Andrea Buran 5.0

All jots | Page 2

As an avid reader, I jot down bits from food for thought pieces on design and development to revisit and reflect on later.

  • Design leaders need more than just design skills. Understanding business and strategy is one the most impactful things designers can learn to lead teams and attain meaningful results.

    Ted Goas, “Doing strategy” as a product designer, UX Collective on Medium.
    335 jotted on 14 Aug 2023, 17:30.
  • This is enshittification: surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they’re locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they’re locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit.

    Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic: Tiktok's enshittification, Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow.
    334 jotted on 5 Aug 2023, 14:05.
  • But these new generative tools help you with the first half of the process, taking you from nearly zero to a lot of initial ideas.

    James Currier, Generative Tech Begins, NFX.
    333 jotted on 13 Jun 2023, 12:30.
  • Like that first solution with the diluted potions, designer Wyatt Cheng says “we weren’t totally thrilled with this solution as we were putting it in, but we did it anyway. We knew that even though this might not be a solution that we’re willing it was something that was going to teach us a lot more about the problem”.

    Mark Brown, How Game Designers Solved These 11 Problems, Game Maker’s Toolkit.
    332 jotted on 11 Mar 2023, 11:50.
  • This is vague, but important. You should be deliberate about absolutely everything in your design. This means whitespace, alignment, size, spacing, colour, shadows. Everything. If I point at a random part of your design and you don’t have an explanation for why it looks that way, you’re not finished.

    Anthony Hobday, Visual design rules you can safely follow every time, Anthony Hobday’s site.
    331 jotted on 1 Feb 2023, 12:30.
  • “I tend to think an item lives in a particular folder. It lives in one place, and I have to go to that folder to find it,” Garland says. “They see it like one bucket, and everything’s in the bucket.”

    Monica Chin, File Not Found, The Verge.
    330 jotted on 29 Jul 2022, 12:20.
  • The biggest lie we tell ourselves is “I dont need to write this down because I will remember it”.

    Kevin Kelly, 103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known, The Technium.
    329 jotted on 11 May 2022, 11:10.
  • Given this crucial aspect of scientific production—that early exploration is indispensable but typically has little impact on the wider scientific community—an excessive reliance on citations in the evaluation of scientists effectively punishes the exploration of new ideas.

    Jay Bhattacharya, Mikko Packalen, Stagnation and Scientific Incentives, p. 4, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020.
    328 jotted on 27 Apr 2022, 00:00.
  • For the vast majority of our species’ history, those were the two principal categories of human relations: kin and gods. Those we know who know us, grounded in mutual social interaction, and those we know who don’t know us, grounded in our imaginative powers.

    But now consider a third category: people we don’t know and who somehow know us. They pop up in mentions, comments, and replies; on subreddits, message boards, or dating apps.

    Chris Hayes, On the Internet, We’re Always Famous, The New Yorker.
    327 jotted on 26 Apr 2022, 23:30.
  • Finally, the team noticed one user that was particularly flummoxed by the dialog box, who even seemed to be getting a bit angry. The moderator interrupted the test and asked him what the problem was. He replied, “I’m not a dolt, why is the software calling me a dolt?”

    Andy Hertzfeld, Do It, Folklore.org.
    326 jotted on 21 Mar 2022, 10:30.
  • It is impossible to test against all the version combinations of all components in the library. Is Button v3.4 compatible with Accordion 1.2 and Modal 5.3? Library maintainers can’t guarantee quality, which means when issues arise consuming teams and maintainers have go on an easter egg hunt to pin down where compatibility problems are occurring.

    325 jotted on 22 Feb 2022, 14:10.
  • A focus on building the solution “right” means you do not let debt you take on stay around for long. You keep it visible and eradicate it fast as you deliver new features. And you do this because you recognize the longer the debt lives on, the more the interest hurts.

    Todd Lankford, Three “Right” Ways to Develop Your Product, Serious Scrum.
    324 jotted on 20 Dec 2021, 15:00.
  • Splitting Product Discovery and Delivery across two teams is a form of a functional silo.

