#the interviewer did not know what dave was talking about and just guessed the spelling each time lol

[martyr-eater]

I was going through an old grave disorder era interview and found this charming bit about dave's garden 🌿

[puck--off]

Unpacking some of Dave Portnoy’s statements from his video about the NWHL.

I also watched Dave Portnoy’s video and was thoroughly disgusted with just about everything he had to say. I felt like certain things from his video are a little hard to understand if you're not familiar with the context of them. So, I’ve compiled a list of quotes from the interview, as well as my own thoughts on each of the quotes. If you are so inclined, the video can be found on his Twitter. Here we go:

“I didn’t wanna do this and I was thinking I wasn’t gonna do it because most people probably don’t even know what I’m about to talk about is going on. I’ll only draw more attention to it and the people who don’t like us will drag us.” 

He’s right, in a sense. Since he’s Dave, and cishet white men love Dave, a bunch of people who don’t know what’s going on are suddenly going to be invested in what’s happening with the NWHL. However, people who don’t know about the league or the league’s goals are now going to be attempting to occupy and criticize a space that was not made for them, with no knowledge of the contexts of the league culture or values, etc. Dave backhandedly presents this “attention” as a good thing (no surprises there), but it really is not. 

“Three of the top four executives outside of me are female. But we’re sexist. We’re just doing it for looks, just having basically an entire female executive board take us from a small company to one of the most successful media companies in the world, but we’re just doing it for show. Whatever.” 

This, my friends, is called tokenizing. Dave is using powerful women within a company to promote a non-sexist image. What Dave is failing to acknowledge is that part of his own image as a hardcore, blunt personality was built around bashing much younger women. What Dave is also failing to acknowledge is that Barstool, as a whole, promotes the objectification of women! Again, no surprises here. It even has a whole section called “Smokeshow of the day,” which is essentially pictures of attractive women. 

“[Erika is]…probably the number one supporter of a league called the National Women’s Hockey League. You probably didn’t know it existed. The only reason I know it existed—don’t let the headlines fool you—is because 2013, a girl, Denna Laing, got a spinal cord injury playing in the Winter Classic in Boston, and guess what company drew attention to it, raised 100 grand, and brought more attention and more money to the cause? We did. Whatever. I digress. I’m just showing we’ve supported this league before and women’s hockey before.” 

Oh boy. Lots to unpack here. First of all, as a little background, Denna Laing was a forward for the Boston Pride in 2015 when she crashed into the boards during the Winter Classic Game, leaving her paralyzed from the chest down. She’s been working incredibly hard since and regularly updates her Instagram page @/dlaing24, showing her progress. So. Dave got the year wrong. Simple mistake, I guess, but if he really wanted to make it seem like he cared about her or bringing her into the conversation, he would have mentioned the correct year. He also uses her accident as a supposed show of support for both the NWHL and women’s hockey itself, which is yet another example of tokenization. I obviously can’t speak for Denna, but I personally am not happy that he is using Barstool support of one woman’s journey as a claim of support for an entire league and an entire sport. Two asides: Portnoy also called Denna a “girl”—correcting himself after beginning to say “lady”—despite the fact that she is currently 29 years old and was in her mid 20s in 2015. Barstool also has not posted anything about her progress on their website since 2016. Also, downplaying interest in the NWHL is a classic Dave move—pandering to his audience of cishet white men. 

“A player in the league, in the NWHL, said Barstool is ‘white supremacist’ and doesn’t want to associate with us. …You should be in jail for that. Like, to call a company ‘white supremacist’ without a shred of proof because I sang a Ja Rule song five years ago, is that it?” 

No Dave. This is it. Note: The linked article is a very brief summary of racism within Barstool and does include full spelling of the N-word within the context that Barstool used it. Please be warned. Knowing the context of (some of) Barstool’s history of racism, I think Saroya Tinker’s tweet speaks for itself. I will leave things at her words here. 

Also, Dave cannot pronounce “supremacist.” 

After this, Dave makes a lot of petty, immature statements that I won’t bother transcribing, including calling NWHL league management “no-fun-club losers.” 

He also says that he told Erika, “If you want to start your own league and put these fucking clowns out of business, I’m in…all you people who kept your mouth shut can come play in our league. But the white supremacist crap girl and everyone else who talked shit about it, you’re done.” 

Dave Portnoy and Barstool want to start a women’s hockey league that diminishes issues and values that are important to current NWHL players. I hope the NWHL continues to handle this situation and support their players who may be coming under fire for criticizing a truly problematic organization.

[callmeblake]

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21st 2017

Despite the stereotypical Scottish weather, fans of all ages settled in outside Edinburgh’s La Belle Angele last week in anticipation for the nights lineup. Frank Iero and the Patience return to the UK alongside Homeless Gospel Choir, Paceshifters and Dave Haus And The Mermaid in support of September’s Keep The Coffins Coming EP. I sat down with Frank before he took the stage on Wednesday to talk about the release, family life, and answer some of your questions.

M.E: You are right in the centre of your UK tour alongside The Homeless Gospel Choir and Paceshifters. How does it feel? Frank: It’s great, yeah. I mean, I feel like when you come out from the states on tour, there’s usually a threshold, right? I think that three and a half, four weeks is where you’re feeling strong, but when you hit the fifth week that’s when things start to, like, “Oh my God”.

M.E: You start to miss home and go a little crazy? 

Frank: Yeah, but I think the way to combat that is to surround yourself with people and bands that you like.

M.E: I noticed that with Homeless Gospel Choir, you guys are with them constantly! Frank: That’s the thing, you know? Having Derek around and having Dave and the mermaid around; I mean, we just met Paceshifters but they’re amazing, really really nice guys, so, I have to tell you that, that helps. When you have someone that’s just a jerk, it really brings the rest of the tour down, you know? So we’ve been really lucky, so knock on wood.

M.E: You released the new EP, Keep The Coffins Coming almost a month ago now; how are you feeling about the response from fans?

Frank: It’s been amazing. I mean, I didn’t expect that much attention around it because when we did the recording, I just did it for me, you know? And I didn’t know if it would ever see the light of day. I heard it was going to come out and it was like “Whoa, that’s amazing; people that really care are going to see the bridge between the two records,” and that’s awesome. It’s a session that I am in love with and I had a lot of fun doing, and looked forward to dong since I was, like, fuckin’ eleven, and then all of a sudden it came out and people were really enjoying it, and that makes you feel even better about it. M.E: So, fans are going crazy for the new stuff? Yeah! It’s fun, there were songs like “Best Friends Forever”. M.E: Ah, I remember when that music video came out, it’s real sweet. That’s the thing, right? We did that and people knew it, but the way we do it live is a little bit different and I think that it threw people through a loop a little bit to hear the live version because they were so familiar with the original. So, now to have the live version recorded and out there, too, kids really knew where certain segments happen and they’re bouncing off of that version of the song, so that’s awesome.

