Diversity Month, Influencing Redesign, The Web Looks Like Shit, and more UX this weekWhat's hot in UX this week.
Diversity Month: it's Time to Talk About our Role as Designers →The topic of Diversity and Design is becoming increasingly popular in conferences, meetups and other design events around the world. But we wanted to bring the topic from the stage to the inside of the company you work for. So over the course of April, we will pause a bit on our day-to-day posts. No "tutorials on how to use Sketch", or "ten tips for tech handoff". Less buzzwords like "chatbots", "artificial intelligence" or "VR". Let's talk about Diversity and Design. For a month. In depth. Through different perspectives. The Benefits of a Diverse Team → As a designer, I have always had this false belief that my field was diverse — after all, while I heard about teams that were predominantly male, I have had the pleasure of having many women as leaders and mentors in my career. Oh boy, I was wrong. Since I moved from Brazil to the US and found myself being part of a minority, I have learned that I have a lot to learn about diversity. Diversity is more than having someone in your team that has a different gender, ethnicity or background from you. Is Diversity a Problem in the Design Industry? → If you are in your office while reading this email, there is a chance you will get this weird feeling when you look around. Does your company's workforce mirror the talent available in the country? Does it mirror the users of your product? Do you honestly think your team is as diverse as it could be, or do you sometimes feel like you work in a bubble? Fixing this issue is not as simple as it sounds, though. You can't simply start hiring more diverse candidates — because the pipeline of qualified candidates is not very diverse. Celebrating Our Differences and Showing You (Truly) Care About Inclusion → It's two old grandmothers later, and you would think the black community would not feel like they are still shackled in chains. There has been a lot of upward mobility in society, but in most blacks eyes the context is still the same, but the story and settings are different. This is shockingly accurate in the design industry. In our industry we feel we are more progressive and forward-thinking than any other industries, but in most cases, we are pretty much the same. This is due to a series of factors: unconscious bias, monster egos, and the recurring unwillingness to step outside of the award-winning white box. Auto-play videos lurking in unopened tabs. Pop-ups that won't go away. Photos that won't load. It's hard to complain about the internet without feeling like a mom struggling to post on Facebook. The Boundaries of Artificial Emotional Intelligence → I'm told I should prepare for the day an artificial intelligence takes my job. This will leave me either destitute and rootless or overwhelmed by a plenitude of time and existential terror, depending on whom you ask. With over 1,500 people working at Dropbox, getting a complete web redesign to happen isn't easy. Redesigning is hard enough. But what's even harder is convincing everyone in your organization to get on board with the idea. Poor Management and Mediocre UX Design Go Together → Web design has improved by leaps and bounds within the past 10 years. Yet there is still a substantial amount of poor UX design today, even with more UX professionals on the job. News & Ideas
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A year ago…The UX-factor: Why I Don't Care Where or What You Studied → In the last 20 years, interaction design has evolved into user experience design and a smorgasbord of related competencies. The most influential contributors of the field came from myriad backgrounds: human factors, graphic design, architecture, AV arts, software engineering, philosophy, cognitive psychology, people research. I can't think of any other profession that encompasses such a holistic spectrum of arts and sciences. So why care about where or what people studied? Like the links? Share the love ♥ |
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Sunday, 9 April 2017
Diversity Month, Influencing Redesign, The Web Looks Like Shit, and more UX this week
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