Journal 3062 Links 10272 Articles 84 Notes 7385
Friday, April 26th, 2024
Help us invent CSS Grid Level 3, aka “Masonry” layout | WebKit
This is a wonderful in-depth article by Jen, with lots of great demos.
She makes a very strong case for masonry layouts being part of the grid spec (I’m convinced!). If you have strong feelings one way or the other, get involved
European astronaut rookies make the grade - BBC News
Rosemary and her dad are regular attendees of Brighton Astro so everyone is pretty excited about this news!
Podcast AP
Here’s a handy service that allows you to follow a Mastodon account that updates when a new podcast episode is released from any podcast you like.
Thursday, April 25th, 2024
UX London 2024, day three
UX London runs for three days, from June 18th to 20th. If you can, you should get a ticket for all three days. But if you can’t, you can get a one-day ticket. Think of each individual day as being its own self-contained conference.
The flow of the three-day event kind of mimics the design process itself. It starts with planning and research. Then it gets into the nitty-gritty product design details. Then it gets meta…
Day three, Thursday, June 20th is about design systems and design ops.
Maintenance matters, not just for the products and services you’re designing, but for the teams you’re designing with. You can expect a barrage of knowledge bombs on alignment and collaboration.
The bombardment commences with four great talks in the morning.
- Brad Frost kicks things off with the question is atomic design dead? Brad will show you how to imagine what a global design system might look like.
- Alicia Calderón is going to be talking about unlocking collaboration . Alicia will show you how to use a framework for creating lasting aligment between developers and designers.
- Benaz Irani will be speaking about empathy overload. Benaz will show you how to strike a balance between compassion and confidence within your team.
- Kara Kane is going to talk about why UX building blocks need standards. Kara will show you how to use standards to enable adoption and contribution to design systems.
After the lunch break you’ll have your pick of four superb workshops. It’s not an easy choice.
- Brad Frost is not only giving a talk in the morning, he’s also leading an afternoon workshop on the design system ecosystem. Brad will show you how to unpack the many layers of the design system layer cake so you can deliver sturdy user interfaces and help teams work better together.
- Stéphanie Walter is running a workshop on designing adaptive reusable components and pages . Stéphanie will show you how to plan your content and information architecture to help build more reusable components.
- Tom Kerwin will be giving a workshop on multiverse mapping. Tom will show you how to pin down your product strategy and to align your team around the stuff that matters.
- Luke Hay is running a workshop on bridging the gap between Research and Design. Luke will show you how to take practical steps to ensure that designers and researchers are working as a seamless team.
Finally we’ll finish the whole event with one last closing keynote. I’m very excited to announce who that’s going to be—I’ll only keep you on tenterhooks for a short while longer.
When step back and look at what’s on offer, day three of UX London looks pretty unmissable. If you work with a design system or heck, if you just work with other people, this is the day for you. So get your ticket now.
But be sure to use this discount code I’ve prepared just for you to get a whopping 20% off the ticket price: JOINJEREMY.
Wednesday, April 24th, 2024
UX London 2024, day two
If you can’t make it to all three days of this year’s UX London, there’s always the option to attend a single day.
Day two is focused on product design. You know, the real meat’n’potatoes of working at the design coalface (to horribly mix my metaphors).
The day begins with four back-to-back practical talks.
- John V Willshire gets the ball rolling with a big-picture talk on the product of design. John will show you how to think about futures rather than features.
- Tshili Ndou follows on with her talk aboutvalidating features. Tschili will show you how to create high value products and avoid wasting money.
- Wioleta Maj is up after the break with a talk on understanding the impact of design choices. Wioleta will show you how to identify who we are creating our designs for (and who we are not).
- Harry Brignull closes out the morning with his call to action, Do Not Pass Go. Harry will show you how to get to grips with our industry’s failure to self-regulate when it comes to harmful design patterns.
After lunch, it’s decision time. Whereas the morning talks are sequential, the afternoon’s workshops run in parallel. You’ve got four excellent workshops to choose from.
- Ben Sauer will be giving a workshop on the storytelling bridge . Ben will show you how to find your inner storyteller to turn your insights into narratives your stakeholders can understand quickly and easily.
