplines work in harmony.
  • Why high growth, high churn products never seem to work (15min) when you build a meme apps (single-use, highly shareable experiences) you often get a boost of popularity when it launches. But, people will use it once or twice, and then forget about it. It’s very hard to build retention with those. Instead of focusing on quick initial launch, you should focus on sustainable growth and long term retention.
  • Figma AI tools: I’m not worried about my job anytime soon (7min) : “The features are awesome but we’re far off from replacing designers. That’s coming from someone immersed in AI every day of the week.” By Patrick Neeman. True, most of us should be fine. Especially when you work on complex products (enterprise, health tech) doesn’t fit into the cookie-cutter pattern from their models.
  • Agency work vs product work: a designer’s confessions  (7min) Matteo Montolli explains how you might become your worst client once working on your own product, so, patience, focusing on essential features, continuous user research, clear role definitions, marketing are critical for success. But you still need to enjoy what you are doing.

Accessibility and inclusion

  • Public toilets are vanishing and that’s a civic catastrophe  (12min) no having easy access to public toilets is a big issue for a lot of disabled people, people with health issues and marginalised groups. By Guido Corradi
  • Kiosks, touch screens and physical devices (10min) a couple of issues and good examples for physical and screen reader accessibility for ATMs, kiosks, charging pole for electric vehicles, etc., and what the European Accessibility Act requires for such devices
  • European Accessibility Act (EAA): Top 20 Key Questions Answered: it’s not easy to understand what is covered with the new EAA and how it will be implemented, this should answer as least some of your questions. Like: yes, US businesses have to comply if they sell on European markets. No, overlays don’t make a website accessible.
  • Working from Home? Telecommuting Strategies from Adults with ADHD  (8min) haa, happy to see OneTab mentioned in here, it’s been helping me a lot too. Also, I love the idea of having flash cards pined to your desk for each thing you need to do, and switch them to reflect what you work on. I love stationary, so I might end up designing some cute cards. Yes, it needs to be cute, cuteness brings dopamine!

Last but not least

The Three Pillars Of SEO: Authority, Relevance, And Experience (15min) in case you were under a rock, good SEO is not just about link building anymore, you need good content, and great user experience too!

Curiosity cabinet: non-design/tech rabbit holes I enjoyed

How One Small Change Broke Wikipedia’s First Link Rule a fun rabbit hole on wikipedia where all articles link to philosophy eventually

Inspiration: fun experiments, beautiful art, and great ideas

Books

  • App accessibility handbook a free PDF handbook to help you learn about the basics of native apps accessibility, by Appt Foundation, updated with WCAG 2.2 criteria (by Jan Jaap de Groot & Paul van Workum)
  • Web Performance Guide a free online guide to help you build more performance websites, form business success to Core Web Vitals, optimization techniques, etc.

Useful tools & resources

  • Book Radio: a place to list to free audio books with some classics like Alexandre Dumas, Homer, etc.
  • design tool tips: a collection of small tips, mostly about Figma, and a couple of design tools, curated by vijay verma
  • Landingfolio a place to find curated landing page inspiration

Cool and Interesting Videos

Stop Holding Yourself Back: 7 Limiting Beliefs Debunked interesting video on some common believes that hold us back, like that ideas are either good or bad, that all information is equal (it’s not), that you need more (you might not), that consuming content might make your smarter, etc.

Other articles you might enjoy:

Published on 4 August 2024

in Pixels of the Week (curated newsletter)

By Stéphanie Walter