Reading List
What I’ve been reading lately. Interesting & informative UX-focused links, updated as I find notable pieces.
(Any bolding or emphasis added by me.)
4 psychology principles every UX/UI designer should know • Taylor Green
Four ethical psychology principles you should be using in your design.
Banal Binaries: How power plays in how we communicate • Tatiana Mac
Really fascinating discussion of “how people wield power, especially subconsciously” in workplace communications. I’d consider this a must-read for any leader or manager. While Tatiana couches this in general terms of existing power relationships, it has significance for workplace anti-racism, gender identity, and age factors.
This doesn’t mean anyone is evil or bad. Remember, systemic issues are often driven by unconscious bias and behaviors. We have to learn to see them before we can change them.
AI is “often very confidently wrong” • theverge.com
Pithy summary of the state of AI chat by Grant Tremblay, astrophysicist who fact-checked Google's Bard public demo.
Accessible Target Sizes • craftcms.com
This article on accessibility in touch & click targets reminds us everybody is disabled at some point. Accessible design is not just about “the blind” or “people with a disability”:
“Typically, we hear about target sizes being important for users on touch devices as it’s important to increase the tappable area of many UI controls. However, increasing target size also benefits:
• Users with hand tremors
• Users with decreased dexterity or fine motor control
• Users who are in an environment that can increase hand shaking, such as a bumpy ride on public transportation
* * *
YouTube’s ‘dislike’ and ‘not interested’ buttons barely work, Mozilla study finds • theverge.com
“Even when users tell YouTube they aren’t interested in certain types of videos, similar recommendations keep coming, a new study by Mozilla found.
“Using video recommendations data from more than 20,000 YouTube users, Mozilla researchers found that buttons like “not interested,” “dislike,” “stop recommending channel,” and “remove from watch history” are largely ineffective at preventing similar content from being recommended.“
Enriched Site-Search Suggestions: Rarely Used • nngroup.com
“People rarely interact with enriched site-search suggestions. While these types of recommendations can provide quick shortcuts and useful validation for users conducting known-item searches, consider whether the investment is worth the effort to do it right. Excessive, slow-to-load, or shifting enriched search suggestions increase task complexity, contribute to a low signal-to-noise ratio, and are largely ignored.”
You may actually pay more with an Amazon discount • futurity.org
“More than a quarter of vacuum cleaners sold on Amazon have at some point pretended to offer a discount when they had actually just increased the price, according to new research.”
The World's Most Satisfying Checkbox • andy.works
“In Product Design, we sprinkle a touch of “delight” on key moments—colorful illustrations in our onboarding, confetti for major milestone reached. In reality, it’s the mundane, everyday interactions that need our attention most.
“Feel is not something we talk much about as digital product designers. It’s difficult to quantify in metrics or even describe in words, so it tends to fall to the bottom of a priority list. But we know it’s important.”
Women's pockets really are Inferior. Here’s the data. • pudding.cool
“Like so many things on the internet, we could find complaints and anecdotes galore but little data illustrating just how inferior women’s pockets really are to men’s. So, we went there.
“We measured the pockets in both men’s and women’s pants in 20 of the US’ most popular blue jeans brands. Take a look at what we found.”
ADA compliance website lawsuits: What you need to know • audioeye.com
“ADA website compliance lawsuits can be a significant drain of time and resources, with some ADA lawsuits against websites dragging on for years. To give you an idea of what can happen when lawyers get involved, we are sharing the details from five notable ADA website accessibility lawsuits.”
Disability as Mismatch | Inclusive Design Guides • inclusivedesign.ca
“Inclusive design [is an] approach […] that perceives disability as a mismatch between our needs and the design features of a product, built environment, system or service. This shifts the responsibility to the design, and to the designer, to correct the mismatch.
“It shifts our perspective such that we understand the mismatch to be solvable through design, which encourages innovation.“