Pixels of the Week – June 27, 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
If you speak French, I published the recording of “Designer au delà du « pixel perfect » qui n’existe pas” An English version of the video exists at another conf here. I also updates my talks list here, there’s a lot of new things available online. Last but not least, I had an awesome time talking about “enterprise UX” (in French), the youtube replay will be available soon. But again, I’ll talk about this in English soon too ^^
Those days I’m a little tired of the whole “everyone should be a designer” talks we hear in design industry. “Why JS dev shouldn’t be done ONLY by JS devs ?You should democratize JS dev to the whole team, PMs, POs, designers, democratize this to the whole company and build JS thinking workshops with all the stakeholders.” Makes no sense? Then why do we do this for UX research and design?
TL;DNR the one you should not miss
#Deliverables
An interesting guide on what designs elements you should hand off to the development team and how. I’ve noticed that many of the UX deliverables (like flows and prototypes) are super useful to devs as well, so it’s nice to see those mentioned
Interesting article
#Accessibility #OpenGraph
- “How to define Open Graph / Twitter image alt text (and why it might not matter…)” I didn’t know about “og:image:alt” but since many blogs use third part plugins (yoast in my case) we need them to support this as well.
- An interesting thread on the misconception that, if you meet all of the criteria then your service will work for everyone. Here is a little thread to explain why #WCAG itself is not enough.
- “Accessible design: How much motion is too much motion?” design advice on how to build motion that doesn’t cause sickness to users. Even if you consider your motion safe, in double, let users deactivate it (prefers-reduced-motion)
#QuantitativeData
“Young UX researchers: overcome your fear of numbers to stay relevant” this is so true and not only for young researchers tbh, if you have great resources on “data analysis for UXRs” please share, it will help a lot of people
#Design
“Why so many products are so badly designed” or how basic design rules are often ignored in part because technology and design are taught as separate subjects
#UXMaturity
NNGroup updated their level of maturity model to now have 6 stages that cover processes, design, research, leadership support, and longevity of UX. Use our quiz to get an idea of your organization’s UX maturity.
#DesignEducation
“The problems with UI/UX bootcamps that hiring managers won’t tell you – When creative education turned into assembly lines”, Stella Guan highlights some of the issues with bootcamp & also some university programs
#ShieldingUsers
Some interesting ideas on how Apple could help us reclaim our attention. A nice way to emphasis our role as a designer to help technology do less arm. Not sure how apps creators would react to such “limitations” tough.
#Redemption
Every time I hear “Tristan Harris” + than 5 times in a talk about ethics, I feel compelled to share this: The tech executive turned data justice warrior is celebrated as a truth-telling hero, but there’s something a bit too smooth about this narrative arc
Inspiration, fun experiments and great ideas
#Inspiration #Fonts
For my sci-fi and dystopian fiction fan friends, here is over two decades of book covers using the iconic “Roslyn Gothic” font
#Inspiration #Birbs
For my birds, sorry, birbs loving friends, you should love the paintings of Adele Renault, full of pigeons and colorful feathers
#Comics #Design
Come on in, the water’s…. oh. A sad-fun metaphor of the design industry.
#Vaccination
A cute video illustration on how vaccines work
#Game
Hahah a “find waldo” game in the browser, but you need to find emojis instead (plays sound)
#Greensock
Haa this is awesome, a giant 3D burger that you can use as a drum: The demo and the how to youtube episode with by @trostcodes with @steeevg
#Artlicking
This made me laugh so much: Art Criticism In A World Where Museums Let You Lick The Art
#Honk
For my Untitled Goose Game fan friends…
#Introverts
A cute little animation on how introverts get adopted
#SailorMoon
A thread with the strange villains in Sailor Moons
Video and podcasts
#Data #Survey
“How to (correctly) queer your data” a fantastic video by Mei Ke to help you ask questions about gender, sexuality, gender expression (that you might only need for clothes) and more the right way in your surveys
News in the industry
#Apple
“What does the Safari 15 update mean for my designs?” I’m happy about the theme color. I think the input borders light gray lack contrast though, but that new color picker is nice. Also the blue is more consistent with native apps
Tutorials
#CSS
A list of articles on container queries by @geoffreygraham so that you can keep up to date on that topic
Useful tools and resources that will make your life easy
#HTML #Semantics
A HTML button cheatsheet to help you find the right markup for that button in your interface (by @mmatuzo) with plenty of links to explain why some of those are bad
#Conference #Game
Meet amazing creators from around the world and learn how to build and market games players love at #GDoCExpo, happening online September 23-27! Learn more and snag your ticket here
#Firefox
Did you know you have a tool in Firefox to play with all the cool new font features? Here’s a video that shows you how.
#Sketching
If you need to print some paper prototyping templates with grid and browsers/mobile, this should help: predesign.me
#Typefaces
For my typeface lover friends undercasetype has a nice selection of variable fonts (retail and open source). I’m in love with Regina Black. And Fraunces looks awesome, is open source, has a dedicated site
#iOS
If you are designing iOS native apps, here is a iOS 15 UI kit for Figma
