Issue 16

WELCOME

This issue of BeingDesignerly continues featuring accessibility, having just celebrated Global Accessibility Awareness Day last week. There are articles about difficulties automated accessibility tools cause for disabled people, Apple's accessibility updates, and an inclusive design toolkit. If you use WhatsApp, you've seen the privacy update that kicked in this past week, and there are articles on different aspects of privacy, including facebook still tracking your phone.

FEATURE

Blind people, advocates slam company claiming to make websites ADA compliant

Throughout the pandemic, blind people, like everyone else, became increasingly dependent on websites to purchase goods. They have raised issues with a company that promises to make websites more accessible. Many blind people and disability advocates on social media say they have experienced problems when trying to use sites that have installed AccessiBe.

Apple previews powerful software updates designed for people with disabilities - Apple

Last week, Apple announced that later this year, people with limb differences will be able to navigate Apple Watch using AssistiveTouch; iPad will support third-party eye-tracking hardware for easier control; and for blind and low vision communities, Apple’s industry-leading VoiceOver screen reader will get even smarter using on-device intelligence to explore objects within images.

UX

WhatsApp's privacy policy war is over, and WhatsApp lost

After initially setting a May 15th deadline for users to accept the new policy and threatening to disable the accounts of those who refused it, WhatsApp reversed its stance, instead saying that it would start to disable some account features for users who declined.

TLDR; Theoretically, if you restrict your usage of WhatsApp to sending messages to other individual users, the changes in the data policy won't affect you at all.

Facebook Still ‘Secretly’ Tracks Your iPhone—This Is How To Stop It

Your iPhone settings enable you to tell Facebook you don’t want your location tracked. It’s clear and non-ambiguous. Why then, if you tell Facebook “never” to access your location, is the data harvesting giant doing exactly that?

Dark patterns

A recent New York Times op-ed derided the use of dark patterns: design tricks that push people to do things online by confusing or deliberately inconveniencing them. An example cited was a dark pattern used to cancel Amazon Prime, which is not as easy as subscribing.

Funny thing though, the Times uses the very same dark pattern it derides to prevent its own subscribers from canceling.

Unveiling Material You - Material Design

At I/O, Google unveiled Material You, the next evolution of Material Design and called it 'a new way to think about design.' Over the coming months, we will learn more about Material You, but this blog post has the vision. Material You explores a more humanistic approach to design, answering the question: “What if form did not just follow function, but also followed feeling?”

Your double diamond lacks context

The original Double Diamond is often used to illustrate the design and development process. While frameworks are wonderful, there are many factors that contribute to a project's success or failure, and this article discusses flattened, warped, and truncated double diamonds. These are more horrific than just incorrect aspect ratios!

VISUAL

Map of the Internet

A visual representation of the Internet as a map - incredibly detailed with 3000 websites as countries. I chuckled at ‘Attention-seeking peninsula’ and ‘duckface mountains’ in the Facebook landmass…

Click through to see what catches your eye, or where you spend most of your time online!

TOOLS

Cards for Humanity

Cards for Humanity is a practical tool for inclusive design. Deal the cards to get a random person and their needs. Your challenge is the work out how to design for this person. Note: Idean is a part of Capgemini, the company I work for, but that's not why it made it here - I really love the concept and tool!

Microsoft Inclusive Activity Cards [PDF; 3.5Mb]

These have been around for a while - the activity cards and support cards are designed to be integrated into your design process. Jump-start creative thinking and stress-test concepts through an inclusive lens.

UNTIL NEXT TIME

I hope you enjoyed this issue, and the articles about accessibility, privacy, dark patterns and inclusive design activity cards.

If you think someone would benefit from Being Designerly, please forward it to them.

I'm looking for feedback, of the brutally honest kind, so this can improve over time. You can reach me at lycerejo (at) gmail.com - thank you!