Designers are good people. Some designs exclude people anyway. Alan Dalton offers a practical fix: accessibility personas that help you recognize problems while you're designing, not after. Homework included.
Computing was born in a Viennese café. Between 1928 and 1934, while Hitler plotted and Europe crumbled, a motley crew of mathematicians, philosophers, architects, and economists gathered weekly to puzzle out the limits of reason—and invented Computer Science in the process. What made their collaboration possible wasn't just brilliance (though they had plenty). It was amiability: the careful design of a social space where difficult people could disagree without destroying each other. Longtime A List Apart contributing author Mark Bernstein mines this forgotten history for lessons that might just save today's embattled web from its worst impulses. Spoiler: it involves better coffee service and the looming threat of public humiliation.
Design systems aren't component libraries—they’re living languages. Rigid adherence to visual rules creates brittle systems that break under contextual pressure. Fluent systems bend without breaking.
Having both a Design Manager and a Lead Designer on the same team is beautiful, but can be messy. To make it work without creating confusion, overlap, or “too many cooks,” check Michel Ferreira’s Holistic Framework for Shared Design Leadership.
No Comments
More from ALA
Good designers, bad websites: a proposal
“Successful” or “Unsuccessful”: the Post-“Good Design” Vocabulary
Design for Amiability: Lessons from Vienna
Design Dialects: Breaking the Rules, Not the System
An Holistic Framework for Shared Design Leadership