Pixels of the Week – February 16, 2025

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

I’ll be speaking at the Smashing Meets on accessibility this week, on Thursday February 20. Meetup starts at 5, it’s full remote, and you’ll enjoy really nice talks from Sarah L. Fossheim, Kardo Ayoub, and me, with Geoff Graham as MC. You can get your free ticket on Smashing Meets’ site.

Also, if you work in a French-speaking environment, the French version of my accessibility kif for designers has now all the items translated and available in French: the full checklist was updated to WCAG 2.2 and the 32 points poster is now available in French too. You can get the “Accessibilité Web: Outils pour designers” on my shop.

Most popular content this week

Desperate UX Portfolio job hunting is hard, demanding, and, let’s face it, depressing. So, we might as well laugh a little bit.  Yatrik Raithatha created that an amazing parody of what a portfolio from a desperate designer would look like, full of deceptive patterns and fun little nuggets.

Interesting articles that caught my attention

• Less Precious (3min) Social media started as a way to connect with friends. With time, it became a machine that demands non stop attention and tricks to please whatever new algorithm update happened this week. Many content creators feel trapped. They believe these platforms are the only way to grow and make money. Naz Hamid reminds us that, social media should be temporary: one channel among other to promote your content (and make money). Your real work deserves a space you control, like your own website.
• God of the Gaps: How the Supernatural Explains What We Can’t: People often turn to supernatural explanations when they can’t find a clear human cause. Early religious beliefs may have emerged as a way to make sense of the mysteries of nature. The problem with that: highly religious people today, might not want to do anything about things like climate change, because because they see God as the ultimate architect of climate and weather.

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

I adore the new Lady Gaga Abracadabra song. And it’s not just the song. The video is amazing too.  But what sold this to me is the fact she dances with a cane. And sits while dancing.  My mum has fibromyalgia too, and I never imagined I would send her a pop music video, but here we are. This is why we need more disability representation. Also, I now hope Justdance will get the rights, do a sitting song, and I’ll dance with my Mum in this banger!!

Inspiration: fun experiments, beautiful art, and great ideas

• Saaristo‘s visual identity is very creative: the islands themselves as visual building blocks. And, honestly, it works wonders.
• Your Name in Landsat 🛰️  To continue with beautiful landmarks, here comes the NASA tool to write names, using beautiful landmarks on earth (shared by Myles Lewando) Yea

Useful tools & resources

• VENNGENN: select a style modifier, an environment modifier, give your prompt, and get an illustration that is the middle of the venn diagram of both.
• cad.to.design in case you need to import AutoCAD files to Figma, there’s now a plugin for that
• Notepad Online is a free, secure online text editor. You don’t need to log in, and it support plan text, rich text and markdown. You can export your text in HTML, JSON, PDF and as an image. Love the idea
• Global Caps lock Key You know I have a soft spot for fun, chaotic things. In case you need randomness in your life, install the client, and get you caps lock synchronized with everyone who uses this tool.
• Here’s a PDF Version of the CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism, just, you know, in case. It “describes ways to train normal people to be purposefully annoying telephone operators, dysfunctional train conductors, befuddling middle managers, blundering factory workers, unruly movie theater patrons, and so on. In other words, teaching people to do their jobs badly”. This is a scan of the original guide. If you want more accessible formats, you can get an HTML version,  and many more formats on the Project Gutenberg’s site, including EPUB and plant text.