34: A Stark difference in design
Happy Weekend and Happy Mother’s Day to all of our Momma readers out there <3 Last week’s read had a 40% open rate. The most popular link was 7 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about Accessibility. 💌
Tidbits
1. Rejection Kills
…those who felt the most emotional distress also showed the most pain-related brain activity. In other words, being socially rejected triggered the same neural circuits that process physical injury, and translate it into the experience we call pain.
Rejection actually hurts. The article, in all it presents, should force you to ask:
Does social exclusion need a health warning?
2. The Fundamentals Behind Visual Hierarchy
“The whole is other than the sum of its parts” — meaning the whole has “an independent existence in the perceptual system,” says Dr. Russ Dewey.
In other words, humans don’t perceive their surroundings individually and equally. Instead, we organize them in specific ways to make sense of them as a whole.
From their research, Kohler, Wertheimer and Koffka created eight laws of perceptual organization — the tenets of Gestalt psychology.
3. Laws of UX
Mentioned in the article above, Laws of UX is a collection of the maxims and principles that designers can and should consider when building user interfaces. It was created by Jon Yablonski, and it’s gorgeous.
Aside from its beauty, I love the site because it reminds us that UX shouldn’t be a siloed role, that designers should be end-to-end, and in turn be involved in the overall experience — be it someone who focuses on visuals but understands the other facets.
Now I’m not saying that everyone needs to be the best visual designer, or have the most business chops, but knowing the role each plays and being able to step into them if and when need be ensures you understand the sum of the parts. If you don’t understand the sum of the parts, you can’t understand the whole. For more information on that, see the quote and article from above :)
4. The Most Measured Person In Tech Is Running The Most Chaotic Place on the Internet
“If someone were to look back on the decisions that we’re making, would they feel we were on the right side of history? Would I feel proud? Will my children feel like I made good decisions?” —Susan Wojcicki, CEO of Youtube
“We needed to have a deeper understanding of the issues, we needed to have much deeper enforcement and we needed to have much more precision in our policies,”
What’s new from Stark
+ We obtained an Apple Dev account
+ The most heartwarming feedback we’ve ever received
What keeps us trekking is those quiet ones. The people that aren't included because of the color of their skin, difficulty in speaking a language, those with some form of disability, impairment or disorder (be it physical or cognitive), that can’t have large reach with their voice. Because, as we know from the wonderful Kat Holmes, and must repeat to our superhero-driven selves: we are all just temporarily abled.
To those who have shared heartwarming thoughts and feedback, thank you. And for those who have pushed us, enabling us to stay on our A-game, we appreciate you <3
Benefit from this newsletter? Give it a like or buy us a coffee. Find us talking shop on Twitter or community chat.
–Team Stark