fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Hadoop cluster configuration using Ansible
By: Abhiroop Bas
Tags: Ansible, Hadoop, Cluster, Big Data, Network

Ansible Hadoop

Ansible

No one likes repetitive tasks. With Ansible, IT admins can begin automating away the drudgery from their daily tasks. Automation frees admins up to focus on efforts that help deliver more value to the business by speeding time to application delivery, and building on a culture of success. Ultimately, Ansible gives teams the one thing they can never get enough of: time. Allowing smart people to focus on smart things.

Ansible is a simple automation language that can perfectly describe an IT application infrastructure. It’s easy-to-learn, self-documenting, and doesn’t require a grad-level computer science degree to read. Automation shouldn’t be more complex than the tasks it’s replacing.

Hadoop

The Apache Hadoop software library is a framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using simple programming models. It is designed to scale up from single servers to thousands of machines, each offering local computation and storage. Rather than rely on hardware to deliver high-availability, the library itself is designed to detect and handle failures at the application layer, so delivering a highly-available service on top of a cluster of computers, each of which may be prone to failures.

About the project

🔰 11.1 Configure Hadoop and start cluster services using Ansible Playbook

🔰 11.2 Create a Article, blog or Video on how industries are solving challenges using Ansible.

🔰 11.3 Restarting HTTPD Service is not idempotence in nature and also consume more resources suggest a way to rectify this challenge in Ansible playbook

Output

Hadoop Cluster setup

Steps followed

playbook step 1

playbook step 2

playbook step 3

playbook step 4

The steps for the same are written in the playbook . The code for the same can be found in github.
Hadoop & Spark for beginners
By: Javier Caceres
Tags: Yarn, Hadoop, Spark

I have noticed that many people are not familiar with Spark tools, so I wanted to put together few simple but important concepts about Spark below.

Firstly, some definitions (extracted from here):

Hadoop is a framework that facilitates software to store and process volumes of data in a distributed environment across a network of computers. Several parts make up the Hadoop framework, which includes:

Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS): Stores files in Hadoop centric format and places them across the Hadoop cluster where they provide high bandwidth.

MapReduce Programming Model: This is a Hadoop feature that facilitates a batch engine to process large scale data in Hadoop clusters.

YARN (Yet Another Resource Negotiator): A platform for managing computing resources within the Hadoop clusters.

Spark is a framework that focuses on fast computation using in-memory processing. Spark includes the following components:

Spark Core: it facilitates task dispatching, several input/output functionalities, and task scheduling with an application programming interface.

Spark SQL: Supports DataFrames (data abstraction model) that, in turn, provides support for both structured and unstructured data.

Spark Streaming: This deploys Spark’s fast scheduling power to facilitate streaming analytics.

Spark can run on EC2, on Hadoop YARN (i.e.: spark data processing jobs run on yarn), on Mesos, or on Kubernetes.

Hadoop is usually bundled with the following components:

Now the concepts:

hadoop

hadoop client allows you to interact with the file system and it uses kerberos to authenticate, sample commands (hadoop fs can talk to different file system, hdfs can only talk to HDFS):

To list version: hadoop version (output.: Hadoop 3.0.0-cdh6.2.1)

Command to see root folder name: hadoop fs -ls -d

Command to list directories: hadoop fs -ls

Command to list files in a directory: hadoop fs -ls pattern

To copy a file from linux to hadoop: hadoop fs -put /path/in/linux /hdfs/path

kerberos

hadoop is usually secured with kerberos, some sample commands:

To delegate privileges to other user: pbrun user

To verify tickets use: klist

To list the obtained tickets: klist -a

To obtain and cache a kerberos ticket: kinit -k -t /opt/Cloudera/keytabs/ whoami . hostname -s .keytab whoami / hostname -f @domain

. .keytab / @domain Yarn is the cluster management tool.Sample command: yarn application -list

Spark

You can run apps in Spark using the Spark client OR self contained applications OR scripts.

Spark has modules to interact via SQL or DataFrames or streaming.

Sample spark client commands:

spark-submit -version (e.g.: version 2.4.0-cdh6.2.1)

To run spark-shell and load class path: spark2-shell -jars path/to/file.jar

To run the program -> :load example.scala

hive

To connect to hive using beeline:

beeline -u “jdbc:hive2://server:10000/;principal=hive/server@domain;ssl=true”

SHOW DATABASES;

use db;

use tables;

Thanks,

Javier Caceres
Configure Hadoop and start Hadoop cluster services using Ansible Playbook.
By: Yashraj Panda
Tags: Ansible, Automation, Hadoop, Ansible Playbook

In this article, we will configure Hadoop and start Hadoop cluster services using Ansible Playbook.

Prerequisite:

Install Python Install Ansible

What is ansible?

