Let's get intentional
This week's theme: Intentional
Happy Holidays fam. This year, we created new patterns and routines, re-evaluated our business strategies, and explored our inner-worlds (well, let's be honest... there was no where else we could go).
Heading into 2021 with a little more hope than we left it, we have the opportunity to be deliberate with our actions. Setting intentions is all about being present — it's a moment in time where you focus on who you are, what you do, and why you do what you do. Choosing how and where to put effort as in your work or personal life should be intentional. A lot of time can easily be wasted flailing with the wrong tooling or going around in circles in meetings.
As designers and engineers, we must be considerate of 'what' and 'how' we decide to build things. For example, our data encodes systemic racism from our culture. Companies are making decisions about their roadmaps by innovating in their markets — notably like Lyft, who plans to expand driverless experiences from Las Vegas to multiple cities this coming year.
Whether you're approaching this year with a personal or professional intent, remember that there were things we've learned and aspirations we can hold onto for the year to come.
This post was originally published on 12/25/2020.THE LATEST
💯100 UX lessons for the year to come: Genderless user data, accessibility-based consultancies, & GPT-3 designing our interfaces
UX TRENDS — It starts with, "things are not ok", and ends with "let's get to work." UX Trends curated 100 lessons from 2020, highlighting some significant events that impacted the tech world for the year to come. A few notable examples: #9 'You're Muted - one of the most popular phrases` (on zoom), #16 'Algorithms are far from being neutral', & #24 'Data needs literacy to combat conspiracy theories'.
🎤 Deepdub uses neural nets to localize content in multiple languages at the click of a button — it carries the same tone inflection of the original voice actor, across languages
Deepdub — In the wake of social disconnection during COVID, global technology has to be more intentional about bringing people across barriers. At a time when streaming is rising in popularity around the world, AI and deep learning are leveraged to extend and retain audience experiences for entertainment companies. It only works in post-production now, but the technology alone reduces the time it takes to dub a film from 2 months to a fraction of that time.
🥰 The Japanese government is investing 2 billion yen ($19.2 million) towards artificially intelligent matchmaking to curtail dwindling population count
Singularity Hub — If one thing is certain, Japan’s Cabinet Office is getting intentional about improving fertility in Japan, which has been a problem for over 40 years now (since WWII). Less babies means less working-age adults to drive economic growth — which could be a problem if there is no one to support a large proportion of the elderly. Online dating is the number one way couples meet in the US, but that doesn't mean the US' fertility rate is improving, either.
⛰ Remember taking product or computer science challenges at university? Well, you can participate all over again in updated list of programming challenges for 2021 — and it might just go viral again
Austin Z. Henley — At a certain point being a tech-leader or developer is less about the ability to write code and more about being able to learn. Whether you actually intend to write software around the problems, or just dive into the concepts, this updated list of challenge projects is a great place to bolster your knowledge.
⚒️ Some drawbacks to the DRY principle (Don't. Repeat. Yourself.)
Moshe Zadka — One of the most common principles in software development is DRY. But Moshe Zadka has the other side of the coin with some of the trade-offs of strictly adhering to not repeating code across a project.
😍 A swiss-army platform to collaboratively document your app's programming interfaces, user guides, team SOPs, internal wikis, & more for 2021
Archbee.io — Documentation, documentation, documentation. We can write fantastic code to solve all the world's problems with the best processes, but it won't matter if no one understands how to use it. Archbee.io brings it all together in their documentation platform.
As always, special shoutout to Taylor Beseda for helping curate this content.
Follow him on twitter @tbeseda.