Linknote — — 29 words

Content design — Web

Word count for web pages

Why setting a word limit for webpages may actually be a bad thing. Like speed limits, people begin to treat it like a target.

Linknote — — 67 words

Media — Technology — Web


Google Chrome’s now blocks dodgy ads by default. Which is great for Google

An interesting piece on the conflict of interest surrounding Google’s move to block the worst ads in Google Chrome.

I might have more sympathy for the publishers if they hadn’t systematically destroyed their own websites with terrible ads, reducing the trust of their readers, and giving the web a bad reputation as a result.

Linknote — — 67 words

Human-centred approaches — Technology — User experience

Make me think!

A provocative piece on “the problem with “user centered” design”.

Whenever we are about to substitute a laborious activity such as learning a language, cooking a meal, or tending to plants with a — deceptively — simple solution, we might always ask ourselves: Should the technology grow — or the person using it?

A good companion to the idea that “computers are setting us up for disaster”.

Linknote — — 67 words

Culture — Economics — Technology

The dark art of stealing from self-checkouts

Anyone who pays for more than half of their stuff in self checkout is a total moron.

I have long wondered how much stealing goes on at self-checkouts. It turns out, quite a lot — but presumably not enough to make many retailers think twice about having them. What’s interesting is that many self-checkout thieves are apparently otherwise generally law-abiding.

Linknote — — 65 words

Business — User experience

Subverted design

As designers have gradually become more senior (or perhaps more experienced), their role in organisations has evolved. But it’s not necessarily a good thing.

> Products will always be made through compromise. But in a world where Designers are focused on balancing business needs against user needs, while other stakeholders are focused exclusively on business needs, these compromises will almost always favor the business.

Linknote — — 79 words

Society

How many dimensions are there, and what do they do to reality?

Reading this article is the closest I have ever come to understanding what is meant by having more than four dimensions.

> Imagine… you are an ant living on a long, very thin length of hose. You could run along the hose backward and forward without ever being aware of the tiny circle-dimension under your feet. Only your ant-physicists with their powerful ant-microscopes can see this tiny dimension.

Linknote — — 136 words

Digital — Media — Technology

It’s the (democracy-poisoning) golden age of free speech

You may think you’ve read it all from people complaining that the likes of Facebook are threatening free speech. But this is a genuinely smart, thought-provoking article on the wide-ranging ways society need to rethink its approach towards freedom of speech.

We are particularly susceptible to glimmers of novelty, messages of affirmation and belonging, and messages of outrage toward perceived enemies. These kinds of messages are to human community what salt, sugar, and fat are to the human appetite. And Facebook gorges us on them.

I have thought before that we need to start thinking about ‘eating your digital greens’. Which means being wary of processed content (processed through an algorithm, that is), and ensuring you seek out a balanced diet of content from different sources and perspectives.

Linknote — — 77 words

Human-centred approaches — User experience

What is design ethnography?

A useful overview of how you can apply principles from ethnography when designing. You are unlikely to be able to use a fully ethnographic approach. But that doesn’t mean you can’t incorporate elements of it.

Our view is that, if we liken traditional ethnography to a prize heavyweight boxer, then design ethnography is more akin to a street fighter. It doesn’t follow all of the rules but it gets the job done.

Linknote — — 107 words

Media

Ed Yong: I spent two years trying to fix the gender imbalance in my stories

…I looked back at the pieces that I had published in 2016 thus far. Across all 23 of them, 24 percent of the quoted sources were women. And of those stories, 35 percent featured no female voices at all. That surprised me. I knew it wasn’t going to be 50 percent, but I didn’t think it would be that low, either. I knew that I care about equality, so I deluded myself into thinking that I wasn’t part of the problem. I assumed that my passive concern would be enough. Passive concern never is.

Linknote — — 64 words

Business — User experience

The power of ‘so that?’

A lot of UX and business process related work is about uncovering the true motivations behind a behaviour, not just accepting what people say at face value.

I like this idea of ‘so that?’. It is a bit like the [five whys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys), another technique to help you get to the root cause.

Linknote — — 33 words

Media — User experience — User research

Level up your user interviews: lessons from the master, Louis Theroux

How following Louis Theroux’s techniques can improve your interviews as a UX researcher.

An entertaining post with some good advice as well.

Linknote — — 71 words

Digital

I’m having a ‘digital transformation’ right now

This is slightly inflammatory, but contains a lot of truth.

I was particularly struck by this point:

You will also find lots of high-level pieces about why ‘Digital Transformation’ matters — but very little in the way of relevant, reference-able case studies and practical advice about how to do it.

Although I would give mention to the case studies outlined in the New Reality.