Category: UX

Thoughts on user experience design best practices and trends, and a sprinkling of actual new ideas.

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Thoughts on How to Speak Machine

How to Speak MachinePicked 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.

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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.

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Google Chrome “privacy” enhancements

“We have enhanced your privacy by sharing your browsing history and behavior with random websites. You’re welcome.”

Dialog from Google Chrome: Enhanced ad privacy in Chrome We're launching new privacy features that give you more choice over the ads you see. Chrome notes topics of interest based on your recent browsing history. Also, sites you visit can determine what you like. Later, sites can ask for this information to show you personalized ads. You can choose which topics and sites are used to show you ads. X X X To measure the performance of an ad, limited types of data are shared between sites, such as the time of day an ad was shown to you. More about ads in Chrome You can make changes in Chrome settings

(via @rmondello@hachyderm.io)

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Mute Mother’s Day emails

Mother’s Day can be hard enough—you shouldn’t also have to worry about your inbox. That’s why we’re making it easy to opt-out of emails about the holiday. Simply click the link below to skip Mother’s Day emails. Don’t worry, you’ll still get all of the regular programming like city guides, new openings, and Diners' Choice lists.

I’m thankful my mom is still with us and I have a totally fine relationship with her, but that’s not the case with everyone so for businesses with holiday-centric marketing this type of opt out from OpenTable is thoughtful customer experience.

(Smart business too as it likely means fewer people will just unsubscribe completely.)