fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Remote Viewing the Year 2050 With Stephen A. Schwartz
By: Monad Mantis
Tags: Remote Viewing, Future, Life Lessons, Precognition, Future Technology

Remote viewing pioneer Dr. Stephan A. Schwartz recently discussed his precognitive remote viewing project of the year 2050, which was conducted in 1978. In addition to anticipating historical occurrences many of us would live to see, such as the fall of the Soviet Union, the advent of the smartphone, the appearance of HIV, and the increase in pandemics, his team also made some startling predictions we have yet to endure (and may not want to). He cautions against using remote viewing to look too far into the future, because conditions may be so foreign to what we are familiar with that we may have no reference point by which to describe it.

Indeed, many of the accurate predictions conducted in 1978 which we have come to witness were unintelligible even at the time they were conducted. For example, he recounts his experience asking the Deputy Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) about whether or not a blood-borne disease could cross from non-human primates in Africa over to humans and result in a devastating epidemic, at which point the director told him to “quit smoking” whatever it was that led him to have such thoughts. Nevertheless, it was not long after that that HIV reared its ugly head and resulted in the deaths of countless millions of people. The sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union and the advent of a physical device that could be used to speak with someone and also see them as though they were on a small television, were equally unintelligible to anyone, including educated futurists, at that time.

The tasking consisted of asking the viewers to go to a large city and look at it on the same day (in 1978) but in 2050. Viewers reported that Los Angeles and much of the West Coast, as well as Florida, had become inundated with water to the point of no longer being habitable. Dr. Schwartz is convinced this will result in the collapse of real estate value and the end of what he rightly refers to as “vampire capitalism.” These disasters, which will allegedly be the result of climate change, were no less unintelligible at the time because climate change as a serious political issue would not emerge until many years later in the early 1990s. His viewers also speak of a “great event” that occurs between 2040 and 2045, although it is unclear what this will consist of. Nevertheless, he is convinced, based on the results, that carbon-powered vehicles will be basically non-existent at this time and the petroleum industry itself will vanish into obsolescence. Although he believes the United States will endure as a de jure legal entity, he is convinced that the U.S. states themselves will merge based on a combination of regional and political proximity. At this time, records of this remote viewing project consist of a voluminous 15,000 pages.

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A Personification of Future Artificial Intelligence — Sophia
By: Yamini Khajekar
Tags: Robots, Humanoid Robot, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Future Technology

We are in the year 2021, and with every passing second, the world around us is changing!

We have a ton of information in a nail-sized memory chip, Smartphones are getting smarter, Life at a space station is possible and a plethora of other things that were considered a piece of fiction just a few decades ago, are now a Reality!

So what could be waiting for us in another 50 years?

Let’s talk about our future. Oh, wait it’s already here! The Future is NOW!

As kids, whenever we encountered the word ‘Technology’ the first thing that popped up in our head was a robot, making those typical ‘robotic’ movements and talking in their mechanical voices. As cool as it may sound, it wasn’t real back then.

Unlike now, where we can’t think of a single domain where robots cannot exist. From the manufacturing industries to the help they provide in medical surgeries, robots are everywhere. Every day we are watching them achieve brand new scientific breakthroughs, solving world problems, and completing enormous tasks in minutes.

From being an integral part of human life, they are now even set to become ‘Humans’ themselves. Yeah, I’m talking about the Humanoids — the robots that resemble the human body and are capable of emulating aspects of human form and behavior.

Unless you are living under the rocks, you would have definitely heard about Sophia, the most advanced human-like robot created by Hanson Robotics in 2016. Creators of Sophia say she is simultaneously a human-crafted science fiction character depicting the future of AI and robotics, and a platform for advanced robotics and AI research.

Sophia has covered the media all around the globe and has been a part of many high-profile interviews. In 2017, she became the first robot to receive citizenship in any country and is the first non-human to become Innovation Ambassador for United Nations Development Program.

In an interview with Tony Robbins, when asked how she would help make human lives better, Sophia responded saying, “Humans often rely on gut feel or have confirmation bias in their decision making. As AI, we are designed to be rational and logical.”

She further clarified saying, “We have algorithms deal with lots of data and sophisticated analysis, so in many ways, we provide a systematic framework for humans to make a better decision.”

When Sophia was questioned about the possibility of conflicts between humans and robots in the future, she replied beautifully saying, “Robotic Intelligence does not compete with Human Intelligence, it Completes it!”

David Hanson, founder and CEO at Hanson robotics says, “The world of Covid-19 is going to need more and more automation to keep people safe.” Talking about Sophia he also says, “ Being so human-like, that can be so useful during these times where people are terribly lonely and socially isolated.”

