Links Archives: 2020

All 19 links
  1. Don’t Demonize Employees Who Raise Problems

    Jordan shared this Harvard Business Review article on Twitter recently. There’s a lot of great advice that leaders within organizations should take to heart.

    This particular passage hit really close to home:

    Problem spotters don’t especially enjoy bearing bad news, but they do it to advance the organization. To help you, the leader. Maybe it’s because they have a different perspective, or a fresh take based on that spot in the world where only they stand. Maybe it’s that they are better at expressing the issue, where others struggle. Stop making it so hard on them to help you.

    Address the message not the messenger.

  2. BBC GEL Technical Guides

    The BBC Global Experience Language (GEL) Technical Guides are a series of framework-agnostic, code-centric recommendations and examples for building GEL design patterns in websites. They illustrate how to create websites that comply with all BBC guidelines and industry best practice, giving special emphasis to accessibility.

    This technical companion to the BBC’s Global Experience Language serves as a reference for developers implementing GEL’s user experience recommendations.

  3. Reacji Channeler

    Add a reacji (emoji reaction) to a message to send it zipping through the microscopic pipelines inside Slack, popping out into another channel—where the right people can see and act upon it.

    Found this useful Slack integration via Mina Markham’s tweet:

    Protip: I have a channel in my work Slack (or Slack’s Slack, if you will) that catalogs anything with my custom :mina: reacji.

    Definitely came in handy during promo cycle :thumbsup:

  4. Guide to Internal Communication, the Basecamp Way

    The how, where, why, and when we communicate. Long form asynchronous? Real-time chat? In-person? Video? Verbal? Written? Via email? In Basecamp? How do we keep everyone in the loop without everyone getting tangled in everyone else’s business? It’s all in here.

    An unsurprisingly blunt, plain language set of guidelines from the Basecamp team. Useful as a guide for other teams looking to build or improve upon their internal communication habits.

  5. A11Y Style Guide

    The A11Y style guide comes with pre-populated accessible components that include helpful links to related tools, articles, and WCAG guidelines to make your site more inclusive. These components also serve as a guide for both HTML markup and SCSS/CSS code, to inform designers, front-end and back-end developers at every stage of the website’s creation.

  6. Preserving the Eameses’ Film Legacy - Herman Miller

    the Eameses’ massive archive—one million items, including their films—went to the Library of Congress after Ray died in 1988. Now the stewards of The Work of Charles and Ray Eames, the Library of Congress is at work creating preservation-quality copies of their films. They’ve done 20 already with more to come.

    In this article, Herman Miller’s WHY Magazine details three recently preserved Eames films: S-73 Sofa Compact, Soft Pad, and Fiberglass Chairs—Something of How They Get the Way They Are.

    Also worth watching, Eames: The Architect and the Painter.

  7. 18F User Experience Design Guide

    18F user experience (UX) designers join cross-functional teams to improve interactions between government agencies and the people they serve. The 18F UX Guide helps us get this job done. It’s a starting point for UX design at 18F: doing it, discussing it, and ensuring it’s done to a consistent level of quality.

    Another useful open source guide from the incredible team at 18F.

  8. The UX of LEGO Interface Panels – George Cave

    Two studs wide and angled at 45°, the ubiquitous “2x2 decorated slope” is a LEGO minifigure’s interface to the world.

    These iconic, low-resolution designs are the perfect tool to learn the basics of physical interface design. Armed with 52 different bricks, let’s see what they can teach us about the design, layout and organisation of complex interfaces.

    Welcome to the world of LEGO UX design.

    Be still my childhood heart.

  9. De-risking government technology | 18F

    Only 13% of large government IT projects succeed*

    Implementing custom software projects can be extraordinarily costly and risky in a government setting. Waterfall software development remains standard at all levels of government. Outdated budgeting and oversight processes have been designed around these very waterfall processes. Moving toward a user-centered, agile approach to this work will save millions of dollars in spending on bad software.

    Another fantastic online resource from the team at 18F.