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But how can a content management system ( CMS ) be set up to reach your current and future audience? I learned the hard way that creating a content model—a concept of information types, attributes, and relationships that let people and systems understand content—with my more comfortable design-system wondering would collapse my patient’s holistic information strategy. By developing content versions that are lexical and even join related content, you can avoid that result.

I just had the opportunity to direct the CMS application for a Fortune 500 company. The customer was excited by the benefits of an holistic information plan, including material modify, multichannel marketing, and robot delivery—designing content to be comprehensible to bots, Google knowledge panels, snippets, and voice user interfaces.

A content type is essential for an omnichannel articles strategy, and the model needed conceptual types, which are types of types that are categorized according to their meaning rather than their presentation. Our goal was to allow artists to create original content that could be used wherever they felt was most useful. But as the job proceeded, I realized that supporting material utilize at the range that my client needed required the whole team to identify a new pattern.

Despite our best efforts, we remained influenced by design systems, which we were more familiar with. An omnichannel content strategy can’t rely on WYSIWYG tools for design and layout, unlike web-focused content strategies. Our tendency to approach the content model with our familiar design-system thinking constantly led us to veer away from one of the primary purposes of a content model: delivering content to audiences on multiple marketing channels.

Two fundamental tenets are necessary for a successful content model

We needed to explain to our designers, developers, and stakeholders that we were undertaking a very different task from their earlier web projects, where it was common for everyone to view content as visual building blocks that fit into layouts. The previous approach was not only more familiar but also more intuitive—at least at first—because it made the designs feel more tangible. We discovered two guiding principles that helped the team understand how a content model and the design processes we were familiar with were:

1. Instead of layout, content models must define semantics.
2. And content models should connect content that belongs together.

Semantic content models

Type and attribute names for semantic content models are used to reflect the content’s intended purpose and not its intended display. For example, in a nonsemantic model, teams might create types like teasers, media blocks, and cards. Although these types might make it simple to present content, they don’t aid in understanding the meaning of the content, which would have opened the door to the content presented in each marketing channel. In contrast, a semantic content model uses type names like “product,”” service,” and “testimonial” to allow for each delivery channel to interpret and use the content as it sees fit.

When you’re creating a semantic content model, a great place to start is to look over the types and properties defined by Schema. a community-driven resource for type definitions that are understandable on platforms like Google search .org

A semantic content model has a number of advantages:

Even if your team doesn’t care about omnichannel content, a semantic content model decouples content from its presentation so that teams can evolve the website’s design without needing to refactor its content. In this way, content can withstand irrational website redesigns.
• A semantic content model also gives you an advantage in the market. By adding structured data based on Schema. A website can provide hints to Google to understand the content, display it in search snippets or knowledge panels, and use it to respond to user voice-interface queries. Potential customers could access your content without ever visiting your website.
• Beyond those practical benefits, you’ll also need a semantic content model if you want to deliver omnichannel content. Delivery channels must be able to understand the same content in order to use it across multiple marketing channels. For instance, if your content model provided a list of questions and answers, it could be easily displayed on a frequently asked questions ( FAQ ) page as well, but it could also be used by a bot that answers frequently asked questions.

For example, using a semantic content model for articles, events, people, and locations lets A List Apart provide cleanly structured data for search engines so that users can read the content on the website, in Google knowledge panels, and even with hypothetical voice interfaces in the future.

Content models that connect

Instead of slicing up related content across disparate content components, I’ve come to the realization that the best models are those that are semantic and also connect related content components ( such as a FAQ item’s question and answer pair ). A good content model connects content that should remain together so that multiple delivery channels can use it without needing to first put those pieces back together.

Consider creating an essay or article. The piece of an article’s meaning and usefulness depend on how well it is organized. Would one of the headings or paragraphs be meaningful on their own without the context of the full article? Our well-known design-system thinking on our project frequently led us to want to develop content models that would divide content into distinct chunks to fit the web-centric layout. This had a similar effect to an article that had had its headline removed. Because we were slicing content into standalone pieces based on layout, content that belonged together became difficult to manage and nearly impossible for multiple delivery channels to understand.

Let’s examine how connecting related content can be used in a practical setting to illustrate. A complex layout for a software product page that included multiple tabs and sections was presented by the client’s design team. Our instincts were to follow suit with the content model. Shouldn’t we make adding multiple tabs in the future as simple and flexible as possible?

We felt like we needed a content type called “tab section” because our design-system instincts were so well-known, so that multiple tab sections could be added to a page. Each tab section would display various types of content. One tab might contain the software’s information or specifications. A list of resources might be provided by another tab.

Our inclination to break down the content model into “tab section” pieces would have led to an unnecessarily complex model and a cumbersome editing experience, and it would have also created content that couldn’t have been understood by additional delivery channels. How would a different system have been able to determine which “tab section” referred to a product’s specifications or resource list, for instance? Would that system have had to have used tab sections and content blocks to calculate this? This would have prevented the tabs from ever being rearranged, and logic would have had to be added to each other delivery channel to interpret the layout of the design system. Furthermore, if the customer were to have no longer wanted to display this content in a tab layout, it would have been tedious to migrate to a new content model to reflect the new page redesign.

Our customer had a breakthrough when we realized that each tab’s specific information, such as the software product’s overview, specifications, related resources, and pricing, was intended to reveal a specific purpose. Once implementation began, our inclination to focus on what’s visual and familiar had obscured the intent of the designs. It wasn’t long after a little digging that it became clear that the idea of tabs wasn’t applicable to the content model. What was important was the meaning of the content they were planning to display in the tabs.

In fact, the customer could have decided to display this content in a different way—without tabs—somewhere else. In response to this realization, we created content types for the software product based on the meaningful attributes the client wanted to display on the web. There were rich attributes like screenshots, software requirements, and feature lists as well as obvious semantic attributes like name and description. The software’s product information stayed together because it wasn’t sliced across separate components like “tab sections” that were derived from the content’s presentation. Any delivery channel, including those that follow, could comprehend and display this content.

Conclusion

In this omnichannel marketing project, we discovered that the best way to keep our content model on track was to ensure that it was semantic ( with type and attribute names that reflected the meaning of the content ) and that it kept content together that belonged together ( instead of fragmenting it ). These two ideas made it easier for us to shape the content model based on the design. Remember: If you’re developing a content model to support an omnichannel content strategy, or even if you just want to make sure that Google and other interfaces understand your content, keep in mind:

• A design system isn’t a content model. You should maintain the semantic value and contextual structure of the content strategy throughout the entire implementation process because team members might be drawn to conflate them and force your content model to resemble your design system. Without the use of a magic decoder ring, every delivery channel can now consume the content.
• If your team is struggling to make this transition, you can still reap some of the benefits by using Schema. Your website uses structured data from org. The advantage of search engine optimization is a compelling argument on its own, even if additional delivery channels are not in the works.
• Additionally, remind the team that decoupling the content model from the design will let them update the designs more easily because they won’t be held back by the cost of content migrations. They will be prepared for the upcoming big thing, and they will be able to create new designs without compromising compatibility between the design and the content.

You’ll help your team understand these principles by firmly defending them in their efforts to give content the attention it deserves as both your most valuable resource and your most effective way to engage with your audience.

Here’s the key. To find stakeholders to determine high-risk assumptions and buried complexity, you must first convince them to do so so that they become just as motivated as you are to receive user-response. Generally, you need to make them think it’s their plan.

By bringing the group up around two straightforward issues, I’ll show you how to collectively introduce alignment and cracks in the group’s shared understanding in this article.

1. What are the things?
2. What are the associations between those things?

A cross between panel design and analysis

These two issues correlate to the first two methods of the ORCA approach, which may be your new best friend when it comes to reducing speculation. What’s ORCA, then? Glad you asked.

ORCA stands for Things, Relationships, CTAs, and Values, and it outlines a process for creating good object-oriented user experience. My style philosophy is based on object-oriented UX. ORCA is an iterative strategy for synthesizing person study into an elegant fundamental foundation to help screen and interaction design. My work as a UX designer has become more collaborative, effective, efficient, fun, strategic, and meaningful thanks to OOUX and ORCA.

The ORCA process has four iterative rounds and a whopping fifteen steps. In each round we get more clarity on our Os, Rs, Cs, and As.

I occasionally refer to ORCA as a “garbage in, garbage out” procedure. To ensure that the testable prototype produced in the final round actually tests well, the process needs to be fed by good research. The beginning of the ORCA process, however, serves another purpose: it helps you sell the need for research if you don’t have a ton of research.

In other words, the ORCA process serves as a gauntlet between research and design. You can gracefully ride the killer whale from research to design with good research. But without good research, the process effectively spits you back into research and with a cache of specific open questions.

Getting back in the same curiosity-boat

What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.

Mark Twain

The first two steps of the ORCA process—Object Discovery and Relationship Discovery—shine a spotlight on the dark, dusty corners of your team’s misalignments and any inherent complexity that’s been swept under the rug. It starts to reveal what this timeless comic so skillfully demonstrates:

This is one reason why so many UX designers are frustrated in their job and why many projects fail. Every decision-maker is confident in their own mental picture, which is another reason why we frequently can’t sell research.

Once we expose hidden fuzzy patches in each picture and the differences between them all, the case for user research makes itself.

However, how we go about doing this is crucial. However much we might want to, we can’t just tell everyone,” YOU ARE WRONG”! Instead, we need to facilitate and guide our team members to self-identify holes in their picture. When stakeholders accept responsibility for their beliefs and understanding gaps, BAM! Suddenly, UX research is not such a hard sell, and everyone is aboard the same curiosity-boat.

Let’s say you have doctors on your staff. And you have no idea how doctors use the system you are tasked with redesigning.

You might try to sell research by honestly saying:” We need to understand doctors better! What are the issues they face? How do they use the current app”? But here’s the issue with that. Those questions are vague, and the answers to them don’t feel acutely actionable.

Instead, you want your stakeholders themselves to ask super-specific questions. This is more similar to the conversation you need to facilitate. Let’s listen in:

” Wait a sec, how frequently do doctors share patients?” Does a patient in this system have primary and secondary doctors”?

” Can a patient even have more than one primary doctor”?

Is it a “primary doctor” or “primary caregiver” ?Can’t that position be considered a nurse practitioner?

” No, caregivers are something else… That’s the patient’s family contacts, right”?

Are caregivers included in this redesign, then?

” Yeah, because if a caregiver is present at an appointment, the doctor needs to note that. Like, tag the caregiver on the note… Or on the appointment”?

We are currently traveling somewhere. Do you see how powerful it can be getting stakeholders to debate these questions themselves? Here, the diabolical goal is to diplomatically and diplomatically shake their confidence.

When these kinds of questions bubble up collaboratively and come directly from the mouths of your stakeholders and decision-makers, suddenly, designing screens without knowing the answers to these questions seems incredibly risky, even silly.

If we create software without understanding the real-world information environment of our users, we will likely create software that does not align to the real-world information environment of our users. And most likely as a result, this software product will become more confusing, complicated, and unintuitive.

The two questions

But how do we approach these kinds of contentious inquiries diplomatically, effectively, collaboratively, and reliably?

We can do this by starting with those two big questions that align to the first two steps of the ORCA process:

1. What are the things?
2. What are the associations between those things?

In practice, getting to these answers is easier said than done. I’m going to demonstrate how these two straightforward questions can serve as the Object Definition Workshop’s starting point. During this workshop, these” seed” questions will blossom into dozens of specific questions and shine a spotlight on the need for more user research.

Work in preparation: Noun for foraging

In the next section, I’ll show you how to run an Object Definition Workshop with your stakeholders ( and entire cross-functional team, hopefully ). But first, you need to do some prep work.

In essence, look for nouns that are specific to the subject matter or industry of your project and use at least a few sources. I call this noun foraging.

Just a few excellent noun foraging sources can be found here:

• the product’s marketing site
• the product’s competitors ‘ marketing sites ( competitive analysis, anyone? )
• the already-existing product ( check the labels )!
• user interview transcripts
• notes from interviews with stakeholders or vision documents from stakeholders are both important.

