27: A stark difference in design...
Hey! Welcome to this week’s Stark Difference in Design. Last Edition No. 26 had a 45% open rate. The most popular link was the What Happens When Kids Help Design Our Cities post. 💌
Tidbits
+ How to build technology that feels like a friend
If communicating with CUIs is going to be as simple as talking to a good friend, we should design them as such. William Rawlins, a professor of Interpersonal Communication at Ohio University who studies friendship, says a friend has three qualities: they’re easy to talk to, enjoyable, and dependable. We form routines around turning to important people in our lives in the same way we build habits with our technologies.
Following up on the point that technology should be built to feel like a friend is this a16z article from Connie Chan. Connie goes through four key product principle’s from WeChat’s creator (Allen Zhang), with the first being the “Golden Principle”; or that the user is your friend.
Allen’s take on whether or not to maximize monetization potential is black and white: “If WeChat was a person, it would be your best friend based on the amount of time you spend on it. So, how could we put an advertisement on the face of your best friend? Every time you see them, you would have to watch an advertisement before you could talk to them.”
+ Meet Q: The first genderless voice
While assigning a gendered voice to technology does help a number of people connect to it, it can also uphold stereotypes and bias. Check out the video in the tweet. Some things we’d love to know…
As a user, how does Q make you feel?
As a professional, do you feel this move promotes accessibility, diversity, and equality?
+ Why disability simulation exercises are misguided
This thread from Matt May at Adobe on disability simulation exercises, product folks being misguided by them, and the importance of listening to, and believing, disabled users.
Additional material on the topic: The Disability Resources & Education Services at University of Illinois put together a guide on this.
For bookworms
+ The Mathematics of Love
Mathematics is ultimately the study of patterns — predicting phenomena from the weather to the growth of cities, revealing everything from the laws of the universe to the behavior of subatomic particles […] These patterns twist and turn and warp and evolve just as love does, and are all patterns which mathematics is uniquely placed to describe. […] Mathematics is the language of nature. It is the foundation stone upon which every major scientific and technological achievement of the modern era has been built. It is alive, and it is thriving.
What’s new from Stark
+ Stark featured in Sketch’s extensions
Oh shucks! Thanks to our @sketch friends for featuring us 🖤
Liked this newsletter? Let us know. And we’re always talking shop on Twitter @getstarkco or in our community chat.
–Team Stark