Elsewhat

This book follows the history of what is commonly referred to as user experience (or UX) design. The book both chronicles the history of UX, and describes how we arrived at the current state of the design industry (warts and all).

I particularly liked this passage discussing how accessibility in design has lead directly to innovation:

You sit at the end of a long line of inventions that might never have existed but for people with disabilities: the keyboard on your phone, the telecommunications lines it connects with, the inner workings of email. In 1808, Pellegrino Turri built the first typewriter so that his blind lover, Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano, could write letters more legibly. In 1872, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone to support his work helping the deaf. And in 1972, Vint Cerf programmed the first email protocols for the nascent internet. He believed fervently in the power of electronic letters, because electronic messaging was the best way to communicate with his wife, who was deaf, while he was at work.

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As pricey as a run to the grocery store has become, our grocery bills would be considerably more expensive if environmental costs were included, researchers say. The loss of species as cropland takes over habitat. Groundwater depletion. Greenhouse gases from manure and farm equipment.

For years, economists have been developing a system of “true cost accounting” based on a growing body of evidence about the environmental damage caused by different types of agriculture. Now, emerging research aims to translate this damage to the planet into dollar figures.

Beef has the highest environmental costs of the foods we examined, pound for pound, and it wasn’t close. Cattle are very inefficient at converting what they eat into body weight. For every 100 grams of protein a cow eats, less than 4 grams end up in the beef we eat.

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the most recent episode of Ezra Klein featured author Zadie Smith, who gave a summary of social media and phones which has been bouncing around my head since I heard it:

the facts of this technology is that it was designed as and is intended to be a behaviour modification system. That is the right term for it … the phone tells me exactly what to think about, where to think about it and often how to think about it, and it’s not even to me the content of those thoughts, like there’s a lot of emphasis put on the kind of politics to express on these platforms to the right or to the left. To me, it’s the structure. It’s not the content of what’s on them. It’s that it’s structured in a certain way. That an argument is this long that there are two sides to every debate that they must be in fierce contest with each other is actually structuring the way you think about thought…

I don’t think any one of my age who knows anyone they knew in 2008 thinks that that person has not been seriously modified. In many different directions but the fundamental modification is the same, and that’s okay, all mediums modify you. Books modify you, TV modifies you, radio modifies you, the social life of a 16th century village modifies you, but the question becomes who do you want to be modified by and to what degree? That’s my only question, and when I look at the people who have designed these things, what they want, what their aims are, what they think a human being is or should be…This machinery is not worthy of them. That’s the best way I can put it, and I speak of someone who grew up as an entirely TV addicted human. I love TV. I love reading. Modification is my bread and butter, and when the internet came, I was like, “Hallelujah. Finally, we’ve got a medium which isn’t made by the man or centralized. We’re just going to be like talking to each other, hanging out with each other. It’s going to be amazing.” That is not the internet that we have. That is not what occurred.

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I’ve been a big fan of the Transit for years now. I know that they’re truly dedicated to their mission of helping people get around without cars. During the winter months, I use Transit several times a week to figure out how to get around Montréal. However, I don’t tend to use it for over half the year, as when it’s not icy I tend to get around on my bike.

Well, Transit has come out with beautiful bike routing and directions in their app. So now I can use their app in the summer too.

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Kevin Kelly‘s Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wished I’d Known Earlier, was a perfect quick rainy day cottage read. It’s a collection of advice which the author has gathered in their 70-plus years on earth. Some are pithy aphorisms, like ‘If someone is trying to convince you it’s not a pyramid scheme, it’s a pyramid scheme.’ Very true.

Though generally pithy and easy to digest, the chunks of advice sometimes come a little longer, like this (still brief) thought about creativity:

Seperate the processes of creating from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement.

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This isn’t quite new information for a lot of us, but I keep seeing the same tired arguments saying that closing cars to streets kills businesses. As a Montréaler, I’ve seen more and more streets closed while businesses continue to thrive.

As fellow Montréaler Toula Drimonis writes in the Walrus:

…once merchants saw the street fill with milling crowds, they were convinced. The pandemic initiative became an annual event. By 2023, the avenue’s commercial vacancy rate plummeted from 14.5 percent in 2018 to 5.6 percent. A few years earlier, in 2021, the pedestrianization of Wellington Street in the Verdun borough had increased foot traffic and shoppers by 17 percent. A once-drab strip is now lined with restaurants, bars, and cafes.

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Colourful mural by Jordan Bennett.

Street Scultpure off St. Laurent blvd. by Spanish artist Isaac Cordal.

When I saw the title of this book, written by fellow Montréaler Kevin Yuen Kit Lo of LOKI, I know I had to go to the book launch and read it. The description says it well: “Design Against Design argues for the urgent necessity of critical engagement and political resistance through graphic practice.”

The book is a clear reflection of its author—socially conscious, antiestablishment, anticapitalist, and with a punk aesthetic in its visuals and politics. It’s also deeply personal, and begins with a vivid account of childhood abuse, which may turn some people off. You know from the first chapter that it’s not a beach read.

Design Against Design was great, evoking some other great socially-conscious design writers like Victor Papanek and Mike Monteiro. It’s not meant to go down easy.

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