If somebody can use it, somebody can misuse it
Your weekly list of curated design resources, brought to you by your friends at the UX Collective.
There is a portion of the American legal system under the category of negligence called “strict product liability,” also referred to as SPL. Under SPL, anyone in the product chain (seller, distributor, or manufacturer) of a defective product can be liable to anyone injured by that product, regardless of whether the defendant did everything possible to make sure the defect didn’t occur.
SPL applies both to regular use and reasonably foreseeable misuse. Under the “reasonable foreseeability standard,” a manufacturer may be held liable for injuries caused by a product even when a consumer misused the product.
So what does that mean for digital products?
If somebody can use it, somebody can misuse it →
The UX Collective is an independent ad-free design publication that elevates unheard design voices, reaching over 409,600 designers every week. Curated by Fabricio Teixeira and Caio Braga.
Editors’ picks
Frictionless design, frictionless racism →
Can meaningful friction combat racial bias amongst users?The return of the generalist →
Rethinking specialization and breaking down silos.Not all things should be gamified →
Robinhood app and the role of UX in finance.
The Bauhaus chess set: the form of the pieces artfully show their function (1922).
Food for thought
Why I'm losing faith in UX →
”Increasingly, I think UX doesn't live up to its original meaning of ‘user experience.’ Instead, much of the discipline today, as it's practiced in Big Tech firms, is better described by a new name. UX is now ‘user exploitation’.”
The coup we are not talking about →
”The third stage, which we are living through now, introduces epistemic chaos caused by the profit-driven algorithmic amplification, dissemination, and microtargeting of corrupt information, much of it produced by coordinated schemes of disinformation. Its effects are felt in the real world, where they splinter shared reality, poison social discourse, paralyze democratic politics, and sometimes instigate violence and death.”
The mental disorders that gave us modern architecture →
“One reason modern architecture looked so different than past constructions was that its key 20th-century founders literally didn’t see the world in a ‘typical’ fashion. They couldn’t. Their brains had been either physically altered by the trauma of war or, like Le Corbusier, they had a genetic brain disorder. And while their recommendations for ‘good design’ certainly reflected their talent, ambition, and drive, their remedies also reflected their brains’ specific disorders.”
The importance of play: In a world driven by utility and performance, is there room for an open-ended typographic play system?
Little gems this week
Framer is dead: A love letter to my prototyping tool of choice
Building better products with a design token pipeline
Applying white space in UI design
Tools and resources
AnimXYZ →
The first composable CSS animation toolkit.Bad front-end habits →
21 bad front-end habits we are better off leaving behind.Tabbs Pro →
Navigate Chrome tabs like a pro.
