fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
The Price of a Lesson Learned
By: Brian Ford
Tags: Lessons Learned, Gratitude, Lessons, Ownership, Life

Transcribed from the podcast “Self Improvement Daily”.

Well, I have to break it to you — I’m not perfect. I recently made a few mistakes and paid the price, quite literally, it cost me a lot of money. But in that moment, and reflecting on the situation, I have learned a valuable lesson that will continue to make that money well invested.

So, about two months ago, in the morning I got up and got in the car to go to work, only to find that there was a crack in my windshield. It was disappointing of course, but it was small, so I didn’t think much of it. Then as time passed, the crack continued to creep further and further across my windshield until it got to a point where repairing it was unavoidable. So I booked an appointment to get it fixed at the dealer.

Well let me tell you, that was not the right decision. Not only was it much more expensive than it needed to be, but the dealership doesn’t accept insurance, and I got jerked around by the staff trying to get a ride, making me late for work. It was frustrating and I was getting upset.

But then I decided to be in control, or as I say every day, take ownership of the situation. It was my fault that I let the car get to this point, and I could have managed the crack better before it required a full windshield repair. I could have been more proactive about reaching out to insurance earlier to understand how to best handle the situation, and I didn’t. And also, I have so many knowledgeable friends and family who could have guided me through the process of what I should have done, but I didn’t ask anyone. That’s on me. I realized that my frustration and emotion could have been avoided had I done something differently.

But after taking ownership I was able to take a position of gratitude — how lucky I was to have a car, and for this repair to be the only thing I needed. There is SO much worse out there and I tried to keep that in perspective. And then of course the lessons I learned — Don’t procrastinate when it comes to things you don’t know much about, and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

I’ll take those with me for years to come!

Thanks for taking the time to read, and follow to never miss a tip again! Or if you prefer to listen, all tips are available by audio here. They can also be found on every major podcasting site by searching “Self Improvement Daily”.
What I Learnt After Being curated 5 time
By: Randomly Useful
Tags: Lessons, Writing, Myths, Curation, Medium

What I Learnt After Being curated 5 time

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Five of my stories were curated in the past 25 days.

These four articles were curated, but none of them received more than 60 view. Though it was chosen for further distribution none of them received a lot of views. But the below article received more than 600 views at the time of writing.

Now let me tell you what I learnt from this.

Medium distributes it to a few people once an article is curated. If the read ratio is above 55% then the article will be distributed further. In my case the first four stories has less than 45% read ration which is why Medium stopped distributing it further, because medium wants your article to be compelling, so that it can make people stay on the platform.

Screen shot of Author’s stats

The fifth article about space made my stats look like a roller coaster, the read ratio was above 57%.

Here are my tips for you to make the article reach more people after curation:

Make your title compelling.

The subtitle is your second chance to pull viewers to read your articles.

Add humour subtly to your article. I noticed in the space article that it had some sense of humour while the other four didn’t have.

Use some attractive pictures. Try gathering pictures from various sources that are royalty free.

Then, while I was starting out on medium I heard some rumours about medium. Few myths about medium are:

Photo by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash

You get into curation jail, if you don’t get curated within your first three articles. But my first curated article was my 20th piece of work on medium.

But my first curated article was my 20th piece of work on medium. You get curated within two or three hours of publishing. My articles took minimum of five days to get curated, it may even take weeks.

My articles took minimum of five days to get curated, it may even take weeks. You don’t get curated if you write about medium but that’s not true. (Note to the Curator: Hey curator, please don’t embarrass me by not curating this article.)

but that’s not true. (Note to the Curator: Hey curator, please don’t embarrass me by not curating this article.) You have to write your own personal stories to get curated . No, my most viewed article was about space.

. No, my most viewed article was about space. You get an email from medium if you get curated . This is absolutely false. Medium never sent me an article stating about my curation. I found it out myself while checking the stats.

. This is absolutely false. Medium never sent me an article stating about my curation. I found it out myself while checking the stats. Curators are not bad guys, they are so sweet.You will only feel it when you don’t get curated often, not everyone can understand the point.

So that’s what I learnt about medium after writing for a month now.This just my point of view. Hope this article was insightful.
3 Lessons to Succeed as a New Software Engineer
By: Nathan Yang
Tags: Engineering, Software Engineer, Reflections, New Grad, Lessons

Even though I still feel like one sometimes, I’m no longer considered a new grad. As of the writing of this, it’s been two years since I graduated from UCLA and joined Redfin as a software engineer.

A lot has happened in that time: getting my first promotion, switching teams, winning a hackathon, and shipping a lot of great software. I’ve also been fortunate enough to have grown so much in an incredibly open and supportive environment at Redfin. Here are the biggest lessons I’ve learned so far, along with some advice for those early in their careers.

🧠 Prioritize for impact, not perfection.

