Issue 003: Black Lives Matter, Design Ethics, SpaceX UI

America is hurting. Many of us are protesting against the hundreds of years of systemic racism in our country. I fear this moment will pass, and nothing will change. The protests sparked by Marjory Stoneman Douglas High did not change gun laws in this country. Nor did any marches for Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Stephon Clark, and countless others do much to change policing in the United States. But despite my pessimism, there is a glimmer of hope. This moment does feel different.
 
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
 
My friends, go and make your voices heard. However you can.
 
Roger

If you click on one link in this issue, let this be the one. AIGA’s Eye on Design published a long list of resources for this moment, for this movement for black lives. You will find funds and charities to which to donate; guides on how to call your local representatives to support police reform; guides on virtual protesting; and further reading on antiracism.

Crooked Media has a great page on how to be an antiracist too.

It is no secret that Twitter has enabled and emboldened Donald Trump by not restricting any of his tweets, even if they violated their terms of service. But earlier this week, they put misinformation warnings on two of his tweets about mail-in ballots. This angered the President but also got the ball rolling. Snapchat shortly followed by saying it will no longer promote Trump’s account. Against the backdrop of growing protests against the murder of George Floyd by police, some tech companies finally started to grow a conscience. But will Silicon Valley change? Mary-Hunter McDonnell, corporate activism researcher from the Wharton School of Business says, “Giving money to organizations that are out on the front lines is more helpful, but it’s also to some extent passing the buck. People are tired of that.”

As designers, we have some power over the projects we work on, and the products we create. Mike Monterio wrote in February, “At some point, you will have to explain to your children that you work, or once worked, at Facebook.”

While at Facebook, Lisa Sy designed ways to flag hate speech on the platform—using Trump’s account in the mockups. In 2016. Four years later, Facebook has not implemented such a system and continues to leave up dangerous posts from Trump, including the highly-charged “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” post.

Tobias van Schneider wrote in 2016, “The role as a designer, or even as an engineer has become more influential and powerful than ever. The work we do makes an impact and naturally brings up the discussion around ethics, responsibility and accountability.” Many of us will work on pieces that are seen by hundreds, maybe thousands. A few of us, having larger clients, or working at a tech company, might work on something used by millions, if not billions of people. We hold great responsibility.

We produce work for audiences, users. Humans who are on the other end of that screen, poster, or ad. “You don’t work for the people who sign your checks. You work for the people who use the products of your labor. If I were to put my hope in one thing, it’s that you understand the importance of this. Your job is to look out for the people your work is affecting. That is a responsibility we cannot defer.”

Memes on social media are the modern-day equivalent of telephone pole posters, cork bulletin boards at laundromats, or painted murals. In less than a couple of weeks, murals memorializing George Floyd have popped up around the world.

“The political nature of walls themselves – separating, as they do, nations and ideologies, the public arena from the private – makes them an invocation to artistic expression,” says Sarah Jilani about the power of murals.

Earlier this week, SpaceX and NASA successfully launched two astronauts to the International Space Station aboard the privately-built Crew Dragon spacecraft. Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will be controlling their vehicle via giant touchscreens. Designer Michal Malewicz writes, “Looking at the knobs, dials and switches on the first space crafts and then looking at the huge touch-screens of the Dragon2 we are seeing the same path forward as with computers and phones.”

BTW, if you are a fan of fictional sci-fi interfaces, Chris Noessel’s Sci-Fi Interfaces blog is a fantastic wormhole.

User experience designer Taras Bakusevych follows up his deep-dive on buttons with an in-depth look at text fields and best practices for designing forms. I’m looking forward to his next piece.

An ex-Apple designer’s lifehack lets doctors make surgical masks safer and better. Ex-Loopers Sabrina Paseman and Megan Duong created the Fix The Mask project. All it takes are three rubber bands and a surgical mask to make an N95-equivalent.

The sophisticated design behind a simple coronavirus sign. “Each public sign is a distillation of human psychology, cultural anthropology, urban design, user design principles, and graphic design, on top of the politics of its constituents.”

Google Search will now favor websites with great UX. Google is switching up its ranking algorithm again to ensure sites with better user experiences rank higher.

Standards Manual is releasing a book on NASA’s worm logo. This was the NASA logo that I grew up knowing and loving. It made a return last week with the Launch America mission. 

If you want to try firsthand the UI that SpaceX’s astronauts are using, you can! Here’s an online simulator where you can dock with the ISS.