M.E: Do you have a favourite track from the EP? Frank: I guess best friends, I mean, that song holds a special place in my heart and the fact that my kids kind of approved it, too, they were like “Yeah, that’s pretty good”. M.E: What age are they now?! Well, the girls are seven, and Miles is five.

M.E: What were you listening to right now, and what were you listening to writing the record? Frank: Oh man, just right now, I was listening to new Weezer songs, which are phenomenal. The Paceshifters record just came out, I think that’s a fantastic record. The new Homeless Gospel Choir record is amazing. The new Culture Abuse single, I guess it’s old now, but I love that. The new Liam Gallagher, we like!

M.E: I feel like, despite being a frontman where a lot of people focus on your vocals, you manage to make every project you’ve been involved with so far (MCR, Death Spells, LeATHERMOUTH) sound so different. How does it feel to play with so many different genres in that way? Frank: Yeah, I think it’s because I just love making music so much and I enjoy so many different types of music that it kind of just makes sense to branch out and make things with different people and try different, new things. It keeps me interested and keeps me inspired, I like to have so many different projects because I feel like if I hit a wall with something else, like, a creative wall, I can go to something else that opens up my head and opens doors, you know?

M.E: How does having a family back home change the approach to touring and live performance, and all of those things? Frank: It’s harder, you definitely get more homesick, and you try to tour smarter as opposed to harder, but it’s one of those things where I think you have to have really understanding loved ones, that, you know? M.E:That appreciate what you’re doing? Yeah, and that get that you’re doing it for the best for everybody.

M.E What is the first thing you’re going to do when you get home? Frank: Spend time with my kids, the girls are in soccer right now so I want to try to get to a soccer game.

@kayleighewing_ asked: What made you decide to do full Scotland dates, like Aberdeen and Edinburgh, whereas most people will focus solely on Glasgow? It’s very much appreciated. Frank: I think because, after this UK run, we have a couple more shows for the rest of this year and then I’m going to take some time off. I think it was important for me to try to hit as many places as humanly possible, we’ve always had really great Scotland shows and it’s fun to go to new cities and play new venues that we’ve never played before.

How do you keep yourself busy/stop yourself from getting bored on tour? Well, usually you have a lot of things during the day, but also, there is a lot of “hurry up and wait” kind of stuff. We take a lot of walks and see as much of the city as we possibly can. You’re good here, then! There’s a lot of history in Edinburgh. Yeah, I think it’s really inspiring to get to walk around and look at things. I mean, where I come from everything is very new, so you feel the history in a city like this, and I think that kinds helps remind you, in my job, how much bigger the world is than just your view.

Gaby and @aya_lmao asked: How do you feel about so many people being dedicated enough to follow a tour and travel as far as they do to see you play? The queue outside is crazy tonight. Yeah? Man, it’s amazing. I feel very lucky to have that type of fan base and those type of people that care that much to want to come to multiple shows, and stay and come early and wait, and see all of the bands on the tour. That means a lot. You feel that support, you feel that love, and that makes you want to put on a good show every night for them. I know a lot of people have fanbases that aren’t that dedicated and I feel very blessed to have that, it’s amazing.

@penceyprick asked: What were your favourite pedals and amps to use on “Parachutes”? On “Parachutes”, I used a Fender Tone Master, head, mostly. I think some of the clean tones are through a VOX AC30, and the main distorted tone is a Keeley modded Blues Driver, and sometimes I’ll have a chorus and a reverb kind of going through that as well, so, you always have that little open weave. There’s a little bit of tremolo on there, I use the boss tremolo, the green one, and… I’m trying to think! There’s a little bit of memory man in there in some parts, but the main tone is the Fender Tone Master with the Keeley modded boss Blue Driver.

How do you manage to get through days when you experience creative blocks? Do you have any methods to overcome those moments? Honestly, I like to keep multiple projects going where I can jump back and forth and really explore other options and different musical stylings, that really helps. Sometimes you just have to know when to bust through the block and when kind of just leave it alone. Sometimes just living your life is a good way to get around that block.

@pussyliquorband asked: Any advice for new bands starting out? Just don’t be full of shit. Basically, do it because you have to do it, don’t do it because you expect anything in return.

@fordangeroushumans on Instagram asked: Have you ever considered recording a full album on analog tape? Do you feel as though there’s a difference between that and digital? I have found that a lot of musicians say that it makes music feel more human/real. Well, yeah! Keep The Coffins Coming was on tape. The drums on Parachutes is all tape and then, that was bounced down and recorded digitally over the top of that, so the guitars- Actually, a lot of that, I think, was recorded on tape and bounced down, so yeah, both of those records are to tape, but Steve’s studio is a full studio, so.

@coffeeandavocados on Instagram asked: If you were in a post-apocalyptic comic book world, what kind of character would you be? Survival/fighter/leader etc? … Dead, I’d be a dead character.

[depechemodespiritera]

As Depeche Mode’s principal songwriter looks forward to playing in front of 70,000 people in their biggest ever UK show at the London Stadium, Tim Burrows talks to him about new album Spirit, his Essex roots and what it feels like to grow up as a British European

If there’s one thing Depeche Mode isn’t it’s favourite sons. A few years ago I went on a bus and walking tour of the band’s hometown, Essex’s (no longer) New Town of Basildon. In our party were Germans, Scandinavians, east Europeans - but if memory serves, no British people, and certainly no one from Essex. As we crept around the former garage of Vince Clarke, where the band rehearsed in their early days, a neighbour pulled up and smilingly explained she’d never heard of Depeche Mode. The Europeans were astonished at the fact this multi-platinum band who’d filled their lives were not known in the place where it all started

Depeche Mode have sold millions and millions of records, but they are still considered a cultish proposition on these isles. This year the band are on the road again. Five stadium shows in Germany; three in Italy. Three in France. But only one in the UK, at the London Stadium, the new home of West Ham. Yet this is still a triumph. It feels as if the band have struggled to escape their Basildon days in this country, the synthpop and the hair, the patterned shirts and the cheesy grins.

Only now does Martin Gore feel like the band are being taken seriously in the country they grew up. We’re in the kind of Mayfair hotel you’d expect a band like Depeche Mode to be ensconced in, fulfilling the last of the band’s press obligations in the promotional push for latest album Spirit. Gore seems relieved that he’ll soon be back in Santa Barbara, California, where his 13-month old and two-week old daughters are – he has only been with his youngest for 24 hours of her life due to band obligations. Spirit is emphatically humanist. A state-of-world summary that sounds like it could be about Trump or Brexit but was written and recorded before both were material game-changers, it gives apathy short shrift, calling for “revolution” no less. There is a beautiful lullaby ('Eternal'). It sounds like a record by a new father and all the more interesting for it.

