UI/UX Articles and Interesting Tidbits of the Week
May//26//2023
Here are some interesting finds on UI/UX of the week!
1.
Documenting a VR Experience. Loved this article from Sara M. Watson published on The Verge about her experiences using Meta’s Quest Pro. As the VR investment continues, with various degrees of success, the considerations Ms. Watson details in the article are worth reading through. She enumerates several concerns on one’s health in relationship with that particular type of technology, but also highlights some of the studies that are being done of VR in the Medical field, and even with experiences that are being devised to mimic psychedelics. Very interesting and pertinent article. Highlight of the article includes:
“Big Tech is betting that extended reality — virtual reality, augmented reality, and the rest — will usher in the next generation of hardware computing interfaces, leading us into an era of spatial and embodied computing. Responsible innovation principles need to extend beyond privacy and data stewardship to consider the duty of care for users in emerging immersive, embodied computing interfaces. Technologists will need to have a duty of care to users for the impacts of the interfaces so intimately entangled with our sense of our bodies and reality itself. So what responsibility do platform and device makers have to users? Taking care in immersive digital environments is a matter of consumer protection and public health.”
2.
The Fading of Internet’s Memory. Not a typical article or even content for this newsletter, but one worth mentioning nonetheless. Chris Velazco’s newsletter for The Washington Post on this particular issue focuses on the Internet’s memory, and how with new privacy claims and data protection standards, data which has existed on the web is rapidly disappearing. Mr. Velazco offers some suggestions for everyone to preserve their own digital footprint, which includes backing up devices, archiving voice mails, not relying solely on the cloud, but also using local drives for storage, to name but a few techniques which can indeed preserve that digital narrative. It’s an interesting reflection on how ephemeral the internet has become. Highlight of the article includes:
“Even things you’ve chosen to save online for your own use or convenience can come with an expiration date. Just today, Google announced a new policy under which personal Google accounts — not ones you may use for work — that haven’t been accessed for two years will be deleted. That includes “content within Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet, Calendar), YouTube and Google Photos”. Google’s clarity here is somewhat comforting; it won’t start deleting accounts until December 2023 at the earliest, and says it’ll send multiple messages to affected accounts before they get purged. Still, the message is clear: online, most things won’t last forever.”
3.
Screener Surveys. Another great article filled with insight and noteworthy tips from Nikki Anderson-Stanier, published on the dScout Design Blog. This time around the article focuses on creating screener surveys to assure that studies are getting the right candidates. The article includes recommendations such as Mixing up Questions, Using Logic to Order the Questions, Always Including a Text Field for additional comments the potential interviewee may have, to name but a few. The article even includes an example of a complete screener. Well worth reading through. Highlight of the article includes:
“Screener surveys are an excellent tool for beginning research projects. You use short surveys to qualify participants and ensure you get the best fit for the information you need. One big mistake I used to make was only asking for demographic information in my screener surveys. Since I came from an academic background, demographic information was a must in many projects. I didn’t focus on behavior or habits in those projects. Unfortunately, when I just asked for demographic information (ex: gender, age, location), I landed in the same scenario I described above. The participants might have fit a specific demographic, but they couldn’t give me the needed information.”
