DPL Reading List – February 10, 2017
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week.
Study shows 20% more high school girls like computer science after an Hour of Code – “We just released the results of a new study, conducted by our own evaluation team, that sought to measure the student impact of an Hour of Code. We surveyed students on their attitudes and confidence towards computer science, both before they did an Hour of Code and directly after.”
Maintaining Accessibility in a Responsive World (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “At Filament Group, our primary concern has long been to build sites that are accessible to as many people as possible. In that aim, being “accessible” means many things. It means that a page must load quickly—even in slow and spotty mobile networks. After loading, the page should be usable and feel appropriate and intuitive to folks using any device, browser, viewport size, and assistive technology.”
Why Planning Your Day the Night Before Drastically Increases Your Productivity – “Finish each day by writing the 5 most important things you want to get done tomorrow and start each day by working those 5 things. You can also schedule those 5 things on your calendar. It doesn’t matter as long as those 5 things get done.”
There is No Magic Pill – “Almost 3 years ago, the Twitter Design and Research department went from being about 25% women to about 50% women in a little over a year and a half. Almost every time I tell someone this fact, they immediately ask, “Wait, how did you do it?!” with an incredulous look on their face similar to how people gaze upon someone who’s lost a lot of weight. And like losing weight, the answer is always a combination of things done together and sustained over time.”
A Look into Navigation in Web Design – “In web design, navigation is second only to content. You need good content to sell your ideas, but that content won’t mean much if your users can’t find what they’re looking for.”
Lifelong Learning Is Good for Your Health, Your Wallet, and Your Social Life – “The reasons to continue learning are many, and the weight of the evidence would indicate that lifelong learning isn’t simply an economic imperative but a social, emotional, and physical one as well. We live in an age of abundant opportunity for learning and development. Capturing that opportunity — maintaining our curiosity and intellectual humility — can be one of life’s most rewarding pursuits.”
Living in a World of Big Data and Smart Things – “Forget about ready-made solutions; forget about multi-year strategies. The word “traditional” is no longer on trend. Everything familiar that we have known for years will very soon cease to exist and objective reality will become distorted beyond recognition. The winners in this race will be the first to recognize and accept the new and rapidly changing state of affairs — a new reality driven no longer by production, but by intellect, not by the end product, but by an innovative idea for a product. And this is why the Internet of Things is now a trend that no technology company can afford to ignore.”
