3

La nueva amenaza de la pandemia: gente podría morir por no llamar al 911

DALLAS, 22 de abril de 2020 — Informes de las líneas del frente de los hospitales indican que la cantidad de ataques del corazón y ataques cerebrales a nivel nacional ha caído en forma precipitosa. Sin embargo, es claro que COVID-19 no hace que las ...




3

Las dos nuevas declaraciones de la AHA se centran en la insuficiencia cardíaca: cómo pueden afectar los determinantes sociales a los resultados clínicos, y el impacto en los cuidadores

Aspectos destacados de las declaraciones: Los factores sociales adversos, como el estado de los seguros, la inseguridad alimentaria, la falta de fondos para medicamentos y otros, pueden causar resultados clínicos negativos de la insuficiencia...




3

Mejores hábitos de sueño pueden ayudar a reducir el riesgo de sufrir cardiopatías y a bajar de peso

Puntos destacados de la investigación: Las personas con mejor salud cardíaca, con hábitos de sueño saludables y que cumplen con AHA Life Simple 7, tienen menos probabilidades de tener un diagnóstico de cardiopatía y menos probabilidades de desarrollar...




3

Más pasos por día se relaciona con reducciones significativas de la diabetes y la hipertensión arterial

Puntos destacados de la investigación: Los adultos de mediana edad que caminaron una mayor cantidad de pasos al día mostraron un 43% menos de riesgo de padecer diabetes y un 31% menos de riesgo de hipertensión arterial, en comparación con personas de...




3

Comer más proteína vegetal y lácteos en lugar de carne roja puede mejorar la salud del corazón

Puntos destacados de la investigación: En un estudio de más de 37 000 estadounidenses, aquellos que comieron la mayor cantidad de proteína vegetal tenían un 29% menos de probabilidades de morir de una enfermedad coronaria. Sustituir una porción por...




3

Massachusetts' ethnic mosaic

A look into Massachusetts ethnic/race/country of origin by town.




3

Untangling Florida's foreclosure crisis

Florida's foreclosure crisis seems like a never-ending nightmare. Mortgages are caught up in MERS, an electronic database that most homeowners never heard of until the foreclosure crisis. Homeowners in foreclosure are worried that robo signing by lenders' employees may have led to mortgage fraud. The mortgage process itself is under scrutiny by the courts and government regulators who are asking: How could something so simple as a home loan go so terribly wrong?




3

Normalizing Mental Illness: One Mom's Hope

Joyce Plis directs the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Modesto, California. She's a hero to sick people who have nowhere else to turn. Her son Eric, 46, has schizophrenia. Photography, audio and production by Lauren M. Whaley/CHCF Center for Health Reporting.




3

El nuevo registro de datos de pacientes con COVID-19 proporcionará perspectivas sobre la atención y los resultados cardiovasculares adversos

DALLAS, 3 de abril del 2020 – Debido al esfuerzo de médicos, científicos e investigadores de todo el mundo por comprender la pandemia del coronavirus (COVID-19), la American Heart Association está desarrollando un nuevo registro para agregar datos y...




3

Nueva capacitación sobre el manejo de oxigenación y ventilación para profesionales de la salud

DALLAS, 3 de abril del 2020 – Con la pandemia de COVID-19, más pacientes presentan disnea (dificultad para respirar) y necesitan ventiladores para ayudarlos a respirar. Debido a que los volúmenes de pacientes en hospitales y unidades de cuidados...




3

Muévanse a través de los momentos difíciles, juntos, con tWitch y Allison Boss, dúo de bailarines y estrellas de la televisión

Botones para compartir de AddThis Compartir en Facebook Compartir en Twitter Compartir por correo electrónico Compartir para imprimir DALLAS, 20 de abril del 2020 — Debido a que la pandemia del coronavirus (COVID-19) ha cambiado las...




3

Cuidadores a distancia: cómo ayudar a los seres queridos con insuficiencia cardíaca en medio del COVID-19

  DALLAS, 23 de abril del 2020 — A medida que el distanciamiento social mantiene a las familias separadas, es posible que muchos de los que cuidan de un padre o un ser querido que padece insuficiencia cardíaca se pregunten cómo...




3

Perspectiva del paciente: vivir con diabetes de tipo 2 y cardiopatías en medio del COVID-19

Botones para compartir de AddThis Compartir en Facebook Compartir en Twitter Compartir por correo electrónico Compartir para imprimir DALLAS y ARLINGTON, 23 de abril del 2020 — Debido a que la ciencia que emerge en torno al COVID-19...




