DPL Reading List – December 2, 2016
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week.
Technical Credit (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “Technical Credit is the investment in the engineering, designing and constructing of software or systems over and above the minimum necessary effort, in anticipation of emergent properties paying dividends at a later date.”
Why investors outside your hometown don’t take your calls (Thanks to Brian Zimmer for recommending this article) – “Traction is credibility. If you have any traction at all, lead with it. If you find yourself talking about the product more than the traction, you’re done. The deal’s never going to happen.”
How to encrypt your entire life in less than an hour (Thanks to Cassey Lottman for recommending this article) – “But you obey the law. What do you have to worry about? As the motto of the United Kingdom’s surveillance program reminds us, “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.” Well, law-abiding citizens do have reason to fear. They do have reasons to secure their devices, their files, and their communications with loved ones.”
The Guide To Living Creatively – “The easiest thing in the world is to let go of your creativity. To say you’ve got a *real* job and give up the creative work that used to matter deeply to you. To find an excuse to prioritize Netflix over your artist’s studio. To find an excuse to stop painting, writing, filming, building, making, crafting and discovering. That’s because being creative is the hard part. Giving it up forever is terrifyingly easy. But you don’t have to let it all go.”
Designing Confirmation (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “The confirmation design pattern isn’t something to be taken lightly. If employed erroneously, or not at all, users may commit unintended havoc. This article shares guidelines and best practices for designing effective confirmations.”
How Predictive AI Will Change Shopping (Thanks to Brian Zimmer for recommending this article) – “Responsive retail has peaked, and we’re about to enter the era of predictive commerce. It’s time for retailers to help people find products in their precise moment of need — and perhaps before they even perceive that need — whether or not they’re logged in or ready to click a “buy” button on a screen. This shift will require designing experiences that merge an understanding of human behavior with large-scale automation and data integration.”
I totally forgot about print style sheets (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “Optimizing web pages for print is important because we want our sites to be as accessible as possible, no matter the medium. We shouldn’t make assumptions about our users and their behavior. People still print web pages. Just think about articles or blog posts, recipes, contact information, and directions or real estate sites. Someone somewhere will eventually try to print one of the pages you made.”
