In Don’t Say ‘Cyclists,’ Say ‘People on Bikes’ Sarah Goodyear explains how some deliberate language changes turned a serious conflict in Seattle into a civil debate. Here’s what they did:

“Though the group made no secret of their biking advocacy, they didn’t brand themselves as biking advocates,” writes [PeopleForBikes blogger Michael Andersen]. “They branded themselves as neighborhood advocates.”

[Seattle Neighborhood Greenways] also developed a list of new ways to talk about their concerns and promoted it in handy chart form. Instead of “cyclists,” they suggest, use “people on bikes.” Instead of “drivers,” “people driving.” Instead of technical traffic-engineering terms such as “pedestrian/hybrid beacon,” say “safer ways to cross busy streets.” Replace “pedestrians” with “people walking.”

The result?

[Tom Fucoloro of Seattle Bike Blog] says that talking about streets in a way that emphasizes the common humanity of all users, rather than dividing them into tribes with warring interests, has made a real difference in the way Seattle’s planners discuss possible changes to streets with the community. As a result, he says, the discussion has become much more civil. And Seattle has been installing protected bike lanes (don’t say cycletracks!) at a steadily increasing pace.

I wonder if we need something similar in our industry. Instead of “users,” perhaps we should talk about “people who use websites.” After all, we’re supposed to be all about emphasizing humanity in our products.

Paul Ford wrote a great post about the significance of the blue/green bubbles in the Messages app on iOS. From It’s Kind of Cheesy Being Green:

This spontaneous anti-green-bubble brigade is an interesting example of how sometimes very subtle product decisions in technology influence the way culture works. Apple uses a soothing, on-brand blue for messages in its own texting platform, and a green akin to that of the Android robot logo for people texting from outside its ecosystem. […]

There are all sorts of reasons for them to use different colors. (iMessage texts are seen as data, not charged on a per-text basis, and so the different colors allow people to register how much a given conversation will cost—useful!) However, one result of that decision is that a goofy class war is playing out over digital bubble colors. Their decision has observable social consequences.

This then turns into a post about product management, in a way that only Ford can do. Great stuff.

Kevin Roose and Pendarvis Harshaw wrote a fascinating 3-part series for Fusion on technology in prisons. I was particularly drawn to the part about allowing inmates to use tablets: Can technology and prisons get along? —

He can’t just hand out iPads, of course. The tablets being used in the Napa jail are manufactured by a Chicago start-up called Jail Education Solutions, which runs them on a secure, proprietary software platform called Edovo. The tablets can’t be used to connect to the Internet; instead, inmates can connect to a local intranet administered by the correctional facility itself. Using the tablets, they can stream Khan Academy lectures, run cognitive behavioral therapy apps, study for a GED, or take courses from Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous. They can also opt for lighter fare – games and movies, which can be “purchased” with points they earn by completing more educational tasks.

I’m intrigued by stories like this because it shows how designing under severe constraints can result in big innovations.

(I know it’s bad form to explain a joke, but I’m pretty happy with the title of this post)

I’m as fascinated with Slack‘s rise to prominence as most people, so I really enjoyed From 0 to $1B – Slack’s Founder Shares Their Epic Launch Strategy (no byline). It’s full of fantastic product strategy advice, including on the importance of user feedback:

As much information as Slack put out to customers, they learned even more themselves. Butterfield and his cofounders are voracious readers of user feedback, and they attribute much of the company’s rapid traction to this skill. From the get-go, Slack made sure that users could respond to every email they received, and approached every help ticket as an opportunity to solidify loyalty and improve the service. As they listened to their ever-growing flock of users, the Slack team iterated accordingly.

And also remember that sometimes people are going to use a product differently than what you had in mind:

“Sometimes you will get feedback that is contrary to your vision,” Butterfield says. “You may be trying to drive in a particular direction that people don’t necessarily understand at first. In our case, we knew the users we had in mind for this product. So in the early days, we looked at our customers, really just testers at that point, and we paid extra attention to the teams we knew should be using Slack successfully.”