3

10 notable examples of 3-team trades

When it comes to pulling off a trade, three is sometimes not a crowd, but a necessity. With that in mind, here is a look back at 10 of the most notable three-way trades from recent history.




3

10 of MLB's biggest player-team reunions

Through MLB history, plenty of players have returned to the teams where they became stars. Let's take a look back at 10 of the most memorable ones.




3

The best 'walk years' in baseball history

There is a long history of exceptional walk years as well, and Adrian Beltre, who retired after the 2018 season, is a big part of it. Here is a look at 20 of the best.




3

These are MLB's Top 100 Prospects

The wait is over. After MLB Pipeline unveiled its Top 10 Position lists over the past two weeks, it's time to dive into the Top 100 Prospects, the best of the best.




3

Struggling Sutton and Epsom Rugby Club 'overwhelmed' as global donations raise £24k

In a year that has seen financial struggles and even loss of life, the community has generously supported the club




3

WordPress Theme Releases for 3/11

Attitude is a simple, clean, and responsive retina-ready theme. Catch Everest is a simple, clean, and responsive theme. Liberus is an ideal business related theme that is relatively simple and would suit any blog or website. Stitch is an elegant, modern theme with optional fixed header.




3

WordPress Plugin Releases for 3/13

New plugins Easy Media Gallery is designed to display portfolios and various media types including gallery sets, single images, google maps, video, audio, and links with ease and elegance. ytlink provides a preview image for embedded YouTube videos. Updated plugins BackWPup allows you to backup your WordPress database, files, and more. Genericon’d enables easy use of the Genericons icon font set from within WordPress. Icons can be inserted using either HTML or a shortcode. Keyring provides a very hookable, completely customizable framework for connecting your WordPress site to an external service. WP All Import makes it easy to import any XML or CSV file into your WordPress site.




3

WordPress 3.6 Release Delayed

The impending release of WordPress 3.6 has been pushed back one more week to April 29. At this time, WordPress 3.6 is not yet feature complete (meaning that all intended new features have not been entirely finished), so the decision was made to push the first beta release back two weeks to March 27 and the final release back one week to April 29. This will allow the team time to focus on finalizing the in-progress new features so that they (and the brave folks who enjoy running beta software) can simply focus on testing and bug fixing rather than polishing up partial features.




3

WordPress Theme Releases for 3/15

Ease is a simple red and white theme. Nomad is an attractive professional, business or blog theme with an unusual, very narrow orientation and design. Sensitive is fully responsive theme using Twitter Bootstrap and a Metro-styled accent. Visual is a dark minimalist theme for displaying photos and images.




3

WordPress Plugin Releases for 3/17

New plugins Barc Chat provides a simple yet feature rich chat room for your whole community to interact in real-time directly on your site. Get Directions is a flexible and responsive map plugin. Namaste! LMS is a learning management system for WordPress. Pinterest Verify Meta Tag simply inserts the Pinterest meta tag verification code to the correct section of your site. Updated plugins BackWPup allows you to backup your WordPress database, files, and more. Ooyala Video allows you to easily embed videos from the Ooyala Video Platform.




3

WordPress Theme Releases for 3/19

Cazuela is a neutral colored theme. Ilisa is a clean and minimal theme that can be easily used as a personal portfolio or a business website. Partition has a light, lively, colorful, yet professional and classic appearance.




3

WordPress Plugin Releases for 3/21

New plugins Google Adsense Dashboard for WP will display your Google Adsense earnings and related reports inside your Dashboard. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP will display Google Analytics data and statistics inside your Dashboard. Updated plugins Ad Code Manager allows you to manage your ad codes through the WordPress admin in a safe and easy way. BFT Autoresponder allows scheduling of automated autoresponder messages and managing a mailing list. CampTix Event Ticketing is an easy to use and flexible event ticketing plugin.




3

WordCamp San Francisco 2013 Dates Announced

The dates have been announced for WordCamp San Francisco 2013, an event which is often heralded as the annual WordPress conference. WordCamp San Francisco 2013 will be held on July 26 and 27 at the Mission Bay Conference Center with a Developer Hack Day on July 28. A list of speakers is not yet available, but they would like you to nominate your favorite past WordCamp speakers. Will you be attending WordCamp San Francisco this year?




