[teampractices] 2 interesting articles about design

[Max Binder]

>
> Please DON'T give me garish trendy colors and patterns in a seat that has
> to last 20 years.


Reminds me of a story from college. Our dining hall had these enormous oak
chairs, and they were just terrible: uncomfortable, heavy, scratched the
floor, didn't sit next to one another properly, pinched fingers, just the
worst. When I asked the person in charge why we had these awful chairs, he
answered, "Because they last forever." o_0

On Tue, Aug 9, 2016 at 2:30 PM, Kevin Smith <ksmith at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> 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-mai
>> l-font-is-ruining-your-life
>>
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>
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