Gore cracks a wide Californian smile before launching into a unaffected yet still controlled guffaw that punctuates time spent with him (I’m told to expect it so am relieved when it first appears in our conversation). I’m telling him about the Depeche Mode cover band Speak And Spell that I caught at last September’s Essex Architecture Weekend, part of the Radical Essex project put on by Southend gallery, Focal Point. Their version of Dave Gahan performed in front of some blue Fosters cans that lined the front of the stage, a tiny barrier between the tribute frontman and the locals, architecture fans, Essex geeks and arts press all dancing to the ‘Mode’s early hits. Tribute acts are the real “folk” musicians, the dancing and singalongs they inspire keeping some kind of collective spirit alive in pubs and village halls nationwide. But it’s a fractured collective these days in the UK.

'The Worst Crime', the third track on Spirit, sounds like it is about Brexit, but wasn’t it conceived before that?

Martin Gore: It wasn’t written for that at all. For me, it’s a song about humanity hanging itself and the worst crime being the destruction of the planet, because there are so many crimes that we’re committing on a daily basis, but this is the worst crime because we are not just doing it to ourselves but we’re also doing it to future generations. And, like I say, we’ve had so much time to implement things, to put things right.

You recently had a daughter, did that affect the songs?

MG: I had one 13 months ago and one two weeks ago. I have five children, four daughters and one son. I think that has definitely affected me. A lot of the songs would definitely have been written before my 13 month old was born but while my wife was pregnant. There is one song on the album actually about her, 'Eternal', which talks about caring for a child, but which also mentions the black cloud rising and the radiation falling.

How pessimistic are you about the future with Trump being elected?

MG: I was really pessimistic up until a few weeks ago. I now have a glimmer of hope because maybe the American system works, because the the Muslim ban obviously didn’t get through, the judges stopped that. And then now his repealing of Obamacare got scrapped. So now I am just hoping that everything that he wants to implement is just going to get rejected.

You live in Santa Barbara. How did you end up moving from Basildon to Berlin to there?

MG: I think I was in Berlin 85-86, 86-87. Then I came back to London, from 90-95. And then I moved to Hertfordshire until 2000 and that’s when I moved to Santa Barbara.

I once spoke to Alison Moyet, who also moved Hertfordshire. I remember she told me how in Basildon the milkman would come round to get autographs and wouldn’t stop hassling her so she had to move away.

MG: Yeah I used to live not too far from Alison. We only left Hertfordshire as I was married to an American [Suzanne Boisvert] and she had lived here for 11 years wanted to move back to America. I thought, 'OK, I can’t really get out of this one.' It wasn’t my choice at the time. We got divorced almost immediately, but we have children together and my son is still only 14 so I see him every other week when I am at home.

England never felt claustrophobic for me at all. I think it would feel more difficult for me if I lived in mainland Europe. America I think is really easy because Los Angeles has film stars everywhere and musicians and Santa Barbara a lot of people have homes there even if they don’t live there. You are kind of inconsequential, no one cares.

How do you view political changes in the UK. Do you feel you get a sense of what is happening?

MG: Obviously I understand the bigger changes, but I think it’s more the smaller stuff that’s going on ... I don’t feel part of it and I don’t think I have a right to. I’ve lived away for 17 years. I didn’t vote in the referendum because I think there was a rule, I think somebody told me was a 15-year limit. But I would have voted Remain.

Did it surprise you that where you were from in Essex voted to leave the EU at such a high rate? Basildon voted over 68 per cent to leave the EU.

MG: Yeah, it does surprise me, but I really think that people were fooled. A lot of people believed in the idea that all the money that was going to be saved from the EU was going to go to the NHS. It was a lie. And, in a way, they should redo the referendum as so many people voted on that. And the other thing, Andy in the band said this to me, and he’s absolutely right: even somebody who really understands the world of finance didn’t have any idea about the implications of that vote. If you’re gonna leave that to the general population to make that decision it should have been a minimum of a 60/40 split. It was so close, virtually 50-50. Such a huge decision and so many things hinge on that decision – but that’s it, it’s made.

There’s always been a split with the people in the UK who feel a cultural affinity with Europe and the people who don’t. I guess you always had a cultural affinity with Europe?

MG: Yeah. Most people at school I went to in Basildon didn’t take French very seriously. You would get laughed at even if you just put on a French accent, but taking [the idea of] German was completely laughed at. And then I took German, which was new at the time, one of the first people at the school to. When I was 15 I went to Germany on a school exchange. I felt an affinity with Europe before I was in the band.

A few years ago I wrote about a Depeche Mode themed guided tour of Basildon put on by Vince Clarke’s former girlfriend Deb Danahay. It was striking how many German, east European people there were, whereas the locals were nonplussed.

MG: I know Deb. I don’t know what it was that made us take off in those countries. If you go into the eastern bloc countries we are huge, and in Russia. Maybe there is something about the depressing nature of our music and lyrics that some people find an affinity with.

Do you think the UK has a cultural need for stasis and nostalgia, which means people don’t pick upon your messages so much?

MG: I don’t know. When I first started writing this album I realised that I was going down a dangerous route, because it is more about social commentary/politics. But funnily enough, 99.9% of the reviews I have seen have been amazing. I don’t know if it is just this album but gradually over time we’ve become more accepted and acknowledged in the UK, whereas in Europe we were embraced much quicker and for longer. The fans who get on the bus to go round Basildon, they’ve travelled there. I don’t know if they’re expecting to see Graceland but believe you me I didn’t live in Graceland!

It fits with this idea of Depeche Mode as the biggest cult band in the world but there currently seems to be a new wave of critical reevaluation for the band.

MG: I’ve noticed it particularly with this album, like I said. I think we have slowly got better press over the years [in the UK]. One of the things we did wonder about is if we were trying to lose the albatross of the early pop days. We were bigger here with Speak And Spell than we were in Europe, we were bigger in Europe around Some Great Reward, so they don’t remember that. So that embarrassing point still haunts us - that’s one of the things we think about but it’s probably nothing to do with that. But people probably don’t really care.

What songs are we talking about?

MG: We were really bubblegum pop when we started out. So Speak And Spell, A Broken Frame, 'See You', 'Meaning of Love'.

When Vince left just before that period was there a sense that you might have to go back to the commuter job if things didn’t work out?

MG: There were a couple of songs on A Broken Frame that I had written before for another band that we thought were quite good that could be used. Some of them I just made up as I went along in the studio. That’s why it’s my least favourite album. I was dropped in the deep-end with it. But I was young and I did relish it really to be honest - it was fun to do. And it wasn’t like we worried about it when Vince left because of the naivety of youth.

Did you have backing from the label?