Ansible works by connecting to your nodes and pushing out small programs, called “Ansible modules” to them. Ansible then executes these modules (over SSH by default), and removes them when finished. Your library of modules can reside on any machine, and there are no servers, daemons, or databases required.

What is Ansible Playbook?

An Ansible playbook is an organized unit of scripts that defines work for a server configuration managed by the automation tool Ansible. Ansible is a configuration management tool that automates the configuration of multiple servers by the use of Ansible playbooks.

Everything about Hadoop:

You can check out the following links to know more about Hadoop and its configuration:

Ansible configuration file:

With a fresh installation of Ansible, like every other software, it ships with a default configuration file. This is the brain and the heart of Ansible, the file that governs the behavior of all interactions performed by the control node. Here we will set up our ansible inventory.

Ansible hosts file:

The Ansible inventory file defines the hosts and groups of hosts upon which commands, modules, and tasks in a playbook operate. The file can be in one of many formats depending on your Ansible environment and plugins. The inventory file can list individual hosts or user-defined groups of hosts.

Now that we have configured our ansible inventory and hosts file, we can ping the hosts and check whether they are connecting or not in the following way:

Namenode setup:

Run the following command to setup the Hadoop namenode using ansible-playbook

Ansible-playbook namenode.yml

(P.S: the error in task[installing jdk software] is because I have already installed jdk software in my system. And this error is being ignored so it wont effect other process)

Run the “jps” command to check whether the Hadoop namenode has started or not,

Datanode setup:

Run the following command to setup the Hadoop datanode using ansible-playbook

Ansible-playbook datanode.yml

(P.S: the error in task[installing jdk software] is because I have already installed jdk software in my system. And this error is being ignored so it wont effect other process)

Run the “jps” command to check whether the Hadoop datanode has started or not,

Access the below mentioned GitHub link to checkout the “namenode.yml” and “datanode.yml” files.

https://github.com/yashraj24/Hadoop-automation-using-ansible
Configuration of Hadoop using Ansible
Tags: Hadoop

This article is to explain how to configure Hadoop and start cluster services using Ansible playbook.

Ansible offers a simple architecture that doesn’t require special software to be installed on nodes. It also provides a robust set of features and built-in modules which facilitate writing automation scripts.

This article explains how to use Ansible to automate the steps contained in our article on Configure hadoop and start cluster services using Ansible playbook . Hadoop is an open-source software framework for storing data and running applications on clusters of commodity hardware.

What Does this Playbook Do?

An Ansible playbook is an organized unit of scripts that defines work for a server configuration managed by the automation tool Ansible.

In order to configure the hadoop we have to put managed node ip in inventory file in master node. And it’s good practice to check the connectivity.

we have a proper connectivity with the target node. And we also have hadoop software and java jdk in side the master node.

First we have to copy the software from manager node to managed node .

here we don’t have the software so we have to run ansible playbook .

so we successfully copy the software in target node.

here we installed software in target node.

we are going to create directory in / drive with name dn2

we successfully created the folder dn2.

we have to copy hdfs-site.xml and core-site.xml file inside target node.

here we don’t have the configuration files.

we successfully copy the file.

- name: format the namenode shell: "echo Y | hadoop namenode -format" - name: start hadoop namenode service shell: "hadoop-daemon.sh start namenode"

finally we started the services of the namenode and in this way we can configure the namenode hadoop master.
Hadoop cluster set up with Ansible.
Tags: Ansible, Hadoop, Arthbylw, Vimaldaga, Righteducation

1) Update master node and name node ip details in inventory file. Please refer to ip.txt file in below git repo.

2) Created variable files for datanode and namenode. Please refer to namenode_vars.yml and datanode_vars.yml file in below git repo.

3) Created playbook for name node and data node set up. Please refrer to namenode.yml and datanode.yml respectively in below git repo.

https://github.com/harshalearn/hadoop-ansible/blob/main/namenode.yml

Once playbooks are executed below is the setup of cluster:

#vimaldaga #righteducation #educationredefine #rightmentor #worldrecordholder #linuxworld #makingindiafutureready #righeudcation #arthbylw

#ansible ##facts #inventory #webserver
Integrating LVM with Hadoop to provide Elasticity to DataNode Storage
By: Bhavesh Kakrotra
Tags: Hadoop, AWS, Technology, Big Data, Linux

Integrating LVM with Hadoop to provide Elasticity to DataNode Storage

When we create a cluster we often are limited to a fixed configured capacity.

To make this storage elastic, we make use of LVM.

Create two volumes and attach them to DataNode instance.

Create physical volumes and add them to a volume group.

Using this volume group, create a logical volume, format it and set the mount point to /dn.

We have now changed the size of data node.

To increase this size, we can extend the logical volume using lvextend and then format the unformatted part using resize2fs.