Put your detective hat on, my dear Watson. Get resourceful and leverage what you have. Use those if all you have is a marketing website, some screenshots of the current legacy system, and access to customer service chat logs.

As you peruse these sources, watch for the nouns that are used over and over again, and start listing them ( preferably on blue sticky notes if you’ll be creating an object map later! …

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:

1. Structure
2. Instances
3. Purpose

Consider a library app, for instance. Is “book” an object?

Can you think of a few attributes for this potential object? Title, author, publish date … Yep, it has structure. Check!

What are some instances of this conceivable “book” object? Can you name a few? Check out The Alchemist, Ready Player One, and Everybody Poops!

Purpose: why is this object important to the users and business? Well, “book” is what our library client is providing to people and books are why people come to the library … Check, check, check!

Concentrate on capturing the nouns with SIP as you go noun foraging. Avoid capturing components like dropdowns, checkboxes, and calendar pickers—your UX system is not your design system! Components are just the packaging for objects—they are a means to an end. No one is visiting your digital location to play with your dropdown! They are coming for the VALUABLE THINGS and what they can do with them. We are attempting to identify those things or objects.

Let’s say we work for a startup disrupting the email experience. This is how I’d start my noun foraging.

I’d like to take a look at my own email client, which is Gmail. I’d then look at Outlook and the new HEY email. I would examine Hotmail, Yahoo, and even Basecamp and other’email replacers’. I’d read some articles, reviews, and forum threads where people are complaining about email. While doing all this, I would look for and write down the nouns.

( Before moving on, feel free to go noun foraging for this fictitious product as well, and then scroll down to see how closely our lists correspond. Just don’t get lost in your own emails! Remain with me!

Drumroll, please…

Here are a few nouns I came up with during my noun foraging:

• email message
• thread
• contact
• client
• rule/automation
• email address that is not a contact?
• contact organizations
• attachment
• Google doc file / other integrated file
• newsletter? ( HEY views this in a different way )
• saved responses and templates

Scan your list of nouns and pick out words that you are completely clueless about. It might be automation or a client in our email example. Do as much homework as you can before your session with stakeholders: google what’s googleable. But other terms might be so specific to the product or domain that you need to have a conversation about them.

Aside: Here are some real nouns that I needed my stakeholders to understand during my own past project work:

• Record Locator
• Home of Incentive
• Augmented Line Item
• Curriculum-Based Measurement Probe

A list of nouns that represent potential objects and a short list of nouns that need to be further defined are really all you need to prepare for the workshop session.

Facilitate an Object Definition Workshop

Noun foraging can be used as a starting point for your workshop; it can be done in concert. If you have five people in the room, pick five sources, assign one to every person, and give everyone ten minutes to find the objects within their source. When the time’s up, come together and find the overlap. Here, affinity mapping is your friend!

If your team is short on time and might be reluctant to do this kind of grunt work ( which is usually the case ) do your own noun foraging beforehand, but be prepared to show your work. I enjoy showing screenshots of documents and screens that have all the highlighted nouns. Bring the artifacts of your process, and start the workshop with a five-minute overview of your noun foraging journey.

HOT TIP: before jumping into the workshop, frame the conversation as a requirements-gathering session to help you better understand the scope and details of the system. You don’t need to tell them you‘re looking for gaps in the team’s understanding so that you can demonstrate the need for more user research; that will be our little secret. Instead, go into the session optimistically, as if your knowledgeable stakeholders and PMs and biz folks already have all the answers.

Let the whack-a-mole question then start.

1. What is this thing?

Want to have genuine fun? At the beginning of your session, ask stakeholders to privately write definitions for the handful of obscure nouns you might be uncertain about. Then, have everyone present their cards at once, and see if you get different definitions (you will ). This is gold for exposing misalignment and starting great conversations.

As your discussion unfolds, capture any agreed-upon definitions. And when uncertainty strikes, ostensibly start an “open questions” parking lot. � �

Here’s a fantastic follow-up after definitions solidify:

2. Do our users know what these things are? What do users refer to this as?

Stakeholder 1: They probably call email clients “apps”. I’m not certain, though.

Stakeholder 2: Automations are often called “workflows”, I think. Or, maybe users think workflows are something different.

Ask the group if they can agree to use only that term as a starting point if a more user-friendly term does. This way, the team can better align to the users ‘ language and mindset.

Okay, let’s get to the next part.

If you have two or more objects that seem to overlap in purpose, ask one of these questions:

3. Do they share the same name? Or are these different? If they are different, how are they different?

You: Is a saved response the same as a template?

Stakeholder 1: Yes! Without a doubt.

Stakeholder 2: I don’t think so… A saved response is text with links and variables, but a template is more about the look and feel, like default fonts, colors, and placeholder images.

Continually expand your expanding glossary of terms. And continue to capture areas of uncertainty in your “open questions” parking lot.

If you successfully determine that two similar things are, in fact, different, here’s your next follow-up question:

4. What’s the relationship between these objects?

You: Are saved responses and templates in any way connected to each other?

Stakeholder 3: Yeah, a template can be applied to a saved response.

You, always with the follow-ups: When is the template applied to a saved response? When a user is creating a saved response, does that occur? Or when they apply the saved response to an email? How does that actually function?

Listen. Capture uncertainty. When the number of “open questions” reaches a critical mass, pause and begin asking questions of groups or individuals. Some questions might be for the dev team ( hopefully at least one developer is in the room with you ). One question might be specific for someone who was unable to attend the workshop. And many questions will need to be labeled “user”.

Do you see how we are building up to our UXR sales pitch?

5. Is this object in scope?

Your next query makes the team’s attention narrower so that it can focus on what your users are most interested in. You can simply ask,” Are saved responses in scope for our first release”?, but I’ve got a better, more devious strategy.

By now, you should have a list of clearly defined objects. Ask participants to order these items either in small breakout groups or separately from the most important. Then, like you did with the definitions, have everyone reveal their sort order at once. Unsurprisingly, it’s not unusual for the VP to place something like” saved responses” at the top of the list while everyone else places it at the bottom. Try not to look too smug as you inevitably expose more misalignment.

I did this for a startup a few years ago. We displayed the three groups ‘ wildly different sort orders on the whiteboard.

The CEO nodded his head and said,” This is why we haven’t been able to move forward in two years,” taking a step back.

Admittedly, it’s tragic to hear that, but as a professional, it feels pretty awesome to be the one who facilitated a watershed realization.

Once you have a good idea of in-scope, clearly defined things, this is when you move on to doing more relationship mapping.

6. Create a visual representation of the objects ‘ relationships

We’ve already attempted to figure out what two things are different, but this time, we need to ask the team about every possible connection. For each object, ask how it relates to all the other objects. In what ways are the objects connected? Pull out your trusted boxes-and-arrows technique to visualize all the connections. Here, we are connecting our objects with verbs. I prefer to keep my verbs to simple statements like “has a” and “has many”

This system modeling activity brings up all sorts of new questions:

• Can an attachment in a saved response be present?
• Can a saved response use a template? If so, can the user override the template if an email uses a saved response with a template?
• Do users want to see all the emails they sent that included a particular attachment? For example,” show me all the emails I sent with ProfessionalImage. attached .jpg I’ve changed my professional photo and I want to alert everyone to update it”.

Strong responses might come directly from the workshop participants. Great! Capture that new shared understanding. However, keep adding questions to your expanding parking lot as uncertainty arises.

Light the fuse

You’ve set up the explosives strategically along the floodgates. Now you simply have to light the fuse and BOOM. Watch the buy-in for user research flooooow.

Have the group reflect on the list of open questions before the workshop ends. Make plans for getting answers internally, then focus on the questions that need to be brought before users.

This is your final move. Take those questions you’ve compiled for user research and discuss the level of risk associated with NOT answering them. Ask, “if we design without an answer to this question, if we make up our own answer and we are wrong, how bad might that turn out”?

With this approach, we are making our decision-makers fight for user research because they themselves define questions as high-risk. Sorry, not sorry.

Your moment of truth is right now. With everyone in the room, ask for a reasonable budget of time and money to conduct 6–8 user interviews focused specifically on these questions.

HOT TIP: if you are new to UX research, please note that you’ll likely need to rephrase the questions that came up during the workshop before you present them to users. Make sure your questions are non-repeated and don’t force the user to choose any default responses.

Final words: Hold the screen design!

Seriously, if at all possible, if you never design screens again without first addressing these fundamental inquiries: what are the objects and how do they relate?

I promise you this: if you can secure a shared understanding between the business, design, and development teams before you start designing screens, you will have less heartache and save more time and money, and ( it almost feels like a bonus at this point! ) users will be more receptive to what you put out into the world.

Before you begin building screens, I sincerely hope this will free up your time and money to spend on user education and clarifying what you are designing. If you find success using noun foraging and the Object Definition Workshop, there’s more where that came from in the rest of the ORCA process, which will help prevent even more late-in-the-game scope tugs-of-war and strategy pivots.

Wish you the best of luck! Now go sell research!

CSS is all about design containers. In fact, the whole website is made of containers, from the website viewport to components on a webpage. However, every now and then a new function emerges that prompts us to reevaluate our design philosophy.

Square features, for instance, make it fun to play with round picture areas. Mobile display holes and electronic keyboards offer issues to best manage content that stays clear of them. Additionally, two screen or portable devices force us to reevaluate how to best make the most of the available space in a variety of different device positions.

These latest changes to the website platform have made it both more difficult and fascinating to create products. They’re wonderful opportunities for us to break out of our triangular containers.

I’d like to talk about a new feature similar to the above: the Window Controls Overlay for Progressive Web Apps ( PWAs ).

Liberal Web Apps are bridging the gap between websites and apps. They combine the best of both worlds. On the one hand, they’re flexible, relatable, and stable, just like sites. On the other hand, they provide more effective features, work online, and read documents just like local apps.

As a style area, PWAs are really exciting because they challenge us to think about what mixing online and device-native user interface can get. We have more than 40 years of experience telling us what software may look like, especially on desktop computers, and it’s challenging to get out of this psychological design.

At the end of the day though, PWAs on desktop are constrained to the window they appear in: a rectangle with a title bar at the top.

What does a typical desktop PWA app look like:

Sure, as the author of a PWA, you get to choose the color of the title bar (using the Web Application Manifest theme_color property ), but that’s about it.

What if we could consider other ways and reclaim the entire window in the app? Doing so would give us a chance to make our apps more beautiful and feel more integrated in the operating system.

The Window Controls Overlay offers exactly this. This new PWA functionality makes it possible to take advantage of the full surface area of the app, including where the title bar normally appears.

About the title bar and window controls

Let’s get started with an explanation of the window and title bar controls.

The title bar is the area displayed at the top of an app window, which usually contains the app’s name. The buttons or buttons that are displayed at the top of an app’s window allow you to minimize, maximize, or close it.

Window Controls Overlay removes the physical constraint of the title bar and window controls areas. The title bar and window control buttons can be overlayed on top of the application’s web content, allowing it to free up the entire height of the app window.

If you are reading this article on a desktop computer, take a quick look at other apps. Chances are they’re already doing something similar to this. The top area of the page is used by the web browser you’re using to read this, in fact.

Spotify displays album artwork to the top of the application window all the way up.

Microsoft Word uses the available title bar space to display the auto-save and search functionalities, and more.

The whole point of this feature is to allow you to make use of this space with your own content while providing a way to account for the window control buttons. And it makes it possible to offer this modified experience across a variety of platforms without having a negative impact on browsers or other devices that don’t support Window Controls Overlay. After all, PWAs are all about progressive enhancement, so this feature is a chance to enhance your app to use this extra space when it’s available.

Let’s use the feature.

For the rest of this article, we’ll be working on a demo app to learn more about using the feature.

The demo app is called 1DIV. Users can create designs using CSS and a single HTML element in a simple CSS playground.

The app has two pages. The first lists the CSS designs you’ve already created:

The second page enables you to create and edit CSS designs:

We can install the app as a PWA on the desktop because I added a straightforward web manifest and service representative. Here is what it looks like on macOS:

And on Windows:

Our app is looking good, but the white title bar in the first page is wasted space. It would be really nice if the design area extended to the top of the app window on the second page.

