Linknote — — 119 words

Human-centred approaches — User experience

Then and now: The Bauhaus and 21st century design

Don Norman assesses the Bauhaus movement, and its relevance to design today. He notes that despite its widespread cultural influence, it failed to produce a single object that significantly improved people’s lives.

Consider the “Curriculum Wheel”… developed by Walter Gropius in 1922… It contains three years of study, starting with form and materials, moving to advanced topics in materials, composition, and construction. Never a mention of people. Never a mention of usage. It was all about form.

Elements of this remind me of contemporary debates around flat design and other superficial user interface decisions. This form or that form isn’t right or wrong, unless you know you are meeting people’s needs.

Linknote — — 60 words

Content design — Digital

Language in web teams

Content designer Sarah Richards shares an amusing story of a technique she has used to help people from different disciplines and backgrounds who have been talking at cross-purposes.

We are meant to be content and communication experts. But we often see people putting little effort into how they communicate internally, or even within their own teams.

Linknote — — 76 words

Accessibility — Digital — Human-centred approaches — Web

Accessibility according to actual people with disabilities

We often hear about the theory of accessibility in design. But we know that the reality can often be different.

So it’s great to see such a comprehensive run-down of actual digital accessibility complaints from people with disabilities.

The article ends with a sage point:

Basically everything that people with disabilities comment on are things that annoy everyone, so fixing these issues makes your interface better for all users!

Linknote — — 129 words

Human-centred approaches — Personal

Your design ikigai

I love this idea of the ikigai.

It has no direct translation into English, but roughly means your level of happiness in life, or your ‘reason for being’.

This is what I was thinking about when I wrote that you should follow your passion — you should instead find your purpose.

This ikigai venn diagram potentially provides a way of discovering the elements that make up that purpose. I will spend some time thinking about this, and considering what my answer is for each of the sections of this diagram.

It is interesting that passion is represented, as the intersection of what you love and what you are good at. Your mission, profession and vocation may be harder to figure out.

What would your answers be?

Linknote — — 166 words

User experience

Net promoter score considered harmful (and what UX professionals can do about it)

You have probably been asked in a customer satisfaction survey how likely you would be to recommend a company to a friend or colleague. This is used to measure the net promoter score, and it has become very popular.

Here, Jared Spool has comprehensively outlined why net promoter score is not as valuable as businesses hope.

As usual, the problem is that net promoter score is a tool that has been sold as a silver bullet — “This number is the one number you need to grow. It’s that simple and that profound.” And businesses looking for a silver bullet have lapped it up.

But of course, reality is much more complex than that. Net promoter score, when applied consistently by a business, probably does have some value. But it should be used as just one tool of many that you should be using to ensure you are meeting your customers’ needs.

Linknote — — 143 words

Human-centred approaches — Technology

Tech has a diversity problem — so this designer went to Kentucky

I am interested in how, despite the (theoretical) potential of technology improvements to make remote working easier, technology jobs still seem to cluster in particular areas.

Design firms and technology firms are heavily concentrated in cities on the west and east coasts, particularly in San Francisco, LA, and New York, limiting job opportunities to those who have the resources to move to, and live in, such expensive metropolises. And with so many designers living in urban centers, few have the perspective that comes from living in rural areas.

This can be viewed as yet another of the tech industry’s diversity problems.

Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com, has all of its employees working remotely. Automattic’s John Maeda is trying to engage young people “that fall outside the normal Silicon Valley culture”.

Linknote — — 170 words

Architecture — Digital — Human-centred approaches

Sticks in the ground for public services

You know I love a bit of brutalism. Well here, Ben Holliday draws a comparison between civic architecture of the mid-20th century, and modern-day digital local services.

Many of these buildings are now disused or in different states of disrepair. It’s an important reminder. The fact is, no matter how bold you set out to be. No matter how big or successfully your original statement of intent, eventually the roof will start to leak.

Buildings, just like ideas, need maintenance. They fall into disrepair over time.

I have written a few times before about the parallels I see between architecture and digital services. It’s well worth learning the lessons from the past and applying them to our own projects.