MG: Yeah. We were on Mute so it was an independent label, it was Daniel Miller, who is still involved with us to this day, he’s one of out best friends. We never thought about it at the time and fortunately the first thing that we released after Vince left, 'See You', was really successful.

Going back to the album, when you sit down to write, are you writing from a certain character or position, or is it just instinctive.

MG: I think it really is me trying to do something organically as I possibly can. I start playing some chords on a guitar or a piano and get something on the computer and I just start singing along. And that somehow ends up going from a verse to a chorus and then that’s the start of a song. But sometimes I’m not 100 per cent sure where the words are going. They’re not actual noises I’m making, they’re words. I’ll look and I think about where I am going with that. And then start again, the same chords, try and get another verse, get to the chorus... Without wishing to sound like a hippy, sometimes I think that you tap into something.

How did you first start songwriting?

MG: Somebody taught me two chords on a guitar when I was 13 and then I got a book and learned the rest of the chords. I used to buy Disco 45, a magazine that came out weekly or monthly. It had all the chart’s hits in it, the words not the chords. And I used to sit there from the age of 13 to the age of 16/17 or whatever and work out all the songs. At the same time I was writing songs myself. But I think that was great training because you learned the structures of songs subconsciously. By learning everything in the charts at that age when you are like a sponge it must have been good for me.

The London stadium gig - are you looking forward to that as a kind of homecoming as you were born not far from that neck of the woods in Dagenham?

MG: I was actually born in London, Hammersmith hospital. Then we moved to Dagenham, then Basildon. We’re particularly looking forward to it as it’s about time we made the step up from what we’ve been doing for so long. We usually do three nights at the O2 or something. We probably could have done this the last tour or the tour before but even with this one we felt it was a little bit of a risk. But we keep having to extend the capacity: I think we’re up to 68,000 now. My mum’s not very well so I don’t know if she will come this time, but my sisters and my kids and their kids and lots of friends. Because we’re just playing one show, we’ll probably know half the audience!

[pattersondonaldblk5]

Onboarding: A College Student Discovers A List Apart

What would you say if I told you I just read and analyzed over 350 articles from A List Apart in less than six weeks? “You’re crazy!” might have passed through your lips. In that case, what would you say if I was doing it for a grade? Well, you might say that makes sense.

As a part of an Independent Research Study for my undergraduate degree, I wanted to fill in some of the gaps I had when it came to working with the World Wide Web. I wanted to know more about user experience and user interface design, however, I needed the most help getting to know the industry in general. Naturally, my professor directed me to A List Apart.

At first I wasn’t sure what I was going to get out of the assignment other than the credit I needed to graduate. What could one website really tell me? As I read article after article, I realized that I wasn’t just looking at a website—I was looking at a community. A community with history in which people have struggled to build the right way. One that is constantly working to be open to all. One that is always learning, always evolving, and sometimes hard to keep up with. A community that, without my realizing it, I had become a part of. For me, the web has pretty much always been there, but now that I am better acquainted with its past, I am energized to be a part of its future. Take a look at some of the articles that inspired this change in me.

A bit of history

I started in the Business section and went back as far as November 1999. What a whirlwind that was! I had no idea what people went through and the battles that they fought to make the web what it is today. Now, I don’t mean to date any of you lovely readers, but I would have been three years old when the first business article on A List Apart was published, so everything I read until about 2010 was news to me.

For instance, when I came across Jeffrey Zeldman’s “Survivor! (How Your Peers Are Coping with the Dotcom Crisis)” that was published in 2001, I had no idea what he was talking about! The literal note I wrote for that article was: “Some sh** went down in the late 1990s???” I was in the dark until I had the chance to Google it and sheepishly ask my parents.

I had the same problem with the term Web 2.0. It wasn’t until I looked it up that I realized I didn’t know what it was, because I never experienced Web 1.0 (having not had access to the internet until 2004). In that short time, the industry had completely reinvented itself before I ever had a chance to log on!

The other bit of history that surprised me was how long and hard people had to fight to get web standards and accessibility in line. In school I’ve always been taught to make my sites accessible, and that just seemed like common sense to me. I guess I now understand why I have mixed feelings about Flash.

What I learned about accessibility

Accessibility is one of the topics I took a lot of notes on. I was glad to see that although a lot of progress had been made in this area, people were still taking the time to write about and constantly make improvements to it. In Beth Raduenzel’s “A DIY Web Accessibility Blueprint,” she explains the fundamentals to remember when designing for accessibility, including considering:

keyboard users;

blind users;

color-blind users;

low-vision users;

deaf and hard-of-hearing users;

users with learning disabilities and cognitive limitations;

mobility-impaired users;

users with speech disabilities;

and users with seizure disorders.

It was nice to have someone clearly spell it out. However, the term “user” was used a lot. This distances us from the people we are supposed to be designing for. Anne Gibson feels the same way; in her article, she states that “[web] accessibility means that people can use the web.” All people. In “My Accessibility Journey: What I’ve Learned So Far,” Manuel Matuzović gives exact examples of this:

If your site takes ten seconds to load on a mobile connection, it’s not accessible.

If your site is only optimized for one browser, it’s not accessible.

If the content on your site is difficult to understand, your site isn’t accessible.

It goes beyond just people with disabilities (although they are certainly not to be discounted).

I learned a lot of tips for designing with specific people in mind. Like including WAI-ARIA in my code to benefit visually-impaired users, and checking the color contrast of my site for people with color blindness and low-vision problems. One article even inspired me to download a Sketch plugin to easily check the contrast of my designs in the future. I’m more than willing to do what I can to allow my website to be accessible to all, but I also understand that it’s not an easy feat, and I will never get it totally right.

User research and testing methods that were new to me

Nevertheless, we still keep learning. Another topic on A List Apart I desperately wanted to absorb was the countless research, testing, and development methods I came across in my readings. Every time I turn around, someone else has come up with another way of working, and I’m always trying to keep my finger in the pie.

I’m happy to report that the majority of the methods I read about I already knew about and have used in my own projects at school. I’ve been doing open interview techniques, personas, style tiles, and element collages all along, but I was surprised by how many new practices I’d come across.

The Kano Model, the Core Model, Wizard of Oz prototyping, and think-alouds were some of the methods that piqued my curiosity. Others like brand architecture research, call center log analysis, clickstream analysis, search analytics, and stakeholder reviews I’ve heard of before, but have never been given the opportunity to try. 

Unattended qualitative research, A/B testing and fake-door testing are those that stood out to me. I liked that they allow you to conduct research even if you don’t have any users in front of you. I learned a lot of new terms and did a lot of research in this section. After all, it’s easy to get lost in all the jargon.

