As we perform more of our work collaboratively online — suddenly, nothing seems as antiquated as a corporate “shared drive” — there’s a lot of value in knowing the range of features available. These 18 Google docs tips, like the ability to search images by color, can help you keep up with recent improvements. Is a …
Friday 5 — 8.19.2016
Google Duo, a clean, simple mobile video calling (and soon, audio calling) app launched this week to take on Facetime. The jury is still out whether its simplicity will carry the day, or it will become the latest failed Google social tool (Buzz, Wave, Plus). Here’s a UX secret that will ruin apps for you: artificial …
Friday 5 — 8.12.2016
Jasmine Friedl suggests how to make your not-so-great visual design better. More importantly, she shares the process that can help a designer get better: asking questions and guiding rather than issuing prescriptive statements. Connie Chan explains why stickers are more than just a frivolous gimmick: they are an emerging visual digital language. In messaging platforms like WeChat and Line, stickers …
Friday 5 — 7.29.2016
Nieman Lab shares insights about the progress and user adoption of Stela, the New York Times’ in-house analytics platform. As publishers adjust to living in a world of distributed content and to using analytics data to drive decisions, there’s value in more than aggregating the data: make it approachable, simple and fun to use. Make your buttons look like buttons. Nick …
Friday 5 — 6.24.2016
Slack has launched Buttons to ensure you never leave, advancing the platform from a discrete messaging app to a productive work hub. Now you can pay back a colleague, resolve a tech alert, update a project management task all from within Slack, thanks to some new APIs.
Friday 5 — 5.20.2016
Bots won’t replace apps, better apps will. Read the entire post for insights on the limitations of the conversational user interface, including too many taps and lingering skeuomorphism in chat interaction design. 85% of Facebook video is watched without sound, which is why you’ll find savvy organizations posting videos like this, this, or this — all tell a compelling story with the audio …
Friday 5 — 5.13.2016
Findings from Artefact’s recent design maturity survey indicate that your chief design officer is not your savior. Other tactics, like training cross-disciplinary teams in design thinking, may have more impact than a single, high-profile hire. There’s not a lot I love more than a good digital playbook, and NYC has just released theirs. The interface is a little dramatic …
Friday 5 — 5.6.2016
Visual content is everywhere, and measurement and optimization are starting to catch up. Netflix already knows which pictures you’ll click on and why, and blogged some lessons learned — including the value of regional nuance, and of recognizable, polarizing characters. As a travel geek, I loved this compilation of 16 apps that will help you travel the world. Some …
Friday 5 — 3.18.2016
Instagram tells us that we see only 30% of our feeds, and that their imminent algorithmic intervention will make that 30% the best it can be. Rendering posts out of temporal order clearly passes muster with Pope Francis, who is making his Instagram debut tomorrow, March 19th. You may have heard that a Google AI program, AlphaGo, …
Friday 5 — 3.11.2016
When are people on Facebook, Reddit, or Gmail? This data dive by Medium’s head of Product Science discovered that the times of day when people read tend to follow consistent patterns each week. Design thinking has been all the rage for a while. It’s one thing to understand the overall concept, and yet another to change an …