Going into Redfin, I was very much in the student mentality where everything had to be done to perfection. As a student, the goal was to get A’s, but I quickly had to readjust my mindset since that’s not how things work in industry. There are often way more ideas than there are engineers to implement them so work should be prioritized and done based on potential impact.

This dilemma can manifest in several ways. One situation could be building a product with only a few features that solve an important problem rather than building all the features that were thought of. Another could be fixing a few bugs that account for the majority of a team’s errors rather than fixing the highest number of bugs possible. There’s always the opportunity to iterate and tackle the other work in the future.

There’s a principle called the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, that was shared with me that’s especially relevant here. Essentially, the principle states that we should aim to deliver 80% of the value with 20% of the effort/time. This has helped me gauge priorities and reason what we should and shouldn’t work on.

Similarly for personal growth, prioritizing what you do so you’re making the highest impact on your areas of growth can help you meet your goals and get you to the next step in your career faster, whether that’s getting a promotion or that dream job. The next time you work on something, I challenge you to question whether it’s the most important thing you could be doing right now and whether you can re-prioritize your work to make the highest impact possible.
What A 75 Year Old Man Taught Me About Life
By: Ananya Dube
Tags: Friendship, Lessons, Love, This Happened To Me, Life

What A 75 Year Old Man Taught Me About Life

I met him first in the park. I was running and there was a lizard on the track. So I obviously stopped and shrieked. This old man was walking behind me, smiled and shooed the lizard away. I thanked him and carried on with my run. I crossed him at least 10 times that day and when I was leaving the park that evening, he waved me goodbye. Surprised and slightly creeped out, I waved back.

The next day we met again, this time he waved and wished “Good morning”. I being a typical millennial, removed my airpod and asked him what he was saying. He shook his head and said nothing, nothing. And just smiled. I felt awfully guilty. I kept looking out for him in the park that day just so I could ask him what he was saying but I think he left soon after that.

I didn’t see over the next few days and I was really disappointed.

I saw him again after a week, this time he was holding his wife’s hand and both of them were strolling in the park. I made it a point to remove my airpods and greet both of them and they returned the warmest smiles and greetings. I immediately felt nice.

I continued to see him in the park every morning, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by his wife, however, the smiles and warmness remained intact.

One day as I was stretching after my run, he asked me what do I do. I hadn’t had a conversation with him until then and explaining a boomer what Tech Strategy Consulting is wasn’t my strongest suite. But I tried and he nodded. (A few weeks later he told me that he was a scientist. Haha)

Slowly and steadily, the old man became my most cherished conversation of the day. I would finish my run and walk or sit by him for a few minutes just to have a conversation. His wife, joined us on a lot of days, and they always welcomed me like a child. One day, I told them I’m almost 27, and they laughed away about how they were over the digits reversed!

Sometimes he’d leave little learnings in statements that would make me feel profound. His children called him back to his hometown a couple of weeks ago, so I don’t see him anymore. We never exchanged phone numbers because he believed in fate and the power of it to bring some people into our lives for a reason. He said he met me because he lacked youth in his life, and talking to me made him feel young again. And here I am, cribbing about how old I am turning.

Every time, I spoke to him, I felt comforted. For someone who grew up without grandparents, it made my heart so full. Little did I know, I was getting attached and how.
The Heart Sutra
By: John Szabo
Tags: Guan Yin, Buddhism, Chinese, Mindfulness, Translation

The Heart Sutra

Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

Chanting the Heart Sutra is a popular Buddhist practice in East Asia for several reasons. First, it is one of the shortest sacred texts, which makes it convenient for even people who lead busy lives. It is also a daily practice of my wife and me. Despite being short, it’s very condensed: it can be easily considered to contain the very essence of Buddhist wisdom. Hence the full title: The Heart (essence) of the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajnaparamita).

Second, it’s a sutra whose main character is Guanyin Bodhisattva (appearing with another name, Guanzizai (觀自在), which is another Chinese translation of the Sanskrit Avalokitesvara. Guanyin, the personification of the Buddhist ideal of Compassion, often seen as a mother-figure is immensely popular among practitioners. This adds to the popularity of the Heart Sutra as well.

Guanyin is one of the most popular figures in East Asian Buddhism. Photo by Denny Ryanto on Unsplash

This translation of the Heart Sutra is primarily meant for English-speaking practitioners, who nevertheless, for one reason or another, prefer to adhere to the tradition of chanting the sutra in Chinese.

The principles behind the translation are simple:

It should be easy-to-follow, at a reasonable speed, to chant in Chinese, while being able to understand the underlying English text.

Wherever possible, the English should correspond one-to-one to the Chinese characters.

If this is not possible, at least maintain understandability in English.

Prefer shorter, simpler words to aid quick comprehension.

Clearly signal Sanskrit transliterations, by rendering them in all-caps.

