Should designers PM?
Weekly curated resources for designers — thinkers and makers.
“Designers probably remember the headlines and edutech companies in the 2010s practically pleading us to learn to code. Fortunately, that’s over, but it really does help us designers to at least get a feel for coding so we can work more smoothly and empathetically with our engineering teammates.
The same goes with our product management (PM) teammates. We should “get” them and the work they do just like we “get” coding and the work engineers do, as the three of our domains together comprise the engine of product development. We wouldn’t be doing our due diligence as good designers if we just wait for PMs to tell us what to do, do our work in a bubble, and then tell engineering what to do. If it’s important to be fairly educated about how our design may be engineered, the same should go for how it may be productized.”
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The Feminist Tech Principles: a set of guidelines for tech policy-making and technology creation.
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Make me think
The cost of convenience →
“And lest we forget, the Web Platform is owned by everyone and no one in particular, which means progress and consensus is a lot harder to come by than, say, Android or iOS. It has multiple, independent, often slightly diverging implementations. This has obvious downsides, but also advantages which are, admittedly, more subtle and not always very immediate.”Value beyond instrumentalization →
“Silicon Valley was founded on an ethic of “move fast and break things” and a boundless techno-solutionism. Although this has been somewhat revised in the techlash post-2016, moving fast is still the imperative, and arguments still abound that technology is value-neutral and that everything and anything profitable should be built. The speed of ethical and regulatory development continues to be outpaced by technological development, incurring massive ‘ethical debt’.”
Little gems this week
Towards the HyperNormal—living in an increasingly fake world →
A new recipe format for cooking →
Design lessons from guitar pedals →
Tools and resources
Flexbox in Figma →
Prototyping advanced responsive designs in Figma.Tools for better thinking →
Thinking tools and frameworks to help you solve problems.UX writing study guide →
A collection of articles by NNgroup about writing.