Let’s use the Window Controls Overlay feature to improve this.

Enabling Window Controls Overlay

The feature is still experimental at the moment. To try it, you need to enable it in one of the supported browsers.

It has currently been implemented in Chromium as a result of a collaboration between Microsoft and Google. We can therefore use it in Chrome or Edge by going to the internal about: //flags page, and enabling the Desktop PWA Window Controls Overlay flag.

Using the overlay of window controls

To use the feature, we need to add the following display_override member to our web app’s manifest file:

{ "name": "1DIV", "description": "1DIV is a mini CSS playground", "lang": "en-US", "start_url": "/", "theme_color": "#ffffff", "background_color": "#ffffff", "display_override": [ "window-controls-overlay" ], "icons": [ ... ]}

On the surface, the feature is really simple to use. The only thing required is for this manifest change to transform the window controls into an overlay and make the title bar disappear.

However, to provide a great experience for all users regardless of what device or browser they use, and to make the most of the title bar area in our design, we’ll need a bit of CSS and JavaScript code.

What the current state of the app is:

Our logo, search field, and NEW button are now partially covered by the window controls, but the title bar has been removed, which is what we wanted. Our layout now begins at the top of the window.

It’s similar on Windows, with the difference that the close, maximize, and minimize buttons appear on the right side, grouped together with the PWA control buttons:

Using CSS to keep clear of the window controls

New CSS environment variables have also been added in addition to the feature:

• titlebar-area-x
• titlebar-area-y
• titlebar-area-width
• titlebar-area-height

You use these variables with the CSS env ( ) function to position your content where the title bar would have been while ensuring it won’t overlap with the window controls. Our header, which includes the logo, search bar, and NEW button, will be placed using two of the variables in our case.

header { position: absolute; left: env(titlebar-area-x, 0); width: env(titlebar-area-width, 100%); height: var(--toolbar-height);}

The titlebar-area-x variable gives us the distance from the left of the viewport to where the title bar would appear, and titlebar-area-width is its width. (Remember, this is not equivalent to the width of the entire viewport, just the title bar portion, which as noted earlier, doesn’t include the window controls.)

By doing this, we make sure our content remains fully visible. We’re also defining fallback values (the second parameter in the env() function) for when the variables are not defined (such as on non-supporting browsers, or when the Windows Control Overlay feature is disabled).

Now our header adapts to its surroundings, and it doesn’t feel like the window control buttons have been added as an afterthought. The interface resembles a native app much more.

Changing the window controls background color so it blends in

Now let’s take a closer look at our second page: the CSS playground editor.

Not very good. Our CSS demo area does go all the way to the top, which is what we wanted, but the way the window controls appear as white rectangles on top of it is quite jarring.

We can fix this by changing the app’s theme color. There are several definitions for it:

PWAs can define a theme color in the web app manifest file using the theme_color manifest member. The OS then uses this color in a variety of ways. On desktop platforms, it is used to provide a background color to the title bar and window controls.
• Websites can use the theme-color meta tag as well. It’s used by browsers to customize the color of the UI around the web page. For PWAs, this color can override the manifest theme_color.

In our case, we can set the manifest theme_color to white to provide the right default color for our app. The OS will read this color value when the app is installed and use it to make the window controls background color white. This color works great for our main page with the list of demos.

The theme-color meta tag can be changed at runtime, using JavaScript. So we can do that to override the white with the right demo background color when one is opened.

What will we do with this function:

function themeWindow(bgColor) { document.querySelector("meta[name=theme-color]").setAttribute('content', bgColor);}

With this in place, we can imagine how using color and CSS transitions can produce a smooth change from the list page to the demo page, and enable the window control buttons to blend in with the rest of the app’s interface.

Dragging the window

Now, getting rid of the title bar entirely does have an important accessibility consequence: it’s much more difficult to move the application window around.

Users can use the Window Controls Overlay feature to move the window, but this area becomes limited to where the control buttons are, and they must very precisely aim between these buttons to move the window. However, the title bar offers a sizable area for users to click and drag.

Fortunately, this can be fixed using CSS with the app-region property. This property is, for now, only supported in Chromium-based browsers and needs the -webkit- vendor prefix. 

We can use the following to make any feature of the app a drag target for the window:

-webkit-app-region: drag;

It is also possible to explicitly make an element non-draggable:

-webkit-app-region: no-drag; 

These choices might be beneficial to us. We can make the entire header a dragging target, but make the search field and NEW button within it non-draggable so they can still be used as normal.

However, because the editor page doesn’t display the header, users wouldn’t be able to drag the window while editing code. So let’s take a different strategy. We’ll create another element before our header, also absolutely positioned, and dedicated to dragging the window.

...

.drag { position: absolute; top: 0; width: 100%; height: env(titlebar-area-height, 0); -webkit-app-region: drag;}

With the above code, we’re making the draggable area span the entire viewport width, and using the titlebar-area-height variable to make it as tall as what the title bar would have been. This way, our draggable area is aligned with the window control buttons as shown below.

And, now, to make sure our search field and button remain usable:

header .search,header .new { -webkit-app-region: no-drag;}

Users can now click and drag the title bar back into the above code. It is an area that users expect to be able to use to move windows on desktop, and we’re not breaking this expectation, which is good.

Adapting to window resize

It may be useful for an app to know both whether the window controls overlay is visible and when its size changes. In our situation, there won’t be enough room for the search field, logo, and button to fit because the user made the window very narrow. We would need to lower them a little.

The Window Controls Overlay feature comes with a JavaScript API we can use to do this: navigator.windowControlsOverlay.

Three intriguing things are provided by the API:

• navigator.windowControlsOverlay.visiblelets us know whether the overlay is visible.
• navigator.windowControlsOverlay.getBoundingClientRect()lets us know the position and size of the title bar area.
• navigator.windowControlsOverlay.ongeometrychangeenables us to determine changes in size or visibility.

Let’s use this to be aware of the size of the title bar area and move the header down if it’s too narrow.

if (navigator.windowControlsOverlay) { navigator.windowControlsOverlay.addEventListener('geometrychange', () => { const { width } = navigator.windowControlsOverlay.getBoundingClientRect(); document.body.classList.toggle('narrow', width < 250); });}

In the example above, we set the narrow class on the body of the app if the title bar area is narrower than 250px. We could do something similar with a media query, but using the windowControlsOverlay API has two advantages for our use case:

• It’s only fired when the feature is supported and used, we don’t want to adapt the design otherwise.
• We can see the title bar area on different operating systems, which is great because Mac and Windows have different title bar sizes. Using a media query wouldn’t make it possible for us to know exactly how much space remains.

.narrow header { top: env(titlebar-area-height, 0); left: 0; width: 100%;}

When the window is too small, we can use the above CSS code to move our header down and the thumbnails down in accordance with this.

Thirty pixels of exciting design opportunities

We were able to turn our simple demo app into something that felt so much more integrated on desktop devices by using the Window Controls Overlay feature. Something that reaches out of the usual window constraints and provides a custom experience for its users.

In reality, this feature only gives us about 30 more pixels of room and presents challenges when using the window controls. And yet, this extra room and those challenges can be turned into exciting design opportunities.

More devices of all shapes and forms get invented all the time, and the web keeps on evolving to adapt to them. New features are added to the web platform to make it easier for web authors to integrate more and more fully with those devices. From watches or foldable devices to desktop computers, we need to evolve our design approach for the web. We can now think beyond the rectangular box when building for the web.

So let’s embrace this. Let’s use the standard technologies already at our disposal, and experiment with new ideas to provide tailored experiences for all devices, all from a single codebase!

You can open issues on the spec’s repository if you get the chance to try the Window Controls Overlay feature and have feedback on it. It’s still early in the development of this feature, and you can help make it even better. You can also look at this demo app and the source code, the feature’s existing documentation, or the feature’s existing documentation.

However, we’re still very far from this best.

At the time, I didn’t realize yet how to functionally combine morality. Yes, I did discover some tools in other jobs that had worked well for me, such as using checklists, notion monitoring, and “dark truth” sessions. I was still struggling for time and support, and at best I had only partially achieved a higher ( moral ) quality of design—which is far from my definition of structurally integrated.

I made the decision to investigate deeper the causes of organization that prevent us from practicing regular social style. Today, after much research and experimentation, I believe that I’ve found the code that will let us functionally combine morality. And it’s remarkably easy! However, we must first focus out to understand what we’re up against.

Control the program

Unfortunately, we are confined to a capitalist system that fosters commercialism and inequality and is obsessed with the utopian dream of infinite growth. Sea levels, temperature, and our demand for energy continue to rise unquestioned, while the divide between rich and poor continues to increase. Owners expect ever-higher returns on their investments, and firms feel forced to set short-term goals that reflect this. Our well-meaning human-centered mentality has been transformed into a powerful device that encourages ever-higher levels of consumption over the past ten years due to these objectives. When we’re working for an organization that pursues “double-digit growth” or “aggressive sales targets” ( which is 99 percent of us ), that’s very hard to resist while remaining human friendly. Yet with our best motives, and despite the fact that we like to claim that we provide solutions for people, we’re a part of the issue.

What can we do to alter this?

We may start by acting on the appropriate level of the system. System intellectual Donna H. Meadows when outlined ways to increase the effectiveness of a system. When you apply these to architecture, you get:

You can change figures like functionality results or the number of layout critiques at the lowest level of effectiveness. But none of that may change the direction of a business.
• Similarly, affecting buffers ( such as team budgets ), stocks ( such as the number of designers ), flows ( such as the number of new hires ), and delays ( such as the time that it takes to hear about the effect of design ) won’t significantly affect a company.
• A business can improve its ability to achieve its goals by concentrating instead on managing control, employee recognition, or design-system opportunities. But that doesn’t alter the goals themselves, which means that the business may also work against your ethical-design ideals.
• Most ethical-design efforts’ current focus is on the exchange of honest techniques, toolkits, articles, conferences, workshops, and other topics. This is also where social style has remained largely theoretical. We’ve been focusing on the wrong level of the system all this day.
• Get rules, for instance; they consistently defeat information. There can be commonly accepted guidelines, such as how fund works, or a sprint group’s concept of done. However, illegal laws intended to maintain income, frequently revealed through comments like” the customer didn’t ask for it” or “don’t make it too big” can smother social style.
• Changing the rules without holding official energy is extremely difficult. That’s why the next stage is thus important: self-organization. Research, bottom-up initiatives, love projects, self-steering teams, and other such self-organization techniques all contribute to the resilience and creativity of a business. It’s precisely this diversity of viewpoints that’s needed to functionally address major structural issues like materialism, money injustice, and climate change.
• But objectives and metrics are even more powerful than self-organization. Our companies want to make more money, which means that everything and everyone in the company does their best to… make the company more money. And once I realized that profit is nothing more than a measurement, I understood how crucial a very specific, defined metric can be toward pushing a company in a certain direction.

What is the conclusion? If we truly want to incorporate ethics into our daily design practice, we must first change the measurable objectives of the company we work for, from the bottom up.

Redefine success

Traditionally, we consider a product or service successful if it’s desirable to humans, technologically feasible, and financially viable. You tend to see these represented as equals, if you type the three words in a search engine, you’ll find diagrams of three equally sized, evenly arranged circles.

However, we all know that the three dimensions are not equally important: viability is ultimately what determines whether a product will become operational. So a more realistic representation might look like this:

The means are feasibility and desire, and viability is the aim. Companies—outside of nonprofits and charities—exist to make money.

A genuinely purpose-driven company would try to reverse this dynamic: it would recognize finance for what it was intended for: a means. Therefore, both feasibility and viability are important factors in the company’s efforts to accomplish what they stated. It makes intuitive sense: to achieve most anything, you need resources, people, and money. Fun fact: Italian speakers are completely unaware of the distinction between feasibility and viability; both terms are merely fattibilità.

But simply swapping viable for desirable isn’t enough to achieve an ethical outcome. Desirability is still linked to consumerism because the associated activities aim to identify what people want—whether it’s good for them or not. When it comes to a product’s usability, such as user satisfaction or conversion, don’t take into account whether it is good for people. They don’t prevent us from creating products that distract or manipulate people or stop us from contributing to society’s wealth inequality. They are ineffective for maintaining a healthy relationship with nature.

