Industry News

Back in 1979 anthropologist Michael Thompson wrote a book called Rubbish Theory. Considered ahead of its time, the book—which has been out of print for decades—explores how discarded objects can become valuable and fashionable again, and how the line between what is regarded as rubbish and what is not regarded as rubbish can be moved. In the article Highlight the power of creativity from below Lorenz Khazaleh interviews Thompson about how the book (and underlying theory) is now finally...

Ryan Singer shares some tips about prototyping tradeoffs in The Fidelity Curve: How to weigh the costs and benefits of creating UI mockups:

The purpose of making sketches and mockups before coding is to gain confidence in what we plan to do. I’m trying to remove risk from the decision to build something by somehow “previewing” it in a cheaper form. There’s a trade-off here. The higher the fidelity of the mockup, the more confidence it gives me. But the longer it takes to create that...

Google has just replaced the Google Webmaster Guidelines document, known as the holy-grail of SEO guidelines for most in our community. It seems a lot of the content has been revised and updated, which may be part of the new webmaster home from Google...

Did you know that you’re absolutely, positively, not allowed to use Q-tips to clean your ears? Not only that, but you’re not even supposed to clean your ears at all. From Roberto A. Ferdman more-fascinating-than-it-should-be The strange life of Q-tips, the most bizarre thing people buy:

“People have been led to think that it’s normal to clean their ears — they think that ear wax is dirty, that it’s gross or unnecessary,” [Dennis Fitzgerald, an otolaryngologist in Washington, D.C.]...

Dominic Basulto wrote an excellent summary of a recent McGraw Hill Financial Global Institute report called What the world’s best cities will look like in 2030. The main point the report makes is that people in cities are aging, and we’re not really paying attention to that. There are, however, several things we can do to make sure that older people can live comfortably in our cities:

First, the city of the future should have the infrastructure and transportation links to address the...

Daniel Zacarias has some tips for How to Deal with “Sinatra” Stakeholders—those people (usually HiPPOs1) who only want to design and build things their way. At the end he makes an important point:

These stakeholder attitudes don’t come out of the blue or from malfeasance. They result from misalignment and even when you can’t change your entire organization, you can definitely affect change around your product.

This is something I constantly have to remind myself about. If someone...

Craig Mod’s essay on doing design ethnography in Myanmar is so far my favorite piece of writing of the year. In The Facebook-Loving Farmers of Myanmar he shares some notes about the team’s visits and interviews:

There is a phrase repeated over and over again during my time in Myanmar: From no power to solar, from no banks to digital currencies, from no computers and no internet to capable smartphones with fast 3G connections. It is the mantra of consultants working in these emergent...

Matt Cutts of Google who is still on leave as far as we know, was on TWIG #336 and he spent about 15 minutes going through the core updates, Penguin...

Google is organizing more and more things in its index based upon entity numbers. I have a couple of examples for you that show how they are being used.

It’s possible that you may have missed a reference to Freebase Entities in a Google...

Melissa Perri in Changing the Conversation about Product Management vs. UX:

Product Management with no User Experience Design creates functional products that don’t make users excited. User Experience Design with no Product Management produces delightful products that don’t become businesses.

I have a few quibbles with this article (including the idea that the role of UX is to make users excited…), but I like this quote because it ties in with a common theme I write about: the...