What to consider before adding Markdown to your app
Adam Lynch
design
Why empathy isn't a shortcut to great product design
Adam Lynch
Stale, Mate: An Assortment of Tweaks to the 2019 Redesign, Three Months In, and Join My Newsletter
Adam
I wrote fairly extensively regarding the 2019 AC.com redesign when it launched, and I knew then, as I took a loupe to my work, that the design had issues. Collating that assessment was constructive because it forced me to acknowledge shortcomings that I may otherwise have turned a blind eye. I...
On the 2019 Redesign: Experiments in Pulling Teeth, Past AdamCap(riola).coms, and What I Should’ve Been Doing All Along
Adam
If, after a week, I’m already over my latest AdamCap.com redesign, does that count as progress? (Too soon? Not soon enough?) I’ve launched redesigns in the past (to be enumerated below), and for each I’ve been privately optimistic that the “new wheels” would spurn creativity and drive and that I’d...
Disease of Familiarity, the Flaw of Wikipedia
aharoni
Originally written as an answer to the question What are some major flaws in Wikipedia? on Quora. Republished here with some changes. Wikipedia has a whole lot of flaws, and its basic meta-flaw is the disease of familiarity. It does not mean what you think it means. The disease of...
My favorite Design books
Adrián Mato
I often get asked about Design book recommendations, so I’ve put together a few of my favorite ones that somehow helped me to grow as a designer. You’ll notice that some of them are not necessary design-related and that’s OK as far as they teach us different lessons to extract and apply later on....
Every Function Has a Superpower. What’s Yours?
Adam Nash
Over the course of my career, I’ve been fortunate enough to work in a variety of different functions. No matter whether it is engineering, design, product, or service, every role has its own unique set of requirements and challenges. Maybe that’s why I have always believed strongly that software...
The New SpyParty Tutorial!
checker
After years in Early-Access Beta, with nothing but a four-page manual to help you learn how to play, SpyParty finally has a fully interactive tutorial! I’m pretty proud of how it came out. The tutorial uses a mix of text and voice narration,1 and it tries to get as close as possible to how we...
Dickbars and Other Readability Excrement
Isshin
John Gruber in Medium and the Scourge of Persistent Sharing Dickbars: Medium seems to continue to grow in popularity as a publishing platform, and as it does, I’m growing more and more frustrated by their on-screen “engagement” turds. Every Medium site displays an on-screen “sharing” bar that...
Product Leaders as Curators & Editors
Adam Nash
A few years ago, I wrote a few posts to outline the requirements for exceptional product leadership: In “Be a Great Product Leader,” I focused on three key responsibilities: strategy, prioritization & execution. In “Great Product Leaders Win Games,” I focused on deliverables in the first two...
Advanced CartoCSS Techniques
Abel Vázquez
Some obscure CartoCSS techniques by STAMEN’ Director of Technology, Seth Fitzsimmons. Two years old slides, but still quite useful.
Twitter’s Missing Manual
Isshin
One of Twitter’s problems is that it’s tilted a little too far towards the vim end of the scale. It looks like a dead-simple service, but those humble 140 characters have been crammed full of features over the years, and the ways they interact aren’t always obvious. There are rules, and the rules...
One Aggregator to Rule them All – Or How to Think Like Facebook & Twitter
Thomas Petersen
Facebook and Twitter seems to be unbeatable and companies are feeling the pressure to establish themselves in the social space to get a piece of the traffic pie. But is the price of traffic really worth the trade-off? Whether you’re a newspaper, publicly traded on the stock exchange, small...
Anatomy of a Noob – Why your Mom Sucks at Computers
Thomas Petersen
The words metaphor and intuitive are often used in UX. They are the metrics we use to judge the quality of a solution. But is this quality really as universal as we might like to believe? Let me introduce you to my mom. (Insert random “yo’ momma” joke here) Some years ago I needed a […]
The Ghost Protocol – Digital Identity for Immortals
Thomas Petersen
I admit that I am not the superstitious type. Superstitions have never resonated with me as my mind simply doesn’t grasp the idea of something unnatural. It is, therefore, with some reluctance that I use words like ‘ghost’ and ‘immortals’ here. However, they are useful to explain my thoughts on...
Design Discussion Principles – How to get your client to love your design
Thomas Petersen
I’m going to share with you a few of my principles to get clients to approve a design. As many designers know, discussing design with clients can be one of the most challenging aspects of a client relationship. Every designer has experienced the frustration of watching helplessly as their design...
The Power of Digital Ecosystems
Thomas Petersen
When Sony introduced the PlayStation in 1994, it wasn’t at all obvious that they would be successful. Nintendo and Sega were already in fierce competition and, although their arena was the 16-bit market, they were much more experienced in selling consoles and games. One of the features that was...
Developers are from Mars, Designers from Venus – A question of metaphors
Thomas Petersen
Next to the relationship between man and woman, there’s probably no two groups of people who understand each other less than designers and developers. Yet there is very little literature about the subject and surprisingly very little debate. Why this problem get so little attention isn’t easy to...
Mr. Brand Manager… Tear down this wall! – Re-branding Branding
Thomas Petersen
We must evolve our understanding of branding. Too long have companies and their agencies been treating values as if they are merely words to play around with. In this next decade, discount brands will be judged on their ability to be what they claim they are. But before I get into what that mean,...