3

WordPress Theme Releases for 3/23

Memori Jingga is a responsive, clean, and simple theme. Rockers is a responsive theme with a clean design. Satu is an elegant single-column responsive theme.




3

WordPress Plugin Releases for 3/25

New plugins Easy Watermark automatically adds watermark to images when they are uploaded. Internet Defense League Cat Signal automatically loads either the modal or the banner Cat Signal when there is an active campaign from the Internet Defense League. Updated plugins BFT Autoresponder allows scheduling of automated autoresponder messages and managing a mailing list. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP will display Google Analytics data and statistics inside your Dashboard. WordPress MU Domain Mapping allows users of a WordPress MU site or WordPress 3.0 network to map their blog/site to another domain.




3

WordPress Theme Releases for 3/28

AirTime is a subtle and simple theme. FirmaSite is a responsive theme with BuddyPress and bbPress support. Stark Lite is a minimalist and simple theme.




3

WordPress Plugin Releases for 3/30

New plugins GC Message Box allows you to highlight your key message(s) in smart ways within articles and blog posts. Simple Social Icons allows you to insert social icons in any widget area. Stick It allows you to stick the navigation menu in any theme to the top of browser window. Updated plugins Jetpack allows you to supercharge your WordPress site with powerful features previously only available to WordPress.com users. Nav Menu Images enables uploading of images for nav menu items on the menu edit screen.




3

Weekly News for Designers № 537

This week’s Designer News – № 537 – includes a Free Animation in Design System E-Book, Creating Playful Effects with CSS Text Shadows, UI Design Hygiene, Creating the NHS Patient Webinars Platform, pattern.css Pattern Library, CSS Selectors Explained, Open Source Dashboards UI Kit and so much more!

The post Weekly News for Designers № 537 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.




3

Weekly News for Designers № 538

This week’s Designer News – № 538 – includes 5 Simple Habits to Improve UX Research, New Media Queries You Need to Know, The Cost of Javascript Frameworks, The Hero Generator, Why Wireframes are Becoming Obsolete, Looking at coronavirus.data.gov.uk, Lots of Freebies and so much more!

The post Weekly News for Designers № 538 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.




3

Weekly News for Designers № 539

This week’s Designer News – № 539 – includes How to Create a Color Theme Switcher, a Morphing Gooey Text Hover Effect, Free UXUI Doc Kit for Sketch/Figma, Design System Interview Questions, Faking 3D Elements with CSS, the StyleStash Chrome Extension, Teach Yourself Code and a bunch more!

The post Weekly News for Designers № 539 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.




3

3 Elements of Good Logo Design for Your WordPress Website

Your logo could easily be the most memorable component of your WordPress website—or any other form of publicity, for that matter. However, it’s imperative that your logo reflects the fundamentals of modern logo design. WordPress’s own logo, which is placed very subtly in a corner on most websites using the platform, has such a clean design that it’s hard not to notice. Yours can be like this too. In this brief article, we’ll discuss three fundamental tips or techniques for designing the best possible logo for your WordPress website. Modern Logo Design Tips Most businesses have logos, and if they

The post 3 Elements of Good Logo Design for Your WordPress Website appeared first on Photoshop Lady.




3

Get Started With CSS3 Transitions Today

Transitions (basic animations) are one of the most popular additions in CSS3, and one of the easiest to implement for big gains on your site. A transition is simply an animation from one set of CSS properties to another. So for example; whilst before you may have had links with blue text, which suddenly turned orange when you hovered on them, you would now replace that sudden jump with a more graceful animation. In this post, we'll look at the basic syntax, step through some examples, and finally take a brief look at current browser support.




3

Best sports movies: Just as baseball is America, 'Field of Dreams' has become Iowa

Editor's note: The Gazette sports staff has compiled lists of its top 15 favorite sports movies. Each day, a different staffer will share some insight into one of their favorites. Some of them are...




3

Best sports movies: 'Brian's Song' is about more than football — it's about friendship

Editor’s note: The Gazette sports staff has compiled lists of its top 15 favorite sports movies. Each day, a different staffer will share some insight into one of their favorites. Some of them...




3

Trucker from Iowa charged in 1990s slayings of 3 women

IOWA CITY — Investigators on Wednesday arrested a long-haul trucker from Iowa who they say is linked by DNA evidence to the killings of three women whose bodies were dumped in Wyoming and...




