Relational Infrastructure " … refers to the social connections, interactions, and collective intelligence that underpin a community, network or group’s ability to collaborate, solve problems, and drive change."

They talk about you, gurgling sugar through their roots …

Source: Root Words

Effectively, the time costs of doing things over a weekend have diminished considerably for those who don’t have to commute.

Source: How remote work is boosting the U.S. economy

For my flavor of UX and Design, I’ve found my most important work is communication. My role is to discover, gather, and analyze the many varied contributions and specifications from all of these contributors and generate output in a language that everyone understands. I also need my outputs to forward the conversation, and expand the audience, at each step.

Source: Why I moved on from Figma – No Handoff

A touchscreen, then, operates as a digital platform where features can be locked or unlocked by the company at will, depending on customers’ rent payments. Physical buttons, on the other hand, can’t be turned into rent. They only serve the customer, so they’re less attractive.

Source: Creative Good: Why car companies (still) ignore customers

Stack Rock Fort: Victorian island reclaimed by nature. The property has been bought by a community interest company, which plans to preserve it as a “living ruin”.

The quiet power of introverts. A nice animated short via the always great Converge Newsletter.

The “ghost hotel” nomenclature refers to an entire apartment building which is functionally a hotel because most or all units are short-term rentals instead of tenant-occupied.

Source: All Long-Term Tenants at a Montreal Apartment Building Were Replaced With an Airbnb Ghost Hotel – Pixel Envy

Rad Reader by Alexander Cobleigh. “It’s like a pokedex for personal websites, and designed to surface the latest posts for you to view rather than juggle an ever-increasing inbox.”

It’s really hot, let’s look at some classic cold photos. “Snow” by Photographers Arturo + Bamboo

Tools versus Systems. “Yes, the two are different.”

Japan Jazz Kissa Tour — 2023. Binaural recording from various jazz kissa in Japan. Headphones recommended.

Melike Turgut created this diagram to try to “pin-point the stages of my creative process.”

If your concept of “progress” doesn’t put people at the center of it, is it even progress?

Source: I’m a Ludite (and so can you!)

Webring. A list of hand-crafted wikis and portfolios.

What I learned from taking a train across the US. “Here’s how US train travel went from excellent to mediocre.” A Vox video.

Multi-layered calendars. “Notes are just emails to your future self. Emails are just tasks. And tasks are just calendar events.”

How do I find new music now that I’m old and irrelevant?, a podcast episode about how “a normal person can find new stuff when they feel like their ears have rusted.”

Give it the Craigslist test. “If you’re designing a new product or service, give it the Craigslist test — start with low-fidelity options that see if people would love it even if it looked like Craigslist.”

Taken at the Natural History Museum.

I love that my Grandpa Norm told me to put a $10 in my coat pocket when I put it away for the season: ‘You’ll give yourself a surprise treat when it gets cold again!’ He’s been gone for over five years, but I still think of him when swapping coats.

Source: Have a Restorative Weekend - Cup of Jo

Because red and green are complementary colors opposite one another on the color wheel, they’ve become the default colors for every designer who wants to represent opposites: true and false, high and low, stop and go. Inconveniently, these are also the two colors most likely to be mixed up by people with color vision deficiencies.

It me!

Source: Designing for colorblindness - The Verge

Moe Lauchert’s photography is pretty amazing.

Lynne Carty’s site is fun!

I think that if you want to know how something is made, you should look for the grids. They are the ever-present, behind-the-scenes structure of our cities, our machines, our homes, and our lives. You’ll find the grid in the artist’s studio, in the patterns of the textile weaver’s pattern book, in the architect’s floor plan sketches, in the engineer’s CAD software; even the monospaced fonts that programmers use fit to the grid.

Source: GRID WORLD by Alexander Miller