Hey,

Welcome to issue #100. Thanks for being a subscriber and sticking with it. If you enjoy the newsletter, please share it with someone you think might enjoy it :)

Onto this week’s links…

1. Why the accept attribute degrades file upload UX

Adam always does a brilliant job of explaining the flaws in common form patterns. There are so many things that would seem to offer good UX, but breakdown when you scratch below the surface:

But this guidance almost definitely comes from Jakob Nielsen’s 5th usability heuristic about error prevention.

The heuristic is fine, but designers constantly misinterpret it as approval to hide errors from users.

As if it’s better to hide an error and pretend one doesn’t exist, than it is to show the error and let users fix it.

2. NB Akademie Edition

I came across this typeface in a website recently – it’s always fun to discover foundries I’ve not come across before.

3. Do it properly now

If we ship a subpar feature or update to our product, what’s the likelihood of going back to put it right?

Other priorities creep in, team members change, and that temporarily inaccessible work is forgotten. It gets built on top of. And the longer it sits there, the more expensive and awkward it is to fix.

4. No slop grenade

Pasting a massive AI-generated response into a chat or email where a human would write one sentence. It destroys the medium itself. Nobody writes essays in Slack. It’s only possible because of AI copy-paste.

It’s like calling someone and asking “What time is the meeting?” and they read you a 10-page analysis of calendar management best practices. You asked a simple question. They lobbed a document.

5. Thickening Time

A friend recommended this book to me a little while ago. It’s $12, with an option to read for free online.

What am I up to?

• Last week I published the next design process interview, this time with Stéphanie Walter.
• My next available Unoffice Hour slot is 10 June
• I have limited availability for new projects from July.

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Until next time,

Dave

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