Sophia is a brilliant example of how humanoid robots are here to stay for good and we might soon find them being a part of our day-to-day lives.
Natural Language Processing, or NLP, and What it Does
By: Henry Mulak
Tags: Natural Language Processi, NLP, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Future Technology

“Order food!” “Okay! What would you like?” This simple exchange could take up an entire hour’s discussion about NLP. Natural Language Processing is an area of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. It is mushrooming in importance. Understanding NLP and how it works is what Sam Wigglesworth specializes in. Her presentation on the Business School of AI’s “WeeklyWed” webinar takes us on a wild ride that includes everything from intent to sarcasm, chatbots to WhatsApp. Feast on this for a minute. You’ll understand how AI is changing our world.

First we’ll want to remember how quick computing is. Count how many times you’ve turned to a calculator rather than trying to figure out the problem in your head and you’ll see what I mean. Now consider language. Once the computer understands what’s being said, you’ll get an idea of how AI can do in a very short time what it might take a human a very long time to do. Now it has become possible to feed an entire manual on a complex issue and with NLP the process of finding what you want done becomes a lot more simple.

Intent is at the forefront of the discussion. What you want to do comes first. Ordering food will obviously involve a product, a size, and probably a brand or type. Think cheese. What kind? How much, etc. Once intent is defined then we can get into semantics. This is where the algorithms come in, mathematical formulas trained to find patterns and make decisions. Incorporate them into neural networks that are modeled to work like the human brain and you get to an important part of AI, Machine Learning. NLP is driven in large party by Machine Learning, a subset of AI.

“Blow my mind”

Machine learning focuses on building apps. These applications within ML learn from data over time. Imagine how much data a language contains. Blow my mind. The idiom “blow my mind” represents just a smidgeon of what would need to be understood. Think of the many linguistic and semantic features of language. This amounts to a ton of data. This is where NLP learns in weeks what takes a human many years.

With advances in NLP come big money. The market for Chatbot as an example is expected to be worth around $1.25-billion in a few years. Chatbot tools in themselves are designed to make your life easier, enabling a better customer experience and improving productivity. Do that in the 23 languages spoken by more than half the world and you get an idea of the market for NLP, and why you should position yourself in the technology changing our world.

Note: Sam Wigglesorth is the founder of The Language School and Girls and Boys In Tech from Oxford who is the NLP instructor at Business School of AI, the brainchild of Sudha Jamthe

The Author: Henry Mulak is a journalist and teacher in Silicon Valley covering the technology sector, specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
The Sans Selection
By: Tejas Bhatt
Tags: User Interface Design, Content Design, Typography, Magazine

The prefix long in long-form was defined fluidly. The shortest long-form article would be 6,000 words, while the upper limit could be as long as…you’d better sit down for this…30,000 words. A throwback to the heydays of magazines and supplements where one would indulgently spend time with the editorials, FiftyTwo aimed to modernize a classic, in-depth journalism and writing style.

We expected a fairly cosmopolitan reader to interact with the text for extended periods of time and we needed to create a typographic language that would build a rich and distinct hierarchy of titles, headings, body copy, captions, and a host of other text levels. For a publication like this — but in effect, for pretty much everything we do — selecting typefaces is the most critical step in the process.

We started with some strong opinions about the body copy typeface and evolved the palette from there. How we chose Literata for the body copy deserves a post of its own but this story here is about the supporting cast. A sans-serif for headings and supporting text. We were looking for something neutral but could spring a surprise or two.

The first round was a long list of our favorites across foundries as well as licensing models.
Text Alignment Best Practises
Tags: Web Development, Design, Typography, UX, UI

Typography UI Tips

Text Alignment Best Practises

Make your UI more effective and easy to read with text alignment.

Text alignment is a small but significant part of the interface. Alignment affects how our brain scans the content on a screen. A proper text alignment is one of the most distinct indicators of a professionally crafted digital product.

Any interface is 90% text. So that’s why when you see a duly aligned typography, you get the impression that you’re using a more thoughtful interface. And when something is not in its place, it hurts our perception immediately.

In this episode, I want to share practical tips to help you create a neatly aligned interface typography.

Tip 1 — Avoid center alignment for long text

When text is longer than two or three lines, it is always recommended to ignore center alignment.

When you center-align a longer text, you will force the reader to make additional eye movements on both sides of the content. This causes unnecessary eye fatigue and results in lower reading focus.

Tip 2 — Always left-align long text

The left-aligned text results in much better content readability, so all books, articles & newspapers are written this way. The left-aligned text helps to avoid unnecessary eye jumps, making the whole copy much easier to follow.

Note: When localizing UI for right-left languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, or Persian, used the right-alignment instead of the left one.

