sundryletter
The Sundry Letter
Electic news, ideas and commentary. Curated by Ulysse Sabbag.
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One of our analysts decided to move to Brooklyn and had to figure out what to do with her apartment in Manhattan.
http://avc.com/2017/06/flip/
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"While today’s agreement doesn’t exactly give Amazon permission to start drone deliveries, it marks a major step forward for Amazon’s ambitions in this area."
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“Today, Facebook drives about 40% of all referrals and Google drives about 35%. Together then, they drive 75% of all referrals to news and entertainment sites. Google has plateaued and Facebook shows continuing, if slowing, share-of-referrals growth.”
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youtube
Understand how rappers write their texts. Pretty cool infographic video.
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Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.
Primo Levi
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Great stuff!
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Here’s Shigeru Miyamoto, talking about World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. Fun fact: Most of the things he’s talking about can be used for designing every onboarding experience there is. Stuff like that never gets old.
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In reality, a particular shade of a color, say pink, can look darker when surrounded by some colors, lighter when surrounded by another, crisp in one context, and difficult to read in another. Picking one absolute value for it doesn’t actually deliver what it’s supposed to: consistency. The job of the good designer is to deliver a great design based on context. If the goal is consistency, then the designer should have the freedom to adjust that color to get that to happen, again working back from the context to the solution.
Insightful writing by Atrin Assa.
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Tips and resources for designers who really want to learn JavaScript
This was made using JavaScript.
Ah programming. You’re a designer who always wanted to start but you never found the courage. Sure, you know how to write a bit of HTML/CSS. But you know deep down this is not the real deal. Fear not my fellow friends. Here I am going to share some resources to help you learn JavaScript—once and for all.
A couple of months back, I started learning CoffeeScript in order to create Framer prototypes. (CoffeeScript is a simpler way to write JavaScript and is thus a little simpler to learn, check it out on their website.) More recently, I realised I needed to learn JavaScript for WUT Design, the design and development shop I cofounded.
A million things will be easier when you know JavaScript. Obviously, you’ll be able to write small programs and you’ll feel great about it. But it’ll also be easier for you to learn node.js (to write server-side code) and Swift (to write iOS apps) and Python (to, you know, take things to another level).
What about design though?
Knowing how to write simple programs makes you a more rounded, better-equipped designer. You will know more precisely what you can do and what you cannot do. You will help developers understand your work. You’ll win time and gratitude.
It is like feeling the wood that is going to be the base material for your next piece of furniture. Nobody is asking you to open a woodworking shop. Yet, to better understand it, you still need to feel it.
Convinced? Good.
Alright, for some tips:
Build something. Only building something useful or fun will motivate you enough to withstand the simultaneous feelings of joy and pain that come from learning how to write programs. Don’t count on Codecademy, etc., to learn. Do you have a unique twist on the sempiternal todo list? Did you always dream about creating a Twitter bot? Project-oriented learning will yield far more fruitful result than theoretical learning. The best combination? Read a bit, then work. Rinse, repeat, you’ll get better in no time.
Don’t copy and paste the code, write it. You will obviously use code that was written by other peeps. You’ll be tempted to copy and paste but this will not help. When you write the code, you feel that you’re actually doing something. This will fuel both motivation and understanding.
Break your program into small bits with pen and paper. This is not something I read very frequently but it was super useful for me. When you want to write an app, break down the idea in small bits. It’ll help you organise your work and measure progress.
And now, here are a few resources:
The Mozilla Developer Network. Forget about W3Schools. Read anything and everything on MDN. They have awesome introductory sections. The reason MDN is good is because it’s a wiki. Anyone with better knowledge can update the page and give better information.
Eloquent JavaScript. It’s a great introductory book on JavaScript that also lays out some fundamentals of programming. Sometimes, the writing is poetic. Consume it!
Google + StackOverflow. Here’s a killer combo for you. Never hesitate to google your way out of your problem. Try to use the most precise vocabulary for your request and you will most probably find a relevant StackOverflow thread.
JSFiddle. Want to quickly write a program and don’t want to upload it to your server? JSFiddle is here for you. Run your program, tidy it up and iterate with this superb service.
The Chrome Dev Tools. Download Chrome and open the dev tools by pressing CTRL+CMD+J. You’ll have a console and everything you need to inspect your code.
If I’m missing something, tell me @usabbag.
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Some great insight on building better onboarding experiences.
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Some things we all do apparently fail usability tests conducted by the NN Group. The arguments are indeed quite convincing.
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vimeo
Django Reinhardt lost two of his fingers in an accident. Same goes for Black Sabbath’s guitarist Tony Iommi.
Neither stopped playing.
Here’s more on the matter.
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It seems like we managed to reveal a glimmer of self-awareness in robots.
Here’s Quartz on the matter:
Bringsjord programmed three robots to think that two of them had been given a special “dumbing pill” that would not allow them to speak. Their task was to identify which robots received the pill. When the Nao robot on the right tried to speak, it heard its voice, and its voice alone. That’s when it waved its hand and said: “I know now. I was able to prove that I was not given a dumbing pill.
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A Watch OS idea
Consider this.
Jane has an Apple Watch, she travels often and has a weather complication on her Watch Face. Jane took a plane from New-York to London. She just landed in London.
Her watch changes the time automatically.
However, Jane has to go to her Apple Watch app on her iPhone and change the weather manually.
This is cumbersome.
Apple Watch should have a setting which would allow automatic detection and change of the weather complication based on the user’s current location.
(Not the biggest experience problem of the Apple Watch? It’s all about the details, man.)
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Nearly one in six college students has been diagnosed with or treated for anxiety within the last 12 months, according to the annual national survey by the American College Health Association.
The causes range widely, experts say, from mounting academic pressure at earlier ages to overprotective parents to compulsive engagement with social media. Anxiety has always played a role in the developmental drama of a student’s life, but now more students experience anxiety so intense and overwhelming that they are seeking professional counseling.
Anxious Students Strain College Mental Health Centers - NYTimes.com
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