Manny
@mannimoki.bsky.social
Designer, educator, technologist, growth-seeker. He/Him 🏳️🌈 mannyikomi.com
"What is the ROI of UX?" is shaped like a question, but it is actually two hostile premises: 1) that UX is sufficiently marginal for its value to be openly questioned 2) that the asker has the authority to judge this question, and practitioners are merely consulted on it, as a matter of courtesy
you’re right! it feels mostly awful to Go Online™, these days. the internet in a sad state, for reason after reason after reason. but there is a way to fix it; to trade the voidful howling for a quiet & joyful song. here’s how to win the war for the soul of the internet, and build the Web We Want.
A Website To End All Websites | Henry From Online
How to win the war for the soul of the internet, and build the Web We Want.
henry.codes
One of few newsletters I actually look forward too and read. A MUST have for anyone working in product and technology.
Pavel@spavel.bsky.social · 8mo agoIt was my goal to enter 2026 with 2026 subscribers for my user experience design newsletter, The Product Picnic. Currently we are only in 1969, which while a great year is somewhat short of the goal. Help me bring my newsletter into the present!
I have been back and forth over the span of 5 years about whether to publish this article. All opinions and experiences in this post are my own, or from people I personally know, backed up with recent reports and statistics.
Why Women in Tech isn't enough
Women in Tech spaces help, but fall short in the long run. Real progress needs systemic change and active involvement from men in positions of power.
whitep4nth3r.com
A very timely read for tech workers right now. My favorite takeaway as it applies to cross-functional teams, especially for designers: "in order to master your own domain, the boundaries of your specialism will often blur with specialists in other domains."
Robb Owen@robbowen.digital · last yr.Back when I was finding my feet in tech everybody was buzzing about building positive change. Somewhere along the way, something changed. Fortunately for us though, tech is not the first industry forced to defend itself against dubious practices. What might we learn if we were to look elsewhere?
Soon enough, people will be adding "Figma Suite" to their resumes.
You don't necessarily need to say "image of" in your alt text for users to know it's an image. Screen readers will announce that it's an image. But it can help readers to specify if it's a hand-drawn image, Polaroid, infographic, screenshot, chart, map, diagram, or so on.
Sometimes I wonder who has the world record for the most Workday accounts? 🤔
Context matters and not everything valuable is measurable. See "Why big data needs thick data" by Tricia Wang. A timeless classic imo medium.com/ethnography-...
Why Big Data Needs Thick Data
Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Data in Research
medium.com
Jason Cohen@asmartbear.com · last yr.Always seek data; never act on data alone. Because not looking at the data is just ignorance, but believing that all important things are in the data, or that the data are measuring what you think they're measuring, is also folly.
So called 'gender critical' thought is unscientific, reductionist, and incompatible with the historical record. Human history is undeniably and richly populated by endless examples of multiple gender identities and roles, decoupled from biological sex, throughout time, across continents & islands
Something I realized about the convos around the Ghibli styled images generated by Open AI, is that a lot of people rely on legalities. They have no sense of internal ethics. We have to fight to make sure the law is on the side of ethics. Slavery was legal but that doesn’t make it right.
See if color contrast meets accessibility standards right within the color picker
Why does it feel so much harder to design for yourself and not others?
UX design is in disarray. The idea of design-for-use has been replaced with design-for-sales, and its incentives (make more features so that you have more shit to sell) don't align with user-centered work. In this issue, I investigate the ground-level view of how this happened and how to stop it.
Why design goes wrong and how to set it right, part 1
At the root of design's crisis is an incentives crisis throughout tech. But we have tools that let us cut through the magical thinking of feature factories - if we're willing to use them.
productpicnic.beehiiv.com
Something I've noticed is that when someone says, "can I ask a stupid question?" during a teaching session, this is almost always followed by the most interesting discussion of the session It's one of the things I look forward to most about teaching
Hollering at this episode 🤣 "At this point, I will even take, 'we will improve our NPS score'" @spavel.bsky.social 😱 www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7m-...
Design That Counts: Lessons on UX Influence and Impact with Pavel Samsonov, Ep26
YouTube video by vaexperience
youtube.com
By excluding these “edge cases” it also further perpetuates the bias that “[insert marginalized group here] doesn’t use our app”. Strengthening and perpetuating the cycle through even more self-selection and exclusion, leading to more feature factory product teams.
dorian@doriantaylor.com · last yr.was thinking about this again in the context of "edge cases", arguments software programmers make for not addressing some particular constituency or other (eg localization, accessibility) because each consideration only represents a sliver of the population and gets in the way of shipping…
Can we get an executive order to end daylight savings? Too soon?
I think it's important to remember, with everything extremely fucked up and dumb right now, that at the root of it, fuck fuck fucking fucking fuck.
+1 for this course! I use it as part of my interactive design course every semester with my students. Fantastic content, and approachable for everyone!
Accessibility Awareness@a11yawareness.bsky.social · last yr."Introduction to Web Accessibility" is a free course designed for people of all roles and all experience levels. Regardless of your background, there's something you can learn here. www.edx.org/course/web-a...
former colleagues from 18F have asked me to share this open letter widely - please pass on 🙏 🇺🇸 💻💪 18f.org
We're not done yet | 18F
18f.org
18F, the federal government’s technology shop, was just demolished by Musk’s team. It was a cost-recoverable org, charging agencies for their expertise, using a consulting model. Its cost to government was negligible, its benefits huge. My team there once saved DoD $500 million. A thread about 18F:
Waldo Jaquith@waldo.net · last yr.18F is *precisely* what Musk and team claim should exist within government. But when his team found it, they destroyed it, because it is evidence that government works well (can’t have that!), and because like Zelensky, 18F didn’t bend the knee.