    Todd Lankford, We Need One Complete Product Team, Serious Scrum.
    323 jotted on 20 Dec 2021, 14:30.
  • Instead of thinking of the daily stand-up as a ritual for the people, think of it as a ritual where the Work Items Attend (e.g., User Stories in an Agile context) and the people attend only to speak for the work items… since obviously the work items can’t actually talk.

    322 jotted on 17 Dec 2021, 18:40.
  • Discovery work often results in killing ideas. At the end of every test you’ve got a decision to make: build it, kill it, or keep learning. Yes, what I’m really saying here is discovery work can and should result in killing ideas. Not everything goes forward.

    Jeff Patton, Dual Track Development is not Duel Track, Jeff Patton & Associates.
    321 jotted on 17 Dec 2021, 18:00.
  • After all that work, after establishing all that shared understanding I feel like we pull all the leaves off the tree and load them into a leaf bag–then cut down the tree.

    That’s what a flat backlog is to me. A bag of context-free mulch.

    Jeff Patton, The New User Story Backlog is a Map, Jeff Patton & Associates.
    320 jotted on 17 Dec 2021, 13:30.
  • The idea is to test as many solutions as possible during discovery and discard all the wrong ones during this phase; this way, only the right solutions are developed during delivery.

    Emanuele Bolognesi, Introducing Dual Track Agile—the theory, UX Collective.
    319 jotted on 16 Dec 2021, 10:30.
  • Playing a videogame for someone is a far more elaborate skill than just playing to win.

    Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, Playing videogames carefully, Eurogamer.
    318 jotted on 11 Dec 2021, 22:40.
  • You’ll want to focus on nouns that might represent objects in your system. If you are having trouble determining if a noun might be object-worthy, remember the acronym SIP and test for: Structure Instances Purpose.

    Sophia V. Prater, How to Sell UX Research with Two Simple Questions, A List Apart.
    317 jotted on 10 Dec 2021, 10:20.
  • When the return sweep does not reach the beginning of the new line (undershoots), it is followed by a small leftward saccade to move back towards the beginning of the line. This is described as a corrective saccade.

    Mary Dyson, Line length revisited: following the research, Design Regression.
    316 jotted on 8 Dec 2021, 10:30.
  • Dependencies suck; dependencies rule. Other people’s code is like getting other people’s work for free. The downside is that it comes with their opinions, hobbies, and hygiene attached. All code comes bundled with a code smell. Usually, there isn’t anything you can do to prevent it from stinking up the place.

    315 jotted on 3 Nov 2021, 11:00.
  • …and even if you have all of that, something being unique does not automatically grant it quality. NFTs operate on the principle that being one-of-a-kind grants something value by default.

    Ed Zitron, The Internet of Grift, Ed Zitron’s Where”s Your Ed At.
    314 jotted on 12 Oct 2021, 12:00.
  • In the classic buildup-climax-resolution structure of drama, the JoJo pose is not the climax. A crucial moment has already happened when characters assume their stances. That’s why I think it’s part of the resolution.

    Ruben Ferdinand, An essay about JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and queer masculinities, Ruben Ferdinand’s Medium.
    313 jotted on 12 Oct 2021, 02:15.
  • In other words, solutions should only be considered if they help us deliver on one of our target opportunities. If they don’t connect to the tree, they should be considered a distraction.

    Teresa Torres, Assessing Product Opportunities, Why This Opportunity Solution Tree is Changing the Way Product Teams Work.
    312 jotted on 19 Sep 2021, 11:00.
  • But the problem with not doing anything and just jumping right into the product is that it is generally a good idea to look before you leap. The challenge is to do this in a quick, lightweight, yet effective manner.

    Marty Cagan, Assessing Product Opportunities, Silicon Valley Product Group.
    311 jotted on 18 Sep 2021, 11:00.
  • When engineers build ad retargeting platforms, they build something that will continually funnel more content for the things you’ve indicated you’re interested in. On average, that’s the correct thing to do, Seyal said. But these systems don’t factor in when life has been interrupted.

    310 jotted on 16 Sep 2021, 11:00.

Previously designing products at Skippet and Kolay IK, remotely.

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