The full Chinese text, with modern punctuations:

般若波羅蜜多心經

觀自在菩薩，行深般若波羅蜜多時，照見五蘊皆空，度一切苦厄。舍利子！色不異空，空不異色；色即是空，空即是色，受想行識亦復如是。舍利子！是諸法空相，不生不滅，不垢不淨，不增不減。是故，空中無色，無受想行識；無眼耳鼻舌身意；無色聲香味觸法；無眼界，乃至無意識界；無無明，亦無無明盡，乃至無老死，亦無老死盡；無苦集滅道；無智亦無得。以無所得故，菩提薩埵。依般若波羅蜜多故，心無罣礙；無罣礙故，無有恐怖，遠離顛倒夢想，究竟涅槃。三世諸佛，依般若波羅蜜多故，得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提。故知：般若波羅蜜多是大神咒，是大明咒，是無上咒，是無等等咒，能除一切苦，真實不虛。故說般若波羅蜜多咒，即說咒曰：揭諦揭諦，波羅揭諦，波羅僧揭諦，菩提薩婆訶。

The translation follows below:

Please do not hesitate to let me know if you spot any errors, or if you have any suggestions to improve.
Convivium in C-F-A (“Party in the USA” in Latin)
By: In Medias Res
Tags: Latin, Miley Cyrus, Carmina Convivalia, Translation, America

Convivium in C-F-A (“Party in the USA” in Latin)

Image of Cyrus courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

[Editor’s Note: The Vatican uses the term “Civitates Foederatae Americae” for “United States of America,” and that’s the source of the title of this song, “Convivium in C-F-A” (pronounced “kay-eff-ah”). ] It’s another great song translation from California Latin teacher Luke Henderson, who has been using songs like this with his Latin students for decades. This is a hard song to sing in English or Latin — the instrumental parts do not lead the vocals along, so you need to know the vocal melody well. But it’s something to be able to say you’ve got a Miley Cyrus song in Latin, and the chorus “convivium in C-F-A” is usable all by itself.]

Convivium in C-F-A (“Party in the USA”)

(Miley Cyrus)(Gottwald/Cornish/Kelly)(tr. Henderson)[2009]

descendi æronavigio

incitata cum thorace.

libent gloria, luxuria

me nimis audace.

taxiræda

huc advena sum vecta,

in dextra titulus Acrifoliensis.

puto me turbari.

omnes homines præclari.

male me habeo, desideroque domum,

anxia, sollicitata.

deinde accenditur radiophonium,

et Jay Z carmen auditur

et Jay Z carmen auditur

et Jay Z carmen auditur.

CHORUS:

manibus sublatis

auditur meum

quo melius me habeam,

capite annuens,

et coxis me movens.

manibus sublatis

auditur meum

quo bene res eveniat.

io, est convivium in C-F-A!

io, est convivium in C-F-A!

ad discothecam ræda vehor

nunc ab omnibus spectata.

“certe ista venit alias

quæ insolitest ornata?

difficilest absque amicis,

nec hoc convivium Nasburgiense,

altis modo et acutis

sic calceis omnes indutis.

male me habeo, desideroque domum,

anxia, sollicitata.

deinde accenditur stereophonium,

Britannia dein auditur

Britannia dein auditur

Britannia dein auditur.

[CHORUS]

manibus sublatis

auditur meum

quo melius me habeam,

capite annuens,

et coxis me movens.

manibus sublatis

auditur meum

quo bene res eveniat.

io, est convivium in C-F-A!

io, est convivium in C-F-A!

veh’æronavigio (‘vigio)

domum hac nocte volo. (‘te volo)

aliquid me prohibet. (prohibet)

audito carmine atque valeo!

[CHORUS]

manibus sublatis

auditur meum

quo melius me habeam,

capite annuens,

et coxis me movens.

manibus sublatis

auditur meum

quo bene res eveniat.

io, est convivium in C-F-A!

io, est convivium in C-F-A!
How hard is to become a US Citizen?
Tags: Translation Companies, Translation Services, Certified Translation, Translation Agency, Translation

How hard is to become a US Citizen

Many people ask this question, that how hard is it to become a US citizen? Though people from all continents are interested in becoming US citizens, the current administration has made the processing very difficult. The main problems while migrating to the US involve the high budget that causes financial problems. Some people find it hard to adjust without the support of any US relative.

The process of applying for US migration is very complex due to the USCIS requirements. Therefore, it is very hard for other nationalists to understand the procedure. A helpful option, in this case, is to hire a lawyer who can explain all the details to you. Some people change their homeland because they don’t get enough opportunities in the country they live in. Though, the reason for migration can be different for different people. But as a whole, becoming a lawful permanent US resident is a hard thing to do because of the changes in the immigration system.

How to know if you are eligible or not?