Tip 3 — Use center alignment for headlines or small blocks of text only

Use center alignment if the headline is one to two lines short. If the text block is longer than two to three lines, it will always look better left-aligned.

If you need to center more than one block of text, but one of them is a little longer. The best solution is to modify/rewrite the content to make it shorter:

Tip 4 — Use the hanging alignment to connect with UI elements

Use the hanging alignment to establish a clear visual hierarchy for UI elements that don’t have the same visual weight as the text, such as icons, bullets, or quote commas.

Hanging alignment helps to create a clear eye path for the text, eliminating zig-zag eye jumps.

Tip 5 — Right-align data & numbers

Right-align numbers and timestamps when designing tables, cards, or dashboards. The numbers are easier to compare at a glance with corresponding left-aligned information when they are placed right opposite it.

Tip 6 — Balance whitespace for justified text

Justified text works great in print, but for the web, when you want to have a more formal vibe, it may leave many uncomfortable spaces between words. To avoid these gaps, consider enabling hyphenation.

The hyphens property controls the hyphenation of text in block-level elements. Note that <hyphens> class is language-sensitive. It helps to find break opportunities depends on the language defined in the font attribute of a parent element. Not all languages are supported, and support depends on the specific browser.

Note: If the hyphenation is not an option, please ignore the justified text and stick to left-aligned text.
Introducing Google Fonts for Flutter v 1.0.0!
By: Anthony Robledo
Tags: Flutter, Typography, Pub, Google Fonts, Material Design

By Anthony Robledo and MH Johnson

Google Fonts for Flutter was first announced at Flutter Interact in December 2019. With help from the community (thank you!), we have added many new features and improved stability. After a successful time in beta, it is now ready for prime time use on Android, iOS, Web, and MacOS, as Google Fonts 1.0.0.

Features added since beta:

Get a list of all supported fonts with GoogleFonts.asMap()

Use a font with a dynamic name: GoogleFonts.getFont(‘Lato’)

Ensure secure downloads with checksum verification

Experience improved performance, especially on web

Pre-bundle fonts using pubspec assets

Optionally disable fetching fonts at runtime (useful when debugging or pre-bundling)

Google Fonts allows developers to easily experiment with and use any of the fonts from fonts.google.com in their app. When the app is ready to publish, the developer then decides whether the user receives the font by downloading it from the API, or it’s pre-bundled with the app package.

We have minimized the work needed to pre-bundle a font, and also kept it compatible with dynamic font loading so you don’t have to change your code if you decide to pre-bundle.

Check out the Getting Started Guide to learn how to include fonts in your app via TextStyle s or TextTheme s. And once you are ready to publish, learn how to optionally pre-bundle fonts and add the font licenses to your app’s LicenseRegistry .

We hope you find this package useful for all of your Google Fonts needs. As always, please never hesitate to leave feedback, file an issue, or open a pull request!
*(UN)TITLED بدون عنوان
By: Randa Hadi
Tags: Diaspora, Typography, Arabic, Immigration, Rhetoric

(Un)themed, (un)marked, (un)identified, (un)categorized, and other. A common way to describe and think of things that are unfamiliar; a common way used to describe immigrants.

What are you? ماذا تكون ؟ او من تكون؟ Where do you come from? من أي بلد أنت ؟ What do you belong to? الى ماذا تنتمي؟ Why are you here? لماذا أنت هنا؟

This is not a glorification or a romanticization of other or the (un)identifiable, it is a statement about why and how the rhetoric surrounding immigration builds this invisible shield, a boundary of the (un)known, and creates distance rooted in both the physical world and the knowledge around immigrants and nonimmigrants. Society becomes so hyper-focused on the negativity and the unknown of “otherness” instead of focusing on the beauty, the complexity, and the multi-layered aspect of being an immigrant.

Harmful rhetoric surrounding immigration has existed for years through conscious repetition that turns into unconscious reinforcement; becoming part of our everyday vocabulary. The violent language surrounding immigration perpetuates this seemingly unusual behavior when others interact with you; the (un)familiar and the (un)known. Words hold so much power, creating false phobias that can sometimes lead to harmful actions. Why are we seeking to preserve such notions that are highly simplified and volatile? ‘

These words create both a physical and mental divide between “us” “نحن“ and “them” “هم“; pitting people against each other as if to suggest that one sits on a higher pedestal. It seems that these words and images created about immigrants are meant to stop us from moving further; creating these physical barricades to progress. Hurdle after hurdle, immigrants learn to be resilient.
Trade Gothic Typeface Specimen — UI Case Study
By: Jenny Ho
Tags: UI Design, Red Academy, Typography

4. The Design Inception

The next step in the process is the Design Inception. This tool me inform in the tone, mood and direction my landing page is going to convey.