The endless amount of abbreviations

I spent a lot of my time Googling terms during this project—especially with the older articles that mentioned programs like Fireworks that aren’t really used anymore. One of my greatest fears in working with web design is that someone will ask me something and I will have no idea what they are talking about. When I was reading all the articles, I had the hardest time with the substantial amount of abbreviations I came across: AJAX, API, ARIA, ASCII, B2B, B2C, CMS, CRM, CSS, EE, GUI, HTML, IIS, IPO, JSP, MSA, RFP, ROI, RSS, SASS, SEM, SEO, SGML, SOS, SOW, SVN, and WYSIWYG, just to name a few. Did you manage to get them all? Probably not.

We don’t use abbreviations in school because they aren’t always clear and the professors know we won’t know what they mean. To a newbie like me, these abbreviations feel like a barrier. A wall that divides the veterans of the industry and those trying to enter it. I can’t imagine how the clients must feel.

It seems as if I am not alone in my frustrations. Inayaili de León says in her article “Becoming Better Communicators,” “We want people to care about design as much as we do, but how can they if we speak to them in a foreign language?” I’m training to be a designer, I’m in Design, and I had to look up almost every abbreviation listed above.

What I learned about myself

Prior to taking on this assignment, I would have been very hesitant to declare myself capable of creating digital design. To my surprise, I’m not alone. Matt Griffin thinks, “… the constant change and adjustments that come with living on the internet can feel overwhelming.” Kendra Skeene admits, “It’s a lot to keep track of, whether you’ve been working on the web for [twenty] years or only [twenty] months.”

My fear of not knowing all the fancy lingo was lessened when I read Lyza Danger Gardner’s “Never Heard of It.” She is a seasoned professional who admits to not knowing it all, so I, a soon-to-be-grad, can too. I have good foundations and Google on my side for those pesky abbreviations that keep popping up. As long as I just remember to use my brain as Dave Rupert suggests, when I go to get a job I should do just fine.

Entering the workplace

Before starting this assignment, I knew I wanted to work in digital and interaction design, but I didn’t know where. I was worried I didn’t know enough about the web to be able to design for it—that all the jobs out there would require me to know coding languages I’d never heard of before, and I’d have a hard time standing out among the crowd.

The articles I read on A List Apart supplied me with plenty of solid career advice. After reading articles written by designers, project managers, developers, marketers, writers, and more, I’ve come out with a better understanding of what kind of work I want to do. In the article “80/20 Practitioners Make Better Communicators,” Katie Kovalcin makes a good point about not forcing yourself to learn skills just because you feel the need to:

We’ve all heard the argument that designers need to code. And while that might be ideal in some cases, the point is to expand your personal spectrum of skills to be more useful to your team, whether that manifests itself in the form of design, content strategy, UX, or even project management. A strong team foundation begins by addressing gaps that need to be filled and the places where people can meet in the middle.

I already have skills that someone desperately needs. I just need to find the right fit and expand my skills from there. Brandon Gregory also feels that hiring isn’t all about technical knowledge. In his article, he says, “personality, fit with the team, communication skills, openness to change, [and] leadership potential” are just as important.

Along with solid technical fundamentals and good soft skills, it seems as if having a voice is also crucial. When I read Jeffrey Zeldman’s article “The Love You Make,” it became clear to me that if I ever wanted to get anywhere with my career, I was going to have to start writing.

Standout articles

The writers on A List Apart have opened my eyes to many new subjects and perspectives on web design. I particularly enjoyed looking through the game design lens in Graham Herrli’s “Gaming the System … and Winning.” It was one of the few articles where I copied his diagram on interaction personality types and their goals into my notebook. Another article that made me consider a new perspective was “The King vs. Pawn Game of UI Design” by Erik Kennedy. To start with one simple element and grow from there really made something click in my head.

However, I think that the interview I read between Mica McPheeters and Sara Wachter-Boettcher stuck with me the most. I actually caught myself saying “hmm” out loud as I was reading along. Sara’s point about crash-test dummies being sized to the average male completely shifted my understanding about how important user-centered design is. Like, life-or-death important. There is no excuse not to test your products or services on a variety of users if this is what’s at stake! It’s an article I’m glad I read.

Problems I’ve noticed in the industry

During the course of my project, I noticed some things about A List Apart that I was spending so much time on. Like, for example, it wasn’t until I got to the articles that were published after 2014 that I really started to understand and relate to the content; funnily enough, that was the year I started my design degree.

I also noticed that it was around this time that female writers became much more prominent on the site. Today there may be many women on A List Apart, but I must point out a lack of women of color. Shoutout to Aimee Gonzalez-Cameron for her article “Hello, My Name is <Error>,” a beautiful assertion for cultural inclusion on the web through user-centered design.

Despite the lack of representation of women of color, I was very happy to see many writers acknowledge their privilege in the industry. Thanks to Cennydd Bowles, Matt Griffin, and Rian van der Merwe for their articles. My only qualm is that the topic of privilege has only appeared on A List Apart in the last five years. Because isn’t it kinda ironic? As creators of the web we aim to allow everyone access to our content, but not everyone has access to the industry itself. Sara Wachter-Boettcher wrote an interesting article that expands on this idea, which you should read if you haven’t already. However, I won’t hold it against any of you. That’s why we are here anyway: to learn.

The takeaway

Looking back at this assignment, I’m happy to say that I did it. It was worth every second (even with the possible eye damage from reading off my computer screen for hours on end). It was worth it because I learned more than I had ever anticipated. I received an unexpected history lesson of the recent internet past. I was bombarded by an explosion of new terms and abbreviations. I learned a lot about myself and how I can possibly fit into this community. Most importantly, I came out on the other end with more confidence in myself and my abilities—which is probably the greatest graduation gift I could receive from a final project in my last year of university. Thanks for reading, and wish me luck!

Thanks

Thanks to my Interactive Design professor Michael LeBlanc for giving me this assignment and pushing me to take it further.

https://ift.tt/2kjXQf3

[dustinwootenne]

Onboarding: A College Student Discovers A List Apart

What would you say if I told you I just read and analyzed over 350 articles from A List Apart in less than six weeks? “You’re crazy!” might have passed through your lips. In that case, what would you say if I was doing it for a grade? Well, you might say that makes sense.

As a part of an Independent Research Study for my undergraduate degree, I wanted to fill in some of the gaps I had when it came to working with the World Wide Web. I wanted to know more about user experience and user interface design, however, I needed the most help getting to know the industry in general. Naturally, my professor directed me to A List Apart.

At first I wasn’t sure what I was going to get out of the assignment other than the credit I needed to graduate. What could one website really tell me? As I read article after article, I realized that I wasn’t just looking at a website—I was looking at a community. A community with history in which people have struggled to build the right way. One that is constantly working to be open to all. One that is always learning, always evolving, and sometimes hard to keep up with. A community that, without my realizing it, I had become a part of. For me, the web has pretty much always been there, but now that I am better acquainted with its past, I am energized to be a part of its future. Take a look at some of the articles that inspired this change in me.

