In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn how to write prototype usability testing tasks, find a helpful explainer web accessibility site, discover the state of CSS in 2022, and more.
If you’re new to my blog, each Friday I publish a post highlighting my favorite user experience, accessibility, WordPress, CSS, and HTML posts I’ve read in the past week.
Hope you find the resources helpful in your work or projects!
Want more resources like these on a daily basis? Follow me @redcrew on Twitter.
Tweet of the Week
We need fewer meetings and more conversations.
— Lorin Hochstein (@norootcause) May 7, 2022
User Experience
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Making sure user research participants know how to navigate your prototype is critical. Learn more tips about writing prototype usability testing tasks from Darienne Jordan.
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Worth bookmarking! Ted Goas shares his product design process in a playbook, which details the major processes of discovery, definition, development, and delivery.
It’s not a mandatory set of actions that must happen for every project, but rather a reference and a prompt I can use to either do a task or understand why it can be skipped.
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From this week’s Confab 2022 conference:
Content strategy is the practice of planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful (relevant), usable (can be used), and effective (clear measurable goal) content. – @hilarymarsh, on defining content strategy to include measurement. #Confab2022
— Erin Schroeder (@erinbschroeder) May 12, 2022 -
Improving readability of your text is key to avoid intimidating and overwhelming your readers. In their latest post, Baymard Institute shares key findings in the large-scale e-commerce UX testing as they discuss readability: the optimal line length.
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Join Measuring U at their free webinar An Overview of Essential UX Metrics on May 25, 2022. The webinar will provide an intro and overview of UX metrics, discuss which metrics are most important, and help you determine which metric you need.
Accessibility
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Launched this week at Microsoft’s virtual Ability Summit, the Microsoft Adaptive Mouse Kit is adaptive, modular, and customizable. The kit consists of a mouse, attachable tail, hub, and button and can be used with desktops, laptops, tablets, or phone.
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Good analogy!
Saying #Accessibility is an “enhancement” to web or mobile content is like saying flour is an enhancement for a cake or cookies. It’s part of the recipe to making web and mobile content that is fully usable and accessible for everyone #A11y #Webdev #Mobile— Mark Steadman (@Steady5063) May 10, 2022
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Good news to share about International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP)’s Code of Conduct revisions and their overlay position statement. According to the updates, members of their association:
Should not knowingly make false claims about their products and services or those of others. Should not knowingly make false claims about their abilities, profession, and matters of expertise.
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You can use two approaches to accessibility on the web, says Jens Oliver Meiert: producing accessible websites and apps (which Meiert calls active accessibility) or creating accessible-making software (passive accessibility).
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Did you miss this week’s Ability Summit 2022 online event? I was able to attend a few sessions and published my recap of the takeaways from inclusive design in the heart of the organization session.
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Ready for Global Accessibility Awareness Day next week? Melanie Sumner created a helpful explainer site about web accessibility. Share it with your family, friends, team members, and colleagues.
WordPress
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The second release candidate for WordPress 6.0 is available for download and testing. The scheduled release date for WordPress 6.0 is May 24, 2022, less than two weeks away. Don’t forget to read the haiku in the release candidate announcement!
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Are you new to Mailchimp or to WordPress? Jeremy Holcombe explains how to configure Mailchimp for WordPress opt-in forms and email marketing.
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One of the hot topics in the WordPress community is the latest stats from W3Techs showing a slight decrease in WordPress market share. Which has many folks concerned what the cause is. Sarah Gooding takes a closer look in her WordPress community attributes declining market share to performance post.
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If you’re starting a blog for your business, check out Nick Schäferhoff’s helpful nine steps to get started blogging for business guide. Good tips and resources, though I’m no longer recommending Google Analytics. I’m a fan of Koko Analytics and Plausible.
CSS and HTML
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At his talk at Google IO 2022 this week, Adam Argyl gave an introduction and brief overview of the State of CSS in 2022. Thankful for the article format of his talk.
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Have you been wanting to learn HTML and CSS? Take the first 15 chapters (121 lessons and challenges) of Learn HTML CSS for free. Learn HTML CSS is an online course where you’ll learn concepts step-by-step while building two projects.
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Fun story to learn why Chris Coyier originally built CSS Tricks, one of the most popular and well-known web design sites.
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Ollie Williams takes a deep dive into color fonts in COLRv1 and CSS font-palette: web typography gets colorful. Have to admit, I knew little about color fonts before I read the article. Disappointed to learn Firefox has no support for color fonts (as of May 2022) on desktop or mobile.
What I Found Interesting
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Disappointing news for users: Apple officially ends the iPod, more than 20 years after it debuted. Did you have an iPod? Do you still use it?
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I’m always interested in productivity tips for Google Docs. I’m a fan of voice typing, but I’ve never used Substitutions. Have you?
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Whoa. Researchers didn’t know if anything would grow in the dirt collected by NASA’s Apollo astronauts. For the first time, scientists grow plants in lunar dirt.
If you like what you’ve read today, share the post with your colleagues and friends.
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