We see that we have extended the size of data node.

Feel free to contact on my LinkedIn.
How to provide Elasticity To Hadoop using Python Automation
By: Aditya N
Tags: Hadoop, Arth, Redhat Linux, Linux, Lvm

💠 In this article will be writing how to provide desired Storage to NameNode using the concept of LVM and using python for Automation 💠

LVM

What is LVM and Why it is needed?

LVM is called as Logical Volume Manager

Managing disk space has always been a significant task for sysadmins. Running out of disk space used to be the start of a long and complex series of tasks to increase the space available to a disk partition which was always an difficult Thing Until the entry of LVM

Steps Require To Setup LVM:

Physical Volume Volume Group Logical Volume

LVM infrastructure

Physical Volume:

Physical block devices or other disk-like devices (for example, other devices created by device-mapper, like RAID arrays) are used by LVM as the raw building material for higher levels of abstraction.

Volume Group:

The Volume Group is the highest level abstraction used within the LVM. It gathers together a collection of Logical Volumes and Physical Volumes into one administrative unit.

Logical Volume:

The equivalent of a disk partition in a non-LVM system. The LV is visible as a standard block device; as such the LV can contain a file system .

Example: like the root(\) volume is build upon LV as in future if we need to extend we can do it by Dynamic process.

With the Basics covered up we shall see how we can implement the LVM into the hadoop NameNode(master) how we can provide Elasticity to master node which can scale according the Data Requirement.

Hadoop logs

In the above figure we can see that the entire root volume is getting contributed to the Master node. in the coming Steps we shall see how we can provide specified amount of storage to master node and scale it to our Requirement using the concept of LVM as above discussed.

For this Demo i will be attaching the HD from my system :

One is of 4GB and other one is of 2GB once it is successful we will create the physical Volume

Attached volume

lvcreate <attached volume name>

PV

creation of volume group using from the above created PV

vgcreate <volume group name> <PV name>

To see the VG created we can use

vgdisplay

vgdisplay

Once the VG is created the main part is to deep dive into our LV which can be done through

lvcreate — size <SIZE>G -name<NAME> <name of volume group>

here we have created a LV of 3GB in the name of Hadoop

LV creation

once the job of creating the LV is done we need to format it using mkfs.ext4 and mount it to respective folder in our case it is hadoop master folder named /dn1

Mounting Operation

Now it is time to check how our hadoop namenode is configured with new LV Lets SEE!!!🤔

we can check it using

hadoop dfsadmin -report

hadoop logs

Yippee we can see our configured LV of 3GB is attached to our Namenode🥳

NOW its time to Complete automate the same process using Python Scripting which makes it MUCH EASY
Contribute limited/specific amount of storage as slave to the cluster
By: Bhavesh Kakrotra
Tags: Hadoop, Technology, DevOps, Big Data, Linux

Contribute limited/specific amount of storage as slave to the cluster

Lets suppose we set up a Hadoop cluster with just one data node

We notice that all of our hard disk capacity has been contributed to the cluster, which is 8GB in this case.

To be able to control the size of this data node we create a new volume and attach it to our data node using AWS CLI.

Stop the data node.

Partition the attached volume, format it and set the mount point to the location of contributed storage. Then start the data node.

Now if we check the web UI of the Hadoop cluster we see that we have successfully changed the size contributed by the data node.

Feel free to contact on my LinkedIn.
Increase and Decrease the size of Static Partition😎
By: Upmanyu Sharma
Tags: Hadoop, Redhat Linux, Linux, Partition

In this article, We are going to learn how we can increase and decrease the size of Static Partition.🧐

We are going to use the Ec2 instances on AWS.

Let us attach the volume to our instance on AWS.

Now we have to create a partition in the volume attached to the instance.

Format the Partition

Now mount the partition on folder /dn1.

Now How we can increase the size of the partition.

For that, we have to firstly unmount the /dn1 folder.

Now we have to delete the partition to create a new partition with an increased size.

Now we can create a new partition with increased size.

Now we have to format the partition.

Mount the partition on the folder and you can see the increased size using the command: df -h

Now, For Decreasing Size.

We have to check and repair the file system.

Then we have to resize the file system for reducing the size.

Mount the partition on the folder (eg. dn1 in our case)

Here you can see the size has been decreased.

Thank You for reading my article. 😊
Hadoop The Stuffed Elephant.
Tags: Hadoop, Big Data

“So, this Hadoop thing can handle the heat ?”

Yes, it can. At its core, Hadoop is a framework for storing data on large clusters of commodity computer hardware that is affordable and easily available and running applications against that data. A cluster is a group of computers interconnected to each other. These working computers are called as nodes. These computers are capable of working on the same problems individually. They share the computational workloads and take advantage of the large aggregate bandwidth across the cluster. A cluster consists of a master node, which looks over the storage and processing of the incoming data, and under these master nodes work *ahem* slaves, (Yep that’s what its called don’t look at me) which store all the cluster’s data and here the data also gets processed.

