David Mdzinarishvili / Reuters I own three pairs of noise-canceling headphones. Two go over my ears, enveloping them in cozy tombs of silence. One pair consists of earbuds, one of which I jam into my ear to block out the world while I use my other ear for phone interviews. Besides the…

Back in my day *adjusts glasses* designers had to take development classes and red line all of our files by hand! Now with nifty tools like Zeplin and Abstract , designers spend little to no time on handoff. Unfortunately a lot can get lost in translation. Is this button a fixed size…

Linzi Berry Mar 12, 2019 · 4 min read A crafted balance of brand essence and science Too often digital designers are required to move fast and details are forgotten. Hopefully we can all agree that handing off a text box centered within a rounded rectangle is not quality button, so what is? A…

A journalist makes a video of the Instagram logo using the new video feature at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez (AP) The only good social network is evidently toying with the idea of purging the worst thing about social media—and I, for one, couldn’t be more on…

I n August 2016 I went to New York for the first time. On the second evening, as the sun slipped behind the building across the street, I was sitting on a long couch on the top floor of an old church. All around me instruments were scattered on the floor – singing bowls, tuning forks, rainsticks,…

Is it perfect timing or merely perverse to release a documentary promoting the design philosophy “Less, but better” during the holiday season? The opening moments of Gary Hustwit’s “Rams,” about Dieter Rams, is more likely to have you revising your gift list than tossing it out. As the camera pauses…

Jenny Odell’s new book is not a self-help book. But with a title like How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (out April 9), the artist and writer understands (and doesn’t necessarily hate) why it might seem like one. “By the time you figure out that it's not [self-help], it's too late,"…

As a general rule, to build something great is not about more hours and resources thrown at a problem, but less bullshit.

A few weeks back I was standing in a room facilitating a large ideation workshop. Mid-session I found myself thinking, I am not sure if I enjoy this . Walking out of that workshop, I told myself that I entered into the design field to become a designer, not a facilitator. I felt that as a workshop…

A DoorDash delivery employee Lisa Baertlein / Reuters In March 2009, Uber was born. Over the next few years, the company became not just a disruptive, controversial transportation company, but a model for dozens of venture-funded companies. Its name became a shorthand for this new kind of business :…

‘Citizens are experiencing a “techlash” – a rude and abrupt awakening to the mammoth powers of technology companies.’Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images T o note that the “techlash” – our rude and abrupt awakening to the mammoth powers of technology companies – is gaining force by the month is…

Design System Structure “If you wish to make apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” —Carl Sagan We’ve come a long way in this theoretical exploration of an atomic designsystem. The first step was discarding preconceived notions of a design libraryas a catalogue of ready-made…

The less-obvious ways design sprints help our clients and our design business Eran Dror Feb 13, 2019 · 8 min read It’s shocking to realize that I’ve been involved with Product and UX Design for the better part of 15 years. It started with one of the leading tech sites in Israel — where I had been a…

The answer to this question has profound implications for those who design and facilitate workshops, and participative gatherings such unconferences, World Cafés, and Open Space, Future Search and WholeScale ™ events. The answer: Four peopleSource: Jaimie Krems and Jason WilkesRead moreFive…

The AI wrote a new passage of fiction set in China after being fed the opening line of Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (pictured).Photograph: Mondadori/Getty Images The creators of a revolutionary AI system that can write news stories and works of fiction – dubbed “deepfakes for text” – have…

UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose Feb 1, 2019 · 5 min read By Mariana Mazzucato | @MazzucatoM Mariana Mazzucato at the World Economic Forum 2019 in Davos One year ago, Larry Fink, the CEO of Blackrock, wrote a letter to 500 CEOs asking them to rethink their sense of purpose: “To…

This week, Gillette joined the noble ranks of Purposeful Brands with a new ad . It suggested that a decent chap should call out toxic masculinity where he sees it, which was something of a departure from their output of three decades: phallic symbolism that would make Sigmund Freud choke on his…

Subatomic Design Systems The following theory of “Subatomic Design Systems’ is loosely based on anamalgam of existing design system theories and programming architectureapproaches, including Brad Frost’s Atomic Design, Yandex’sBlock-Element-Modifier, Harry Roberts’ Inverted Triangle CSS, Nicole…

