UI/UX Articles And Interesting Tidbits Of The Week
December//20//2019
Here are some interesting finds on UI/UX of the week!
1.
Creativity Myths. Interesting article on the topic of Creativity, hailing from the Fast Company magazine. It’s an article that demystifies the concepts that Creativity are only for professionals in the Design/Marketing world. It is in fact something that requires persistence, training and a volition to understand how ideas are in fact created, and more importantly, assessing how relevant they may be. Worth a read. Highlight of the article includes:
“While creativity is essential in fields like marketing and design, unconventional thinking is essential in just about every aspect of business. A study by Adobe and Forrester found that 82% of companies believe there is a strong link between creativity and business results. According to the report, companies that actively foster creative thinking outperform their rivals in revenue growth, market share, and competitive leadership.”
2.
Technology as a Social Re-Integration Method. Interesting article, and atypical from my usual highlights. This article hailing from The Atlantic, showcases and details the intricacies of a program co-sponsored by Slack, Last Mile, W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Free America, which re-integrates previously incarcerated individuals in tech jobs. These individuals learn the necessary coding skills while incarcerated, and the article focuses on a few of the cases of integration and success within Slack. Well worth a read, for its innovative, social, and professional insights. Highlight of the article includes:
“The prior year, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield and a group of co-workers had visited a Last Mile program at San Quentin State Prison, just north of San Francisco. Butterfield was particularly impressed by the program’s rigor and the quality of the software the inmates were producing. Around the time Aguirre was released, Slack started laying the groundwork for what would eventually become Next Chapter. The goal of Slack for Good, the company’s philanthropic arm, is to increase the number of underrepresented individuals in tech. “Two of our key values as a company are being inclusive and having empathy,” said Deepti Rohatgi, the head of Slack for Good. “This program was not only a way to move the needle on an incredibly important issue in the United States, but also to make it very clear to our employees that these values matter to us.”
3.
The Decade of Design. A retrospective article from Figma, focused on the importance of Design as a discipline, and designers as professionals in the past decade. It’s an interesting reflection on how the field (and its professionals) have evolved, due to constant dynamic shifts of technology, devices, but also to the highly visible success of companies such as Apple, which have in fact placed Design as an equal partner in Product/Software creation. The article also sheds some attention on the evolution of Design Education, with some programs developed in the meantime by some renown Institutes. Highlight of the article includes:
“At the same time, mobile phones brought an avalanche of new information about users. Huge swaths of the population had pocket-sized computers that could see, hear, and interact with what was nearby. People used their phones constantly, resulting in what technologist Jon Gold called “infinitely more data than anything we’d seen in 2.5 decades of software development.” Product teams started running constant A/B tests on UI variations. They’d experiment with button color or text, seeing how it impacted sign ups, purchases, shares, or other behavior. Companies — with Facebook leading the charge — started hiring more designers to power these experiments, and data-driven design became its own discipline.”