A bit of history

I started in the Business section and went back as far as November 1999. What a whirlwind that was! I had no idea what people went through and the battles that they fought to make the web what it is today. Now, I don’t mean to date any of you lovely readers, but I would have been three years old when the first business article on A List Apart was published, so everything I read until about 2010 was news to me.

For instance, when I came across Jeffrey Zeldman’s “Survivor! (How Your Peers Are Coping with the Dotcom Crisis)” that was published in 2001, I had no idea what he was talking about! The literal note I wrote for that article was: “Some sh** went down in the late 1990s???” I was in the dark until I had the chance to Google it and sheepishly ask my parents.

I had the same problem with the term Web 2.0. It wasn’t until I looked it up that I realized I didn’t know what it was, because I never experienced Web 1.0 (having not had access to the internet until 2004). In that short time, the industry had completely reinvented itself before I ever had a chance to log on!

The other bit of history that surprised me was how long and hard people had to fight to get web standards and accessibility in line. In school I’ve always been taught to make my sites accessible, and that just seemed like common sense to me. I guess I now understand why I have mixed feelings about Flash.

What I learned about accessibility

Accessibility is one of the topics I took a lot of notes on. I was glad to see that although a lot of progress had been made in this area, people were still taking the time to write about and constantly make improvements to it. In Beth Raduenzel’s “A DIY Web Accessibility Blueprint,” she explains the fundamentals to remember when designing for accessibility, including considering:

keyboard users;

blind users;

color-blind users;

low-vision users;

deaf and hard-of-hearing users;

users with learning disabilities and cognitive limitations;

mobility-impaired users;

users with speech disabilities;

and users with seizure disorders.

It was nice to have someone clearly spell it out. However, the term “user” was used a lot. This distances us from the people we are supposed to be designing for. Anne Gibson feels the same way; in her article, she states that “[web] accessibility means that people can use the web.” All people. In “My Accessibility Journey: What I’ve Learned So Far,” Manuel Matuzović gives exact examples of this:

If your site takes ten seconds to load on a mobile connection, it’s not accessible.

If your site is only optimized for one browser, it’s not accessible.

If the content on your site is difficult to understand, your site isn’t accessible.

It goes beyond just people with disabilities (although they are certainly not to be discounted).

I learned a lot of tips for designing with specific people in mind. Like including WAI-ARIA in my code to benefit visually-impaired users, and checking the color contrast of my site for people with color blindness and low-vision problems. One article even inspired me to download a Sketch plugin to easily check the contrast of my designs in the future. I’m more than willing to do what I can to allow my website to be accessible to all, but I also understand that it’s not an easy feat, and I will never get it totally right.

User research and testing methods that were new to me

Nevertheless, we still keep learning. Another topic on A List Apart I desperately wanted to absorb was the countless research, testing, and development methods I came across in my readings. Every time I turn around, someone else has come up with another way of working, and I’m always trying to keep my finger in the pie.

I’m happy to report that the majority of the methods I read about I already knew about and have used in my own projects at school. I’ve been doing open interview techniques, personas, style tiles, and element collages all along, but I was surprised by how many new practices I’d come across.

The Kano Model, the Core Model, Wizard of Oz prototyping, and think-alouds were some of the methods that piqued my curiosity. Others like brand architecture research, call center log analysis, clickstream analysis, search analytics, and stakeholder reviews I’ve heard of before, but have never been given the opportunity to try. 

Unattended qualitative research, A/B testing and fake-door testing are those that stood out to me. I liked that they allow you to conduct research even if you don’t have any users in front of you. I learned a lot of new terms and did a lot of research in this section. After all, it’s easy to get lost in all the jargon.

The endless amount of abbreviations

I spent a lot of my time Googling terms during this project—especially with the older articles that mentioned programs like Fireworks that aren’t really used anymore. One of my greatest fears in working with web design is that someone will ask me something and I will have no idea what they are talking about. When I was reading all the articles, I had the hardest time with the substantial amount of abbreviations I came across: AJAX, API, ARIA, ASCII, B2B, B2C, CMS, CRM, CSS, EE, GUI, HTML, IIS, IPO, JSP, MSA, RFP, ROI, RSS, SASS, SEM, SEO, SGML, SOS, SOW, SVN, and WYSIWYG, just to name a few. Did you manage to get them all? Probably not.

We don’t use abbreviations in school because they aren’t always clear and the professors know we won’t know what they mean. To a newbie like me, these abbreviations feel like a barrier. A wall that divides the veterans of the industry and those trying to enter it. I can’t imagine how the clients must feel.

It seems as if I am not alone in my frustrations. Inayaili de León says in her article “Becoming Better Communicators,” “We want people to care about design as much as we do, but how can they if we speak to them in a foreign language?” I’m training to be a designer, I’m in Design, and I had to look up almost every abbreviation listed above.

What I learned about myself

Prior to taking on this assignment, I would have been very hesitant to declare myself capable of creating digital design. To my surprise, I’m not alone. Matt Griffin thinks, “… the constant change and adjustments that come with living on the internet can feel overwhelming.” Kendra Skeene admits, “It’s a lot to keep track of, whether you’ve been working on the web for [twenty] years or only [twenty] months.”

My fear of not knowing all the fancy lingo was lessened when I read Lyza Danger Gardner’s “Never Heard of It.” She is a seasoned professional who admits to not knowing it all, so I, a soon-to-be-grad, can too. I have good foundations and Google on my side for those pesky abbreviations that keep popping up. As long as I just remember to use my brain as Dave Rupert suggests, when I go to get a job I should do just fine.

Entering the workplace

Before starting this assignment, I knew I wanted to work in digital and interaction design, but I didn’t know where. I was worried I didn’t know enough about the web to be able to design for it—that all the jobs out there would require me to know coding languages I’d never heard of before, and I’d have a hard time standing out among the crowd.

The articles I read on A List Apart supplied me with plenty of solid career advice. After reading articles written by designers, project managers, developers, marketers, writers, and more, I’ve come out with a better understanding of what kind of work I want to do. In the article “80/20 Practitioners Make Better Communicators,” Katie Kovalcin makes a good point about not forcing yourself to learn skills just because you feel the need to:

We’ve all heard the argument that designers need to code. And while that might be ideal in some cases, the point is to expand your personal spectrum of skills to be more useful to your team, whether that manifests itself in the form of design, content strategy, UX, or even project management. A strong team foundation begins by addressing gaps that need to be filled and the places where people can meet in the middle.

I already have skills that someone desperately needs. I just need to find the right fit and expand my skills from there. Brandon Gregory also feels that hiring isn’t all about technical knowledge. In his article, he says, “personality, fit with the team, communication skills, openness to change, [and] leadership potential” are just as important.