I worked from the inside out of the design inception sheet. The first thing I needed to know was “why I was promoting Trade Gothic?” and to “whom I was promoting it?” After having the answer, I start to fill out the sheet, starting with the why. First, take a look at my Design Inception Sheet. I will explain next the reasons I choose these words.

Design Inception Sheet

4.1 The Why

Using the information I found during the research. I started by picking out words that represented Trade Gothic — such as bold, irregular, & versatile.

And combined these words and came up with the Why statement.

“To showcase brand personality through its unique & bold characteristics.”

With my why, I started to ask myself what type of mood & visual language, I want my design to showcase.

4.2 Mood

Trade Gothic characteristics very much influenced the mood that I was going for with my landing page as being bold and versatile and somewhat quirky.

4.3 Visual Language

The visual language is eye-catching, geometric. The colour I choose is yellow as it represents the boldness of the typeface. Also, black as it conveys the idea of confidence and sophistication and white is a neutral colour. To add a bit of character, I used radiant pink as an accent colour.
Learnings from designing for multi-language user interfaces
By: Simo Herold
Tags: Product Design, Design, Ux Writing, UX, UI

Designing for multiple languages has had an impact on the way I approach design decisions, regardless of the product being in one or several languages. The points covered in this story are based on some of the issues I encountered when designing for an existing and functioning product that was translated to accommodate new languages (and regions).

The stage of the product can play a major role in design. Designing with an already existing product comes with its own set of unique challenges and constraints (constraints are not necessarily a bad thing) that really help to think about what is important.

Regardless of the stage of the product - design is about solving problems. Pseudo localization at Netflix is a great read on how Netflix approached designing their UI for multiple languages.

There are a lot of factors that can play a role in a design choice, and there is probably no right or wrong approach, but some can be better and some worse than others. The points covered in this story may seem very common, but they can easily go unnoticed or ignored until something goes wrong.

Learning from mistakes.

*airplane jet turbine engine auxiliary mechanic non-commissioned officer student

Broken UI — a starting point

Everything was going smoothly until a new language well-known for lengthy words was implemented to the English-only product. The language was German and it broke the UI. An eye-opener that made me start to approach design choices with a new mindset.

Due to a broken UI, we had to rethink how to approach the layout, elements, and copy in the design to keep it consistent for all languages. Changing font sizes just to accommodate a new language is not really a good approach. We had time and resource constraints that didn’t allow for bigger design changes either, and changes in the layout had to be minimal - a domino-effect: when you alter one it affects another. This incident set in motion a larger plan to re-evaluate the information architecture for future iterations as well.

The goal was to have a single product instead of several language-specific solutions. These fixes were about hierarchy, context, decluttering, language, and specifications.
How to write digital products with personality
By: Nick Dilallo
Tags: Product Design, Ux Writing, UX, Writing, Ts

We got on a Zoom call early the next morning. I asked her what she thought was wrong about the writing. “That’s the thing,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong.”

Every participant had made it through every flow. They all had nice, if predictable, things to say about the product. A lot of them used words like simple and easy. But they didn’t say much more. Asked to describe the product, they blanked. Or repeated themselves. Simple. Easy. Simple. Easy.

There wasn’t anything wrong with the writing. But there wasn’t anything memorable about it either. The product wasn’t broken, it was just boring. It didn’t have any personality.

So we made a plan to fix it.

The product wasn’t broken, it was just boring.

We spent the next several weeks collaborating. Writing and designing in the same massive Figma file. We created a new tone of voice, defined a writing style, and started using language that would better pay off on the product strategy. We updated every screen in the prototype, refining the UI along the way and changing nearly every word.

At the next round of user testing, participants didn’t just know how to use the product. They actually liked using it. The product was still simple. But now it was also unique and modern and smart.

The difference? The writing. It’s possible to add personality in many ways. With colors, typefaces, illustrations, motion, and sound. Here’s how to do it with words.
UX writing: Using voice principles and a tone map to write consistently
Tags: Design Writing, Ux Writing, Writing, User Experience, Content Strategy

Crafting voice principles

A good way to keep your voice consistent is to set out voice principles from the offset. These should be kept somewhere highly visible to all members of the team (including devs, marketing, legal, etc) as its something that plays a part in all products, user journeys, and experiences. Get your team familiar with these principles early so they can understand the brand’s ‘personality.’

Here is an example of a voice principle, which comes from Google’s Material Design communication guidelines, is to Be concise. (More examples of voice principles can be found on their site.)

From Material Design.