Kinda like the group project you work in but its not just you working. Using networks of affordable compute resources to acquire business insight is the key value proposition of Hadoop.

So, there are two components in Hadoop, MapReduce & HDFS. MapReduce is a distributed processing framework and HDFS is the Hadoop Distributed File System.

At its core, if there is an application to be performed, it gets divided among these interconnected machines (or nodes) in a cluster, and the file distributions system (yes HDFS) will store the data that is processed. A cluster with more machines can processes through a data with much more speed as the amount of parallel computing increases. A Hadoop cluster system with thousands of machines, where HDFS stores data, and MapReduce jobs do their processing near the data, which keeps input-output costs low. MapReduce being flexible in nature enables the development of a wide Hadoop: The Definitive Guidevariety of applications.
How Does Youtube Store So Much Data?
By: Nikhil Agarwal
Tags: Hadoop, YouTube

YouTube is an integral part of your life. And this is true for most people on Earth! This is easily proved by the fact that more than 400 hours of video content is uploaded on YouTube every minute, and approximately 1 billion hours of YouTube videos are watched every day. This makes YouTube the 2nd most popular social media platform in the world with 1.9 billion users (The 1st is Facebook!)

GFS Google File System is a distributed file system developed by Google to manage large scale data in a distributed environment.

Google BigTable is a low latency distributed data storage system built on Google File System to deal with petabyte-scale data spread over thousands of machines. It’s used by over 60 Google products.

Bigtable is a distributed storage system for managing structured data that is designed to scale to a very large size: petabytes of data across thousands of commodity servers.

YouTube, is one of the best examples of services which produces a huge quantity of data in a very short period. Data mining of such an enormous quantity of data is performed using Hadoop and MapReduce to measure performance.

Hadoop is a system which provides a reliable shared storage of such huge datasets on the cloud and also provides an analysis system. The storage is provided by HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System) and analysis by MapReduce. MapReduce is a programming model and an associated implementation for processing large data sets.

Youtube is solving its big data problem using optimal solution of Hadoop cluster and HDFS for YouTube dataset storage and using parallel processing to process large data sets using Map Reduce programming framework.

So , at last I end up by saying that Youtube relies on a massive installation of Hadoop, a highly scalable open-source framework that uses clusters of low-cost servers to solve problems.
Top UI UX Design Inspiration 133
By: They Make Design
Tags: Visual Design, Design, Inspiration, Technology, Art

5 tips to create UI/UX Design Works

There is a set of pre-determined rules followed by other UI designers, thus making it difficult for a designer to provide something new. So, when designing your project, study the trends, study and research other UI designs, but try and make your project original.

1. Be original

I remember one of my colleagues once told me that one of the biggest challenges in designing the UI from scratch is the art of being original. A great UI design project isn’t merely a combination of colors, fonts, images, logos, but a great idea. And, the idea needs to be original, precise and creative.

2. Study user interaction

It is important to study user interaction. Look at the projects developed by others and try to understand how the user interacts with it. How easy is it for the user to use it? What steps does the user need to take? What will be the impact of making certain changes? These questions need to be answered with clarity.

3. Observe first hand

It is important to observe first hand. It is important that you try using the app or any other project which you have designed for yourself. This is one of the most effective ways to understand what users will be feeling once they use your project.

4. Study the trends

It is important to understand the user’s behaviour and what has influenced their interaction with an interface. And then, you can identify what the user needs from the app or any other application. According to the situation, you can implement it accordingly. In this way, the design can be modified.

5. Think and have a vision

Through brainstorming, you can understand what the users want from a product or service. This will help in increasing your popularity with the customers.

Observing changes and modifications during the development of the project is also very important. According to results gathered from observations, changes will be made in the project.

Conclusion

There will be a common trend amongst users, which you can identify. So try to pay attention to it and use it in your projects. In this way, the designs will be accepted.

Think about the future and what can be done for the app. Details are very important in great designs. You can identify it, research it thoroughly, and come with an innovative design that will be liked by everyone.

So before you think of starting your project, you need to think of what you want to do with it.

Be original.
Masterclass for Scribld Creative — A UI/UX Design Case Study
By: Rama Krushna Behera
Tags: UX Design, UI Design, Product Design, Visual Design, Interaction Design

🎈 Solution

In order to build a seamless and hassle-free online learning experience for people who want to learn Creative Arts, I designed a mobile app with user needs and business goals in mind.