Casting Graphite in Gold I’ve spent a number of years oscillating between both sides of theDesigner-Engineer spectrum, improvising, learning, and faltering along the way.My experiences on either side have fostered greater empathy for my colleagues inboth roles; both are irreplaceable in their duties…

Designing Product UI Systems (Short preface/definition: “UI systems”—collections of functional UIcomponents and their stylistic appearances—are referred to as “design systems”in this article. Where necessary, functionality and appearance are discussedindividually, but know that “design system” here…

Laurel Schwulst: Late last summer you tweeted: What made you start thinking about restaurant websites then? Toph Tucker: At the time, I was about to meet with my friend at the Astro Restaurant, a diner in midtown Manhattan. I wanted to check the menu before I arrived. So I looked at the website. It…

Photo by Paula Mariel Salischiker The Silicon Valley gospel of “disruption” has descended into caricature, but, at its core, there are some sound tactics buried beneath the self-serving bullshit. A lot of our systems and institutions are corrupt, bloated, and infested with cream-skimming rentiers…

Many people were thrilled when they heard that the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics this year went to William Nordhaus of Yale University, a man known for his work on climate change. Finally, the economics profession is giving climate the attention it deserves, just as the world is waking up to the…

Though Blockchain has been touted as the answer to everything, a study of 43 solutions advanced in the international development sector has found exactly no evidence of success. Three practitioners including erstwhile blockchain enthusiast John Burg, a Fellow at the US Agency for International…

I have been working exclusively with technology product teams now for a full 35 years, and I’ve seen countless processes, methodologies and techniques come and go. In large part that’s the nature of the beast. People are always searching for a silver bullet, and there is always a willing industry,…

Way stoked to have the following piece in Home Futures , the catalogue for the Design Museum’s impressive new show of the same name , alongside incredible work from Open Structures, Superstudio, Enzo Mari et many al. & essays from the likes of Deyan Sudjic and good Justin McGuirk. In full, it’s…

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Zum zehnten Geburtstag des Betriebssystems Android ist das Smartphone allgegenwärtig, aber auch: schlimm. Schlimm, schlimm, schlimm, wenn man der aktuellen Debatte folgt. Die Smartphone-Kritik in Deutschland hat ein Kunststück geschafft - sie ist noch stumpfer, fehlbesorgter und pathologisierender…

October 31, 2018 by Max Roser The world is much better. The world is awful. The world can be much better. All three statements are true. Here I focus on child mortality, but the same can be said for many aspects of global development. There are many aspects of development for which it is true that…

I’m not sure if it’s entirely discernible from the things I’ve written here, but my political sentiments these past few years have taken a reasonably sharp turn toward the position known as degrowth : the acceptance that, in Edward Abbey’s words, economic “growth for its own sake is the ideology of…

Yuval Noah Harari just may know you better than you know yourself. After all, he’s made a career out of studying humans. First, he chronicled the history of mankind in his book Sapiens ; then, he followed it up with thought-provoking contemplations about the future of mankind in Homo Deus ; and in…

Tim Wu The Tyranny of Convenience Leer en español Credit... Hudson Christie Convenience is the most underestimated and least understood force in the world today. As a driver of human decisions, it may not offer the illicit thrill of Freud’s unconscious sexual desires or the mathematical elegance of…

In Praise of Mediocrity The pursuit of excellence has infiltrated and corrupted the world of leisure. Mr. Wu is the author of “The Attention Merchants: The Epic Struggle to Get Inside Our Heads.” Credit... Izhar Cohen Leer en español I’m a little surprised by how many people tell me they have no…

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Loading... Leading teams Comment 8.95 Buy Copies Loading... Executive Summary Many companies, when they decide to invest in team building, decide to do offsite events like bowling nights or ropes courses. Some spend thousands on special events, hoping to improve collaboration. These efforts often…

Trust makes the world go round. Here are ten techniques for building quick trust and rapport with anyone. *** I’m not quite sure how I came across Robin Dreeke ‘s It’s Not All About Me: Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport With Anyone but I’m glad I did. Robin is the lead instructor at the…

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