- Tom Kerwin will be giving a workshop on multiverse mapping. Tom will show you how to pin down your product strategy and to align your team around the stuff that matters.
- Serena Verdenicci will be giving a workshop on behavioural intentions . Serena will show you how to apply a behavioural mindset to your work so you can create behaviour-change interventions.
- Brad Frost will be giving a workshop on the design system ecosystem. Brad will show you how to unpack the many layers of the design system layer cake so you can deliver sturdy user interfaces and help teams work better together.
Finally there’s one last keynote talk at the end of the day. All will be revealed very soon, but believe me, it’s going to be a perfect finisher.
If a day of outstanding talks and workshops on product design sounds good to you, get your ticket now.
And just between you and me, here’s a discount code to get 20% of the ticket price: JOINJEREMY.
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024
UX London 2024, day one
UX London is just two months away!
The best way to enjoy the event is to go for all three days but if that’s not doable for you, each individual day is kind of like a mini-conference with its own theme.
The theme on day one, Tuesday, June 18th is design research.
In the morning there are four fantastic talks.
- Tom Kerwin kicks things off with his talk on pitch provocations. Tom will show you how to probe for what the market really wants with his fast, counterintuitive method.
- Clarissa Gardner is giving a talk about ethics and safeguarding in UX research . Clarissa will show you how to uphold good practice without compromising delivery in a fast-paced environment.
- Aleks Melnikova’s talk is all about demystifying inclusive research. Aleks will show you how to conduct research for a diverse range of participants, from recruitment and planning through to moderation and analysis.
- Emma Boulton closes out the morning with her talk on meeting Product where they are. Emma will show you how to define a knowledge management strategy for your organisation so that you can retake your seat at the table.
After lunch you’ll take part in one of four workshops. Choose wisely!
- Luke Hay is running a workshop on bridging the gap between research and design. Luke will show you how to take practical steps to ensure that designers and researchers are working as a seamless team.
- Serena Verdenicci is running a workshop on behaviorual intentions. Serena will show you how to apply a behavioural mindset to your work so you can create behaviour-change interventions.
- Stéphanie Walter is running a workshop on designing adaptive reusable components and pages. Stéphanie will show you how to plan your content and information architecture to help build more reusable components.
- Ben Sauer is running a workshop on the storytelling bridge. Ben will show you how to find your inner storyteller to turn your insights into narratives your stakeholders can understand quickly and easily.
After your workshop there’s one final closing keynote to bring everyone back together. I’m keeping that secret for just a little longer, but trust me, it’s going to be inspiring—plenty to discuss at the drinks reception afterwards.
That’s quite a packed day. If design research is what you’re into, you won’t want to miss it. Get your ticket now.
Just to sweeten the deal and as a reward for reading all the way to the end, here’s a discount code you can use to get a whopping 20% off: JOINJEREMY.
Sunday, April 21st, 2024
Saturday, April 20th, 2024
Connectivity issues, the short version:
https://status.digitalocean.com/incidents/21gg18q1ddmv
Connectivity issues, the long version:
https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea-deep-repair-ships
Friday, April 19th, 2024
The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat
A fascinating in-depth look at the maintenance of undersea cables:
The industry responsible for this crucial work traces its origins back far beyond the internet, past even the telephone, to the early days of telegraphy. It’s invisible, underappreciated, analog.
It’s a truism that people don’t think about infrastructure until it breaks, but they tend not to think about the fixing of it, either.
Thursday, April 18th, 2024
AI isn’t useless. But is it worth it?
I find my feelings about AI are actually pretty similar to my feelings about blockchains: they do a poor job of much of what people try to do with them, they can’t do the things their creators claim they one day might, and many of the things they are well suited to do may not be altogether that beneficial. And while I do think that AI tools are more broadly useful than blockchains, they also come with similarly monstrous costs.
A very even-handed take.
I’m glad that I took the time to experiment with AI tools, both because I understand them better and because I have found them to be useful in my day-to-day life. But even as someone who has used them and found them helpful, it’s remarkable to see the gap between what they can do and what their promoters promise they will someday be able to do. The benefits, though extant, seem to pale in comparison to the costs.