Scroll down to know more ⬇⬇⬇
O artista por trás da capa do álbum Xscape de Michael Jackson
By: Mj Beats
Tags: Mj Beats, Michael Jackson, Visual Design, Xscape, Noticias

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
Ustatz syafiul anam
Tags: Desain Grafis, Visual Design, Desain Interior Rumah, Visual Studio, Desain Interior

in The Unpopular Opinions of a Senior Developer
Testing Unmetered Shortforms
By: Michael Knackfuss
Tags: UX Design, Visual Design, Technology, Software Engineering, Culture

Testing Unmetered Shortforms. Is there a difference for posts with or without a title?

Photo by Jason Richard on Unsplash

The initial setup was without title and subtitle as it is here.

I changed to a titled and subtitled version. I couldn’t realise a difference besides the fact that there is a clickable title to open the post. However, as the viewer can read the full post anyway, there is no real benefit – for the visitor.

For you instead, the post that runs just through your stream doesn’t show up with any statistical information. I couldn’t realise any views when opening my Medium home page from a public browser and scrolling down to this post.
And the Winner Is
By: Michael Knackfuss
Tags: UX Design, Visual Design, Technology, Software Engineering, Culture

And the Winner Is

Honestly, the question itself may not make sense. When I have little to tell, I just write a short post. That didn’t use to be the attitude of professional writers anyway. They always had to say a lot — and if they didn’t, their self-esteem suffered.

Today, the mix of long narratives and short thoughts is quite okay. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Photo by Joshua Golde on Unsplash

The question is more whether I want to monetise my short posts, too.

I enjoy short forms when I don’t have to hide my stuff behind a paywall. It’s short writing for me and instant reading for my followers and everyone else. So, these posts will be useful for pointing out my other posts and things inside and outside of Medium.

If I have a large following, then putting the shortforms behind the paywall might also work well, as my readers will click on the snippets of text and the illustrated headlines to see the full post and make me some money.

So the winner is me because I can choose what I want based on what my goals are.
Number 3 in Shortforms
By: Michael Knackfuss
Tags: UX Design, Visual Design, Technology, Software Engineering, Culture

Number 3 in Shortforms

Having made a couple of experiences yesterday, I’m going now to write a ‘normal’ post that is only shorter than 150 words at all.

However, it has a title and subtitle and will get an inline picture after I have published the pure text post.

The result comes as predicted and truncates the text after about 40 words. So, there is no difference whether using a bold first sentence or couple of words or using a title with subtitle. The title option opens the possibility to have a link to click on and open the post itself.
Website Dashboard UI Examples Inspiration 82
By: They Make Design
Tags: Visual Design, Design, Inspiration, Technology, Business

Digital dashboard is one of the key elements of today’s digital internet environment. We use them for tracking web analytics, for working with our sales leads, for managing our client base and much more.

Digital dashboard may be laid out to track the flows inherent in the business processes that they monitor. Graphically, users may see the high-level processes and then drill down into low level data.

Digital dashboards may be laid out to track the flows inherent in the business processes that they monitor. Graphically, users may see the high-level processes and then drill down into low level data.

This level of detail is often buried deep within the corporate enterprise and otherwise unavailable to the senior executives. So here are seven tips about Digital Dashboard Inspiration in UI/UX Design

Digital Dashboard is a useful website analytics and statistics tool for your website which will help you on how to increase your website’s conversion rates and help to optimize your website for highest conversion possible.

So here are seven tips about Digital Dashboard Inspiration in UI/UX Design

1. Take advantage of the Gantt charts and Schedule Drawings to visualize key tasks within the process and the critical path(s). Gantt chart shows the schedule for a project’s tasks, milestones, and activities.

2. Think about how to help the user recognize the impact of a delay in the process. These two charts — Critical Path and Cumulative Flow Diagram — are helpful. The existing PM tools are sufficient for visualizing and optimizing the existing workflows.

3. Visualization of the data is undoubtedly one of the most effective methods of winning the battle for the user’s mind. This one chart alone can be worth more than 10 pages of specification. Visualization of the data is undoubtedly one of the most effective methods of winning the battle for the user’s mind.

4. For simplicity, create one overview table for your dashboard. The tables with several dozen rows are not very helpful unless you need to compare several numbers. Each UI/UX Designer should have access to the raw data and be able to compare data and create custom reports.

5. So do all the hard work upfront. Always use summary (scatter) charts rather than the detailed table with 10⁶ rows. Always use summary (scatter) charts rather than the detailed table with 10⁶ rows.

6. Interpretative graphics (pie, bar, line) are most appropriate for showing results and making comparisons. Often it is not necessary to show all the comparisons, for example in a dashboard for 10 sales managers, it may be sufficient to show top 3 salespeople.