There’s a fourth dimension of success that’s missing: our designs also need to be ethical in the effect that they have on the world.

This is hardly a new idea. There are many variations of these models, some calling the fourth dimension accountability, integrity, or responsibility. What I’ve never seen before, however, is the necessary step that comes after: to influence the system as designers and to make ethical design more practical, we must create objectives for ethical design that are achievable and inspirational. There is no one way to accomplish this because it greatly depends on your country’s culture, values, and industry. But I’ll give you the version that I developed with a group of colleagues at a design agency. Consider it a template to get started.

Ensure social justice, equity, and sustainability.

We created objectives that address design’s effect on three levels: individual, societal, and global.

An individual’s goal on the individual level clarifies what success entails in contrast to the typical user-centric focus on usability and satisfaction, taking into account factors like how much time and effort are required of users. We pursued well-being:

We create products and services that allow for people’s health and happiness. Our solutions are non-misleading, transparent, non-addictive, and non-misleading. We respect our users ‘ time, attention, and privacy, and help them make healthy and respectful choices.

We must consider our impact beyond the user, expanding our focus to the economy, communities, and other indirect stakeholders, as a result of having an objective on the societal level. We called this objective equity:

We create products and services that have a positive social impact. We think of racial justice, inclusiveness and diversity of people as teams, users, and customer segments, as well as racial justice and economic equality. We listen to local culture, communities, and those we affect.

Finally, the global goal of maintaining harmony with humanity’s only home is the one we have. Referring to it simply as sustainability, our definition was:

We create products and services that reward sufficiency and reusability. Our solutions promote the circular economy by generating value from waste, reusing products, and giving priority to sustainable choices. We deliver functionality instead of ownership, and we limit energy use.

In essence, ethical design ( to us ) meant achieving well-being for each user and an equitable value distribution within society through a design that can sustain our living planet. When we introduced these objectives in the company, for many colleagues, design ethics and responsible design suddenly became tangible and achievable through practical—and even familiar—actions.

Measure impact

However, defining these goals is still insufficient. What truly caught the attention of senior management was the fact that we created a way to measure every design project’s well-being, equity, and sustainability.

In this overview, you can use examples of metrics to measure your progress toward equity, well-being, and sustainability:

There’s a lot of power in measurement. As the saying goes, what gets measured gets done. This example was once shared by Donella Meadows:

” If the desired system state is national security, and that is defined as the amount of money spent on the military, the system will produce military spending. It may or may not lead to national security.

This phenomenon explains why desirability is a poor indicator of success: it’s typically defined as the increase in customer satisfaction, session length, frequency of use, conversion rate, churn rate, download rate, and so on. But none of these metrics increase the health of people, communities, or ecosystems. What if we instead used ( reduced ) screen time or software energy consumption to measure success?

There’s another important message here. If we set an objective to create a calm interface, we might still end up with a screen that makes people anxious, even if we set the wrong metric for calmness, such as the number of interface elements. Choosing the wrong metric can completely undo good intentions.

Additionally, choosing the right metric is enormously helpful in focusing the design team. You are forced to consider what success looks like in real life and how you can demonstrate that you have met your ethical goals once you have chosen the metrics to use. It also forces you to consider what we as designers have control over: what can I include in my design or change in my process that will lead to the right type of success? The response to this query provides a lot of focus and clarity.

And finally, it’s good to remember that traditional businesses run on measurements, and managers love to spend much time discussing charts ( ideally hockey-stick shaped ) —especially if they concern profit, the one-above-all of metrics. For good or ill, to improve the system, to have a serious discussion about ethical design with managers, we’ll need to speak that business language.

Practice daily ethical design

Once you’ve defined your objectives and you have a reasonable idea of the potential metrics for your design project, only then do you have a chance to structurally practice ethical design. It” simply” turns into a matter of using your imagination and sprinkling from the knowledge and tools that are already at your disposal.

I think this is quite exciting! It opens a whole new set of challenges and considerations for the design process. Would a simple illustration suffice, or should you go with that energizing video? Which typeface is the most calm and inclusive? What brand-new equipment and techniques do you employ? When is the website’s end of life? How can you provide the same service while requiring less attention from users? How can you ensure that those who are impacted by decisions are present when they are made? How can you measure our effects?

What doing good design means will be completely altered by the new definition of success.

There is, however, a final piece of the puzzle that’s missing: convincing your client, product owner, or manager to be mindful of well-being, equity, and sustainability. For this, it’s essential to engage stakeholders in a dedicated kickoff session.

Start it off or return to the pre-existing

The kickoff is the most important meeting that can be so easy to forget to include. There are two main stages to it: 1 ) the alignment of expectations and 2 ) the success definition.

In the first phase, the entire ( design ) team goes over the project brief and meets with all the relevant stakeholders. Everyone gets to know one another and express their expectations on the outcome and their contributions to achieving it. Possumptions are raised and discussed. The aim is to get on the same level of understanding and to in turn avoid preventable miscommunications and surprises later in the project.

For instance, we conducted an online kickoff with the client, a subject-matter expert, and two other designers for a recent freelance project that aimed to design a digital platform that facilitates US student advisors ‘ documentation and communication. We used a combination of canvases on Miro: one with questions from” Manual of Me” ( to get to know each other ), a Team Canvas ( to express expectations ), and a version of the Project Canvas to align on scope, timeline, and other practical matters.

The above is the traditional purpose of a kickoff. However, agreeing on what success means for the project in terms of desirability, viability, feasibility, and ethics is just as crucial as expressing expectations. What are the objectives in each dimension?

You need to be sure that you can trust success at this early stage because it will determine the project’s future. If, for example, the design team wants to build an inclusive app for a diverse user group, they can raise diversity as a specific success criterion during the kickoff. If the client agrees, the team can refer back to that promise throughout the project. As we agreed in our first meeting, having A and B’s diverse user group is essential to creating a successful product. So we do activity X and follow research process Y”. Compare those odds to a situation where the team had to ask for permission halfway through the project and didn’t agree to that beforehand. The client might argue that that came on top of the agreed scope—and she’d be right.

In the case of this freelance project, to define success I prepared a round canvas that I call the Wheel of Success. It consists of a set of outer rings and an inner ring, which are intended to capture ideas for measuring those objectives. The rings are divided into five dimensions of successful design: healthy, equitable, sustainable, desirable, feasible, and viable.

We explored each dimension and recorded ideas on digital sticky notes. Then we discussed our ideas and verbally agreed on the most important ones. For example, our client agreed that sustainability and progressive enhancement are important success criteria for the platform. Additionally, the subject-matter expert stressed the value of involving students from underprivileged and low-income groups in the design process.

After the kickoff, we summarized our ideas and shared understanding in a project brief that captured these aspects:

the project’s history and purpose: Why do we work on this project?
• the problem definition: what do we want to solve?
• the concrete goals and metrics for each success dimension: what do we want to achieve?
• how will we go about defining the scope, process, and role descriptions?

With such a brief in place, you can use the agreed-upon objectives and concrete metrics as a checklist of success, and your design team will be ready to pursue the right objective—using the tools, methods, and metrics at their disposal to achieve ethical outcomes.

Conclusion

A number of my coworkers have questioned me over the past year,” Where do I begin with ethical design?” My answer has always been the same: organize a session with your stakeholders to ( re ) define success. Even though you might not always be 100 percent successful in agreeing on goals that cover all responsibility objectives, that beats the alternative ( the status quo ) every time. There is no skipping this step if you want to design in an ethical, responsible way.

To be even more specific: if you consider yourself a strategic designer, your challenge is to define ethical objectives, set the right metrics, and conduct those kick-off sessions. If you think of yourself as a system designer, you need to understand how your industry influences consumerism and inequality, how finance drives business, and how to think creatively about how to use the most powerful tools to influence the system. Then redefine success to create the space to exercise those levers.

And for those who consider themselves service designers or UX designers or UI designers: if you truly want to have a positive, meaningful impact, stay away from the toolkits and meetups and conferences for a while. Gather your coworkers and set design goals for well-being, equity, and sustainability. Engage your stakeholders in a workshop and challenge them to think of ways to achieve and measure those ethical goals. Take their ideas, make them clear and tangible, ask for their consent, and hold them to it.

Otherwise, I’m genuinely sorry to say, you’re wasting your precious time and creative energy.

Of course, engaging your stakeholders in this way can be uncomfortable. Many of my coworkers had questions to ask, such as” Will they take this seriously?” and “Can’t we just do it within the design team instead”? In fact, a product manager once asked me why ethics couldn’t just be a structured part of the design process—to just do it without spending the effort to define ethical objectives. It seems like a good idea, no? We wouldn’t have to have difficult discussions with stakeholders about what values or which key-performance indicators to pursue. It would let us focus on what we like and do best: designing.

That’s not enough, as systems theory suggests, though. For those of us who aren’t from marginalized groups and have the privilege to be able to speak up and be heard, that uncomfortable space is exactly where we need to be if we truly want to make a difference. We can’t continue to live in the design-for-designers bubble and enjoy our privileged working-from-home environment without access to the real world. For those of us who have the possibility to speak up and be heard: if we solely keep talking about ethical design and it remains at the level of articles and toolkits—we’re not designing ethically. It’s just theory. By challenging them to redefine success in business, we must actively engage with our coworkers and clients.

With a bit of courage, determination, and focus, we can break out of this cage that finance and business-as-usual have built around us and become facilitators of a new type of business that can see beyond financial value. We simply need to come to terms with the right goals when starting each design project, identify the appropriate metrics, and acknowledge that we already have everything in place. That’s what it means to do daily ethical design.

For their inspiration and support over the years, I would like to thank Emanuela Cozzi Schettini, José Gallegos, Annegret Bönemann, Ian Dorr, Vera Rademaker, Virginia Rispoli, Cecilia Scolaro, Rouzbeh Amini, and many others.

The mobile-first design approach is excellent because it concentrates on what the customer truly needs, is well-practiced, and has become a standard design practice for years. But developing your CSS mobile-first should also be wonderful, too…right?

Well, not necessarily. Classic mobile-first CSS development is based on the principle of overwriting style declarations: you begin your CSS with default style declarations, and overwrite and/or add new styles as you add breakpoints with min-width media queries for larger viewports (for a good overview see “What is Mobile First CSS and Why Does It Rock?”). But all those exceptions create complexity and inefficiency, which in turn can lead to an increased testing effort and a code base that’s harder to maintain. Admit it—how many of us willingly want that?

Mobile-first CSS may yet be the best option for your own projects, but you need to first determine how ideal it is in light of the physical design and user interactions you’re working on. To help you get started, here’s how I go about tackling the elements you need to watch for, and I’ll discuss some alternative remedies if mobile-first doesn’t seem to fit your job.

merits of mobile-first technology

Some of the benefits of mobile-first CSS creation, and why it has been the de facto growth practice for so long, make a lot of sense:

Development order. A good development hierarchy is something you can definitely expect from mobile-first; you just concentrate on the mobile view and start developing.

tested and verified. It’s a tried and tested technique that’s worked for years for a cause: it solves a problem actually also.

prioritizes the smart see. The smart watch is the simplest and arguably the most significant because it covers all of the crucial user journeys and frequently accounts for more user visits ( depending on the project ) in terms of complexity.

Inhibits desktop-centric growth. It can be tempting to first focus on the desktop perspective because desktop computers are used for growth. No one wants to spend their day retrofitting a desktop-centric website to work on mobile devices, but thinking about smart from the beginning prevents us from getting stuck in the future!

Drawbacks of mobile-first

Model declarations can be set at lower breakpoints and finally overwritten at higher breakpoints:

more complicated. The farther up the target order you go, the more unnecessary password you inherit from lower thresholds.

higher CSS precision A group name declaration’s default style has then a higher specificity that has been returned to the browser’s default value. This can be a pain on big projects when you want to preserve the CSS candidates as simple as possible.

Takes more regression analysis. All higher thresholds must be regression tested if modifications to CSS at a lower see ( such as adding a new style ) are required.

