June 2018 bookmarks

Author Benjy Stanton
Date 7 July 2018
Category Links

A decent remote show and tell set up: Many organisations work with dispersed teams or stakeholders, so there must be an easy way to do an engaging remote show and tell, surely… right? I couldn’t find one, this is my ongoing request to find my own and my current set up.
The Cult of the Complex: In an industry that extols innovation over customer satisfaction, and prefers algorithm to human judgement (forgetting that every algorithm has human bias in its DNA), perhaps it should not surprise us that toolchains have replaced know-how
Cards: Some of the components I've explored here have specific standardized requirements in order to work as expected. Tab interfaces, for example, have a prescribed structure and a set of interaction behaviors as mandated by the WAI-ARIA specification.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content more accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities.
Creating a list of services: The Home Office is developing a list of services it delivers, or delivers a part of, as an end user might know them, or might search for them online. By end user, we mean citizens, visitors, people living here from abroad, employers, universities, airlines, port operators and many more.
How Design Teams Are Using Trello: The Ultimate Round Up: Design teams are arguably the most underrated, understaffed, but also one of the most important teams at your company.
Making Annotations First-Class Citizens in Data Visualization: I’m convinced that annotations are where we’re going to see the next wave of innovation in data visualization.
“Look after the water” – reflections 1 year into my work at NHS Digital: Other people’s jobs are endlessly fascinating. At a birthday celebration a couple of years ago I got talking to Johnny, a family friend who works as an aquarium curator. He told me a surprising thing about his work: how little of his time he spends actually looking after the fish.
Reimagining The New York Times Digital Story Experience: The New York Times publishes more than 150 articles a day to our iOS and Android apps, and our desktop and mobile websites. All of these platforms were originally developed by separate teams, so each had its own implementation and user experience.
DesignOps Handbook: DesignOps is the key to scaling digital product design teams with more efficiency.
15 principles of good service design: What is a good service and why are we so afraid to talk about it? I’ve been asking myself this question a lot recently. In a bid to find out, I tweeted this a few weeks ago and – bar a couple of people also wondering the same thing – got pretty much tumbleweeds in return.
Measuring the benefits of your service: Building the wrong thing can be very costly. It wastes users’ time, causes frustration and leads to people getting in touch via less cost effective channels.
Designers as power brokers: I put this flag up in work a couple of weeks ago. It caused a bit of a conversation and people had different interpretations of what it meant. I thought it best to explain the way I intended it.
Making the hours count, not counting the hours: I’ve been a content designer for about two years. I started just after my daughter was born. It’s taken some close supervision, support, and some pretty intense onboarding, but we’re both getting used to our roles. We’re taking small steps because getting used to new things takes time.
How to test accessibility of emails: Testing for accessibility in your emails doesn’t have to be a chore. Making accessible and inclusive emails will increase your target audience (1, 2, 3) and will have other unintended benefits. These other benefits are known as the Curb-Cut effect. When people first introduced curb cuts (i.e.
Design your service using GOV.UK styles, components and patterns: GOV.UK uses cookies to make the site simpler. Find out more about cookies Use this design system to make your service consistent with GOV.UK. Learn from the research and experience of other service teams and avoid repeating work that’s already been done.
Service mapping and different types of maps: Written by Ben Holliday. Based on work developed with Kirsty Sinclair and feedback from the FutureGov design team. There’s a question of why designers make so many maps. We love maps.
Jelly Flood! The world of design, seen through the lens of a kids’ cartoon: Maybe it was the sleep deprivation that parenthood brought, but Ben & Holly’s Little Kingdom was one of my favourite TV shows whilst my children were younger. It was funny and smart, and had some wry comments about class and royalty. These are the Fairies. They live in a castle, and can do magic.
Working across organisational boundaries: You may need to work with other organisations or teams across your department to build services that make sense to users. This is because separate teams are often responsible for different chunks of a full end-to-end journey like becoming a childminder or setting up a company.
All in Sync: How our designers keep up with the latest design system assets: Design systems empower designers to focus on the many unique problems that they’re solving while providing a consistent experience.