32: A Stark difference in design
Happy Weekend! Last week’s read had a 38% open rate. The most popular link was Tools & Resources to help you design inclusive products. 💌
Tidbits
1. 7 Basic Design Principles Everyone Forgets About
One of the top 5 best design articles I’ve ever read in my 10+ years in design and technology—from the content to the format of the post."
“Good design is the by-product of a proper contextual evaluation, not a whimsical creation out of context, no matter how brilliant its visual aspect may be. Brilliant design solutions have always taken into consideration the contextual consideration.” — Massimo Vignelli
2. Designing for Real Feelings in a Virtual Reality
Virtual reality, it turns out, is excellent at playing into our emotions. We watch movies when we want to laugh or cry and play video games when we want to feel excited. But virtual reality has an extra ingredient: the feeling that the viewer is really there participating in the scene. I crouched because it’s what I felt the rabbit expected of me. There was an overwhelming urge to mirror her — to participate.
3. Designing UI with Colorblind Users in Mind
While the science behind color blindness is pretty complex, the gist of it is that color blind people have difficulty seeing color clearly or differentiating between some colors. With this in mind, in this article, we’ll share some tips on how you can improve your site’s accessibility and the experience it delivers for color blind people.
4. Why Icons Need Labels
I think about this a lot. Is it, much like any other design decision, purely a matter of context? Some questions below the tweet.
Do you agree?
Do all icons need labels?
When is it appropriate to leave them out?
Just because some icons have become ubiquitous (i.e. Floppy disk for save) doesn’t make them a great / easily understandable choice.
Design problem?
In the middle of taking my sinus medication, I examined the bottle beforehand as I always do. I thought about the label, how pharmacies are putting an emphasis on the visual clarity of the information in hopes of leading to less confusion and mistakes on their end. Realistically, they can be grave.
In doing so, I paused and asked myself:
How do blind or visually impaired people take medicine?
With no braille on the bottles, how does a blind individual navigate this without help? Are their numbers they can call in the event they need help? How are they able to differentiate between the number of bottles they have?
I’d love your thoughts!
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