If you want to unravel the question of how hard is it to become a US citizen, then the first step is crucial. You must check whether you can apply for immigration to U.S. or not. You are a US citizen already if you are born there or your parents live there. But if you are not a US citizen prior, then you need to apply for it. In case, you want to become a green card holder, you need to follow a long procedure instead of just filling out the form. There are several other requirements set by the current administration that you need to speak English fluently, an understanding of the history of America, and few more things. Then you should pay the application fees. The process can be time-consuming which makes it a bit difficult.

How to become a permanent U.S. resident?

You can become a U.S. resident through the following procedure:

Confirm whether you are eligible for the process or not.

Next, you need to go through the naturalization process. You will send an application to USCIS to proceed with the interview and test. Make sure to clear the test and pass the interview because it will be the key gate for you to become a US citizen.

Then you decide whether you want to become a green card holder or a permanent resident of the United States.

In case, you’re well-educated, you will get US citizenship within the next 5 years. But if you have married a US citizen, then it will take 3 years for you to become a green card owner. In all of the cases, only lawful permanent residents of the US can apply for citizenship.
Gwendolyn Brooks | cuando hayas olvidado el domingo: historia de amor
By: Gerardo Velázquez
Tags: Poetry, Traducción, Poesia, Gwendolyn Brooks, Translation

when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story (1945)

— And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday,

And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday —

When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed,

Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon

Looking off down the long street

To nowhere,

Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation

And nothing-I-have-to-do and I’m-happy-why?

And if-Monday-never-had-to-come —

When you have forgotten that, I say,

And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell,

And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang;

And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner,

That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner

To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles

Or chicken and rice

And salad and rye bread and tea

And chocolate chip cookies —

I say, when you have forgotten that,

When you have forgotten my little presentiment

That the war would be over before they got to you;

And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed,

And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end

Bright bedclothes,

Then gently folded into each other —

When you have, I say, forgotten all that,

Then you may tell,

Then I may believe

You have forgotten me well.
Build an Awesome UI for your Machine Learning Models
By: Salma El Shahawy
Tags: Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, User Interface, Python3

What is Gradio?

Gradio is an open-source Python library that allows you to build a user interface for machine learning models and deploy it in a few lines of code. If you worked with Dash or Streamlit in python before, it’s similar; however, it integrates directly with notebooks and doesn’t require a separate python script.

How does it work?

It’s simple to use; to render an interface, we need five components: the first three we have the freedom to customize depending on the use-case of your model, and the last two are bound to rendering and deploying:

An input component: defines the type of the input (file, textbox, image upload, etc.) An output component: defines the type of output (file, textbox, label, audio, etc.) The callable function: the primary inference function applied to the input and rendered in the output. That function could be anything from a simple print to a pre-trained model — check the list of the components. The Interface class: is a python class that maps the callable function with the inputs in a rendered interface. The launch() function is responsible for running the application on the gradio server.

Check out more detailed docs and Gradio’s getting started page

Behind the scenes, Gradio uses the Flask framework to build the interface components and runs it locally, then port forwards it on their domain so you have a deployed link (live for 24hr).

If you want a permanent link, you can set it up with a Gradio premium account and Gradio will host your entire application in a docker image on their servers.

Gradio workflow

Calling the launch() generates a public, shareable link that you can freely share as long as your server is on — as it shares the workspace session dependencies. In the case of working on a colab notebook, a sharable link is always automatically created. It usually looks like this: XXXXX.gradio.app. Although the link is associated with the gradio domain, it is only a proxy for your local server, and it doesn’t collect or store data from the hosted interface.

However, be vigilant that these shareable links are publicly accessible, meaning that anyone can access your interface. Accordingly, don’t expose any sensitive data through the input functions or allow any hazardous modifications to occur on your machine. We can overcome this issue by configuring the auth argument in the launch function by setting a username and a password.

If you set share=False (the default), only a local link is created, which you can share by port-forwarding with particular users.

In the next few steps, we will build a user interface for a PDF-to-audiobook converter using Gradio to get more familiar with the library.
Case study: Redesigning the most widely used chatting app
By: Aarti Kava
Tags: User Interface, UI Design, User Experience, UX Design, Case Study

Remember the days when QWERTY keyboards were all the rage? When everyone wanted to own a blackberry and texting meant sending SMSes? Remember how carefully you hd 2 choose evry wrd so that you do not exceed the character limit? Even after all that effort, one painful rupee got deducted for every text message. But then WhatsApp swooped in and saved the day! (along with a lot of relationships 😉)

WhatsApp was just what messaging needed to be. Quick, easy, painless and endless. It is so effective it has become synonymous with texting.

So I set out to re-design Whatsapp, the world’s most popular messaging app, to make it easier to use and more engaging during a 24-hour design sprint.

The challenge was identifying problems in a system that already worked well. Everyone knows how to fix a bad experience. I believe the real test lies in making good things work even better!