Along with solid technical fundamentals and good soft skills, it seems as if having a voice is also crucial. When I read Jeffrey Zeldman’s article “The Love You Make,” it became clear to me that if I ever wanted to get anywhere with my career, I was going to have to start writing.

Standout articles

The writers on A List Apart have opened my eyes to many new subjects and perspectives on web design. I particularly enjoyed looking through the game design lens in Graham Herrli’s “Gaming the System … and Winning.” It was one of the few articles where I copied his diagram on interaction personality types and their goals into my notebook. Another article that made me consider a new perspective was “The King vs. Pawn Game of UI Design” by Erik Kennedy. To start with one simple element and grow from there really made something click in my head.

However, I think that the interview I read between Mica McPheeters and Sara Wachter-Boettcher stuck with me the most. I actually caught myself saying “hmm” out loud as I was reading along. Sara’s point about crash-test dummies being sized to the average male completely shifted my understanding about how important user-centered design is. Like, life-or-death important. There is no excuse not to test your products or services on a variety of users if this is what’s at stake! It’s an article I’m glad I read.

Problems I’ve noticed in the industry

During the course of my project, I noticed some things about A List Apart that I was spending so much time on. Like, for example, it wasn’t until I got to the articles that were published after 2014 that I really started to understand and relate to the content; funnily enough, that was the year I started my design degree.

I also noticed that it was around this time that female writers became much more prominent on the site. Today there may be many women on A List Apart, but I must point out a lack of women of color. Shoutout to Aimee Gonzalez-Cameron for her article “Hello, My Name is <Error>,” a beautiful assertion for cultural inclusion on the web through user-centered design.

Despite the lack of representation of women of color, I was very happy to see many writers acknowledge their privilege in the industry. Thanks to Cennydd Bowles, Matt Griffin, and Rian van der Merwe for their articles. My only qualm is that the topic of privilege has only appeared on A List Apart in the last five years. Because isn’t it kinda ironic? As creators of the web we aim to allow everyone access to our content, but not everyone has access to the industry itself. Sara Wachter-Boettcher wrote an interesting article that expands on this idea, which you should read if you haven’t already. However, I won’t hold it against any of you. That’s why we are here anyway: to learn.

The takeaway

Looking back at this assignment, I’m happy to say that I did it. It was worth every second (even with the possible eye damage from reading off my computer screen for hours on end). It was worth it because I learned more than I had ever anticipated. I received an unexpected history lesson of the recent internet past. I was bombarded by an explosion of new terms and abbreviations. I learned a lot about myself and how I can possibly fit into this community. Most importantly, I came out on the other end with more confidence in myself and my abilities—which is probably the greatest graduation gift I could receive from a final project in my last year of university. Thanks for reading, and wish me luck!

Thanks

Thanks to my Interactive Design professor Michael LeBlanc for giving me this assignment and pushing me to take it further.

https://ift.tt/2kjXQf3

[joannlyfgnch]

Onboarding: A College Student Discovers A List Apart

What would you say if I told you I just read and analyzed over 350 articles from A List Apart in less than six weeks? “You’re crazy!” might have passed through your lips. In that case, what would you say if I was doing it for a grade? Well, you might say that makes sense.

As a part of an Independent Research Study for my undergraduate degree, I wanted to fill in some of the gaps I had when it came to working with the World Wide Web. I wanted to know more about user experience and user interface design, however, I needed the most help getting to know the industry in general. Naturally, my professor directed me to A List Apart.

At first I wasn’t sure what I was going to get out of the assignment other than the credit I needed to graduate. What could one website really tell me? As I read article after article, I realized that I wasn’t just looking at a website—I was looking at a community. A community with history in which people have struggled to build the right way. One that is constantly working to be open to all. One that is always learning, always evolving, and sometimes hard to keep up with. A community that, without my realizing it, I had become a part of. For me, the web has pretty much always been there, but now that I am better acquainted with its past, I am energized to be a part of its future. Take a look at some of the articles that inspired this change in me.

A bit of history

I started in the Business section and went back as far as November 1999. What a whirlwind that was! I had no idea what people went through and the battles that they fought to make the web what it is today. Now, I don’t mean to date any of you lovely readers, but I would have been three years old when the first business article on A List Apart was published, so everything I read until about 2010 was news to me.

For instance, when I came across Jeffrey Zeldman’s “Survivor! (How Your Peers Are Coping with the Dotcom Crisis)” that was published in 2001, I had no idea what he was talking about! The literal note I wrote for that article was: “Some sh** went down in the late 1990s???” I was in the dark until I had the chance to Google it and sheepishly ask my parents.

I had the same problem with the term Web 2.0. It wasn’t until I looked it up that I realized I didn’t know what it was, because I never experienced Web 1.0 (having not had access to the internet until 2004). In that short time, the industry had completely reinvented itself before I ever had a chance to log on!

The other bit of history that surprised me was how long and hard people had to fight to get web standards and accessibility in line. In school I’ve always been taught to make my sites accessible, and that just seemed like common sense to me. I guess I now understand why I have mixed feelings about Flash.

What I learned about accessibility

Accessibility is one of the topics I took a lot of notes on. I was glad to see that although a lot of progress had been made in this area, people were still taking the time to write about and constantly make improvements to it. In Beth Raduenzel’s “A DIY Web Accessibility Blueprint,” she explains the fundamentals to remember when designing for accessibility, including considering:

keyboard users;

blind users;

color-blind users;

low-vision users;

deaf and hard-of-hearing users;

users with learning disabilities and cognitive limitations;

mobility-impaired users;

users with speech disabilities;

and users with seizure disorders.

It was nice to have someone clearly spell it out. However, the term “user” was used a lot. This distances us from the people we are supposed to be designing for. Anne Gibson feels the same way; in her article, she states that “[web] accessibility means that people can use the web.” All people. In “My Accessibility Journey: What I’ve Learned So Far,” Manuel Matuzović gives exact examples of this:

If your site takes ten seconds to load on a mobile connection, it’s not accessible.

If your site is only optimized for one browser, it’s not accessible.

If the content on your site is difficult to understand, your site isn’t accessible.

It goes beyond just people with disabilities (although they are certainly not to be discounted).

I learned a lot of tips for designing with specific people in mind. Like including WAI-ARIA in my code to benefit visually-impaired users, and checking the color contrast of my site for people with color blindness and low-vision problems. One article even inspired me to download a Sketch plugin to easily check the contrast of my designs in the future. I’m more than willing to do what I can to allow my website to be accessible to all, but I also understand that it’s not an easy feat, and I will never get it totally right.

User research and testing methods that were new to me

Nevertheless, we still keep learning. Another topic on A List Apart I desperately wanted to absorb was the countless research, testing, and development methods I came across in my readings. Every time I turn around, someone else has come up with another way of working, and I’m always trying to keep my finger in the pie.

