➕ The Conditions 43
6 levels of UX Maturity, McKinsey's Top Trends in Tech, Spotify launches Greenroom...
+Issue 43
User Experience
Visual craftsmanship for all
Why and how designers can sensitise cross-functional partners to good visual aesthetics and help make craftsmanship a team effort.
The 6 Levels of UX Maturity
Nielsen Norman’s UX-maturity model has 6 stages that cover processes, design, research, leadership support, and longevity of UX. It measures an organization’s desire and ability to successfully deliver user-centered design. It encompasses the quality and consistency of research and design processes, resources, tools, and operations, as well as the organization’s propensity to support and strengthen UX now and in the future, through its leadership, workforce, and culture.
Product Metrics That Matter – A comprehensive guide to product frameworks (including Pirate Metrics, Heart and North Star)
Business
Cristiano Ronaldo snub wipes billions off Coca-Cola’s market value – Portugal captain rejects bottles in Euro 2020 press conference, the soft drink ‘company’s share price drops by 1.6%’…However this reporting of the drop in share price isn’t necessarily the case as Forbes point out: A Post-Truth World: Why Ronaldo Did Not Move Coca-Cola Share Price …either way it’s a good case study in sponsorship and the flip side of influencer marketing.
Spotify launches its live audio app and Clubhouse rival, Spotify Greenroom
A Homeless Amazon Warehouse Worker in New York City Tells Her Story
"Jeff Bezos has no idea that his workers are homeless, especially in New York, and I'm not the only one."
Oxford University Press to end centuries of tradition by closing its printing arm – Falling sales blamed as 20 jobs axed in final chapter for history of printing in the city, which stretches back to the earliest days of book publishing
Technology
McKinsey have published their Top Trends in Tech report
Digital Trust
Ten Years of data breaches in one image – Nearly 8 billion usernames have leaked since June 2011
Design
The four abstractions of creativity
The tragedy often called ‘reality’ is that many clients (and some creators, too) want to start at step 4 and skip all the rest. After all, that’s where the fun starts, and that’s where things become relatable. Colors! Shiny stuff! Trends and buzz-words! Sadly, many designers go along with it because we think,… well, what do we think? At times, not so much, it seems. Before we know it, we’re having three-hour meetings on typography and what stock photos to use, and how the competitor’s stuff looks, and the lord-of-RGB-knows-what — without anyone in the room knowing what the hell we’re trying to achieve in the first place.
The Diversity in Design Collaborative is united by a belief in design’s power to enact positive change and the role of diversity in creating strong businesses. Their initial focus is to increase representation of Black designers in the field.
Why Aren’t More People Paying Attention to Podcast Cover Design?
The podcast industry has exploded in recent years, but it still hasn’t attracted the same design talent as the book and music industries
The early years of Factory Records celebrated in a new museum show
An exhibition at Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum celebrates the early years of Factory Records, and features rarely seen photographs and works from designers including Peter Saville and Ben Kelly
Remote Working
Are we returning to the office? Or is the future remote? [via andreessen horowitz]
Work during COVID has underscored how distributed teams working remotely can be effective and accelerated the shift from the way we worked in the industrial age to optimizing how we work for the information age. While the tech for working in remote and distributed teams was here before COVID, the pandemic was the impetus and accelerator for moving to a new way of working at scale.
However, while it’s clear that our work models changed in the past 18 months, it’s less clear what the long-term model (or models) for working will be — or what will be the most effective and competitive. We have heard plenty of speculation on the subject, but in reality, only 29% of workplaces were back to the office in May 2021, and we are still in the early stages of workplace experiments with hybrid and remote-first models.
Typography
Typography Trends in 2021: What Should You Know? Including Brutalism, Neo Retro, Dynamic Typography, Gradients, Outlines fonts…
The Font of Philip K. Dick paperbacks
Over almost two decades, Roslyn Gothic graced dozens of covers with works by the writer, building a visual identity for the master of dystopian fiction.
Action Text Brings Personality and Bite to the Smooth World of Screen Type
A new type family opens up, stretches out, and digs in for the hard work of setting dynamic paragraphs and interface copy