Timeline: 24 hrs

Methods: In-Person UX research, Wireframing, UI design, Prototyping (made after the initial timeline)

Tools: Sketch, Figma, Illustrator

Results: ⬆ Ease of use, ⬆ Aesthetic appeal, ⬆ Engagement
Building Design System in React Native 🎨
By: Irem Karaoglu
Tags: Design Systems, Development, User Interface, Mobile App Development, React Native

The design team discussed what kind of buttons will we have, which size, font, colors, and so on. After all, we started to build the components and also made a specific React Native application to see what the design components are. It gives us the benefit of seeing how an upcoming component is compatible with our system, how do they look, and inform us about the design system components. Nowadays, we are updating our products with the new design of the screens using design system components! 🧙🏻‍♀️

If all of these sound complicated, don’t worry it will be clear. Let’s start!

Typography

Text variants were decided and as developers, we created our Text component which takes the variant as a prop and we only use these variants to maintain our design system.

The code snippet shows how we would style a text in a way that probably most of you all know. What we have done is, having stylings and just giving the styling name as a props, and voila! Let’s see how it works.

We called our text component as OtsimoText. It works similarly with the Text component, the only difference is it has the variant props.

Two of the variants are listed below. So, the styling changes according to that variant and it makes our job easier.

Colors

Designers set the color palette that our application will have and as the development team, we created a file to add these colors as constants and named them. We don’t use any other HEX or RGB code, we stay in that color palette.

Some colors are listed below.

Writing style={{ color: colors.yellow.dark1 }} instead of style={{ color: “rgb(245,198, 0, 1.0)” }} is more practical and also prevents typos.

Buttons

Designers designed what kind of buttons we will have and they divided these into three.

Filled Button

Text Button

Iconic Button

So, we created separate components for each of them. They have the Pressable component inside.

Example of our button variants:
Wireframing — Ironhack. Using Sketch, your task is to create a…
By: David L
Tags: Ironhack, Prototyping, User Interface, N26 Bank, Wireframe

Using Sketch, your task is to create a wireframe version of the user flow of the chosen app based on screenshots or high-fidelity prototype screens of such app. Your final product should be a simple 5 screens’ interactive prototype built in Invision or Marvel.

I chose the N26 banking app, because I’m familiar with the user flow and I consider it a good example of UI/UX design.

I chose to wireframe the user flow of ‘MoneyBeam’ which is a way to send money to other N26 users.

User Flow

User logs in to app User clicks on ‘Actions’ at bottom right of screen User selects ‘MoneyBeam’ from Actions page User selects recipient User enters amount they wish to send User can add an optional message User must enter their PIN to confirm User must confirm again

Below are the screenshots from the app, showing the steps taken by the user to transfer money using ‘MoneyBeam’. As a Banking app it is important to have the security confirmation screen(the user has to enter their PIN) as well as a final summary confirmation screen to prevent user errors.

The yellow circles show where the user has to select—note: I blocked out sensitive data

I made a lo-fi wireframe to organise and simplify the user flow in to its most basic parts.

The blue highlight indicates what the user selects

N26 had actually changed the user flow since the last time I used the app. Personally I preferred the old way as it was much clearer ( + symbol on the account summary page). Now the user has to click on the ‘Actions’ button at the bottom right before selecting ‘MoneyBeam’.

After the lo-fi sketch, I made a higher quality wireframe using Sketch. This would in turn be used for the prototype.

Finally I created an interactive prototype using InVision. You can test it yourself by clicking the link below (note that only the MoneyBeam user flow is active on the prototype).
‘Hooking’ Your Audience Using Drag & Drop in React
By: Valerie Nadi
Tags: User Interface, Reactjs, React, API, UI

ReactJS has become one of the leading ways to build efficient, accessible, and fast performing Web applications in JavaScript. React leads the way with functional and accessible programming, championing the User Interface (UI) in a way that simplifies code dramatically.



With a growing ecosystem of libraries and developers behind it, we’ll take a look at how engineers at Salesforce blaze trails with a newer API (Hooks) that hopes to overhaul some key features in React.

Dragging, Dropping, and Hooks

Drag and drop is an intuitive way to animate elements using ReactJS. In most cases, an open source library is sufficient to handle any required animations. However if you wanted to add other elements, you’d have to write it on your own. Hooks create a common way to reuse code by incorporating a single function call to use React features, without writing a class.

“[They] provide a more direct API to the React concepts you already know: props, state, context, refs, and lifecycle. They also offer a new powerful way to combine them.” - ReactJS.org

Hooks were also created to solve for some common problems encountered when coding in ReactJS:

Over time, complex components become difficult to break or test

Classes have a tendency to confuse people and machines

Optimizations that actually end up creating a slower path instead of efficient ones

Essentially, they work as a function to “hook into” the React state and lifecycle features from function components. Another key takeaway is that hooks don’t work inside of classes — allowing you to use React without them.



In Salesforce’s Tech Talks, we’re showing the world how we engineer more than software and lead the way with innovative web technologies. Shay Keinan, a Front-end Architect at Datorama, shows us step-by-step how to master the drag & drop feature using hooks by creating a sortable list.