The browser can’t prioritize CSS downloads. At wider breakpoints, classic mobile-first min-width media queries don’t leverage the browser’s capability to download CSS files in priority order.

Property price issue overrules its own.

There is nothing inherently wrong with overwriting beliefs, CSS was designed to do just that. However, inheriting incorrect values can be laborious and ineffective, which is counterproductive. When you have to replace styles to restore them back to their defaults, which may cause issues after, especially if you are using a combination of bespoke CSS and power classes, it can also lead to more fashion precision. We won’t be able to use a power school for a design that has been restore with a higher precision.

With this in mind, I’m developing CSS with a focus on the default values much more these days. Since there’s no specific order, and no chains of specific values to keep track of, this frees me to develop breakpoints simultaneously. I concentrate on finding common styles and isolating the specific exceptions in closed media query ranges (that is, any range with a max-width set). 

As you can view each target as a blank slate, this strategy opens up some opportunities. If a product’s layout appears to be based on Flexbox at all baselines, that is acceptable and can be coded in the definition style sheet. But if it looks like Grid would be much better for large windows and Flexbox for portable, these can both be done entirely freely when the CSS is put into finished media keyword ranges. Additionally, developing simultaneously requires you to have a thorough understanding of any given component in all breakpoints right away. This can help identify issues in the design more quickly during the development process. We don’t want to get stuck down a rabbit hole building a complex component for mobile, and then get the designs for desktop and find they are equally complex and incompatible with the HTML we created for the mobile view!

Although this strategy won’t work for everyone, I urge you to try it. There are plenty of tools available to support concurrent development, including Responsively App, Blisk, and many others.

Having said that, I don’t feel the order itself is particularly relevant. If you like to work on one device at a time, are comfortable with focusing on the mobile view, and are familiar with the requirements for other breakpoints, then you should definitely follow the classic development order. It’s crucial to find common styles and exceptions in the appropriate stylesheet, which is a manual tree-shaking procedure! Personally, I find this a little easier when working on a component across breakpoints, but that’s by no means a requirement.

Closed media query ranges are used in real life.

We overwrite the styles in the traditional mobile-first CSS, but media query ranges can be used to prevent this. To illustrate the difference ( I’m using SCSS for brevity ), let’s assume there are three visual designs:

• smaller than 768
• from 768 to less than 1024
• 1024 and anything larger

Take a simple example where a block-level element has a default padding of “20px,” which is overwritten at tablet to be “40px” and set back to “20px” on desktop.

.my-block { padding: 20px; @media (min-width: 768px) { padding: 40px; } @media (min-width: 1024px) { padding: 20px; }}

.my-block { padding: 20px; @media (min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 1023.98px) { padding: 40px; }}

The subtle difference is that the mobile-first example sets the default padding to “20px” and then overwrites it at each breakpoint, setting it three times in total. In contrast, the second example sets the default padding to “20px” and only overrides it at the relevant breakpoint where it isn’t the default value (in this instance, tablet is the exception).

The goal is to: 

• Only set styles when needed. 
• Not set them with the expectation of overwriting them later on, again and again. 

To this end, closed media query ranges are our best friend. If we need to make a change to any given view, we make it in the CSS media query range that applies to the specific breakpoint. We’ll be much less likely to introduce unwanted alterations, and our regression testing only needs to focus on the breakpoint we have actually edited. 

Taking the above example, if we find that .my-block spacing on desktop is already accounted for by the margin at that breakpoint, and since we want to remove the padding altogether, we could do this by setting the mobile padding in a closed media query range.

.my-block {  @media (max-width: 767.98px) {    padding: 20px;  }  @media (min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 1023.98px) {    padding: 40px;  }}

The browser default padding for our block is “0,” so instead of adding a desktop media query and using unset or “0” for the padding value (which we would need with mobile-first), we can wrap the mobile padding in a closed media query (since it is now also an exception) so it won’t get picked up at wider breakpoints. At the desktop breakpoint, we won’t need to set any padding style, as we want the browser default value.

Bundling versus separating the CSS

Due to the browser's concurrent request limit (typically around six ), it was crucial back then to keep the number of requests to a minimum. In consequence, using image sprites and CSS bundling was the norm, with all CSS being downloaded as a single stylesheet with the highest priority.

With HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 now on the scene, the number of requests is no longer the big deal it used to be. By using a media query, we can break CSS into several files. The obvious benefit of this is that the browser can now request the CSS it currently requires with a higher priority than the CSS it doesn't. This is more performant and can reduce the overall time page rendering is blocked.

What version of HTTP do you use?

Go to your website and open the dev tools in your browser to find out which version of HTTP you're using. Next, select the Network tab and make sure the Protocol column is visible. If "h2" is included in the protocol list, that indicates that HTTP/2 is being used.

Note: To check the Protocol column in your browser's dev tools, right-click any column header ( such as Name ), go to the Network tab, reload your page, and then check the Protocol column.

Also, if your website is still using HTTP/1... WHY?! What are you waiting for? Excellent user support exists for HTTP/2.

CSS is split in half.

Separating the CSS into individual files is a worthwhile task. Linking the separate CSS files using the relevant media attribute allows the browser to identify which files are needed immediately (because they’re render-blocking) and which can be deferred. Based on this, it allocates each file an appropriate priority.

In the following example of a website visited on a mobile breakpoint, we can see the mobile and default CSS are loaded with" Highest" priority, as they are currently needed to render the page. In case they are needed later, the remaining CSS files ( print, tablet, and desktop ) are still being downloaded with" Lowest" priority, though they are still needed.

Before rendering can begin, the browser will need to download and parse the CSS file when using bundled CSS.

While, as noted, with the CSS separated into different files linked and marked up with the relevant media attribute, the browser can prioritize the files it currently needs. Using closed media query ranges allows the browser to do this at all widths, as opposed to classic mobile-first min-width queries, where the desktop browser would have to download all the CSS with Highest priority. We can’t assume that desktop users always have a fast connection. For instance, in many rural areas, internet connection speeds are still slow. 

Depending on project requirements, the media queries and the number of separate CSS files may vary from one project to the next, but the example below may look similar.

Depending on the project’s deployment strategy, a change to one file (mobile.css, for example) would only require the QA team to regression test on devices in that specific media query range. Compare that to the prospect of deploying the single bundled site.css file, an approach that would normally trigger a full regression test.

Moving on

The adoption of mobile-first CSS was a significant development milestone because it allowed front-end developers to concentrate on mobile web applications rather than creating websites for desktop use and attempting to convert them to work on other devices.

I don't think anyone wants to return to that development model again, but it's important we don't lose sight of the issue it highlighted: that things can easily get convoluted and less efficient if we prioritize one particular device—any device—over others. For this reason, it seems like the natural next step to concentrate on the CSS in its own right, always mindful of what is the default setting and what constitutes an exception. I've started to notice subtle simplifications in both the CSS of my own and that of other developers, and that testing and maintenance work is also a little more effective and streamlined.

In general, simplifying CSS rule creation whenever we can is ultimately a cleaner approach than going around in circles of overrides. However, whatever method you use, it must be appropriate for the project. For the reasons given, mobile-first may turn out to be the best option for the situation, but first you must fully comprehend the trade-offs you're entering.

In yesterday’s data-driven environment, it’s becoming more and more common for a UX expert to be asked to create a personal digital experience, whether it’s a common website, user portal, or local application. However while there continues to be no lack of marketing buzz around personalization systems, we also have very few defined approaches for implementing personalized UX.

That’s where we begin. After completing tens of personalisation projects over the past few years, we gave ourselves a purpose: could you make a systematic personalization platform especially for UX practitioners? A human-centered personalization program can be established using the Personalization Pyramid, which covers files, classification, content delivery, and overall objectives. By using this strategy, you will be able to understand the core elements of a modern, UX-driven personalization system ( or at the very least know enough to get started ).

Getting Started

We’ll assume that you are already comfortable with the fundamentals of modern personalization for the purposes of this article. A nice guide can be found these: Website Personalization Planning. Although Graphic projects in this field can take a variety of forms, they frequently begin with identical starting points.

Common scenarios for starting a personalisation task:

• Your business or client made a purchase to support personalization of a content management system ( CMS ), marketing automation platform ( MAP ), or other related technology.
• The CMO, CDO, or CIO has identified personalisation as a target
• Consumer data is unclear or disjointed.
• You are running some secluded targeting strategies or A/B tests
• On the personalisation approach, parties of contention
• Mandate of customer privacy rules ( e. g. GDPR ) requires revisiting existing user targeting practices

Regardless of where you begin, a powerful personalization system will require the same key building stones. These are the “levels” on the tower, as we’ve made them. Whether you are a UX artist, scholar, or planner, understanding the core components may help make your contribution effective.

From top to bottom, the rates include:

North Star: What larger geopolitical goal is driving the personalization system?
1. Objectives: What are the specific, tangible benefits of the system?
2. Touchpoints: Where will the personal service been provided?
3. Contexts and Campaigns: What personalization information does the person view?
4. What constitutes a distinct, accessible market according to consumer parts?
5. Actionable information: What dependable and credible information is captured by our professional platform to generate personalization?
6. Natural Data: What wider set of data is conceivable ( now in our environment ) to allow you to optimize?

We’ll go through each of these amounts in change. An associated deck of cards serves as an example of each level’s specific examples to make this more practical. We’ve found them helpful in customisation brainstorming periods, and will include cases for you here.

Starting at the Top

The elements of the pyramids are as follows:

North Star

Ultimately, you want a North Star in your personalization plan, whether big or small. The North Star defines the (one ) overall mission of the personalization program. What do you hope to accomplish? North Stars cast a ghost. The darkness is bigger the sun the bigger the sun. Example of North Starts may contain:

Function: Use simple customer inputs to optimize. Examples:” Raw” messages, basic search effects, system user settings and settings options, general flexibility, basic improvements
1. Feature: Self-contained customisation component. Examples:” Cooked” notifications, advanced optimizations ( geolocation ), basic dynamic messaging, customized modules, automations, recommenders
2. Experience: Individualized customer experiences across a variety of interactions and consumer flows. Examples: Email campaigns, landing pages, advanced messaging ( i. e. C2C chat ) or conversational interfaces, larger user flows and content-intensive optimizations ( localization ).
3. Solution: Highly distinctive, personalized solution experiences. Example: Standalone, branded encounters with personalization at their base, like the “algotorial” songs by Spotify quite as Discover Weekly.

Goals

Personalization can aid in developing with client intentions, just like it is with any great UX design. Goals are the military and quantifiable metrics that may prove the entire program is effective. A good place to begin is with your existing analytics and calculation software and metrics you can standard against. In some cases, new targets may be ideal. The most important thing to consider is that personalisation is more of a means of achieving an objective than a desired result. Common targets include:

• Conversion
• Time spent on work
• Net promoter score ( NPS)
• Satisfaction of the customers

Touchpoints

Touchpoints are where the personalisation happens. This will be one of your biggest areas of responsibility as a UX custom. The touchpoints available to you will depend on how your personalization and associated technologies capabilities are instrumented, and should be rooted in improving a person’s experience at a certain place in the trip. Touchpoints can be multi-device ( mobile, in-store, website ), as well as more specific ( web banner, web pop-up, etc. ). Several examples are given below:

Channel-level Points

• Email: Role
• Email: When is the email open?
• In-store display ( JSON endpoint )
• Native app
• Search

Wireframe-level Touchpoints

• Web overlay
• Web alert bar
• Web banner
• Web content block
• Menu on the web

If you’re designing for web interfaces, for example, you will likely need to include personalized “zones” in your wireframes. Based on our next step, context, and campaigns, the content for these can be presented programmatically in touchpoints.

Contexts and Campaigns

Once you’ve identified some touchpoints, you can decide what kind of personalized content a user will receive. Many personalization tools will refer to these as” campaigns” ( so, for example, a campaign on a web banner for new visitors to the website ). These will be displayed to specific user segments programmatically, as defined by user data. At this stage, we find it helpful to consider two separate models: a context model and a content model. The context helps you consider the user’s level of engagement at the personalization moment, such as when they are casually browsing information or deep-dive. Think of it in terms of information retrieval behaviors. The content model can then guide you in deciding which personalization to use in terms of the context ( for instance, an” Enrich” campaign that features related articles might be a good substitute for extant content ).