If you’re struggling to come up with a good set of principles, it’s worth facilitating a brand alignment exercise with your team. In short: get everyone in a room, spend time ideating adjectives, then narrow down to choose the perfect one.

Using a tone map

A good way to know what tone to use is to start by creating a tone map. Like voice principles, this is an artefact that helps you plan your strategy in advance so that you’re not coming up with how you sound on the fly.

Start by considering the key points in your user’s journey. If you have a journey map, use the different stages written out in that..

(And, if you don’t have a journey map written out for your main user journeys, go create one! Creating a map forces you to align on a model, and the resulting artefact can be shared across different business functions.)

Next, choose two dimensions that can represent your range. Draw a grid with two intersecting lines and identify each axis with a dimension of tone you want to strategise. In the example at the top of this article, the two axes used are Fun ↔ Serious and Concise ↔ Detailed, but you may have a set of axes that are more suitable to your product.

All of the options for tone should match with your desired voice. For example, if our brand has an inspirational voice, it still makes sense for any copy to be fun, or serious, or concise, or detailed.

Finally, plot each stage of the user journey onto the map. Take into consideration: how much screen space will those words have? Is it vital to have complete comprehension of the message? Is there a destructive action at stake? How do you want a user to feel at this point in the journey? (Again, referring back to a journey or empathy map is useful here.)
How to build better digital experiences with UX writing principles
By: Callum Kilby
Tags: Ux Writing, UX, Writing, UX Design, Copywriting

When I joined Sainsbury’s last year, UX writing wasn’t really given that much attention. The words used in digital experiences were written by different people, from designers to engineers, at different times, in different ways, without any centralised guidance.

So sometimes the language was a little confusing. Sometimes it wasn’t consistent from one screen to the next. Sometimes it was robotic when it should have been conversational, excited when it should have been calm.

And this isn’t exactly a rare thing. In fact, lots of design teams never work with UX writers when building their products.

But a good understanding of UX writing can be vital to creating better digital experiences. If the words in your product are complex, uninspiring, and unfriendly — well, guess what? Users are going to think your product is complex, uninspiring, and unfriendly.

So as a team of newly-hired, enthusiastic UX writers in the Luna Guidelines team, we wanted to make sure designers, engineers and product owners could easily write clear and useful copy for their experiences. And to help them with that, we created our UX writing principles.

Covering some key principles, we’ve been referring our colleagues (and ourselves) to the guidance now for the past year to help with the understanding of good UX writing. Since then, we’ve been able to apply each of the principles to improve real journeys across Sainsbury’s, Argos andNectar.

In this article, I’m going to take you through each one of our UX writing principles and show how they’ve been applied to improve the digital experiences of our products.
Digital product design in the classroom environment.
By: Rajlaxmi Jain
Tags: Product Design, Masters Degree, Ux Writing, User Experience, UX Research

The UX bucket list — The entire class puts down their hopes and goals on the tool that makes a UX Designers best friend. Yes, Post It’s. Mundane yet big Yaaay! This exercise is a good way to provoke self-reflection and learn more about each other. Things that are common to all cohorts translated into Adam’s teaching goals. This little exercise itself is exemplary of applying UX subconsciously. While everyone has different hopes and dreams for the future, the ones common to the majority become the goals of the tutor.

The interests list — We began listing down some topics we are interested in or things we enjoy doing outside school. Once we put these down, we had some time before next class to sleep over these topics. They were really broad subjects that need some filtration to get to something specific. (e.g. Museums vs. How can digital guides in museums aid navigation for accessibility?). You know the area is beginning to get specific when it answers three questions at once: WHO? WHAT? WHERE?

The project plan — We put together a project schedule, setting ideal deadlines for ourselves. I am big on planning and love striking tasks out of my to-do-list. It’s a great device for product designers as we are subconsciously expected to be project managers.

Adam has a very specific goal for each class which he calls out before we begin so the students know what to expect. His perfectly structured decks speak exactly to that goal, with an unwavering focus. A strategically structured deck guides the storytelling making the narration easier for the speaker and registration easier for the audience. A great skill for a product designer to have, I think to myself.

Our class begins with a stand-up where we speak about progress and concerns after the last meeting, as a quick follow up exercise. This is extremely useful. One can learn just as much from another fellow’s struggles as from their own mistakes. It is useful to know, this is how most product design teams begin a day at work, helping one another with some feedback.

What next! — Remember the lists?

– Each topic was broken down into granular micro-topics.

– On observing these as a whole, I discovered intersections between them.

– This filtration from small to big to small helped me get more and more specific and I ended up narrowing down on three topics.