This Tech Talk covers:

Making the draggable component

Creating a sortable list with drag & drop

Modifying for a smooth release animation

Salesforce Tech Talks: Mastering Drag & Drop Using React hooks

New to hooks? Check out the React v16.8 Release: The One With Hooks. Let us know your thoughts on the future of React, and what you think about hooks as an alternative to classes. If you’re interested in joining the conversation on how Salesforce stays at the forefront of new technologies, check out our careers at Salesforce.
The Path To Achieving Your Vision: The Product Strategy.
By: Allan Kent Lee
Tags: Design, User Interface, User Experience, User Research, Product Strategy

Ready? Here Comes Another UX Case Study

As a UX (user experience) design student at RED Academy, I get the privilege of working with real-life clients on real-life projects. On this particular project I worked in a team of five designers:

Three UI (user interface) designers:

Brett Patriska Jocelyn Cho Luke Yin

and two UX designers:

Allan Lee (myself) Anushka Agrawal

Our client was a start-up company named Unseen Athlete (UA for short), and, as mentioned in the introduction, they were a company with a vision and a mission, but didn’t really know where to go from there — they needed a product strategy. But, before we get to that, we need to start from the beginning. In the first client meeting we learned five things about UA:

1. What their vision and mission are:

Vision

To be the global leader in creating a sports networking site, providing a cutting edge platform for athletes to represent themselves combined with a digital media site curating high-quality sports, wellness and fitness content to entertain, inform, educate and inspire.

Mission

To help athletes be seen as complete human beings, and give them the opportunity to connect with coaches, agents, and health professionals from across the world.

2. What their branding guidelines are:

Unseen Athlete logomark and logotype.

Colours: orange, black, grey, silver (skeuomorphic chrome)

3. Who their desired target users are:

All athletes around the world.

4. Who their competitors are:

Online athletic recruitment platforms such as NCSA Sports, and sports news websites such as CBS Sports.

5. What features they wanted in a website:

Newsfeed

Forums

Events

Groups

Polls

Blogs

Videos

Profiles

Messaging

E-sports

+ more

Coming out of this meeting I knew that we needed to narrow the scope of the project because 1) The project timeline was only three weeks, and 2)

One of the most basic of all product lessons learned is that trying to please everybody will almost certainly please nobody. So the last thing we should do is embark on a ginormous, multi-year effort to create a release that tries to deliver on the product vision. That would truly be the antithesis of the concept of minimum viable product. –Marty Cagan, Founder of Silicon Valley Product Group

But before we could decide on what to put our time and energy into, we needed to do some research into the domain of athlete recruitment and sports news.
eCommerce Product Configurator Examples to Boost Sales
Tags: Ecommerce, User Interface, Product Configurator, UX Design, Shopping Experience

Giving online customers the option to adjust and customize their chosen products while shopping used to be a rather rare occurrence. Last year’s shift in shopping habits has increased this demand significantly, and customers now expect the opportunity to personalize and try on the items online before making a purchase.

Online product configurators help to meet this growing demand.

According to configit.com, the product configuration is an interactive process where the user chooses a feature, which is validated via a configuration rules engine, before allowing the user to make the next choice about the remaining features on their product. Whether they’re shopping for sneakers, interior items, or any other product, configurators allow customers to make real-time adjustments and customizations.

Why are configurators good for online stores?

Reduce returns

Increase margins

Shorter sales cycle

Less inventory

Let's take a look at some great product configurator examples by brands that have implemented them successfully →
Mission Statements Protect Us From Ourselves
By: Ben Mccraw
Tags: App Development, Business Strategy, User Interface, Digital Experience

When a vendor says “but, what’s our mission statement?” it can feel like an agency ploy designed to make everyone feel good while delaying real progress. When done incorrectly, that’s exactly what it is. But I am not talking about a marketing pitch or a tagline. When done right, a powerful mission statement is a succinct declaration that aligns teams and most importantly, protects us from ourselves.

Too often, when dealing with digital products, previously low-tech corporations become overwhelmed by the buffet of possibilities and too often their products fall short. Even the most disciplined industry veterans get seduced by shiny objects masquerading as new opportunities. It’s why so many digital products try too hard to do too much and miss the mark on their original purpose.

A few years ago, Pizza Hut had a struggling mobile app, plagued by technical issues and a bad user interface. Like many companies at the time, their team had fallen victim to fads and the term “gamification” had wormed its way into the brains of the Pizza Hut marketing team and subsequently its mobile products. But when you’re hungry and looking to score a quick dinner, the last thing you want to do is to go on a digital journey through sub-par software.

As we understood it, Pizza Hut had one goal: sell more pizza. So our mission was to create the quickest and easiest way for users to build an order, put in payment info, and move on. We got to work removing any unnecessary barriers and streamlined the entire process, reducing the average ordering time from 14 minutes to four minutes. We even built in a feature to allow users to work from their previous orders, reducing the return order process down to under a minute.

