In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn how to give your UX research projects a greater level of predictability, find out how Twitter is making Spaces more accessible, discover an incredible skateboard animation made only with CSS, 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 shouldn’t have to opt out of things we never opted into.
— Dale Cruse (@DaleCruse) May 6, 2021
User Experience
- One of the biggest areas of disagreements between user experience professionals and project managers is who should do discovery and determining task flow interface, according to a Nielson Norman survey of almost 400 participants. It’s clear project management and user experience have different views of responsibilities.
- Planning gives your UX research projects a greater level of predictability, says Michael Morgan in Research Planning: A Smooth Takeoff. One way to have more control over your research project: use a project plan to identify tasks, resources needed as well as start and end dates.
- It shouldn’t be so frustrating for people to locate the login button on a site.
As an…
– existing user
I want to…
– hunt for the login button amongst multiple large sign-up buttons
so that…
– the new sign-ups metric continues to improve pic.twitter.com/59be2pIl9a— Shit User Story (@ShitUserStory) May 3, 2021
- I’m all for a better self checkout experience at brick and mortar stores, though there are privacy issues with the recommendation to scan faces as part of the checkout process that requires identification for items like alcohol or medicines.
Accessibility
- Happy 22nd birthday! On May 5, 1999, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 was released. Learn about WCAG 2.0 in the Web Design Museum.
- In the 2021 WebAIM Million Report, the annual accessibility analysis of home pages of the top one million website, the number of accessibility errors decreased by 15.6% compared to the 2020 analysis. Disappointing to learn over one-quarter of images had missing alternative text.
- Beware of companies claiming to user artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to make websites accessible, says Haben Girma in her three-minute Avoid AccessiBE and other companies claiming quick and easy AI accessibility video. The companies claim adding one line of code will make your website accessible. That’s not true.
- Planning an event?
How do you create accessible digital meetings and events? “Bring disabled people into every stage of event planning” — @JessicAccess at #AbilitySummit #a11y
— Lainey Feingold (@LFLegal) May 5, 2021
- Wonderful to read how Twitter is making Spaces accessible. If you’re not familiar, Spaces it the new live audio conversation feature on Twitter. Captions are available all all buttons have labels, useful for anyone using assistive technology. Yes, there’s more work to be done, but I’m glad to see the new feature has captions.
- On
WordPress
- A lot happened with WordPress in April 2021, including the release of WordPress 5.7.1, Full Site Editing updates, the announcement of WordCamp Europe 2021, and more.
- Glad to read the Jetpack 9.7 version makes more features available without connecting to WordPress.com. I never liked the change when Jetpack started requiring a WordPress.com connection for Jetpack features.
- At this month’s Rochester WordPress User Group meetup, my friend Chris Wiegman spoke about WordPress site security. Here’s my recap from How to Take your WordPress Site Security to the Next Level presentation.
- To celebrate the fourth birthday of the popular Astra theme, Brainstorm Force is discounting all Astra plans and upgrades. And offering a birthday giveaway of a new iMac.
CSS and HTML
- I remember when I first started using CSS vendor prefixing in 2006. I didn’t expect we’d still be using it 15 years later. At least the number of features that require prefixing fell by one-third between 2013 and 2021, according to Is Vendor Prefixing Dead?
- As I’ve said before, I’m always impressed with what can be done with CSS.
See the Pen
CSS Skateboard🛹 by Deren (@deren2525)
on CodePen. - Another birthday to celebrate! Happy 18th birthday to CSS Zen Garden, the community gallery of websites that drove so many amazing designs. Check out the Web Design Museum entry about CSS Zen Garden.
- Ahmad Shadeed shares his thoughts on he thinks the state of CSS cross-browser development is better than in the past. Why? Much of the reason is due to tools like Grid and Flexbox.
- While #30DaysOfHTML has ended, but you can still get it on demand by registering for the free email course on Gumroad. And for those who want a helpful resource, the #30DaysOfHTML ebook is expected to be available no later than .
What I Found Interesting
- Heads up on the new Twitter Tip Jar feature rolling out this week: if you send someone a tip using PayPal, the recipient will receive your physical address. Not good.
- May 6 was World Password Day, which means it’s a good time for you to review your passwords. If you haven’t already set it up, protect yourself from hackers and identity thieves by setting up two-factor authentication with an application (not text message).
- Sad news to read that Nuzzel has been shut down. A useful tool that looked at your Twitter feed and Twitter lists, many journalists and others used it multiple times a day.
If you like what you’ve read today, share the post with your colleagues and friends.
Want to make sure you don’t miss out on updates? Subscribe to get notified when new posts are published.
Did I miss some resources you found this week? I’d love to see them! Post them in the comments below.
