Issue 010: Affordances, Forms, Tupperware Parties

“Affordance” is one of those UX terms that gets thrown around a lot. But what are they and how do they help? Matthew Ström writes:

Understanding affordances comes from a place of curiosity. This means questioning affordances — why are links blue? Why is most text left-aligned? Why are user avatars usually cropped into circles? Sometimes the answers to these questions are rooted in psychology, biology, anthropology, or technology.

Speaking of affordances and making interactions easy, London-based UI & UX designer Geri Reid summed up all her learnings about form design. Her best practices guide includes examples, cites research, and contains accessibility guidance.

Working on a design system for a bank has taught on a lot about forms. I’ve watched testing in our labs. I’ve worked alongside experts from specialist accessibility organisations. I’ve seen forms tested by disabled people and users of assistive technology. I’ve also read a lot of research.

From all this learning I’ve formed my own forms best-practice guidelines.  

Here is a pretty neat project from San Francisco and New York-based branding studio Character. Ben Pham, creative director and co-founder of Character:

Today we’re officially releasing Asterisk* an open-source version of our physical distancing DIY-kit. What started as an RFP concept, it’s now free and accessible for local communities, municipalities, and individuals to use and extend.

Check out other projects from the same Where We Stand initiative.

After nearly 70 years, Tupperware parties are still going strong. In 2017, their revenue was $2.26 billion. Madeleine Morley writes: 

The home party plan, executed by Tupperware’s vice president of marketing, Brownie Wise, was a system based on social connections, one that proved far more effective for the company than any established forms of marketing. Indeed, the monumental rise of Tupperware was the result of a strategy familiar to today’s social media-fueled companies—networking, sponsored content, and influencer endorsements. 

Some clients just aren’t worth the trouble. And it’s perfectly OK to part ways. Shannel Wheeler:

Firing my first client gave me confidence and permission to know that I didn’t have to accept every client, job, or situation. It taught me to respectfully leave the things that weren’t good for me. I didn’t have to continue with client relationships, partnerships, projects, or jobs that no longer served me or that stifled my growth.

ByteDance Said to Offer to Sell TikTok’s U.S. Operations (nytimes.com) President Trump announced on Friday that he intends to ban TikTok, which is prompting the sale. But Wired’s editor-in-chief Nicolas Thompson wonders if this is an attack on free speech, and I can’t help but speculate if this is a personal vendetta Trump has against the platform that greatly embarrassed him because of the empty seats at his Tulsa rally.

Jokes aside, is the new Space Force logo any good? 5 design experts weigh in (fastcompany.com) OK, how about some serious critique?

Overview of Fluent Design System by Microsoft (uxdesign.cc) Calling a design system “empathetic” is a bit of a stretch. But an interesting breakdown of the system nonetheless.

Teenyicons: Tiny minimal 1px icons (teenyicons.com) “1px” is a bit of a misnomer because these icons aren’t 1×1 pixels. But these teensy-weensy, one-pixel stroke, icons are pretty cute.

When NOT to use Figma auto-layout in your Design System (uxdesign.cc) I’ve been loving the auto layout feature in Figma. It’s definitely not appropriate all the time, but Chuck Rice has a great idea on how to have both ways.

Take a trip down memory lane by running a Mac Quadra 900 from 1991, all on your current computer. Written in JavaScript—yes—this emulator called Macintosh.js, even includes Photoshop 3.0 and trial versions of Illustrator 5.5 and Premiere 4.0.