UI/UX Articles and Interesting Tidbits of the Week
December//2//2022
Here are some interesting finds on UI/UX of the week!
1.
Music Streaming Evolution. Interesting article from The Verge and author Ariel Shapiro on the year end statistics surrounding streaming music (alongside podcasts). At a time when platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio, and others continue to vie for people’s attention, this year the number of streams has pushed 1 trillion (and counting). This not only demonstrates the fact that users have changed their habits of how they consume this type of product, easily adhering to this style of subscription based model, however and in parallel there’s also been a constant volume increase in Vinyl purchases as well, with the statistics in 2021 indicating that in the US alone that sales volume has reached 41 million units. This co-existence of multiple ways of consuming this type of products, continues to be demonstrative that users across different demographics are drawn to different type of experiences, and not all of them are mutually exclusive. Highlight of the article includes:
“Luminate, the data firm behind Billboard charts, reported that listeners in the US have racked up over 1 trillion streams so far in 2022, which is a first. It also reported the top five songs in the country across platforms, which were “As It Was” by Harry Styles, “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals, “Wait For U” by Future, “Super Gremlin” by Kodak Black, and “Me Porto Bonito” by Bad Bunny and Chencho Corleone.”
2.
Web Design Trends of 2022. Margaret Andersen and the Shaping Design portal have published this article on the most commonly observed digital trends from 2022. I typically shy away from articles on trends, since these try to group solutions under fairly shallow common threads, most of the times failing to highlight what the brand history and the intricacy of the solutions themselves are actually about. On the other hand, these articles continue to re-instate the fact that there is indeed a general laziness when it comes to creating solutions that are sensical and brand aligned, as opposed to just blindly following what others are doing. The author highlights aspects such as “Acid Green”, “Friendly Fonts” (as opposed to villainous fonts??), “Candy-like color” and “Nonstop’ 90s” to name but a few, which seemingly dominated digital web products in 2022. Consume with reservations. Highlight of the article includes:
“Designers are attempting to humanize the screen space with microinteractions that provide feedback and foster a sense of wonder through subtle uses of animation, according to designer and CalArts instructor Lisa Armstrong. Armstrong attributes the use of microinteractions to a response to both years of brutalist web design trends, which default to bare-bones functionality in terms of navigation, and the isolation of the global pandemic. “At any rate, users seem to want to feel more connected to the tech they engage with,” she explains.”
3.
Our Brains are Quantum. Another interesting article from Tristan Greene for The Next Web, on a new study that seemingly renders human brains as quantum computers. It’s a fascinating article and study which showcases the possible complexity of how our brain operates, regulates the rest of the body itself and how consciousness is shaped (and its implications on habits, behaviors and everything we touch upon). The article also highlights how some of these findings can also influence the direction in which AI is moving. Worth reading and exploring further. Highlight of the article includes:
“Entanglement refers to a quantum state where two objects remain connected even when separated by distance. It sounds complicated but, essentially, it’s like throwing two coins into the air and knowing that no matter what, as long as the coins remain entangled, they’ll always land on the same side as one another. In the quantum realm, this manifests when two or more discrete objects (such as photons) become entangled in such a way that any relevant measurements scientists perform on one will hold true for the others.”
