Just in case you need some rabbit holes to fall down on your Friday afternoon.

June 9, 2023 · links

Six-word restaurant reviews. Example: tried it twice. Got stomachaches twice.

May 25, 2023 · funny

Polar Night

On May 12, 2023 at 10:24am NZ time, the sun officially passed 18 degrees below the horizon. This marked the end of Astronomical Twilight, and the beginning of the true night. We won’t see any light from the sun until August 3.

Read post paired with The Thing theme music.

May 22, 2023 · science · music · movies · cold

Jim Brown, born ineligible to play for the Redskins, integrated their end zone three times yesterday.”

From an article about Brown by Shirley Povich Source

May 19, 2023 · sports · quotes

Outlines are IA by Christopher Butler:

The text-outline as an information architecture tool is useful when evaluating the effectiveness of an existing visual design. Whenever I look at a page or screen, the first thing I do is scan it to understand what kind of information it contains and how that information is arranged.

I’ll plug all sorts of things into Workflowy (my outliner of choice) to see the raw structure. And then drag the bullets around to remix and re-organize.

May 16, 2023 · IA · text · work

Most of my friends still had mothers but the fathers were endangered, then extinct. I was surprised, though I had always known the ladies lasted longer; the fathers fooled me with their toughness; I had been duped by their jogging and heavy lifting, misled by their strength when they slapped me on the back or shook my hand.

From Disappearing Fathers, a poem by Faith Shearin.

May 15, 2023 · life · poetry

Caravans by Eleanor Crow.

May 15, 2023 · art

Cleaning out my tabs on a Friday afternoon:

  1. Science Fiction Movie Lettering.
  2. Early Computer Art in the 50s and 60s.
  3. Seattle Seahawks 2023 opponents as 90s album covers.
  4. Old School Hip Hop Flyers
  5. Dell books Mapbacks
  6. A catalog of marble
May 12, 2023 · link drop

We were now in that enchanted calm which they say lurks at the heart of every commotion

~ Moby Dick at Sea.

Art by Gerard Dubois.

May 11, 2023 · art · books

These little sculptures are amazing!

May 10, 2023 · art · wood · animals · nature

The UX Research Reckoning is Here

Lots of nuggets in this article, like:

It’s time for us to lean into the future, to realize the last 15 years was more fools golden than golden age.

fools golden, woof … and:

Middle-range findings [e.g. user interviews] are usually not specific enough. They tend to be too general and descriptive, even when a researcher does an amazing job communicating. They’re hard to turn into specific recommendations and thus easy to poke holes in or ignore. They are most likely to trigger the post-hoc bias, which invokes the stereotype that researchers work for months only to tell us things we already know.

On more micro research:

Low-level, technical UX research isn’t always sexy, but it drives business value. When research makes a product more usable and accessible, engagement goes up and churn rates go down. Companies need that for the bottom line. Users get a better product. Win-win.

And more on macro/strategic research:

Great macro-research is multi-method — desk, quant, and qual combined. It provides priorities and frameworks more than answers or hypotheses. It’s unabashedly business first and future first. And it requires direct collaboration with executives, cutting out the messengers who might dilute the business value of research.

Can’t say I don’t disagree. It’s something a lot of client services UXers have known for a while now. Clients are more willing to pay for macro and micro research.

Bottom line, lots of angst (me included) is being stirred up between lay-offs and AI causing lots of us to reevaluate the direction of our careers.

May 8, 2023 · UX · work · making products

The Wind. I can almost hear this painting:

May 5, 2023 · art

The explanation for why He-Man has a tiger. Put a fucking saddle on it!”

May 5, 2023

Pebble Alumni have been leading a community project to design, crowdfund, and build a phone to fill the iPhone Mini’s shoes

May 4, 2023

An Underwater Restaurant:

April 18, 2023

Choosing the Soundtrack for the Rest of Your Life.

January 30, 2023 · podcast · music

El Bueno Y El Malo. Agree with this review: all the mystery of the desert at night compressed into a rare jewel of an album”

January 27, 2023 · music

The relentless accumulation and management of snow.

January 27, 2023 · weather · science

The Floppotron 3.0. A noise-making contraption.

January 27, 2023 · music · fun

Welcome to the Garden of Blogs.

January 27, 2023 · blogging · fun

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