I’m happy to report that the majority of the methods I read about I already knew about and have used in my own projects at school. I’ve been doing open interview techniques, personas, style tiles, and element collages all along, but I was surprised by how many new practices I’d come across.

The Kano Model, the Core Model, Wizard of Oz prototyping, and think-alouds were some of the methods that piqued my curiosity. Others like brand architecture research, call center log analysis, clickstream analysis, search analytics, and stakeholder reviews I’ve heard of before, but have never been given the opportunity to try. 

Unattended qualitative research, A/B testing and fake-door testing are those that stood out to me. I liked that they allow you to conduct research even if you don’t have any users in front of you. I learned a lot of new terms and did a lot of research in this section. After all, it’s easy to get lost in all the jargon.

The endless amount of abbreviations

I spent a lot of my time Googling terms during this project—especially with the older articles that mentioned programs like Fireworks that aren’t really used anymore. One of my greatest fears in working with web design is that someone will ask me something and I will have no idea what they are talking about. When I was reading all the articles, I had the hardest time with the substantial amount of abbreviations I came across: AJAX, API, ARIA, ASCII, B2B, B2C, CMS, CRM, CSS, EE, GUI, HTML, IIS, IPO, JSP, MSA, RFP, ROI, RSS, SASS, SEM, SEO, SGML, SOS, SOW, SVN, and WYSIWYG, just to name a few. Did you manage to get them all? Probably not.

We don’t use abbreviations in school because they aren’t always clear and the professors know we won’t know what they mean. To a newbie like me, these abbreviations feel like a barrier. A wall that divides the veterans of the industry and those trying to enter it. I can’t imagine how the clients must feel.

It seems as if I am not alone in my frustrations. Inayaili de León says in her article “Becoming Better Communicators,” “We want people to care about design as much as we do, but how can they if we speak to them in a foreign language?” I’m training to be a designer, I’m in Design, and I had to look up almost every abbreviation listed above.

What I learned about myself

Prior to taking on this assignment, I would have been very hesitant to declare myself capable of creating digital design. To my surprise, I’m not alone. Matt Griffin thinks, “… the constant change and adjustments that come with living on the internet can feel overwhelming.” Kendra Skeene admits, “It’s a lot to keep track of, whether you’ve been working on the web for [twenty] years or only [twenty] months.”

My fear of not knowing all the fancy lingo was lessened when I read Lyza Danger Gardner’s “Never Heard of It.” She is a seasoned professional who admits to not knowing it all, so I, a soon-to-be-grad, can too. I have good foundations and Google on my side for those pesky abbreviations that keep popping up. As long as I just remember to use my brain as Dave Rupert suggests, when I go to get a job I should do just fine.

Entering the workplace

Before starting this assignment, I knew I wanted to work in digital and interaction design, but I didn’t know where. I was worried I didn’t know enough about the web to be able to design for it—that all the jobs out there would require me to know coding languages I’d never heard of before, and I’d have a hard time standing out among the crowd.

The articles I read on A List Apart supplied me with plenty of solid career advice. After reading articles written by designers, project managers, developers, marketers, writers, and more, I’ve come out with a better understanding of what kind of work I want to do. In the article “80/20 Practitioners Make Better Communicators,” Katie Kovalcin makes a good point about not forcing yourself to learn skills just because you feel the need to:

We’ve all heard the argument that designers need to code. And while that might be ideal in some cases, the point is to expand your personal spectrum of skills to be more useful to your team, whether that manifests itself in the form of design, content strategy, UX, or even project management. A strong team foundation begins by addressing gaps that need to be filled and the places where people can meet in the middle.

I already have skills that someone desperately needs. I just need to find the right fit and expand my skills from there. Brandon Gregory also feels that hiring isn’t all about technical knowledge. In his article, he says, “personality, fit with the team, communication skills, openness to change, [and] leadership potential” are just as important.

Along with solid technical fundamentals and good soft skills, it seems as if having a voice is also crucial. When I read Jeffrey Zeldman’s article “The Love You Make,” it became clear to me that if I ever wanted to get anywhere with my career, I was going to have to start writing.

Standout articles

The writers on A List Apart have opened my eyes to many new subjects and perspectives on web design. I particularly enjoyed looking through the game design lens in Graham Herrli’s “Gaming the System … and Winning.” It was one of the few articles where I copied his diagram on interaction personality types and their goals into my notebook. Another article that made me consider a new perspective was “The King vs. Pawn Game of UI Design” by Erik Kennedy. To start with one simple element and grow from there really made something click in my head.

However, I think that the interview I read between Mica McPheeters and Sara Wachter-Boettcher stuck with me the most. I actually caught myself saying “hmm” out loud as I was reading along. Sara’s point about crash-test dummies being sized to the average male completely shifted my understanding about how important user-centered design is. Like, life-or-death important. There is no excuse not to test your products or services on a variety of users if this is what’s at stake! It’s an article I’m glad I read.

Problems I’ve noticed in the industry

During the course of my project, I noticed some things about A List Apart that I was spending so much time on. Like, for example, it wasn’t until I got to the articles that were published after 2014 that I really started to understand and relate to the content; funnily enough, that was the year I started my design degree.

I also noticed that it was around this time that female writers became much more prominent on the site. Today there may be many women on A List Apart, but I must point out a lack of women of color. Shoutout to Aimee Gonzalez-Cameron for her article “Hello, My Name is <Error>,” a beautiful assertion for cultural inclusion on the web through user-centered design.

Despite the lack of representation of women of color, I was very happy to see many writers acknowledge their privilege in the industry. Thanks to Cennydd Bowles, Matt Griffin, and Rian van der Merwe for their articles. My only qualm is that the topic of privilege has only appeared on A List Apart in the last five years. Because isn’t it kinda ironic? As creators of the web we aim to allow everyone access to our content, but not everyone has access to the industry itself. Sara Wachter-Boettcher wrote an interesting article that expands on this idea, which you should read if you haven’t already. However, I won’t hold it against any of you. That’s why we are here anyway: to learn.

The takeaway

Looking back at this assignment, I’m happy to say that I did it. It was worth every second (even with the possible eye damage from reading off my computer screen for hours on end). It was worth it because I learned more than I had ever anticipated. I received an unexpected history lesson of the recent internet past. I was bombarded by an explosion of new terms and abbreviations. I learned a lot about myself and how I can possibly fit into this community. Most importantly, I came out on the other end with more confidence in myself and my abilities—which is probably the greatest graduation gift I could receive from a final project in my last year of university. Thanks for reading, and wish me luck!

Thanks

Thanks to my Interactive Design professor Michael LeBlanc for giving me this assignment and pushing me to take it further.

https://ift.tt/2kjXQf3