Personalization Context Model:

1. Browse
2. Skim
3. Nudge
4. Feast

Content model for personalization:

1. Alert
2. Make Easier
3. Cross-Sell
4. Enrich

We’ve written a lot more in depth about each of these models elsewhere, so be sure to check out Colin’s Personalization Content Model and Jeff’s Personalization Context Model.

User Groups

User segments can be created prescriptively or adaptively, based on user research ( e. g. via rules and logic tied to set user behaviors or via A/B testing ). You will need to think about how to treat the logged-in visitor, the guest or returning visitor for whom you may have a stateful cookie ( or another post-cookie identifier ), or the authenticated visitor who is logged in at the very least. Here are some examples from the personalization pyramid:

• Unknown
• Guest
• Authenticated
• Default
• Referred
• Role
• Cohort
• Unique ID

Actionable information

Every organization with any digital presence has data. It’s a matter of examining what user data you can ethically collect, its inherent reliability and value, and how you can use it ( sometimes referred to as “data activation” ). Fortunately, the tide is turning to first-party data: a recent study by Twilio estimates some 80 % of businesses are using at least some type of first-party data to personalize the customer experience.

First-party data has a number of benefits for the user experience, including being relatively simple to collect, more likely to be accurate, and less susceptible to the” creep factor” of third-party data. So a key part of your UX strategy should be to determine what the best form of data collection is on your audiences. Several examples are given below:

There is a progression of profiling when it comes to recognizing and making decisioning about different audiences and their signals. As user data volume and time and confidence increase, it varies more granularly to more precise constructs about ever-smaller cohorts of users.

While some combination of implicit / explicit data is generally a prerequisite for any implementation ( more commonly referred to as first party and third-party data ) ML efforts are typically not cost-effective directly out of the box. This is because optimization requires a strong content repository and data backbone. But these approaches should be considered as part of the larger roadmap and may indeed help accelerate the organization’s overall progress. You’ll typically work together to create a profiling model with key stakeholders and product owners. The profiling model includes defining approach to configuring profiles, profile keys, profile cards and pattern cards. a scalable, multi-faceted approach to profiling.

Pulling it Together

The cards serve as the foundation for an inventory of sorts ( we provide blanks for you to tailor your own ), a set of potential levers and motivations for the kind of personalization activities you aspire to deliver, but they are more valuable when grouped together.

In assembling a card “hand”, one can begin to trace the entire trajectory from leadership focus down through a strategic and tactical execution. It serves as the foundation for the workshops that both co-authors have conducted to build a program backlog, which would make a good article topic.

In the meantime, what is important to note is that each colored class of card is helpful to survey in understanding the range of choices potentially at your disposal, it is threading through and making concrete decisions about for whom this decisioning will be made: where, when, and how.

Lay Down Your Cards

Any effective personalization strategy must take into account near, middle, and long-term objectives. Even with the leading CMS platforms like Sitecore and Adobe or the most exciting composable CMS DXP out there, there is simply no “easy button” wherein a personalization program can be stood up and immediately view meaningful results. Having said that, all personalization activities follow a common grammar, similar to how every sentence contains nouns and verbs. These cards attempt to map that territory.

Humility, a writer’s most important quality, has a great circle to it. What about sincerity, an business manager’s important value? Or a surgeon’s? Or a teacher’s? They all have excellent sounding voices. When humility is our guiding light, the course is usually available for fulfillment, development, relation, and commitment. We’re going to discuss why in this book.

That said, this is a guide for developers, and to that conclusion, I’d like to begin with a story—well, a voyage, actually. It’s a personal one, and I’m going to make myself a little prone along the way. I call it:

The Ludicrous Pate of Justin: A Tale of its Author

When I was coming out of arts school, a long-haired, goateed novice, write was a known quantity to me, design on the web, however, was riddled with complexities to understand and learn, a problem to be solved. Although I had formal training in typography, layout, and creative design, what most intrigued me was how these traditional skills could be applied to a young online landscape. This style would eventually form the rest of my profession.

But I drained HTML and JavaScript books until the early hours of the morning and self-taught myself how to code during my freshman year rather than student and go into write like many of my friends. I wanted—nay, needed—to better understand the underlying relevance of what my design decisions may think when rendered in a website.

The so-called” Wild West” of website architecture was the late 1990s and early 2000s. Manufacturers at the time were all figuring out how to use layout and visual connection to the online environment. What were the guidelines? How could we break them and still engage, entertain, and convey information? How could my values, which include humility, respect, and connection, align with that on a more general level? I was hungry to find out.

Those are timeless considerations between non-career interactions and the world of design, even though I’m referring to a different era. What are your core passions, or values, that transcend medium? The main themes are the same, essentially the same as what we previously discussed on the direct parallels between what fulfills you, agnostic of the physical or digital realms.

First within tables, animated GIFs, Flash, then with Web Standards, divs, and CSS, there was personality, raw unbridled creativity, and unique means of presentment that often defied any semblance of a visible grid. Splash screens and “browser requirement” pages aplenty. Usability and accessibility were typically victims of such a creation, but such paramount facets of any digital design were largely (and, in hindsight, unfairly) disregarded at the expense of experimentation.

For instance, this iteration of my personal portfolio site (” the pseudoroom” ) from that time was experimental if not a little overt in terms of visualizing how the idea of a living sketchbook was conveyed. Very skeuomorphic. On this one, we would first sketch and then pass a Photoshop file back and forth to trick things out and play with various user interactions. I co-founded the creative project organizing app Milanote and my dear friend, fellow designer Marc Clancy. Then, I’d break it down and code it into a digital layout.

Along with design folio pieces, the site also offered free downloads for Mac OS customizations: desktop wallpapers that were effectively design experimentation, custom-designed typefaces, and desktop icons.

GUI Galaxy was a design, pixel art, and Mac-centric news portal that graphic designer friends and I developed from around the same time.

Design news portals were incredibly popular at the time, and they now accept tweet-sized, small-format excerpts from relevant news from the categories I previously covered. If you took Twitter, curated it to a few categories, and wrapped it in a custom-branded experience, you’d have a design news portal from the late 90s / early 2000s.

We as designers had changed and developed a bandwidth-sensitive, award-winning, much more accessibility-conscious website. Still ripe with experimentation, yet more mindful of equitable engagement. There are a few content panes here, with both Mac-focused news and general news (tech, design ) to be seen. We also offered many of the custom downloads I cited before as present on my folio site but branded and themed to GUI Galaxy.

The presentation layer of the website’s backbone was made up of global design + illustration + news author collaboration. The backbone was a homegrown CMS. And the collaboration effort here, in addition to experimentation on a’ brand’ and content delivery, was hitting my core. We were creating a global audience by creating something bigger than just one of us.

Collaboration and connection transcend medium in their impact, immensely fulfilling me as a designer.

Why am I going down this design memory lane with you, now? Two reasons.

First of all, there’s a reason for the nostalgia for that design era ( the” Wild West” era, as I put it ): the inherent exploration, personality, and creativity that dominated many design portals and personal portfolio websites. Ultra-finely detailed pixel art UI, custom illustration, bespoke vector graphics, all underpinned by a strong design community.

The web design industry has experienced stagnation in recent years. I suspect there’s a strong chance you’ve seen a site whose structure looks something like this: a hero image / banner with text overlaid, perhaps with a lovely rotating carousel of images ( laying the snark on heavy there ), a call to action, and three columns of sub-content directly beneath. Perhaps there are selections that vaguely relate to their respective content in an icon library.

Design, as it’s applied to the digital landscape, is in dire need of thoughtful layout, typography, and visual engagement that goes hand-in-hand with all the modern considerations we now know are paramount: usability. accessibility. Load times and bandwidth- sensitive content delivery. A user-friendly presentation that is relevant wherever they are. We must be mindful of, and respectful toward, those concerns—but not at the expense of creativity of visual communication or via replicating cookie-cutter layouts.

Pixel Issues

Websites during this period were often designed and built on Macs whose OS and desktops looked something like this. Although Mac OS 7.5 is available, 8 and 9 are not very different.

How could any single icon, at any point, stand out and grab my attention, fascinated me? In this example, the user’s desktop is tidy, but think of a more realistic example with icon pandemonium. Or, let’s say an icon was a part of a larger system grouping ( fonts, extensions, control panels ): how did it maintain cohesion within a group as well?

These were 32 x 32 pixel creations, utilizing a 256-color palette, designed pixel-by-pixel as mini mosaics. Under such absurd constraints, this seemed to me to be the embodiment of digital visual communication. And often, ridiculous restrictions can yield the purification of concept and theme.

So I started doing my homework and conducting my research. I was a student of this new medium, hungry to dissect, process, discover, and make it my own.

I wanted to see how I could use that 256-color palette to push the boundaries of a 32×32 pixel grid while expanding the concept of exploration. Those ridiculous constraints forced a clarity of concept and presentation that I found incredibly appealing. The challenge of throwing the digital gauntlet had been thrown at me. And so, in my dorm room into the wee hours of the morning, I toiled away, bringing conceptual sketches into mini mosaic fruition.

These are some of my creations that made use of ResEdit, the only program I had at the time, to create icons. ResEdit was a clunky, built-in Mac OS utility not really made for exactly what we were using it for. Research is at the center of all of this work. Challenge. Problem-solving Again, these core connection-based values are agnostic of medium.

There’s one more design portal I want to talk about, which also serves as the second reason for my story to bring this all together.

This is the Kaliber 1000, or K10k, abbreviated. K10k was founded in 1998 by Michael Schmidt and Toke Nygaard, and was the design news portal on the web during this period. With its pixel art-fueled presentation, attention to detail paid to every aspect of every detail, and many of the more well-known designers of the time who were invited to be news authors on the site, well… it was the place to be, my friend. With respect where respect is due, GUI Galaxy’s concept was inspired by what these folks were doing.

For my part, the combination of my web design work and pixel art exploration began to get me some notoriety in the design scene. K10k eventually figured out that I was one of their very limited group of news writers who could contribute content to the website.

Amongst my personal work and side projects —and now with this inclusion—in the design community, this put me on the map. My design work has also begun to appear on other design news portals, as well as in publications abroad and domestically as well as in various printed collections. With that degree of success while in my early twenties, something else happened:

I actually changed into a massive asshole in about a year of high school, not less. The press and the praise became what fulfilled me, and they went straight to my head. They inflated my ego. I actually felt somewhat superior to my fellow designers.

The victims? My design stagnated. Its evolution, which is what I evolved, has stagnated.

I felt so supremely confident in my abilities that I effectively stopped researching and discovering. When my first instinct was to sketch concepts or iterate ideas in lead, I instead leaped right into Photoshop. I drew my inspiration from the smallest of sources ( and with blinders on ). My peers frequently vehemently disapproved of any criticism of my work. The most tragic loss: I had lost touch with my values.

My ego almost destroyed some of my friendships and blossoming professional relationships. I was toxic in talking about design and in collaboration. But thankfully, candor was a gift from those same friends. They called me out on my unhealthy behavior.

It was a gift I initially did not accept but which I, on the whole, was able to reflect on in depth. I was soon able to accept, and process, and course correct. Although the realization made me feel uneasy, the re-awakening was necessary. I let go of the “reward” of adulation and re-centered upon what stoked the fire for me in art school. Most importantly, I returned to my fundamental values.

Always Students

Following that temporary decline, my personal and professional design journey advanced. And I could self-reflect as I got older to facilitate further growth and course correction as needed.

Let’s take the Large Hadron Collider as an example. The LHC was designed” to help answer some of the fundamental open questions in physics, which concern the basic laws governing the interactions and forces among the elementary objects, the deep structure of space and time, and in particular the interrelation between quantum mechanics and general relativity”. Thank you, Wikipedia.

Around fifteen years ago, in one of my earlier professional roles, I designed the interface for the application that generated the LHC’s particle collision diagrams. These diagrams are often regarded as works of art unto themselves because they depict what is actually happening inside the Collider during any given particle collision event.