It’s worth reminding ourselves that @-mentions and hashtags on Twitter were user inventions, not something the company came up with themselves. Always follow your loyal users…

Photographer Tanja Hollander wanted to find out what online friendships are really about, so she set out to visit all 626 of her Facebook “friends” at their homes to take formal portraits of them. The first part of How Real Are Facebook Friendships? describes the project, and then it goes into some other research about social media and friendship:

In fact, the distinction between online and offline may be less relevant than it seems. Thinking about social media as a kind of place you go, divorced from physical reality, is a forced demarcation. Facetiming and meeting a friend for coffee certainly aren’t the same experiences, but as Nathan Jurgenson, a contributing editor at The New Inquiry and a researcher at Snapchat, points out, “the self is fluid.” Facebook messaging one friend and writing in pencil to another, as Hollander did that New Year’s Eve, may be more equivalent ways of communicating and expressing herself than she thought. A video chat is physically intimate, Jurgenson argues. And what he calls “digital dualism,” the separation of online interactions from “real life,” doesn’t capture relationship dynamics in the 21st century.

I think this is the most important sentence in the article (and maybe of 2015):

[Jessica Vitak, a professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland] cautioned against an all-or-nothing divide—that Facebook is either “a waste of time” or “the most important social development in history.”

Imagine that. It’s not universally awesome, or evil. It’s just a tool, and how we use it makes all the difference.

Buzz Usborne’s “God is in the details” is a great reminder that spending just a little time thinking things through a bit more that usual can have a big impact on user experience:

But it’s those little things, the tiny minutia of detail, that ultimately make beautiful products, and beautiful houses.

Unfortunately, when I refer to the “details” in product design, I’m not talking about obvious design things; like colours, drop-shadows or placement. Instead I’m referring to something harder to define; experience and subconscious patterns that help the user feel more at-ease with an interaction. That detail might come in the form of a change in cursor, a “down” style for a button, or a helpful animation.

Whatever form that detail takes, I’ll bet that it wasn’t designed in Photoshop, or included in even the most detailed spec document. It’s the details that fall outside of titles like UX, or UI. It’s interaction detail that can only be found after using a product for real, then dedicating solid design and engineering time to building.

I definitely agree with that last bit as well. I’m working on a prototype for a new app at the moment, and it’s only after we did usability testing with real target users that we discovered some interactions that would make the app a lot easier (and more useful) for users.

Michael Andrews brings up some interesting concerns about cards in Are UI Cards good for content? However, I’m left thinking that most of the “cons” in the article are actually Information Architecture problems, not problems with the card metaphor:

UI cards can contribute to content usability problems that may not be immediately evident.  Users often like UI cards when they encounter them, and don’t notice their limitations.  They see tidy cards often with colorful thumbnail images.  The cards seem optimized to make good first impressions.  But often, the cards end up squashing the content that must go in them, or omitting content details that don’t fit the layout vision.

If content is squashed and truncated in cards, it’s not the card element’s fault, it’s the content’s fault. It happens when content isn’t written while keeping the context of use in mind.

Here’s another example:

Another issue with UI cards is their lack of hierarchy. When all cards are the same size, all cards look equally important, whether they have detailed information, time sensitive information, sparse information, or optional information.

Again, visual hierarchy is a larger design problem, and not the fault of cards.

I point this out because it reminded me of one of the big dangers in design that we have to watch out for. We often see a UI issue and immediately switch out the pattern instead of trying to understand what the the real problem is. It’s great if we can look at something we designed and say, “Hmm, that doesn’t work.” But we have to go further and also understand why it doesn’t work before we just take the easy why out and replace the UI element.

If content is squished on cards, is it because we used cards, or because we didn’t write the content concisely enough to be easily consumable in small spaces? If all cards look the same, should we stop using cards, or design different card types to address visual hierarchy better? I would argue that in both cases, the latter should at least be considered. Of course, if cards are wrong for the interface, then burn it with fire. But be sure.

Further reading on cards:

• Card Architecture and Card Design
• How to Champion Your Content with Cards
• Why Cards are the Future of the Web
• Twitter, canvases and cards

Debbie Chachra wrote a great essay on our current obsession with the word “Maker”, and how that devalues other professions like educators and caregivers. From Why I Am Not a Maker:

When new products are made, we hear about exciting technological innovation, which are widely seen as worth paying (more) for. In contrast, policy and public discourse around caregiving—besides education, healthcare comes immediately to mind—are rarely about paying more to do better, and are instead mostly about figuring out ways to lower the cost.