7. When you have the data, it is time to make it shiny. This is not about the fancy data visualization; what is most important is to make the data understandable. This is not about the fancy data visualization; what is most important is to make the data understandable.
What if these everyday applications were tweaked a bit?
By: Manpriya Guliani
Tags: UX Design, User Experience, Visual Design, Interaction Design, User Research

During my first lesson in Human Computer Interaction many years ago, our professor mentioned that we will never see the world the same way every again. It is true, absolutely true! Since then, I can’t go around without thinking about how something might be quite hard to use for some people and it could be so much easier if it was changed this way or that way. Today, I sit to write about some such thoughts of mine. I have seen my near and dear ones struggle with and get frustrated by some of the things you are about to read about. Dear readers, I would love to know what you think about them.

IKEA unavailable articles:

I love Ikea and I have been a regular customer for a long time now. But, when you are shopping from Ikea online and you have spent a lot of time deciding what to buy, it is really frustrating to find out at the very end that some products are actually not available. While you are skimming through product lists or looking at details of the products, sometimes there is no indication that the product might not be available.
Confusing Settings for Shortforms
By: Michael Knackfuss
Tags: UX Design, Visual Design, Technology, Software Engineering, Culture

Confusing Settings for Shortforms. Easy Is Different.

Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash

Well, no excuses, I am the stupid who has got the problems with such an easy thing. And, of course, there was no need to test around and make things more complicated than necessary but …

Anyone else out there who thinks that the procedure could indulge more simplicity and predictability than what is there right now?

Maybe, a checkbox to click that the post is a shortform post and writers don’t have to deal with strange formatting options?
Shortforms Testing
By: Michael Knackfuss
Tags: UX Design, Visual Design, Technology, Software Engineering, Culture

Shortforms Testing. Is The Initial Setup Causing Bizarre Behaviours?

Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash

When making shortform posts, I made the experience that some posts behave as the help tools and articles describe it. Others have their own life and look differently.

So, I was suspicious if the initial setup of the post determines the look it appears later. Changes after that might not have any effect.

This one here got a picture after the initial setup without pictures was published.

The author’s home page view resulted like shown below.

So far, everything is following the descriptions.

My next test was to change the formatting of the first sentence using the quotation mark icon. This change altered the text displayed on the picture and used the sentence following the first paragraph as the label text.

Interestingly, this result appeared only once. Now the text on the picture is gone and the post displays in full.

I’ll keep you posted.
My Shortforms Experience
By: Michael Knackfuss
Tags: UX Design, Visual Design, Technology, Software Engineering, Culture

My Shortforms Experience

Probably I Just Don’t Get It

This is a shortform post without pictures. I didn’t use a title and subtitle. According to the latest update Medium published, the author’s home page should display a 30 words excerpt.

So far. So good.
Shortform Is Fun
By: Michael Knackfuss
Tags: UX Design, Visual Design, Technology, Software Engineering, Culture

Today, I’ve been testing with shortform posts on Medium.

Tomas Smith’s article was the reason to see what I could do with Shortform Posts on Medium. Medium itself changed some things that let their monetized alternative to Twitter fall behind the latter. The viewers can only read the (metered) post if they click and open the article. The news feed style is then gone.

My tests show shortform posts can have a title and subtitle too. The amount of words in the post is the only measure whether a metered article appears with a picture plus title or an article excerpt plus the read-more-link.

Shortform posts are not eligible for further distribution by Medium.

In my next post, I will try to find out where it makes sense to use shortform posts.

As for now, changing from bold first sentence to title with subtitle and adding pictures show bizarre behaviors of the Medium back end. Some post shrink to just the picture with a caption on it. Others display their content in full.

I’ll keep you posted.
Authors Licensing and Copyright Society
By: Eric Sutherland
Tags: Alcs, Visual Design, Authors, Alcs News Dec 2020, Author Comps

Research and write business and technical articles, ebooks and Paperbacks on Amazon and Teacher Resources in TES Shop. https://biztechiewritingservices.blogspot
7 predicted UX trends for the 2021
By: Kairos Euriah
Tags: User Experience, Visual Design, UX, Technology, UI

7 predicted UX trends for the 2021

Predicted UX trends for 2021. VR headset and 3D objects by Freepix.

To say that 2020 was a rollercoaster ride is an understatement. While it was a year of pure chaos from a health, social, and political perspective, it was also a fast-paced 12 months of product, innovation, and experience.

With 2020 nearly behind us, let’s check out what the 7 predicted UX trends are for 2021.

1. Digital health is trending

As if we hadn’t heard enough of COVID-19, but the pandemic has been the instigator of new digital health opportunities including wearables, telemedicine, and artificial intelligence. And in 2021, we can expect these behaviours to continue to trend.

We have also seen some impressive self-monitoring applications being applied to wearables, providing instant data visualisations on steps, sleep, heart rate or blood pressure. These sophisticated functionalities empower users to take charge of their own health and inform them on how to make lifestyle changes.