Designing the interface for this application was a fascinating process for me, in that I worked with Fermilab physicists to understand what the application was trying to achieve, but also how the physicists themselves would be using it. In order to accomplish this, in this role,

I cut my teeth on usability testing, working with the Fermilab team to iterate and improve the interface. To me, their language and the topics they discussed seemed foreign. And by making myself humble and working under the mindset that I was but a student, I made myself available to be a part of their world to generate that vital connection.

I also had my first ethnographic observational experience, where I observed how the physicists used the tool in their own environments, on their own terminals. For example, one takeaway was that due to the level of ambient light-driven contrast within the facility, the data columns ended up using white text on a dark gray background instead of black text-on-white. They were able to focus on their eyes while working during the day while poring over enormous amounts of data. And Fermilab and CERN are government entities with rigorous accessibility standards, so my knowledge in that realm also grew. Another crucial form of communication was the barrier-free design.

So to those core drivers of my visual problem-solving soul and ultimate fulfillment: discovery, exposure to new media, observation, human connection, and evolution. Before I entered those values, I checked my ego before entering the door.

An evergreen willingness to listen, learn, understand, grow, evolve, and connect yields our best work. I want to pay attention to the phrases “grow” and “evolve” in particular. If we are always students of our craft, we are also continually making ourselves available to evolve. Yes, we have years of practical design experience behind us. Or the focused lab sessions from a UX bootcamp. or the work portfolio with monograms. Or, ultimately, decades of a career behind us.

However, remember that “experience” does not equate to “expert.”

As soon as we close our minds via an inner monologue of’ knowing it all’ or branding ourselves a” #thoughtleader” on social media, the designer we are is our final form. There will never be a designer like us.

I have a creative side. What I do is alchemy. It is a secret. I don’t perform it as much as I let it be done by me.

I am imaginative. Certainly all creative people approve of this brand. No everyone see themselves in this manner. Some innovative individuals incorporate technology into their work. That is the way they are, and I take that into account. Perhaps I also have a little bit of fear for them. However, my being and approach are different.

It distracts one to apologize and qualify in progress. That’s what my mind does to destroy me. I’ll leave it alone for today. I may come back later to make amends and count. After I’ve said what I should have. Which is too difficult.

Except when it is simple and flows like a wine valley.

Sometimes it does go that approach. Maybe what I need to make arrives in a flash. When I say something at that time, I’ve learned not to say it because people often don’t work hard enough to acknowledge that the idea is the best idea even when you know it’s the best idea.

Maybe I just keep working until the thought strikes me. Maybe it arrives right away and I don’t remind people for three weeks. Sometimes I get so excited about something that just happened that I blurt it out and didn’t stop myself. like a child who discovered a medal in one of his Cracker Jacks. I occasionally manage to escape this. Yes, that is the best idea, but sometimes another persons disagree. The majority of the time, they don’t, and I regret that joy has faded.

Joy should only be saved for the meet, when it will matter. not the informal gathering that two different gatherings precede that appointment. Nobody understands why these discussions occur. We keep saying we’re getting rid of them, but we keep discovering new ways to get them. They occasionally also excel. Sometimes they detract from the real work, though. Depending on what you do and where you do it, the ratio between when conferences are valuable and when they are a sad distraction vary. also who you are and what you do. I’ll go over it once more. I have a creative side. That is the design.

Sometimes, despite many hours of diligent effort, someone is hardly useful. Maybe I have to accept that and move on to the next task.

Don’t inquire about the procedure. I have a creative side.

I am imaginative. I have no control over my goals. And I have no control over my best tips.

I may hammer apart and often find it useful to surround myself with images or information. I can go for a move, which occasionally works. There is no connection between sizzling fuel and flowing pots, and I may be making dinner. I frequently have a sense of direction when I awaken. The idea that may have saved me disappears almost as frequently as I become aware and a part of the world once more as a senseless wind of oblivion. For imagination, in my opinion, comes from that other planet. The one that we enter in goals, and possibly before and after death. But writers should be asking this, and I am not a writer. I have a creative side. And it’s for philosophers to build massive soldiers in their imaginative world that they claim to be true. That is yet another diversion, though. And one that is miserable. Possibly on a much bigger issue than whether or not I am creative. But that’s not how I came around, though.

Often the result is evasion. also suffering. Do you know the actor who is tortured by the cliché? Even when the artist is trying to write a soft drink song, a call in a worn-out comedy, or a budget ask, that word is correct.

Some individuals who detest being called artistic perhaps been closeted artists, but that’s between them and their gods. No offence here, that’s meant. Your assertions are also accurate. But I should take care of me.

Designers are recognized as artists.

Disadvantages are aware of cons, just like queers are aware of queers, just like real rappers are aware of actual rappers are aware of cons. People have a lot of regard for designers. We revere, follow, and nearly deify the great types. Of course, it is horrible to revere any person. We’ve been given a warning. Better is what we are. We are aware that people are really people. Because they are clay, like us, they squabble, they are depressed, they regret making the most important decisions, they are weak and hungry, they can be cruel, and they can be as ridiculous as we can. But. But. However, they produce this incredible issue. They give birth to something that may not occur without them and did not exist before them. They are thought’s founders. And I suppose I should add that they are the mother of technology because it’s just lying it. Ba ho backside! That’s done, I suppose. Continue.

Because we compare our personal small accomplishments to those of the great ones, artists denigrate our individual. Wonderful video! I‘m not Miyazaki, though. That is glory right then. That is glory straight out of the Bible. This unsatisfied small factor I created? It essentially fell off the back of the pumpkin truck. The carrots weren’t actually new, either.

Designers is aware that they are at best Salieri. That is what Mozart’s artists do, actually.

I am imaginative. I haven’t worked in advertising in 30 times, but my former artistic managers are the ones who make my hallucinations. They are correct in doing so. When it really matters, my brain goes flat because I am too stupid and complacent. There is no treatment for innovative mania.

I am imaginative. Every experience I create has the potential to make Indiana Jones look older while snoring in a deck head. The more I pursue creativity, the faster I can finish my work, and the longer I brood and circle and gaze blankly before I can finish that work.

I can move ten times more quickly than those who aren’t creative, those who have only had a short-cut of creativity, and those who have just had a short-cut of creativity for work. Only that I spend twice as long putting the work off as they do before I work ten times as quickly as they do. When I put my mind to it, I am so confident in my ability to do a fantastic career. I am completely dependent on the excitement scramble of delay. I also have a fear of the climb.

I don’t create anything.

I am imaginative. Never a performer. Though as a boy, I had a dream that I would one day become that. Some of us criticize our abilities and like our own selves because we are not Michelangelos and Warhols. At least we aren’t in elections, which is narcissism.

I am imaginative. Despite my belief in reason and science, my decisions are based on my own senses. And bear witness to what comes next, both the successes and the calamities.

I am imaginative. Another artists, who see things differently, will find every word I’ve said irritate me. Ask two artists a topic and find three opinions. No matter how we does think about it, our debate, our passion for it, and our responsibility to our own truth, at least in my opinion, are the best indications that we are creative.

I am imaginative. I lament my lack of taste in almost all of the areas of human understanding, which I know very little about. And I put my ego before everything else in the areas that are most important to me, or perhaps more precisely, to my obsessions. Without my passions, I may probably have to spend time staring living in the eye, which almost none of us can do for very long. No seriously. Actually, not. Because a lot of career is intolerable if you really look at it.

I am imaginative. I think that when I leave, a small portion of me will stay in someone else’s head, just like a family does.

Working frees me from worrying about my job.

I am imaginative. I fear that my little present will disappear without warning.

I am imaginative. I’m too busy making the next thing to devote too much time to it, especially since practically everything I create did achieve the level of success I conceive of.

I am imaginative. I think method is the most amazing secret. I think so strongly that I am also foolish enough to post an essay I wrote into a small machine without having to go through or edit it. I swear I didn’t do this frequently. But I did it right away because I was even more frightened of forgetting what I was saying because I was afraid of you seeing through my sad movements toward the wonderful.

There. I believe I said it correctly.

I’d like you to consider this a “yes … and” piece to complement Joe’s post. I’m not trying to reject any of what he’s saying, but rather to give some context to initiatives and options where AI may produce real, positive impacts on people with disabilities. To be clear, I want to take some time to speak about what’s possible in hope that we’ll get there one day. There are, and we’ve needed to address them, like, yesterday.

Other words

Joe’s article spends a lot of time examining how computer vision models can create other words. He raises a number of true points about the state of affairs right now. And while computer-vision concepts continue to improve in the quality and complexity of information in their information, their benefits aren’t wonderful. As he rightly points out, the state of image research is currently very poor, especially for some graphic types, in large part due to the lack of context for which AI systems look at images ( which is a result of having separate “foundation” models for words analysis and picture analysis ). Today’s models aren’t trained to distinguish between images that are contextually relevant ( should probably have descriptions ) and those that are purely decorative ( couldn’t possibly need a description ) either. Nonetheless, I still think there’s possible in this area.

As Joe points out, human-in-the-loop editing of ctrl text should definitely be a factor. And if AI can intervene to provide a starting place for alt text, even if the swift might say What is this BS? That’s not correct at all … Let me try to offer a starting point— I think that’s a gain.

If we can specifically station a design to examine image usage in context, it might help us more quickly determine which images are likely to be elegant and which ones are likely to need a description. That will help clarify which situations require image descriptions, and it will increase authors ‘ effectiveness in making their sites more visible.

While complex images—like graphs and charts—are challenging to describe in any sort of succinct way ( even for humans ), the image example shared in the GPT4 announcement points to an interesting opportunity as well. Let’s say you came across a map that was simply the name of the table and the type of visualization it was: Pie table comparing smartphone use to have phone use among US households making under$ 30, 000 annually. ( That would be a pretty bad alt text for a chart because it frequently leaves many unanswered questions about the data, but let’s just assume that was the description in place. ) If your website knew that that picture was a pie graph ( because an onboard model concluded this ), imagine a world where people could ask questions like these about the creative:

• Are there more smartphone users than feature phones?
• How many more are there?
• Is there a group of people that don’t fall into either of these buckets?
• How many people are that?

For a moment, the chance to learn more about images and data in this way could be revolutionary for people who are blind and low vision as well as for those with various forms of color blindness, cognitive disabilities, and other issues. Putting aside the realities of large language model ( LLM) hallucinations, where a model just makes up plausible-sounding “facts,” It could also be useful in educational contexts to help people who can see these charts, as is, to understand the data in the charts.

What if you could ask your browser to make a complicated chart simpler? What if you demanded that the line graph be isolated into just one line? What if you could ask your browser to transpose the colors of the different lines to work better for form of color blindness you have? What if you asked it to switch colors in favor of patterns? That seems like a possibility given the chat-based interfaces and our current ability to manipulate images in the AI tools of today.

Now imagine a purpose-built model that could extract the information from that chart and convert it to another format. Perhaps it could convert that pie chart (or, better yet, a series of pie charts ) into more usable ( and useful ) formats, like spreadsheets, for instance. That would be incredible!

Matching algorithms

When Safiya Umoja Noble chose to write her book Algorithms of Oppression, she hit the nail on the head. Although her book focused on how search engines can foster racism, I believe it’s equally true that all computer models have the potential to foster conflict, prejudice, and intolerance. Whether it’s Twitter always showing you the latest tweet from a bored billionaire, YouTube sending us into a Q-hole, or Instagram warping our ideas of what natural bodies look like, we know that poorly authored and maintained algorithms are incredibly harmful. A large portion of this is attributable to the lack of diversity in those who create and shape them. There is still a lot of potential for algorithm development when these platforms are built with inclusive features in mind.

Take Mentra, for example. They serve as a network of employment for people who are neurodivers. They employ an algorithm to match job seekers with potential employers based on more than 75 data points. On the job-seeker side of things, it considers each candidate’s strengths, their necessary and preferred workplace accommodations, environmental sensitivities, and so on. It takes into account the workplace, the communication environment, and other factors. Mentra made the decision to change the script when it came to typical employment websites because it was run by neurodivergent people. They use their algorithm to propose available candidates to companies, who can then connect with job seekers that they are interested in, reducing the emotional and physical labor on the job-seeker side of things.