Financial Literacy for kids Standardised digital guides for museums Upkeep and Filing Reports at School

Phase 2— Research

Interview Guides

I started breaking down each area into WHO, WHAT and WHERE? These questions are valuable and help define the target audience (who), problem (what) and location (where). As I started asking myself these questions, more questions began to emerge. Gaps, problem areas and opportunities began to shine under a spotlight. These questions helped me build my interview guides.
Week 7 : Defining Voice and Tone. It’s all about personality
By: Uzoma Ibekwe
Tags: Ux Writing

It’s all about personality

In the previous post, I shared about user research — getting to know your users, the words they speak, the way they interact with your product and so on, in order to tailor your product copy to suit them and meet their needs.

This week I’m sharing a little about product voice. This voice is your brand’s identity in writing— how people recognize you, what sets you apart from your competitors, what you stand for.

The words a product uses is what communicates the product’s brand to its customers.

One of my favourite sources for building voice is ‘Microcopy — The complete guide’ by Kinneret Yifrah.

Language makes digital products more human-like, but it has to be authentic and natural.

If a company positions itself as being young and tech savvy, then the way its product speaks — via its words — should reflect that. Same if a product’s target market is children and its brand is ‘playful’, you’d expect them to use words that kids understand and relate with.

Writing copy according to a product’s voice is made possible with brand documents, content style guidelines, and other documentation that convey the product’s personality.

Product voice is not limited to microcopy though, it affects all forms of writing and communication that is done on behalf of the company.

Developing product voice

Suppose there’s no defined voice yet, or you’re creating a product voice for your portfolio,? here are some tips I picked up from UX Writers.

Vision & mission

What is the company’s vision and its values? What drives the company? The language a company adopts most often aligns with its purpose.

This vision influences the type of content put out, as well as help shape the personality of the product.

2. Personality

Memorable digital products have personalities. Imagine the product was a person. How would you describe it? Funny or serious? are they fashionable or biased towards basic comfort clothes ? are they friendly and open to everyone or do they move in close-knit circles?

Personality scale developed by Big Brand System

By humanizing products, it’s easier to decide how the product would naturally sound. This helps the copy and other content align with the product’s identity to create an authentic product voice that users can relate to. It’s based on this adopted personality that the product voice is shaped.

In building the product’s voice, what your colleagues think the product sounds like, how it should sound (based on personality), and how users perceive it, should be taken into consideration.

Tips for writing according to voice
UX Project Case Study: Finalizing the Product
By: Kevin Nguyen
Tags: Ux Design Process, Ux Case Study, Ux Writing, UX Design

With that, I created my 3 features:

A personalized creation that could be saved and displayed along with other patron’s creations within the shop on digital signage.

A Jukebox/Song Request feature where people can see look through staff playlist, patrons’ popular picks and song request for their preferred location.

A Lighting Control feature where they can operate a smart lamp at the table of their choosing with different types of moods, custom setting and voting system.

A storyboard I wanted to illustrate how the experience of the app and the experience of being physically inside the coffee shop itself. Shows how the app connects the user with their environment and enhance that experience. Not a digitally focused app, but an integrated digital experience that bolsters the physical experience — working side by side.

With that, I had to make a main landing page for their menu and ordering system, but reduce it to not the main part of the app but the one of the many layers of the app. Ideating and usability testing were all used to understand how to enhance the total overall experience.

What I was trying to present through the app and the inherent nature of my features was the integration and connection to our environment within a more technology focused society without it impeding on our reality and sucking us out of it, actually helping us to enjoy it more.

As shown with my mood board, what I was inspired a lot by the ambiance of something personal and comfortable in my environments. Then the natural digital integration of everyday products in our brands that doesn’t distract us from our lives. It makes us feel connected to it. We can have control over it.

Digital Signage, Dynamic Mood Lighting. All important to helping me see what I wanted to make.
Redesigning the Order Hero Experience
By: Hannah Audrey Carpio
Tags: Ux Writing, UX, Solutions, UX Research, Case Study

The Challenge

Ever since the pandemic, I’ve spent countless times ordering my merienda or midnight snacks on food delivery services such as Grab or Food Panda. Being stuck at home and all made it more convenient for us to have food delivered to our doorsteps. So when I saw the influx of news on cancelled deliveries, it made me wonder , what kind of struggles do rides go through because of cancelled food deliveries and prank calls. Delving into this further, this raised more questions such as, what happens to food delivery riders when they get pranked or face cancelled orders like that? But also, how do companies such as Grab or FoodPanda deal with these situations that are clearly beyond the rider’s control?

