[teampractices] 2 interesting articles about design

[Kevin Smith]

I am disturbed by the amount of money that seems to go into designing
custom transit upholstery. To me, that kind of "form over function" is what
gives design a bad name. Please DON'T give me garish trendy colors and
patterns in a seat that has to last 20 years. Find some neutral pattern and
color that hides stains well and isn't too depressing, and stick with it.
Go for timeless, not "quickly obsolete".

As for fonts, my peeve with Helvetica and Arial is that they don't
distinguish capital I from lower-case l. Back in the day, I liked one
font's tweak of putting little serifs on the capital I (I thought it was
Tahoma, but apparently not). I see that Verdana puts a little wiggle in the
lower-case l instead, which is better than nothing, but not great. Georgia
doesn't particularly appeal to me, probably because I grew up in the
pixelated world, where serifs made no sense on screen.

I think I'll leave gmail set to "sans-serif", and configure my browser to
default to Ubuntu fonts.

Unfortunately, thanks to the crime against humanity promoted by github, of
requiring custom fonts for basic functionality, I (probably) can't just set
my browser to always use MY preferred fonts. Instead, I (probably) have to
live with whatever crappy font the web page creator felt like shoving down
my throat. That means that I'm (probably) stuck with Helvetica/Arial most
of the time. Ugh.

Whew. Feels great to drag that rant back out of the attic and give it some
fresh air!


Kevin Smith
Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation


On Mon, Aug 8, 2016 at 10:15 AM, Grace Gellerman <ggellerman at wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> 1. ​Charming story about constraints, product requirements, making visible
> that which would otherwise be invisible, and the role of design:
>
> http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160804-why-are-trains-seats
> -so-hideous?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=twitter
>
> 2. Recognizing context and the value of design in improving the
> sustainable pace of work by reducing the waste of fatigue, improving speed
> of recognition, and designing for humans:
>
> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-27/your-e-
> mail-font-is-ruining-your-life
>
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