04 ‣ #IDD2024 is today. Is your design kind?
I love how the simplest questions hit always closest to home. The International Council of Design didn't hesitate: with a bold visual identity (developed by some awesome lithuanian designers), and even bolder motto, the global design community is invited to reflect;
- Is your design kind?
- Which existing systems prevent kind designing?
- How could you build kindness more meaningfully into your practice?
- How would you differentiate design that barely meets ethical standards from design that embodies kindness?
- What kind of metrics could be used to show the ‘successes’ of kind design?
source: IDD2024 toolkit
Once you read through the toolkit, you'll most likely be full of questions like I was. Of course we learnt about dark design patterns and sustainability, but was ever kindness an explicit theme in any education? How can "ordinary" designers impact complicated supply chain constellations? Is it a luxury to measure a projects's kindness instead of its profitability? Is capitalism inherently macho?
Check out the conferences/materials for this special day, and tune in to the collective brainstorm around kindness here 🌀
🐚Behind the scenes of UX hiring One of my previous managers described the hiring process as a theatre play, where a lot of mechanisms and people need to be in place. This article seems to confirm the metaphor. Odette Jansen, UX research team lead invites us to the backstage and shares how they narrowed 600 applicants to 1!
🔭 In The Open™ Want to know what inspires one of the coolest design studios in Denmark?
🤑 Salary.Design Campaigning for a salary can be intense. If you'd like to know what others make across seniorities, industries and locations - this is a good place to start. You can also consider submitting your current numbers (anonymously, of course!).
🎰 Sharpen.design "Mock-up an IOT device for a hot sauce brand in Mexico", "Design a payment UI for a magic shop", "Create custom emojis for a VR lawyer". Ok, I'm on it! Sharpen is a simple and fun design challenge generator - can be used for learning alone or together with your class/team. Set some parameters and generate some randomness - and you'll have some quirky use cases to take into your user journey & interface practice sessions. (I'm still thinking about IOT for hot sauces...)
🪞 Your life, in data The word "data" can be scary. But what if we would take ownership of it, by using random moments and objects from our lives? School for Poetic Computation's summary about their data visualization course might start to make you feel differently about the cars passing by, the flowers in your garden, or the soy sauce packets in your kitchen drawer 🌝
Wohoo, thanks for reading the newsletter all the way here! 😋 I'd love to hear what you thought of it – drop me a line and let's chat. Got a friend who you know would geek out on content like this? Consider forwarding this edition to them 💌
UX vibes,
Kinga ✻