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Licklider in the making.
“This essay will explore some of the possibilities to rethink how humans and ‘intelligent’ machines interact today. The focus is on practical application – how can technology that exists today be leveraged creatively to make applications that are vastly more powerful and useful?”
Jessy Lin a.k.a. /jessylin | @realJessyLin ★
Deep thinking on (design) education (not training!) in combination with a practical implementation.
“Designers are entrusted with increasingly complex and impactful challenges. However, the current system of design education does not always prepare students for these challenges. Designers are moving into new areas, many of which require management, social, technological, and political skills never before thought of as the responsibility of design. Not only has technology increased and changed dramatically in recent decades, but society has become more and more concerned with weighty global issues, such as hunger, health, education. Design skills for developing creative solutions to complex problems are becoming more and more essential. Businesses are starting to recognize that designers bring something special to the work—a rational belief based upon numerous studies that link business success to a design-driven approach. These are all powerful opportunities, yet we are not always training our students appropriately.”
Donald A. Norman and Michael W. Meyer ~ jnd.org ★ courtesy of marcovanhout
All together now…
“What does it mean to be a designer at this time in history? Think about that for a second. Or several days. At the risk of speaking for all designers, I’ll say we’ve moved beyond just surface and tactical concerns, at least in our discourse. I still see religious debates over design tools, and excitement over the latest visual design trends. But, if five years ago we were debating round corners on buttons, we’re now debating whether these things should even exist, and the effect on our society and the world at large. We’re designing from a more thoughtful perspective. (…) In recent years, I’ve come to recognize that the biggest influence I can have, as a designer and design leader, is to become more of a facilitator.”
Stephen Anderson a.k.a. /stephenpa | @stephenanderson ★
We used to call it accessibility, and that’s still what it is.
“Inclusive design is designing to be inclusive of as many users as possible, considering all aspects of diversity in users. With increased understanding, compassionate discussions around how to design for disabilities are becoming increasingly common in the web industry. But even with this growth, there are misconceptions: accessibility is still frequently thought of as ‘design for blind people’ when it’s so much more than that. Users with limited motor functions and those who are hearing-impaired require separate considerations, for instance. But accessibility and inclusiveness also mean considering more than just physical symptoms. What about users with cognitive differences like inattention, anxiety, and depression?”
Brandon Gregory a.k.a. /brandon-gregory | @authorbrandong ~ A List Apart ★
Design for the ears to provide information, to communicate and to experience.
“As we move into an artificially intelligent world whose logics of operation often exceed our own understanding, perhaps we should linger a bit longer on those blips and clicks. Compressed within the beep is a whole symphony of historical resonances, socio-technical rhythms, political timbres, and cultural harmonies. Rather than simply signaling completion, marking a job done right, a beep instead intones the complex nature of our relationships to technology — and the material world more generally.”
From idea to concept. How about execution?
“A good concept can make your design more interesting. It can add depth and meaning to your work. A concept helps you generate new and related ideas. It also guides your thinking and design decisions. Your ability to develop concepts, your creativity, can help you stand out from other designers. So how do you go about developing a concept for a project?”
Steven Bradley a.k.a. /vangogh | @vangogh ~ vanseodesign ★
Perfect text for those involved in circle three of Maeda: Computational Design.
“The design and presentation of data is just as important as the underlying algorithm. Algorithmic interfaces are a huge part of our future, and getting their design right is critical—and very, very hard to do. My work has begun to turn to the responsible and humane presentation of data-driven interfaces. And I suspect that yours will, too, in very short order. While constructing these machine learning models is indeed heavy-duty data science, using them is not. Tons of these machine learning models are available to all of us here to build upon right now.”
Josh Clark a.k.a. /joshclark | @bigmediumjosh ~ big medium ★ courtesy of @gnat
Important topic addressed amongst digital designers.
“Over the next two decades, connected products will demand an unprecedented amount of user trust. Technologists and designers will ask the public for yet more of their attention, more of their data, more of their lives. AIs will know users’ deepest secrets. Co-operating devices will automate security and safety. Autonomous vehicles will even make life-or-death decisions for passengers. But ours is an industry still unwilling to grapple with the ethical, social, and political angles of this future. We mistakenly believe that technology is neutral; that mere objects cannot have moral relevance. And so we make embarrassing blunders – racist chatbots, manipulative research, privacy violations – that undermine trust and harm those we should help.”
Cennydd Bowles a.k.a. /cennydd | @cennydd ~ interaction17 videos
Progression is just an idea, not a practice.
“The premise is refreshingly simple: bridge the gap between offline and online experiences and gain performance increases, lower bounce rates, and even better conversion rates while doing so. Progressive web applications (PWAs) are basically another layer to add on an existing website, one that interacts between the browser and http connection. This means that any and all requests first go through the service worker, which is an important part of any PWA. The service worker then determines whether there is even a need to connect to the internet for the request, or whether it should just serve a locally stored cache of the website the user is currently browsing.”
Mark Pedersen ~ Boxes and Arrows ★
AR and VR, the new design ‘terra incognita’.
“Augmented reality has come a long way from a science-fiction concept to a science-based reality. Until recently the costs of augmented reality were so substantial that designers could only dream of working on design projects that involved it – today things have changed and augmented reality is even available on the mobile handset. That means design for augmented reality is now an option for all shapes and sizes of UX designers.”
Design as a team sport. Getting rid of the genius designer myth.
“Hire for the right roles. Some people believe that founders are the only ones who can create company culture. It’s true that founders are usually responsible for creating the original values. Consider how Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Google defined the way they wanted their first dozen employees to feel at work. In fact many of the best-loved parts of the culture started before Google had 50 employees. But as a company grows, there are still opportunities for cultural recalibration. Here are seven roles of people who help define, harness, reflect, and embody culture at IDEO. Think of them as the new faces of organizational culture.”
Deep thinking and hard fun is rising to the synapses.
“A new era in shaping products is already upon us. Design has to respond, and products must meet the demands of this era. We must look back, to move forward.”
Sanjiv Sirpal a.k.a. /ssirpal | @SanjivSirpa ~ Mbient.com ★
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