2016

beyond tellerrand - two mind-blowing conference days in Berlin

I had heard a lot of good things about beyond tellerrand, the semiannual web/design/tech conference in Germany. I was prepared to listen to an impressive line-up of speakers from the fields of both design and web technology. I was looking forward to reunite […]
2016

Reposting a Tweet by Florian Weil

twitter.com

This looks like an interesting approach for keeping passwords under private control, with the benefits of “centralized” access https://lesspass.com #selfhosting
2016

Reposting a Tweet by Teemu Leinonen

twitter.com

“A framework for entry-level web literacy & 21st Century skills” by Mozilla; interesting model indeed! https://learning.mozilla.org/en-US/web-literacy  
2016

Top 10 Enduring Web-Design Mistakes

nngroup.com

The results from this large-scale study by Nielsen Norman Group are significant not so much for what usability issues they identified to be most common, but the fact that these are still the same basic problems that have been around as long as websites […]
2016

IndieWebCamp Berlin 5.-6.11.2016

One week to go for IndieWebCamp Berlin! Join us: https://indieweb.org/2016/Berlin
2016

Let’s Stop Doing Research

medium.com

Amen! Erika Hall presents why purely user-centred design is out-of-date, explains how data-driven design is actually bias-driven design, and debunks the myth of the genius designer working chiefly based on intuition. And offers her own alternative […]
#design
2016

Takeaways from IndieWebCamp Brighton 2016

The fifth edition of IndieWebCamp Brighton saw a good two dozen enthusiasts gather for a weekend of debating, brainstorming and prototyping the social web of the future. Amongst a myriad of random inspirations, many of which for sure will find their way into projects of mine in the near future, I would like to summarize three main takeaways from this memorable weekend in Brighton [...]
2016

Note, published 23 Sep 2016

2016

How to profit from your data and beat Facebook at its own game

newscientist.com

Just getting started on reading up on the proceedings from the August #MyData conference in Helsinki.
“The best outcome for personal data is that we all naturally think of data as we think of money,” says Lawrence [Neil Lawrence […]
2016

Discrimination by Design

propublica.org

A great read on how the long history of discrimination by design continues in the realm of the digital.
It’s likely that as long as humans and their institutions hold prejudices and bias, their designs will reflect them.
This […]
#design
2016

The Blog That Disappeared

nytimes.com

I occasionally find myself accused of being overly critical of cloud services. Which I am not - per se. My critique is not about the technology and its undeniable potential, but about the terms at which it is provided …and the prevailing silence with […]
2016

IoT Design Manifesto 1.0 - Guidelines for responsible design in a connected world

iotmanifesto.com

The IoT Design manifesto aims to set guidelines for responsible design in a connected world: We don’t believe the hype We design useful things We aim for the Win-Win-Win We keep everyone and every thing secure We build and promote a culture of […]
2016

Ethical Web Development

ethicalweb.org

It is easy for me to subscribe to each and every of Adam Scott’s Principles of Ethical Web Development: Web applications should work for everyone Web applications should work everywhere Web applications should respect a user’s privacy and […]
2016

Solving All the Wrong Problems

nytimes.com

Based on my experiences from teaching at Aalto University’s design department last fall, all hope is not lost on the issues this op-ed on the New York Times raises:
If the most fundamental definition of design is to solve problems, why are […]
2016

Data to Go

Cifas, a non-profit for fraud protection, recently published “Data to Go”, a brilliant candid camera clip. Passers-by are asked to “like” a coffee shop on Facebook in exchange for a cup of free coffee …and, as they will find out […]
2016

Opportunity for All? Technology and Learning in Lower-Income Families

joanganzcooneycenter.org

Recent research on digital media use points to two important gaps in educational opportunity for low-income families with young children. First, there is an access gap. Second, there is what scholars refer to as a participation gap, in which digital resources are not well guided or supported to ensure educational progress.
This research report by Victoria Rideout and Vikki Katz (PDF) contains some interesting, mostly quantitative, findings not just about the challenges, but also about real-life practices of digital device use in lower-income families in the USA.
2016

See The Progress

helloanselm.com

An avid user of strict privacy blockers myself, I have long been advocating that every web developer should test their websites in scenarios with blocked third-party resources (I can’t even count the number of times I run into websites where some […]
2016

The Website Obesity Crisis

idlewords.com

A burning rant by Maciej Cegłowski (aka. Idle Words) on the commercially introduced complexity (“obesity”) of the web. Drawing a bow from ads to assets, the talk also introduces some rather innovative terminology:
Chickenshit […]
2016