In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn the difference between personas and archetypes, find a helpful accessibility testing project guide, discover what you can do when you site goes viral and crashes, 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
Product Managers!
— Lucinda 🔮 Musa (@itslucindarella) May 18, 2022
BRING PROBLEMS TO ENGINEERS.
Friday afternoon, I brought a stakeholder product complaint to my team. I thought it was good context, but not actionable yet.
30 minutes later an engineer showed a poc that solves the problem. We released it today. ❤️🥹
User Experience
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Candidates with advanced degrees have filled the role of UX researchers for years. It’s time to explore other ways to create a sustainable pipeline of UX researchers, says Lawton Pybus in three ways to create more UX researchers.
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As someone who designs products for electric cars for Snapp Automotive, Casper Kessels wanted to experience a long trip in one. Check out his UX review of driving the Porsche Taycan for a week, what stood out for him and the three failings of their system.
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Sometimes we need a reminder!
User experience design should be fun.
— Dan Brown (he/him) 🕊 (@brownorama) May 18, 2022 -
Learn the difference between personas and archetypes and the benefits of one over the other in the first post of a two-part series from the Nielsen Norman Group.
Accessibility
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This week marked the eleventh anniversary of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), held annually on the third Thursday of May. I was amazed at how words has spread, as hundreds of amazing talks, presentations, tutorials, and posts were shared.
Including my colleague Rachele DiTullio’s Accessibility Testing project, with blog articles, videos, and spreadsheet to conduct accessibility testing.
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If you use Microsoft products, you’ll want to bookmark Rebecca Jackson’s start with accessibility in Microsoft 365 roundup of resources and events.
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A slew of new accessibility features are coming later this year from Apple, with new tools for navigation, health, and communication. One of the most interesting new features: Door Detection for users who are blind or have low vision.
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In many cases, organizations aren’t aware of the accessibility issues on their site or app. Don’t hesitate to provide feedback about an issue causing problems. You may be pleasantly surprised with the outcome, as Adrienne Grace was.
Shout out to @LAist for responding with a change to their email button colors within a day. I noticed they didn't meet color-contrast standards for accessibility, but never expected such a fast change to my feedback. #a11y #wcag
— Adrienne Grace (she/her) (@Adri_Grace_OC) May 18, 2022 -
Did you know automated accessibility testing tools only catch 30-40% of issues? Rather than depending on automated testing, developers can improve accessibility in products with keyboard testing, says Mark Steadman.
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Appreciate the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 and WCAG 3 status updates from Rachel Bradley Montgomery, co-chair of the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group.
WordPress
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The WordPress 6.0 version is expected to be released on May 24, 2022, less than a week away! The team could use your help to test the third release candidate of WordPress 6.0, can you help?
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Anyone can experience a sudden surge in traffic on a website, it can happen unexpectedly. Which is what happened to Christine when she created a dog rescue adoption website for Hank, a puppy she was fostering. And the site crashed.
Check out my notes in your website suddenly goes viral, now what? from Tiffany Bridge’s WordSesh 2022 presentation with tips and advice.
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I miss reading stories like this about how the Welch News uses WordPress to keep local news alive in West Virginia. Fascinating story, including learning they chose to continue delivering the paper three times a week.
“We’re here to serve a very vulnerable population that I feel like the modern world is pretty quick to sweep under the rug.”
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In one of the latest Press This community podcasts, David Vogelpohl talks with Jessica Scanlon about no-code WordPress sites. Scanlon focuses on creating value for small businesses who want a low-cost, good-looking website without having to invest their own time to make it happen.
CSS and HTML
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When it is best to use pixels vs. ems vs rem in your code? Did you know you want to use rem in media queries? Josh W. Comeau takes a deep dive in the surprising truth about pixels and accessibility.
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If you’re using CSS math functions like
min(),max(), andclamp(), did you know you might not needcalc()? Thanks for the heads up, Michelle Barker. -
Marcel Moreau explains how to improve icons for UI elements with typographic alignment and scale, using CSS custom properties and pseudo-elements.
What I Found Interesting
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While we can’t quickly unwind the sexism that drives abuse, we can redesign our digital spaces and change the online environments that allow this misogyny to thrive, says Azmina Dhrodia. (Note: language in the article that some of you may find offensive)
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Wow. Lego has released yet another impressive kit, this time a 3-D set to recreate Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Looking for a gift to yourself?
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There’s more to personalizing emails than a name, Litmus shares the top 10 ways marketers personalize emails. Have you used location or reward points in your email marketing?
If you like what you’ve read today, share the post with your colleagues and friends.
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