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Articles by Erin Casali
Sustainable Web Design, An Excerpt
In the 1950s, many in the elite running community had begun to believe it wasn’t possible to run a mile in less than four minutes. Runners had been attempting it since the late 19th century and were beginning to draw the conclusion that the human body simply wasn’t built for the task. Article Continues Below But on May 6, 1956, Roger Bannister took everyone by surprise.
Designing for the Unexpected
I’m not sure when I first heard this quote, but it’s something that has stayed with me over the years. How do you create services for situations you can’t imagine? Or design products that work on devices yet to be invented? Article Continues Below Flash, Photoshop, and responsive design#section2 When I first started designing websites, my go-to software was Photoshop. I created a 960px canvas and set about creating a layout that I would later drop content in.
Asynchronous Design Critique: Getting Feedback
“Any comment?” is probably one of the worst ways to ask for feedback. It’s vague and open ended, and it doesn’t provide any indication of what we’re looking for. Getting good feedback starts earlier than we might expect: it starts with the request. Article Continues Below It might seem counterintuitive to start the process of receiving feedback with a question, but that makes sense if we realize that getting feedback can be thought of as a form of design research.
Asynchronous Design Critique: Giving Feedback
Feedback, in whichever form it takes, and whatever it may be called, is one of the most effective soft skills that we have at our disposal to collaboratively get our designs to a better place while growing our own skills and perspectives. Article Continues Below Feedback is also one of the most underestimated tools, and often by assuming that we’re already good at it, we settle, forgetting that it’s a skill that can be trained, grown, and improved.
Immersive Content Strategy
Beyond the severe toll of the coronavirus pandemic, perhaps no other disruption has transformed user experiences quite like how the tethers to our formerly web-biased era of content have frayed. We’re transitioning to a new world of remote work and digital content. We’re also experimenting with unprecedented content channels that, not too long ago, elicited chuckles at the watercooler, like voice interfaces, digital signage, augmented reality, and virtual reality.
The traits of good remote leaders
A study based on 770 people over six months analyzed which sets of traits are more effective at different levels of remoteness, thus helping us answering the question of what are the differences between remote leads and in-person leads that make them successful? I’ve distilled two sets of traits from the paper. In-person leads are defined by matching and projecting the idea of leadership to the people in the team (projecting “being”).
The Impact of Toxic Influencers on Communities
There’s a common character that can be often spotted in many online communities. It’s the “toxic influencer” (sometimes referred as “intellectual bully”). A toxic influencer is a person that covers a useful role in a community, but at the same time creates a toxic environment around them that can become bullying in some instances — yet they never over-step the line of proper abuse, so they can’t be easily managed.
The culture of hurry: the value of ‘free’ work time
4 minute read by Erin 'Folletto' Casali In 1973 a study looked into which variables influenced the likelihood to help a person in distress. One variable was the subject: one group had to prepare a talk on a random topic, one group on the parable of the Good Samaritan — helping a person in distress. The other variable was hurry: half of them were told they were late for the talk, half of them were told they had time to get there.
Usability Testing for Voice Content
It’s an important time to be in voice design. Many of us are turning to voice assistants in these times, whether for comfort, recreation, or staying informed. As the interest in interfaces driven by voice continues to reach new heights around the world, so too will users’ expectations and the best practices that guide their design.
Designing for Cognitive Differences
Inclusive design is designing to be inclusive of as many users as possible, considering all aspects of diversity in users. With increased understanding, compassionate discussions around how to design for disabilities are becoming increasingly common in the web industry. But even with this growth, there are misconceptions: accessibility is still frequently thought of as “design for blind people” when it’s so much more than that.
My Accessibility Journey: What I’ve Learned So Far
Last year I gave a talk about CSS and accessibility at the stahlstadt.js meetup in Linz, Austria. Afterward, an attendee asked why I was interested in accessibility: Did I or someone in my life have a disability? Article Continues Below I’m used to answering this question—to which the answer is no—because I get it all the time. A lot of people seem to assume that a personal connection is the only reason someone would care about accessibility. This is a problem.
Never Show A Design You Haven’t Tested On Users
It isn’t hard to find a UX designer to nag you about testing your designs with actual users. The problem is, we’re not very good at explaining why you should do user testing (or how to find the time). We say it like it’s some accepted, self-explanatory truth that deep down, any decent human knows is the right thing to do. Like “be a good person” or “be kind to animals.” Of course, if it was that self-evident, there would be a lot more user testing in this world.
Reclaiming Social: Content Strategy for Social Media
“We want to go viral!” says the chief communications officer. “Can’t help you” used to be our standard answer. But by doing this, we’ve left social media in the hands of marketers and self-appointed “gurus” more concerned with Klout than user needs. It’s about time we reclaimed social media. Article Continues Below If the web industry had a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, social platforms would be at the very top—the least essential thing.
The Nearly-Headless CMS
If you’ve been paying attention to the CMS scene lately, you’ve probably heard the terms “headless” and “decoupled.” These terms describe websites and applications where the CMS is not used to render the actual site or application. For instance, it could be a website where the front-end is a JavaScript framework like AngularJS or React, and the CMS supplies the content via a JSON API.
Privacy is UX
Government snooping. Identity theft. Sale of personal data. Privacy is out there in a big way. But it’s not in here, meaning on most product development teams. Article Continues Below I’m a member of those teams, as an experience designer with a foot in strategy and user research. I’m also a longtime public radio reporter (tech was a big topic of mine), so curiosity is my strong suit. I noticed that, at the agencies and tech companies I’ve worked for, privacy never seemed to be discussed much.
Content-First Design
Article Continues Below A few years ago, I started getting into video games like Katamari, Animal Crossing, and Borderlands 2. Their designs are astounding; each feels like I’m having a natural conversation with the game, and each introduces content in the moment I needed it. As a result, the game experience feels so dang smart, and I feel like a hero whenever I play. Here’s an example from the very first minute of Animal Crossing. All you’ve done is started a new game.
Let Them Eat Cake
There has been a growing debate lately that pits accessibility against usability, but there’s no reason we can’t have both. If you can make a page more usable without making it less accessible, by all means do so; do not let your inability to translate certain usability enhancements into accessible functions or features restrict your use of those enhancements. As long as the enhancements do not restrict accessibility, go for it.
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