The healthcare artificial intelligence software, hardware, and services market is predicted to surpass $34 billion worldwide by 2025 — source.

Telemedicine design concept by Rabi Islam

Telemedicine — the practice of doctors consulting patients virtually — increased significantly during the pandemic as people were encouraged to reduce their physical encounters. We can expect this type of remote interaction to continue to trend as health services look to distribute their skills and funds to the patients in most need.

Then there’s artificial intelligence. Precision medicine, genomics, drug discovery, and medical imaging will all be empowered by AI; take cancer treatments, for example, by using AI’s pattern recognition, doctors can prescribe personalised treatment plans tailored to a patient’s genetic makeup and lifestyle.
Love it, thanks for sharing.
By: Bryan Dijkhuizen
Tags: Marketing, Visual Design, Design, Graphic Design, Medium

Love it, thanks for sharing.
Best Branding and Logo Design Examples for Inspiration 117
By: They Make Design
Tags: Marketing, Visual Design, Design, Inspiration, Business

Tips from TMDesign editors

1. Take a look at your logo.

Is it too busy? Does it need to be more simple? Is your logo missing a key detail? Play around with the colors, details, and light and shadows on your logo. Adjust the position of the logo on your website or adjust the typeface for the logo to add more color. Don’t be afraid to try a new typeface or font. Information will always come when you set your mind to it. Your logo is the face of your brand. It’s like a family, or a pair of shoes. You are not going to be able to change it every day, but you can improve it. It is an essential part of your brand so find inspiration in it!

a. Take a look at your competitor.

Observe how they are doing it compared to you. Ask yourself: What are some other brands that are similar to me? Figure out why you are in a different place and what makes you stand out. The perspective that you have on what you do is unique.

b. Think about what you do.

What makes you different? Does your business make you feel inspired? What makes you happy? Write down these emotions.

c. Recreate the essence of your brand.

Write down your brand’s feelings, the emotions it invokes, and the experience it inspires. You may either be able to convey these in a wordy explanation or you can translate the emotion or feeling into a logo.

d. Re-create the essence of your brand.

If you are able to capture your brand feelings then you should be able to create a logo.

2. Identify your favorite brand.

This could be a large company, or a small business. It could be technical, or artistic. Look at their online presence and who knows, you might be surprised by what you learn about yourself and find inspiration.

3. Find a brand that you admire

and figure out what it is about the brand that really moves you. You might be surprised at what you like in a brand that’s not in your space.

4. Go for a look at where the folks you admire are coming from

and the environment that inspires them. Why are they doing what they are doing? What do they handle well?

5. Find out who you should be looking at as a model.

What are the businesses around the world that make a good presentation online, environmentally, and in print?

6. Take a look at what you have to work with.

Do you have the money to hire someone to do all this?

7. Notice your environment.

What inspires you? What do you love about your business and brand? What do you dislike?

8. Notice you are surrounded by other people.

What are other people telling you? What do they like?

9. Notice your customers.

Do you like them? Do you like the decisions your customers make?
The visual designer I’d love to work with
By: Jos Schuurmans
Tags: Web Design, Graphic Design, Visual Design, Brand Design

The short version?

If you are a visual (/brand) designer and up for the occasional brand or web design gig while I tinker with content flows and wireframes — or if you know someone who fits the description -, then let’s have a chat!

The slightly longer version:

I help companies to get their story straight. Sometimes that starts with interviewing the founders and literally writing up their story. Sometimes it involves creating a calendar for their content marketing. And sometimes we need to take a step back to figure out their marketing strategy, or even their brand proposition, first.

Quite often, the result is that we optimise their website for lead generation. I help them create a content flow that guides visitors towards a particular Call to Action (CtA), for example to book a demo, talk with an expert, or download an ebook. In practice, that means that I create simple wireframes and copy-write the content.

At that stage, my client may have engaged a design agency already, who may have created the brand design, the design language for the website, and possibly done some front-end work. I’ve had very good experiences working together with agencies as they converted my wireframes and copy into an online experience that is visually appealing.

However, it also happens regularly that clients ask me to help them with the visual front-end design, or even brand design. While I’m quite comfortable with HTML, CSS and WordPress (I develop, host and maintain WP websites), my visual design skills can be a limiting factor. In such cases, I’d love to have a designer by my side to work on a client’s project.

So that’s it: I’m looking for a visual design buddy to work with me on brand and web design, as well as the occasional slide deck and ebook. Ping me!

jos@cluetail.com
Designing onboarding screens for Finin — a financial app
By: Abhi Mahamkali
Tags: UX Design, Visual Design, Finance, Mobile Apps, Ux Writing

Identify a simple user journey

Onboarding has a great impact on the customer. This is the place in the whole user journey the customer creates a first impression on the product. The longer and boring boarding are the higher chances of the customer getting pissed.

