DPL Reading List – November 4, 2016
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week.
Good code is its own best documentation – “Bad code is like a car that promises to be able to reach 200MPH, but has a stereo that only accepts cassette tapes and the cupholders have tilted bottoms. Any time you try to adjust the mirrors, the car bursts into flames and has to be repaired by the exact person who put it together on the assembly line, using alien-looking tools.”
Read This Story Without Distraction (Can You?) (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “The more we allow ourselves to be distracted from a particular activity, the more we feel the need to be distracted. Paying attention pays dividends.”
Women in computing to decline to 22% by 2025, study warns (Thanks to Brian Zimmer for recommending this article) – “New research warns that at the rate we’re going, the number of women in the computing workforce will decline to 22% from 24% by 2025 if nothing is done to encourage more of them to study computer science.”
Agile vs Lean vs Design Thinking (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “At the end of the day your customers don’t care whether you’re agile, lean or practice design thinking. They care about great products and services that solve meaningful problems for them in effective ways. The more you can focus your teams on these things the better their process will be.”
Study: 1 in 2 American Adults Already In Facial Recognition Network (Thanks to Brian Zimmer for recommending this article) – “That so many American adults are in at least one facial recognition database is largely due to the fact that at least 26 states, and likely more, share their Department of Motor Vehicles databases with the FBI, state police, or other law enforcement agencies, the study found. Compounded with that, police often have access to mugshot databases. Garvie’s study found that most law enforcement agencies don’t purge such records, even if the arrested suspect is found not guilty, unless a court orders it.”
The Ultimate Guide to Chatbots: Why they’re disrupting UX and best practices for building – “While chatbots are still in their infancy in terms of creative potential, it’s still a very exciting time for creatives trying to understand the best way to use this new technology and how to build the best bot possible.”
For Returning Users, Overly Strict Password Requirements Can Lead to an 18% Abandonment Rate (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “When users create an account, they need to set a password. While security is important, during our latest large-scale checkout usability study we also observe that strict password rules can cause an 18.75% checkout abandonment rate among existing account users as they try to sign in. Hence, overly strict password rules can be a key roadblock to the checkout completion rate, particularly for sites with a large account user base.”
