Industry News

The big news out of yesterday was that the US Department of Justice and several states has once again sued Google calling for the breakup of its ad tech business that allegedly monopolizes the US ad market. Google of course does not agree with this action.

Sometimes the internet seems to think about the same things at the same time. Last week we were all in on meetings (see here, here, here, and here), and this week we’re all talking about distractions. Here are three excellent articles about this topic that all came across my feeds this week.

First, there is a new interview with the father of deep work, Cal Newport (NYT gift article link). He talks about context switching and “slow productivity”—and it’s really good:

I’m trying to...

Google has confirmed outages across the Google Ads network, including Google Ads for Search, Google Ads for other surfaces and many of the Google Ads management projects, like Search Ads 360, Display and Video 360 and Campaign Manager 360.

As many of you know by now, Google announced mass layoffs due to "difficult economic cycles." Those Googlers in the US were already informed by Friday morning if they had a job at Google or if they were no longer employed. Googlers outside of the US are not going to find out for a month or so if they were part of these layoffs.

This is a wonderful essay by Vivianne Castillo that encourages designers to hold fast to the belief that things could be better for users—and for themselves. From The one thing missing from UX today? Hope:

Today, it’s clear that many designers are feeling overwhelmed, disillusioned, and even unsafe within their organizations—and design leaders are recognizing that conversations around burnout and stress aren’t quite cutting it. I’ve found a deep sense of comfort in the words of...

Every few days I post some links to things I enjoyed that don’t neatly fit into the topics I usually cover on this blog. Use it to fill your reading queue with interesting stuff.

The Most Ridiculous and Weird Tech Gadgets From the Last 25 Years. “The Hushme was a ‘voice mask’ intended to let you make phone calls without bothering anyone.” Between-time by Mandy Brown. “We live in a world full of distractions but short on breaks. The time between activities is consumed by other...

These types of reports can be a bit vapid sometimes, but I am happy to say that The State of UX in 2023 by Fabricio Teixeira and Caio Braga is an extremely thoughtful, well-researched look at what’s going on in the design industry. They talk about the current economic and labor landscape, the type of skills required, how design tools are evolving, and much more. They also addresses the topic of “algorithm-driven thought leadership”, which is a topic that’s close to my heart:

When...

Every week I post a few links to things I enjoyed that don’t neatly fit into the topics I usually cover on the blog. Use it to fill your weekend queue with interesting stuff!

The Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2022 Winners are out. Did the Music Business Just Kill the Vinyl Revival? “On an aggregate level, consumers are simply not buying music. They prefer to stream it for pennies rather than purchase it for dollars.” How Do Big Tech Giants Make Their Billions? I know...

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s post Meetings for an effective engineering organization, I bring you more meeting content! In You can’t just cancel 76,500 hours of meetings Becky Kane makes some good points about the context of meetings within an async culture:

Reducing meetings is just one piece of creating an async-first culture.

She gives some examples of other pieces that are harder but even more important in having a lasting impact on engagement and productivity:...