When more people with disabilities are involved in developing algorithms, this can lower the likelihood that these algorithms will harm their communities. Diverse teams are crucial because of this.

Imagine that a social media company’s recommendation engine was tuned to analyze who you’re following and if it was tuned to prioritize follow recommendations for people who talked about similar things but who were different in some key ways from your existing sphere of influence. For instance, if you followed a group of nondisabled white male academics who spoke about AI, it might be advisable to follow those who are disabled, aren’t white, or aren’t men who also speak about AI. If you followed its advice, you might gain a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of what’s happening in the AI field. These same systems should also use their understanding of biases about particular communities—including, for instance, the disability community—to make sure that they aren’t recommending any of their users follow accounts that perpetuate biases against (or, worse, spewing hate toward ) those groups.

Other ways that AI can assist people with disabilities

I’m sure I could go on and on about using AI to assist people with disabilities, but I’m going to make this last section into a bit of a lightning round if I weren’t trying to put this together in between other tasks. In no particular order:

Voice preservation You might have heard about the voice-preserve offerings from Microsoft, Acapela, or others, or have seen the VALL-E paper or Apple’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day announcement. It’s possible to train an AI model to replicate your voice, which can be a tremendous boon for people who have ALS ( Lou Gehrig’s disease ) or motor-neuron disease or other medical conditions that can lead to an inability to talk. This technology can also be used to create audio deepfakes, so we need to approach it responsibly, but the technology has truly transformative potential.
• Voice recognition. Researchers like those in the Speech Accessibility Project are paying people with disabilities for their help in collecting recordings of people with atypical speech. As I type, they are actively recruiting people with Parkinson’s and related conditions, and they intend to expand this to other conditions as the project develops. More people with disabilities will be able to use voice assistants, dictation software, and voice-response services as a result of this research, which will result in more inclusive data sets that will enable them to use their computers and other devices more easily and with just their voices.
• Text transformation. LLMs of the current generation are quite capable of changing text without creating hallucinations. This is incredibly empowering for those who have cognitive disabilities and who may benefit from text summaries or simplified versions, or even text that has been prepared for Bionic Reading.

The importance of diverse teams and data

We must acknowledge the importance of our differences. The intersections of the identities that we exist in have an impact on our lived experiences. These lived experiences—with all their complexities ( and joys and pain ) —are valuable inputs to the software, services, and societies that we shape. Our differences must be reflected in the data we use to develop new models, and those who provide that valuable information must be compensated for doing so. Inclusive data sets produce stronger models that promote more justifiable outcomes.

Want a model that doesn’t demean or patronize or objectify people with disabilities? Make sure that you include information about disabilities that has been written by people with a variety of disabilities in the training data.

Want a non-binary language model? You may be able to use existing data sets to build a filter that can intercept and remediate ableist language before it reaches readers. Despite this, AI models won’t soon replace human copy editors when it comes to sensitivity reading.

Want a copilot for coding that provides recommendations that are accessible after the jump? Train it on code that you know to be accessible.

I have no doubts about how dangerous AI will be for people today, tomorrow, and for the rest of the world. However, I also think that we can acknowledge this and make thoughtful, thoughtful, and intentional changes in our approaches to AI that will reduce harm over time as well. Today, tomorrow, and well into the future.

Many thanks to Kartik Sawhney for supporting the development of this article, Ashley Bischoff for providing me with invaluable editorial support, and of course, Joe Dolson for the prompt.

The same holds true for those of us who are currently employed in design and development. Having worked on the web for about three years at this point, I’ve seen the typical wax and wane of concepts, strategies, and systems. Every day we as developers and designers get into a routine pattern, a brand-new concept or technology emerges to shake things up and completely alter our planet.

How we got below

I built my first website in the mid-’90s. Design and development on the web back then was a free-for-all, with few established norms. For any layout aside from a single column, we used table elements, often with empty cells containing a single pixel spacer GIF to add empty space. We styled text with numerous font tags, nesting the tags every time we wanted to vary the font style. And we had only three or four typefaces to choose from: Arial, Courier, or Times New Roman. When Verdana and Georgia came out in 1996, we rejoiced because our options had nearly doubled. The only safe colors to choose from were the 216 “web safe” colors known to work across platforms. The few interactive elements (like contact forms, guest books, and counters) were mostly powered by CGI scripts (predominantly written in Perl at the time). Achieving any kind of unique look involved a pile of hacks all the way down. Interaction was often limited to specific pages in a site.

the development of online requirements

At the turn of the century, a new cycle started. Crufty code littered with table layouts and font tags waned, and a push for web standards waxed. Newer technologies like CSS got more widespread adoption by browsers makers, developers, and designers. This shift toward standards didn’t happen accidentally or overnight. It took active engagement between the W3C and browser vendors and heavy evangelism from folks like the Web Standards Project to build standards. A List Apart and books like Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman played key roles in teaching developers and designers why standards are important, how to implement them, and how to sell them to their organizations. And approaches like progressive enhancement introduced the idea that content should be available for all browsers—with additional enhancements available for more advanced browsers. Meanwhile, sites like the CSS Zen Garden showcased just how powerful and versatile CSS can be when combined with a solid semantic HTML structure.

Server-side language like PHP, Java, and.NET took Perl as the primary back-end computers, and the cgi-bin was tossed in the garbage bin. With these improved server-side software, the first period of internet programs started with content-management techniques (especially those used in blogs like Blogger, Grey Matter, Movable Type, and WordPress ) In the mid-2000s, AJAX opened gates for sequential interaction between the front end and back close. Pages was now revise their content without having to reload. A grain of Script frameworks like Prototype, YUI, and ruby arose to aid developers develop more credible client-side conversation across browsers that had wildly varying levels of standards support. Techniques like photo replacement enable skilled manufacturers and developers to show fonts of their choosing. And technology like Flash made it possible to include movies, sports, and even more engagement.

The economy was reenergized by these new tools, requirements, and methods in many ways. Web style flourished as creators and designers explored more different styles and designs. However, we also relied heavily on numerous exploits. Early CSS was a huge improvement over table-based layouts when it came to basic layout and text styling, but its limitations at the time meant that designers and developers still relied heavily on images for complex shapes ( such as rounded or angled corners ) and tiled backgrounds for the appearance of full-length columns (among other hacks ). All kinds of nested floats or absolute positioning ( or both ) were necessary for complicated layouts. Display and photo substitute for specialty styles was a great start toward varying the designs from the big five, but both tricks introduced convenience and efficiency issues. Additionally, JavaScript libraries made it simple for anyone to add a dash of interaction to pages, even at the expense of double or even quadrupling the download size of basic websites.

The web as software platform

The balance between the front end and the back end continued to improve, leading to the development of the current web application era. Between expanded server-side programming languages ( which kept growing to include Ruby, Python, Go, and others ) and newer front-end tools like React, Vue, and Angular, we could build fully capable software on the web. Along with these tools, there were additional options, such as collaborative build automation, collaborative version control, and shared package libraries. What was once primarily an environment for linked documents became a realm of infinite possibilities.

Mobile devices also increased in their capabilities, and they gave us access to internet in our pockets at the same time. Mobile apps and responsive design opened up opportunities for new interactions anywhere and any time.

This fusion of potent mobile devices and potent development tools contributed to the growth of social media and other centralized tools for people to use and interact with. As it became easier and more common to connect with others directly on Twitter, Facebook, and even Slack, the desire for hosted personal sites waned. Social media made connections on a global scale, with both positive and negative outcomes.

Want a much more extensive history of how we got here, with some other takes on ways that we can improve? ” Of Time and the Web” was written by Jeremy Keith. Or check out the” Web Design History Timeline” at the Web Design Museum. Additionally, Neal Agarwal takes a fascinating tour of” Internet Artifacts.”

Where we are now

It seems like we’ve reached yet another significant turning point in the last couple of years. As social-media platforms fracture and wane, there’s been a growing interest in owning our own content again. From the tried-and-true classic of hosting plain HTML files to static site generators and content management systems of all kinds, there are many different ways to create websites. The fracturing of social media also comes with a cost: we lose crucial infrastructure for discovery and connection. The IndieWeb‘s Webmentions, RSS, ActivityPub, and other tools can assist with this, but they’re still largely underdeveloped and difficult to use for the less geeky. We can build amazing personal websites and add to them regularly, but without discovery and connection, it can sometimes feel like we may as well be shouting into the void.

Especially with efforts like Interop, browser support for CSS, JavaScript, and other standards like web components has increased. New technologies gain support across the board in a fraction of the time that they used to. When I first learn about a new feature, I frequently discover that its coverage is already over 80 % when I check the browser support. Nowadays, the barrier to using newer techniques often isn’t browser support but simply the limits of how quickly designers and developers can learn what’s available and how to adopt it.

We can prototype almost any idea today with just a few commands and a few lines of code. All the tools that we now have available make it easier than ever to start something new. However, as the initial cost of these frameworks may be saved in the beginning, it eventually becomes due as their upkeep and maintenance becomes a component of our technical debt.

If we rely on third-party frameworks, adopting new standards can sometimes take longer since we may have to wait for those frameworks to adopt those standards. These frameworks, which once made it easier to adopt new techniques sooner, have since evolved into obstacles. These same frameworks often come with performance costs too, forcing users to wait for scripts to load before they can read or interact with pages. And when scripts fail ( whether due to poor code, network issues, or other environmental factors ), there is frequently no other option, leaving users with blank or broken pages.

Where do we go from here?

Hacks of today help to shape standards for the future. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with embracing hacks —for now—to move the present forward. Problems only arise when we refuse to acknowledge that they are hacks or when we choose not to replace them. So what can we do to create the future we want for the web?

Build for the long haul. Optimize for performance, for accessibility, and for the user. weigh the costs associated with those user-friendly tools. They may make your job a little easier today, but how do they affect everything else? What is the price to the users? To future developers? To adoption of standards? Sometimes the convenience may be worth it. Sometimes it’s just a hack that you’ve gotten used to. And sometimes it’s holding you back from even better options.

Start with the basics. Standards continue to evolve over time, but browsers have done a remarkably good job of continuing to support older standards. The same holds true for third-party frameworks, though. Sites built with even the hackiest of HTML from the’ 90s still work just fine today. Even after a few years, the same can’t be said about websites created with frameworks.

Design with care. Consider the effects of each choice, whether it is your craft, which is code, pixels, or processes. The convenience of many a modern tool comes at the cost of not always understanding the underlying decisions that have led to its design and not always considering the impact that those decisions can have. Use the time saved by modern tools to consider more carefully and design with consideration rather than rush to “move fast and break things”

Always be learning. If you constantly learn, you also develop. Sometimes it may be hard to pinpoint what’s worth learning and what’s just today’s hack. Even if you were to concentrate solely on learning standards, you might end up focusing on something that won’t matter next year. ( Remember XHTML? ) However, ongoing learning opens up new neural connections, and the techniques you learn in one day may be useful for guiding future experiments.

Play, experiment, and be weird! The ultimate experiment is this web we created. It’s the single largest human endeavor in history, and yet each of us can create our own pocket within it. Be brave and try something new. Build a playground for ideas. In your own bizarre science lab, perform bizarre experiments. Start your own small business. There has never been a place where we have more room to be creative, take risks, and discover our potential.

Share and amplify. Share what you think has worked for you as you go through testing, playing, and learning. Write on your own website, post on whichever social media site you prefer, or shout it from a TikTok. Write something for A List Apart! But take the time to amplify others too: find new voices, learn from them, and share what they’ve taught you.

Go ahead and create.

As designers and developers for the web ( and beyond ), we’re responsible for building the future every day, whether that may take the shape of personal websites, social media tools used by billions, or anything in between. Let’s incorporate our values into the products we produce, and let’s improve the world for everyone. Create that thing that only you are uniquely qualified to make. Then distribute it, improve it, re-use it, or create something new with it. Learn. Make. Share. grow. Rinse and repeat. Everything will change whenever you believe you have the ability to use the internet.