It's really not important to take birthdates, addresses, alternate numbers at the time of onboarding. Remember, the longer it takes the lesser engagement.

the shortest journey that I figured

I’ll go through each screen and explain how better we can create that experience.

Make an impression with your splash screen
UX 工作者的浪漫
By: Daniel Lee
Tags: Quotes, Visual Design, Design, UX, Careers

UX 工作者的浪漫

不知道是不是大家都跟我一樣，都曾經被這句話觸動：

The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

— <Here’s to The Crazy One> by Apple
Stop using style tiles when presenting design work
By: Logan Debiase
Tags: Visual Design, Design, Design Systems, Branding, UI

Designers often get the visual ball rolling on a new project with a few ‘style tiles’ to help a client pick a visual direction. They look like headless UI kits with color swatches, typography samples, and graphs out of context. The problem with the format is they compare surface-level details, not the experience of the product. When you show surface-level details, you will receive surface-level comments. “I don’t like the red” or “mix these two together” is usually the subjective feedback. This puts the designer in a bit of a pickle without a clear direction on how to make decisions. Here’s the remedy:

Run a Brand Experience Workshop

Thanks to Cooper! They have since shut down but taught great leadership classes.

If you’d like to know more about this type of workshop, you can read more here in long-form.

Synthesize Words

After the workshop, you’re left with a ton of great descriptors. Organize them into buckets. You’re looking for 4–5 key attributes that best describe the brand in the form of adjectives. You’re looking for positive words that support those key attributes. And don’t throw away those negative words, they are just as important in defining something. Like measuring anti-matter by measuring the matter around it… Think about the many different factors like competitive landscape, other sub-brands, parent brand, brand story, target demographic, research insights, etc. The product is always more defined when these attributes create some tension with each other. When they push and pull at each other is where an interesting brand experience can lie. Why? Because humans have tension within themselves—this is personality.

Get familiar with these words, they should drive everything about the product, even the architecture should be subject to influence from these words.

Deliver Pillars and Spectrums

Here’s an example of pillars that create the brand box, this is where the brand experience can live.
A dramatic visualisation of Terms & Conditions
By: Simon Robinson
Tags: UX Design, Visual Design, UX, Terms And Conditions, Graphic Design

Dima’s work has also been exhibited at the Visualizing Knowledge showcase in Finland. In the picture below you can see the terms and conditions for WhatsApp, Google, Tinder, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram.

Credit: Dima Yarovinsky

What is strong about this particular visualisation project is the way in which the length of terms and conditions are a physical representation of the true attitudes of the companies towards their customers.

The recent scandal relating to Facebook and Cambridge Analytica has really highlighted to people just how much information these companies know about us and how this information is actually used.

On May 25 of 2018, a General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR law that restricts how personal data is collected and handled will came into effect in Europe. This law was designed to help people know, understand, and consent to the data collected about them.

Unlike the incredibly dense and complex terms and conditions in these photographs above, companies now have to be clear and concise about what data they are collecting and how they are using it, for example, full name, home address, location data, IP address, or the identifier that tracks web and app use on smartphones.

The law is already having an impact on companies’ activities. As Wired reported:

“Google announced that it would stop mining emails in Gmail to personalize ads. (The company says that was unrelated to GDPR and done in order to harmonize the consumer and business versions of Gmail.) In September, Google revamped its privacy dashboard, first launched in 2009, to be more user-friendly. In January, Facebook announced its own privacy dashboard, which has yet to launch. Though the law applies only in Europe, the companies are making changes globally, because it’s simpler than creating different systems.”

Source

There is still a long way to go before full trust is restored in Facebook, and many people are now deciding to either leave, or heavily restrict their use. It will be interesting to see the long term impact of the new European privacy law, but for now it is clear that companies will no longer be able to treat their users as being naive and having no idea about their true business models, as opposed to their stated purposes such as “connecting people” and such like.
Clube iFood — Um clube para os amantes de food delivery
By: Nathalia Dourado
Tags: Craft, Research, Visual Design, Graphic Design, Digital Design

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How to Not Get Fooled by Charts
Tags: Business, Visual Design, Design, Analytics

Data Literacy

How to Not Get Fooled by Charts

Any chart, no matter how well designed, will mislead us if we don’t pay attention to it. — Alberto Cairo

I’ve been fooled by charts, some made by others, some made by me. Because charts tend to be associated with science and reason. Once data is represented in a visual format, it “attains a kind of literal concrete quality that makes one think it is accurate”.

Chart designed poorly can easily mislead without detection, even when the designer doesn’t have ill-intent. If you don’t want to be misled by charts, you should first know how to read a chart. When you are equipped with that, look out for what I have laid out below.

When interviewing analytics/visualization candidates, these can also help you quickly differentiate the experienced from the novice.