UI/UX Articles And Interesting Tidbits Of The Week
October//16//2020
Here are some interesting finds on UI/UX of the week!
1.
Diversity and Equitable Stances in Organizations. Not a typical highlight of this newsletter, but one well deserving more attention. Organizations should reflect the social tissue in which they operate, and therefore, diverse workforces are of paramount importance. This article from Fast Company establishes a series of well thought considerations in assuring the right steps are taken to establish a well ingrained diversity strategy. Well worth a read and a reflection. Highlight of the article includes:
“Document and track every aspect of your program, tie performance/employment to achieving objectives. (What you expect you must also inspect). Conduct exhaustive surveys by EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) designation to determine salary and position equity. Identify and examine shortcomings and develop solutions. This will solve inequities among all protected classes within the organization.”
2.
Color Palettes and Accessibility. Personally I love reading case studies and understanding motivations, strategies and implementation processes for actual products. This thorough and well documented article hailing from Carbon/IBM is a good example of how that team tackled the expansion of their color palette, in order to support data visualizations, while still adhering to accessibility demands. It’s a great read with details on the color choice process, the implementation on Infographics, their handling of textures on charts, among many other relevant topics. Highlight of the article includes:
“Because IBM’s brand palette intentionally skews cool, we found ourselves running out of warm options for visualizations. A balance of warm and cool hues is essential to avoid creating false associations. For example, a single magenta data point in a sea of blues and greens can read as an error — or create the impression that the cooler data points are related. After some thought, we made one key addition to address this problem: an extended yellow and orange spectrum. The extension is only available for Carbon data visualizations.”
3.
Choosing the Right Business Name. Having gone through an exercise of choosing a Business/Product name not that long ago, this article resonates tremendously, and highlights factors to keep in mind when tackling such a challenging exercise. This article from author Suzanne Scacca for The WebDesignerDepot focuses on aspects of this exercise such as services that are provided, target personas, competitive analysis, to name but a few considerations that are lofty when choosing a business or product name. Well worth a read. Highlight of the article includes:
“Your business name isn’t something you can casually choose either — especially if you have lofty long-term goals for your company. It’s not as though you can’t change the name down the road, but that comes with a ton of work and will require you to rebuild pretty much everything all over again: your visual brand identity, your reputation, and your SEO… So, it’s a good idea to spend time choosing a business name that’s going to work for you now and long into the future.”
4.
The Future of the Fitness Industry. The Pandemic has had a profound impact across the entire spectrum of society on a global scale. Apart from the catastrophic aspect that is related to the casualties and the incomparable loss of so many lives, the ripple effects have also been felt across many Industries. One of those is of course Fitness, particularly when it comes to Gyms, and how people in general tackle their fitness goals in group settings. This article documents with insight and detail how different organizations are tackling these challenging times, and how technology is enabling different solutions to be presented and deployed. Well worth a read. Highlight of the article includes:
“We’ve been helping studios that are not fully digital to get on our virtual platform because the preponderance of the industry is based on physical location. When they had the pivot to go virtual, the first thing that most [studios] tried was Instagram live, Facebook live, or even Zoom. But these systems are really disconnected from [the studios’] core operating systems. Our digital platform enables studios to integrate their online classes with our management systems, so that people can book and pay for digital classes. This lets studios offer hybrid memberships where people can sign up for both virtual and in-person classes as things open up. We think the future of the industry is studios being able to offer both.”