Invisible success – Eric Bailey
Snook’s Law in action:
Big, flashy things get noticed. Quiet, boring things don’t.
There isn’t much infrastructure in place to quantify the constant, silent, boring, predictable, round-the-clock passive successes of this aspect of design systems after the initial effort is complete.
A lack of bug reports, accessibility issues, design tweaks, etc. are all objectively great, but there are no easy datapoints you can measure here.
Wednesday, April 17th, 2024
Faster Connectivity !== Faster Websites - Jim Nielsen’s Blog
The bar to overriding browser defaults should be way higher than it is.
Amen!
We Need To Rewild The Internet
Powerful metaphors in this piece by Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon on the Waldsterben of the internet:
Our online spaces are not ecosystems, though tech firms love that word. They’re plantations; highly concentrated and controlled environments, closer kin to the industrial farming of the cattle feedlot or battery chicken farms that madden the creatures trapped within.
We all know this. We see it each time we reach for our phones. But what most people have missed is how this concentration reaches deep into the internet’s infrastructure — the pipes and protocols, cables and networks, search engines and browsers. These structures determine how we build and use the internet, now and in the future.
The Analog Web - The History of the Web
Owning your own piece of the Internet (to borrow a recent phrase from Anil Dash) is itself a radical act. Linking to others at will is subversive all on its own. Or as Jeremy Keith once put it, “it sounds positively disruptive to even suggest that you should have your own website.” The web still exists for everyone. And beneath this increasingly desiccated surface, there is plenty of creators still simply creating.
People create these sites simply so that they exist. They are not fed to an algorithm, or informed by any trends. It is quieter and slower, meant to tether us to a more mechanical framework of the web.
This is the analog web.
Displaying HTML web components
Those HTML web components I made for date inputs are very simple. All they do is slightly extend the behaviour of the existing input
elements.
This would be the ideal use-case for the is
attribute:
<input is="input-date-future" type="date">
Alas, Apple have gone on record to say that they will never ship support for customized built-in elements.
So instead we have to make HTML web components by wrapping existing elements in new custom elements:
<input-date-future>
<input type="date">
<input-date-future>
The end result is the same. Mostly.
Because there’s now an additional element in the DOM, there could be unexpected styling implications. Like, suppose the original element was direct child of a flex or grid container. Now that will no longer be true.
So something I’ve started doing with HTML web components like these is adding something like this inside the connectedCallback
method:
connectedCallback() {
this.style.display = 'contents';
…
}
This tells the browser that, as far as styling is concerned, there’s nothing to see here. Move along.
Or you could (and probably should) do it in your stylesheet instead:
input-date-future {
display: contents;
}
Just to be clear, you should only use display: contents
if your HTML web component is augmenting what’s within it. If you add any behaviours or styling to the custom element itself, then don’t add this style declaration.
It’s a bit of a hack to work around the lack of universal support for the is
attribute, but it’ll do.
Tuesday, April 16th, 2024
The dancing bear, part 1
I don’t believe the greatest societal risk is that a sentient artificial intelligence is going to kill us all. I think our undoing is simpler than that. I think that most of our lives are going to be shorter and more miserable than they could have been, thanks to the unchecked greed that’s fed this rally. (Okay, this and crypto.)
I like this analogy:
AI is like a dancing bear. This was a profitable sideshow dating back to the middle ages: all it takes is a bear, some time, and a complete lack of ethics. Today, our carnival barkers are the AI startups and their CEOs. They’re trying to convince you that if they can show you a bear that can dance, then you’ll believe it can draw, write coherent sentences, and help you with your app’s marketing strategy.
Part of the curiosity of a dancing bear is the implicit risk that it’ll remember at some point that it’s a bear, and maul whoever is nearby. The fear is a selling point. Likewise, some AI vendors have even learned that the product is more compelling if it’s perceived as dangerous. It’s common for AI startup execs to say things like, “of course there’s a real risk that an army of dancing bears will eventually kill us all. Anyway, here’s what we’re working on…” How brave of them.