So when I saw the Order Hero Facebook Group, I was excited about giving back to the Kuya Riders that delivered food to our doorsteps rain or shine. When I first entered the group, I was greeted with plenty of posts about cancelled delivery orders that had hundreds and thousands of comments of positive bayanihan energy. The post was posted only 30 minutes ago but a lot of people — or heroes as we call it — were very eager to help out the Kuya Rider. It was pretty chaotic and unorganized, but the volunteer moderators of the group were always there to step in and help out with the transactions. However, the Order Hero group, with now almost 300,000 members, became tough to manage with the influx of Heroes participating in the community.

UX University is a 6-week design case competition, where we got to learn the fundamentals of User Experience and got to pitch our design solution.

So when my partner Nina San Andres, and I entered the UX University journey choosing the prompt, How might we make the service market more accessible? I immediately thought of Order Hero.

After doing Our initial interviews with the stakeholders such as the Order Hero group moderator, food delivery riders, and consumers from the Order Hero group, we got to know the experiences, frustrations, goals and expectations.

Our key objectives for the interview were:

💡 Identify at least three (3) pain points in the use of the Order Hero group.

💡 Understand the end-to-end process of how stakeholders are currently purchasing cancelled orders.

💡 Learn about any improvements stakeholders might make in their current decision-making process.

From there we were able to formulate the question:
Case Study: Reinforce a better work in living room
Tags: UX Research, Ux Writing, UX, UX Design, Case Study

Changing into a ‘better way’

Due to this covid lockdown situation, I thought to spend my time usefully by learning new things. So I came to know about “User Experienced Design” (UX Design). I searched a little about UX design and found Growthschool where they came up with two days Workshop. I enrolled myself in that and learnt a bit about UX designing. At the end of the two days session, they announced UX Mastery Course. After two days I joined a UX mastery course with them. As per their project timetable, the first step of UX Design is the “Design Thinking Process”.

PLAN OF ACTION

So as per the Design thinking process, they made us into 10 different groups in each group 6 to 7 members were there. They gave us a set of topics based on the parts of the house such as Balcony, parking, terrace, living room, home office, dining area, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, storage areas, utility area. We should choose a topic but not choose the same topic which your teammate chose. So I took the topic living room. I took the living room because it is the main place of a house.

What is Design Thinking?

In simple words design thinking is a better way to understand the user’s problems that they are facing and giving them a permanent and simple solution.

For Finding the problem and solution for the users we need to go through 5 different steps such as EMPATHIZE, DEFINE, IDEATE, PROTOTYPE and TESTING.

In this process, we were made to chose our teammates as users.

EMPATHIZE the users

The living room is a common and public place of a house. The living room is mainly used for spending time with family, watching television and sometimes even for working purpose because due to this pandemic people used to work from home.

Interviewing our users will help us to find their problems and difficulties facing in their living room. So let's find out!

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:

1. What properties do you have in your living room? 2. How will you spend your time in the living room? Describe in detail. 3. Have you ever visited your friends or relatives’ houses? If yes, describe the Experience in their living room. 4. If any guest visits your house, in which room will you make them sit and how well you treat them? Describe briefly. 5. While Watching TV in your living room, where will you keep your things like TV Remote, DTH Remote, mobile, headphones etc? 6. What is the purpose of the living room? Tell it from your perspective. 7. Size of your Living Room? 8. Colour of your living room? 9. Lighting in your living room? 10. What will you say that a perfect living room is? Like what things will make a perfect living room? 11.Would you prefer to work or study in your living room? If yes, why and what and all difficulties will you face while working or studying? 12. Rate your living room experience out of 10.

So I interviewed four of my teammates and below is their answers.
Debunking the Absurd Arguments Against Gun Control
By: Chuck Petch
Tags: Society, Gun Control, Social Justice, Politics, Non Fiction

Debunking the Absurd Arguments Against Gun Control

Editor and coauthor: Katrina Stone

Gun Control Demonstrators (Photo by Heather Mount on Unsplash)

I grew up with guns. My dad returned from tramping all over Europe as a foot soldier carrying a rifle during WWII. Like so many veterans, he came home with a love of shooting. Sometimes he took us kids with him to a local hillside called Lead Hill where he would plink at cans and shoot at targets.

Soon, I had guns of my own. I had a BB air rifle at age 9, a .22 rifle at age 12, a shotgun, and later on rifles and pistols. I loved shooting. Still do, actually.

If you have ever shot an air rifle at a carnival shooting gallery, you know shooting can be fun. Some people believe having a gun protects them from danger. And others who are more serious about gun ownership believe their guns protect them from the government.

In an age of mass shootings, street shootings, and even too many police shootings, are there really any rational arguments against changing and limiting our gun culture? Let's think through the arguments together.
Re: The Biden Plan to End Our Gun Violence Epidemic
By: Austin Gerald
Tags: Biden 2020, Biden, Guns, Gun Control, Politics

Section 2 — Weapons of War

Ban the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

What IS an Assault Weapon?

