User errors, the curb-cut effect, creepy devices

How designers can prevent user errors

The term user error implies it’s the users’ fault when they do something wrong. Most of the times, though, the responsability lies with the designers that created confusing interfaces. In this article you’ll find the most effective ways to prevent errors to occur in the first place.

🔗 Read the article (on UX Tools)

8 everyday items originally invented for people with disabilities

According to the World Bank, 1 billion people have some form of disability, and one-fifth of those have significant disabilities. Many times, these people need special adaptations to thrive. What is interesting is that, often, those adaptations benefit people of all abilities as well. Discover the eight items, and what’s the curb-cut effect.

🔗 Read the article (on HowStuffWorks)

Mastercard introduces accessible card design for blind users

Mastercard is introducing a new card for people who are blind, or have visual impairments. The card, available from 2022, uses three different physical notches to help people use touch to distinguish among them. Its new designs are available for other card companies to use as well. Sounds like another item that can benefit all.

🔗 Read the article (on The Wall Street Journal)

* Privacy not included

Mozilla created a guide to help people shop for safe, secure connected products. Find out how creepy is that smart speaker, that fitness tracker, those wireless headphones.

🔗 Read the article (on Mozilla)

Fifty percent of Facebook Messenger’s total voice traffic comes from Cambodia. Here’s why

Cambodians are ignoring keyboards, which are not designed for Khmer. They’ve adapted for a technology that was never designed with them in mind.

🔗 Read the article (on Rest of World)

The man who taught humans to breathe like fish

Always I rebelled against the limitations imposed by a single lungful of air, he wrote in a 1952 article for National Geographic, his first for the magazine. Read how Jacques Cousteau’s invention of the aqualung opened the undersea realm to scientists and the public.

🔗 Read the article (on National Geographic)