DPL Reading List – July 8, 2016

Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week.

There’s No Hand Off In Product Design (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “For most projects, design specs are tossed over the back wall for an external team to build. You’ll be lucky if you ever meet them face to face. Luckier still if the product ends up resembling anything close to what you designed.”

The Perils of Using Technology to Solve Other People’s Problems (Thanks to Cassey Lottmann for recommending this article) – “Many hard problems require you to step back and consider whether you’re solving the right problem. If your solution only mitigates the symptoms of a deeper problem, you may be calcifying that problem and making it harder to change.”

The Slack Workspace Manifesto – “A common mistake of office design stems from the designers and stakeholders crafting a space based on their personal preferences. You may have a specific type of space that works best for you, but that hardly means it works best for everyone.”

Designing Inward (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “We talk a lot in our industry about using design methodologies to get more in touch with our users, to find out what they think and how they feel about our products. But it’s equally important to turn that lens inward every once in awhile and to get in touch with each other, to find out what we think and how we’re feeling about working together, to improve our collective user experience.”

For Better Recall, Try A Work Out Four Hours After Learning Something – “Working up a sweat is known to release molecules that alter the brain, such as dopamine, noradrenaline, and a protein called BDNF that promotes the growth and development of brain cells. Such molecules, the authors say, are critical for solidifying and storing memories for long-term retrieval. Thus, a flood of these molecules might not have a useful effect when memories are fresh, but may make a big difference a little later when the brain is packing memories away for safe storage.”

Indie Developers Ditch Controllers For Real-life Interactions (Thanks to Chris Apple for recommending this article) – “If there’s one thing E3 was not short of, it was controllers. Thousands of the things! Xbox controllers, Dual Shock controllers, third party controllers, motion controllers. But at Indiecade, an independent games showcase at the show, developers devised a variety of ways to play with no controller at all, making these digital games charmingly analog.”

The “Cobra Effect” That Is Disabling Paste On Password Fields (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “Of course it all comes back to this balance in security where there are no absolutes and things are often a trade-off between cost, convenience and actually making the web a safer place. But in the case of passwords, one of the best damn things anyone can do is get themselves a password manager and stop typing in that same crappy combination of kids birthday and dog’s name they’re using all over the place.”