The results were immediate; the app went to four stars in the iTunes app store, up from 2.5. And more importantly, the company showed a 164% increase in online sales in the first week after its release. This didn’t happen by accident. The mission statement did it’s job and helped us clear away any distractions.

With Pizza Hut, things were pretty straightforward, but whether you’re engaged with consumer brands or enterprises, defining a mission should come from conducting stakeholder interviews, doing product audits and competitive analysis, and undertaking a deep-dive discovery of the organization, its people, technology, systems, principles, revenue, and clients. We wrangle all of these diverse, even contradictory, details into a single stated mission that can be evangelized across all aspects of the project team. Every feature we deliver is designed for someone in particular and tied to actual business goals.

Mission statements allow the product’s true value to endure all the struggles of personalities, budgets, timelines, technical challenges, and more. Defining a project’s core purpose, and having everyone working single-mindedly on that purpose is the key to its success.

By Ben McCraw
I wish for a tree-type view of folders on Drive
Tags: User Interface, Google, Onedrive, Google Drive, User Experience

I wish for a tree-type view of folders on Drive Aishvarya Jun 17·3 min read

Do you use Google Drive or OneDrive? Have you ever searched the folders on Drive crazily for a file or document? How frustrating has that process been?

I get you. I use Google Drive predominantly, but have lately been using OneDrive as well. I use both these cloud storage services for two reasons: 1. All files on Drive are easily shareable and 2. Drive give me plenty of space to store files that I otherwise would not have the space for.

I tend to store just anything on my Drive — articles I have written, my thesis, photographs from over the years, my financial account statements, and the list goes on. I am a very organized person. I tend to create folders, name them in a way that is easily searchable, create sub folders and sub-sub-folders to store information in a hierarchical way.

Here’s my problem though —it’s not enough that I store information in a hierarchical way. There has to be a way to view information in a way that does not force me to look into all the folders and sub-folders to find what I am looking for. I wish there was a way to hover your mouse on a folder or click on it to get a tree-view of what sub-folders and files exist within that folder.

For example, take a look at the screenshot of my Google Drive screen below. There is no way to know what’s in each of the folders, unless I go into the folder. It’s quite mysterious, like it’s saying to me, “you will never know what’s in there unless you navigate through the load of information you have stored”.

A screenshot of my Google Drive

Below is my OneDrive screen which is again pretty similar to Google Drive in a way that it does not allow you to see what’s stored in each folder.

A screenshot of my OneDrive

It has to be easier. User interface systems must be designed keeping in mind the flexibility and ease of use, and must be consistent with standards. In my computer, if go into device manager, I can see a list of items. When I click on each item, a tiny arrow gives me a drop-down of another sub-list. Refer to the image below to see what I mean.

A screenshot of my Device Manager — list of items

A screenshot of my Device Manager — sub-list of items

I would ideally like to see something similar in my Drive as well. That’s a simple change which could enhance the end user experience greatly, in my opinion.

Below is a design I propose — super simple, consistent with standards, easy to use.

A view of what is in the folder — created using Balsamiq

What are your thoughts?
Starting a Career in Design💻
Tags: Product Design, Design, User Interface, Careers, User Experience

“Design is intelligence made visible.” — Alina Wheeler, author

PS: “Please Note you do not have to be in a tech field to start a career in design, anyone in any field can start.”

Designers work behind-the-scenes to create that beautiful product that you love and may even be addicted to (if we’re being honest.)

So yes — you are on the right track✌. Depending on your passion, hobby, flare or flow there are:

User Interface Design — UI

User Experience Design — UX

Product Design not PD😜😜

As for me I am a UI/Product designer and yes you can do the two.

Lets roll on what the designers do:

UI Design

UI design focuses on the user’s visual experience. The job of a UI designer is to design all the screens through which a user will move, and to create the visual elements and their interactive properties that facilitate this movement. In other words the home screen of your favorite app is a UI Design.

Salary earned = $30,000 — $90,000 per annum depending on level of experience.

UX Design

UX design is the process of designing (digital or physical) products that are useful, easy to use, and delightful to interact with.

It’s about enhancing the experience that people have while interacting with your product, and making sure they find value in what you’re providing.

It is about making sure that the interactions and experience you have on any product is smooth.

Salary earned = $75,000- $110,000 per annum depending on level of expertise.

Product Design

This is the process designers use to blend user needs with business goals to help brands make consistently successful products.

Product designers work to optimize the user experience in the solutions they make for their users — and help their brands by making products sustainable for longer-term business needs.

Salary earned = $57,000 — $131,000 per annum depending on level of expertise.

You can see the salary looks nice & classy. Unfortunately you can only earn this by developing yourself i.e. personal development.

Top companies only hire those who have developed and trained themselves, hence they have value to offer.