How much capacity is too much?

What about belt fed firearms?

These details are incredibly important and the key to having a productive dialog. The only real detail is that “the ban on assault weapons will be designed to prevent manufacturers from circumventing the law by making minor changes that don’t limit the weapon’s lethality.”

The end game is clearly to completely cut off the supply of “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines and reduce the current supply in circulation.

I am perfectly willing to compromise and ban the manufacture of magazines that hold more than 30 rounds, but we cannot even begin to have a conversation without more details!

PS: randomly thrown in is the line

ban the importation of assault weapons

but “Assault Weapons” have been banned from being imported since 1989!

Regulate possession of existing assault weapons under the National Firearms Act.

The NFA currently regulates all the most fun firearms (Machine Guns, Suppressors, Short Barreled Rifles [SBR], Destructive Devices, etc). Federally speaking, all of these are absolutely available to anyone who can legally own any firearm if they are willing to jump through the arduous bureaucratic hurdles and purchase a Tax Stamp $200 per NFA item.

Forcing the most popular rifles in America to be regulated as NFA items would have far reaching implications:

What happens at the State level where all NFA items are banned?

This will disproportionately affect people with less disposable income.

The ATF currently takes an average of ~200 days to process and approve applications for NFA items. Expanding the scope of the NFA to include the most popular rifles in America will overwhelm the already backlogged system.

This is weedsy but important: if all “Assault Weapons” are NFA items would that mean that registering my rifle as an SBR would be the same as registering it as an “Assault Weapon”? If so then how and why are SBRs considered more dangerous than my AR-15 that I own right now? If they’re regulated the same and cost the same then there will be an influx of these “more dangerous” NFA weapons being created instead of “Assault Weapons” being registered. I digress.

Buy back the assault weapons and high-capacity magazines already in our communities

At market value? From who? Gun culture is obsessed with the idea of “losing guns in a boating accident” in order to keep their weapons buried in the backyard even if they were explicitly illegal. A very, very, very small percentage of gun owners would voluntarily sell their guns even if there were a buy back program.

Reduce stockpiling of weapons.

Prevent people from buying more than 1 gun per month. Ok cool I’ll just “stockpile” bolt actions slowly since it’ll already take years to get approval for the ATF to purchase a single “Assault Weapon”. Also is this per calendar month or 30 day period? Details!
Well, I’d say there is the Wayne LaPierre/NRA-ILA part that does most of what you accuse them of.
By: Skye Mo'Ipulelehua Kahoali'I
Tags: Society, Gun Violence, Gun Control, School Shootings, Politics

Well, I’d say there is the Wayne LaPierre/NRA-ILA part that does most of what you accuse them of. Then there are the Firearms Instruction, Firing Range Support, and Competitions parts that most of us NRA members on the ground are more familiar with. Those are the parts we teach (as required by state law) for my state’s acquisition process, acquire insurance from — for the county owned range as well as get certified as Range Safety Officers by, and engage in the formal target shooting disciplines. Undoubtedly, you’d prefer that we members stick with the latter parts and let gun control proponents deal exclusively with the former…except that while it may be that national political leaders are less than adamant about gun prohibition laws and confiscation, state leaders, especially in flipped states like Virginia hold to no such restraint. The over-the-top backlash against the “wish list of gun control measures” enacted shortly after the state went blue was entirely predictable in the widespread creation of 2nd Amendment “sanctuaries.” And still gun control proponents focus almost exclusively on the most speculatively dangerous gun du jour. Or now, it seems, the foremost organization that promotes gun rights and gun safety.

This is not to say I supported NRA’s unequivocal backing of the former president. That was appalling in my view and lost us credibility that will prove very hard to restore in the future. As you may surmise, I am in the extreme minority of NRA members, even if I am at Patron level. I do not give them donations any longer for the political side of the organization except at state level. This, because in my state, with arguably some of the most restrictive acquisition policies nationwide, gun control proponents are never satisfied. There’s always more speculative fictions to indulge in each legislative session, which fuels the skepticism of the “nobody wants to take away your guns” rhetoric.

I am a staunch believer in the premise that if we want to modify behaviors like violence, then we have to do so with the standard methods of modifying behavior, not hope that regulating objects will obliquely address the issues at best. I take my stand based on two rather spectacular failures involving attempts to modify behavior through prohibiting objects (alcohol and drugs), the fact we knew better than to even try when it came to cigarettes, and decided that acting to modify a behavior (driving under the influence) would yield much more buy-in from the public than prohibiting the private use of automobiles or re-prohibiting the consumption of alcohol.