Practical Visual Collaboration in 10 Minutes from Stephen Anderson is a great quick read with some tips for leading successful workshops.
Measuring ROI for Generative AI
Been spending a good bit of time at work discussing measuring the value of various AI projects and in particular some GenAI stuff. I found Gartner’s Measuring ROI for Generative AI helped me wrap my head around a few things in particular about first categorizing as a quick win, differentiating, or transformational use case.
The Disciplines Companies Need to Get the Most Out of Gen AI (cough, design, cough)
Want to not just throw money away investing in Gen AI? HBR article on The 6 Disciplines Companies Need to Get the Most Out of Gen AI says your company should focus on behavioral change, controlled experimentation, measurement of business value, data management, human capital development, and systems thinking.
Know what most of those sound like to me? Design. In other words, your company should invest in design.
Thoughts on How to Speak Machine
Picked up John Maeda’s How to Speak Machine: Computational Thinking for the Rest of Us and read through it pretty quickly, but I’m not sure it was a worthwhile read for me and I don’t think I’d recommend it for anyone already familiar with modern software design.
Maeda spends the majority of the book’s 200 pages explaining the basics and extolling the value of UX research, product design, agile delivery, and iterative development and comparatively little on the actual premise of the book.
Both Amazon and Maeda frame the book as a way for designers to understand “the complex world of AI and machine learning”, but while it hints at AI’s transformative potential these mentions are more speculative than practical. There really isn’t any actionable insights or detailed explorations of how AI can concretely impact design work today.
A Book Apart is shutting down
A Book Apart is shutting down: abookapart.com
An Event Apart closed up shop in 2022 and now their book publishing arm is doing the same. Their short, easy to read books on responsive web design, mobile first UX, and content strategy over a decade ago were foundational texts for me as I was growing as a user experience professional.
Sadly, considering how rarely new posts are showing up A List Apart, I worry it might be next on the chopping block.
Invision is shutting down
Pour one out for Invision: InVision design collaboration services shutdown | Inside Design Blog
Tools like Invision, Zeplin, and Abstract came about to fill in feature gaps in products like Sketch and Photoshop and as those products added similar functionality and then Figma came in and ate all their lunches. I wonder if Invision turned down acquisition by Adobe at some point or did they really thing they could build their own design tool and compete?
I wish the future had more buttons
Apple shows off more of the next generation of CarPlay with Aston Martin and Porsche. I’m still not sure if it will ever actually release in any cars anyone actually owns, but Apple’s Next Generation CarPlay does look pretty cool and also looks like it could desperately use some physical controls.
Crossposted on Mastodon
Adobe abandons acquisition of Figma
Adobe has abandoned their $20 billion acquisition of Figma due to regulator pressure from the EU. Great to see more and more scrutiny from at least some countries (and very occasionally the US) into these obviously bad for everyone company acquisitions.
If Adobe had properly invested in my beloved Fireworks in the 2000s, maybe they’d have stopped Sketch and Figma before they even got started.
WhoCanUse color checker
I’ve used WebAIM’s Contrast Checker forever but WhoCanUse is a new color accessibility checker that adds some nice features and is certainly better looking. The breakdowns by each vision impairment with visual examples and percentage of people affected seems especially useful.
Video: An introduction to Photoshop’s Generative Fill
Adobe’s five minute demo of their new AI-based Generative Fill feature in Photoshop is absolutely incredible. Check it out:
I think using AI for iterative creation like this could be the more interesting new capability AI gives us, at least for for a little while. Fabricating new images from thin air still has so many obvious flaws (ethically, technically, and artistically) so this type of use seems like it could be both more successful while also less ethically murky.