You can do this through

Youtube | Udemy | Udacity | LearnUI | CareerFoundry | SpringBoard | Bloc There are many more.

Before I forget you would work with Adobe Creative Suite, Figma +Sketch for IOS users and many others

Alright enough talk, now get stated, created value, impact, grow and make money.

Feel free to reach me

📧ezidubem14@gmail.com

Behance | Linkedin | Twitter

I remain your favorite naija techie😎✌
Game Over Dude: Flickering UI text in Unity
By: Hal Brooks
Tags: User Interface, C Sharp Programming, Unity

Objective: Create game over text which appears and flickers when player’s lives are zero, or less.

Add a UI text element, which will be added as a child of the Canvas. Use the Rect Transform component to center the text in the canvas with X =0, Y=0 and Z=0 coordinates. In the Text component set the font size to 50, color to white allow both horizontal and vertical overflow to overflow using drop down menu. Once we like the look, make sure the check box next to the name, Game_Over_text, is unchecked so it is not displayed at start of the game.

Now enable the text when the player dies, by adding the code below to the UIManager script, which is attached to the Canvas. While there other ways to activate the Game_Over_text, using the transform.GetChild seems efficient. If the lives of the player is zero or less, start the coroutine GameOverFlicker(), which sets the child 2 game object to be active and the after 0.5 seconds turns it off, and again waits 0.5 seconds. This is in an infinite while loop so the process repeats.

UIManager funtions on Canvas

The Game_Over_text must be child 2, i.e. the third child in the hierarchy. Now this has some limitations, or features, depending on perspective. The code above flickers child(2) so if the child order changes as shown below, so does the UI element which flickers. Notice, how the flicker can be moved from the game over text to the lives image and then the score text by changing the order of UI elements within the Canvas.
Downloading music to an Apple Watch: Small changes to Improve Feedback for Users
By: Gabriela Nino
Tags: Apple, User Interface, User Experience

How can the downloading progress give accurate feedback?

Throughout the duration of the transfer prcess, we need an accurate feedback of its status. We need to unambiguously and easily follow the progress status without wondering “How much more do I have to wait?” The iPhone and the watch should give feedback so we can know that downloading progress is going smoothly.

If we are accurately informed about how long it will take the downloading progress in advance, we might decide to cancel the transfer and do it in another time. If we know how much time we have left to finish the transfer, we can do other activities or plug the telephone before the battery dies. Or simply, deciding to download fewer songs or albums.

I’m proposing small changes for the UI that could make a great difference in the way the user receives accurate feedback.

The first change is adding the information about how many songs are already uploaded and how many are still remaining. I think previous versions of the Watch app where showing this information before, it will be great if Apple added it back.

Spotify does this pretty well when downloading songs to the device by showing a green icon when the song has been downloaded.

The second change is adding the information about the estimated remaining time. Sometimes for technological limitations this information might not be available or really difficult to estimate because the calculation can be based on many criteria. But hey, we are talking about Apple here! They might manage to develop an algorithm to do the calculation.

Knowing the estimated remaining time give us the opportunity to better plan our activities to know that we won’t be able to use our phone for that period of time.

The third change is adding a percentage number for the updating progress. This number is on the left side of the loader. This change is related to WCAG accessibility criteria 1.4.1 Use of colour: “If the information is conveyed through colour differences in an image (or other non-text format), the colour may not be seen by users with colour deficiencies.”

Adding a text with the percentage number as a second visual means will ensure that users with colour deficiencies and cognitive deficiencies will clearly understand the progress information.

The last change is to reinforce the update completion confirmation by adding a checkmark where the loader was placed and adding a sound too. So when the updating is completed, the user will see the checkmark and hear a chime sound. The next time the user comes to add music, the checkmark won’t be visible.

Here is the user interface with the proposed changes
My first design case study — Redesigning an app used by 35 million people
By: Asit Khanda
Tags: User Interface, Digilocker, UI Design, Case Study, Redesign

Digilocker stands for Digital Locker and is an app that provides a way to issue original documents virtually for ID & verification purposes. It’s the only app for such purpose made by the Govt. of India under the Digital India initiative. It provides virtual ID of everything from Aadhar, driving license to graduation and vaccination certificates.

Why choose this app?

As of 06 September 2021, data from Google Play Store shows that the app has over 1 Crore (or 10 million) downloads. That’s a lot of people using the app but I find certain core experiences lacking which can help attract even more people to use the app. And when you look at the bigger picture, India is a population of 131 Crore (1.3 Billion) and an app made for the masses needs to penetrate more of the population.

Choosing what to redesign

Digilocker in itself is quite a complicated app with a lot of features, facilities with connectivity to a lot of other third party applications. So I had to make a decision on which elements to design even before I started anything.

The whole app has been designed by an incredible team of UX & UI designers, front-end and back-end developers so that’s why I am focusing on specific components and parts of the app’s UI.