3

How to Fix 503 Service Unavailable Error in WordPress

Are you seeing a 503 service unavailable error in WordPress? The problem with the 503 error is that it gives no clues about what’s causing it which makes it extremely frustrating for beginners. In this article, we will show you how to fix the 503…





3

How to Change Your iPhone's DNS Servers

Just like in Mac OS X, you can change the DNS servers on your iPhone. This can significantly speed up Safari and other iPhone apps that use the Internet. For a general introduction to DNS, and to learn why you would want to change the DNS servers on your iPhone, see How to Change Your Mac's DNS Servers.

Before we start, you should know a couple things about how iOS handles DNS. First, these instructions only work for Wi-Fi connections - iOS does not allow you to change the DNS servers when connected to cellular networks. Also, the changes are network specific, so you'll need to change the DNS servers every time you connect to a new wireless network. The good news is that iOS remembers the settings, so you won't have to do anything the second time you connect to a network.

Here's how to change your iPhone's DNS servers:

  1. From the iPhone's home screen, tap Settings.

  2. Tap Wi-Fi. The screen shown below appears. The available wireless networks in range of your iPhone appear, as shown below.

  3. Find your wireless network in the list, and then click the arrow. The screen shown below appears.

  4. Tap the DNS field.

  5. Delete the current DNS servers, and enter the new DNS servers. (If you enter more than one DNS server, be sure sure to separate the servers with commas.)
    • To use OpenDNS, enter 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
    • To use Google DNS, enter 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
  6. Test your new DNS servers to make sure they're working.

That's it! You've updated your iPhone's DNS servers!

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Meet Your Macinstructor

Matt Cone, the author of Master Your Mac, has been a Mac user for over 20 years. A former ghost writer for some of Apple's most notable instructors, Cone founded Macinstruct in 1999, a site with OS X tutorials that boasts hundreds of thousands of unique visitors per month. You can email him at: matt@macinstruct.com.




3

Trucker from Iowa charged in 1990s slayings of 3 women

IOWA CITY — Investigators on Wednesday arrested a long-haul trucker from Iowa who they say is linked by DNA evidence to the killings of three women whose bodies were dumped in Wyoming and Tennessee in the early 1990s.

Police arrested Clark Perry Baldwin, 58, at his home in Waterloo, Iowa, on murder charges filed in Wyoming and Tennessee in the deaths of the women, including two who were pregnant. Investigators said they were looking into whether Baldwin could be responsible for other unsolved slayings.

Baldwin was arrested after investigators used semen and other material recovered from the victims to develop DNA profiles of their perpetrators, according to court documents in Wyoming. Last year, they learned that the same profile matched all three cases.

Investigators zeroed in on Baldwin after finding DNA in commercial genealogy databases of someone related to the suspect’s profile, court documents say. Last month in Waterloo, the FBI secretly collected DNA from Baldwin’s trash and a shopping cart he used at Walmart and it matched the profile.

In Wyoming, Baldwin is charged in the deaths of two unidentified women whose bodies were found in 1992 roughly 400 miles apart.

A female trucker discovered the nude body of the first victim in March 1992 near the Bitter Creek Truck turnout on Interstate 80 in southwestern Wyoming. An autopsy determined the woman suffered head trauma consistent with strangulation and her body had likely been in the snow for weeks.

A month later, Wyoming Department of Transportation workers found the partially mummified body of a pregnant woman in a ditch off of Interstate 90, near Sheridan in northern Wyoming.

An autopsy didn’t determine the cause of death but found the victim had an injury potentially consistent with suffering a blow to the head.

Investigators never identified the women and referred to them as “Bitter Creek Betty” and “I-90 Jane Doe.” Both were believed to be in their late teens or early 20s, Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Cmdr. Matt Waldock said.

In Tennessee, Baldwin is charged with two counts of murder in the 1991 killing of a 32-year-old pregnant woman from Virginia, Pamela McCall, and her fetus.

McCall was found in woods off Interstate 65 in Spring Hill, Tenn., in March 1991. An autopsy determined McCall had neck injuries and died of strangulation. Sperm was recovered from pantyhose worn by McCall, who was last seen at a Tennessee truck stop days earlier.

Court documents say that Baldwin allegedly raped a female hitchhiker in Wheeler County, Texas, at gunpoint in his truck in 1991. The 21-year-old woman told police that Baldwin struck her on the head, bound her hands and mouth and tried to choke her to death. He allegedly admitted to the assault but was released pending grand jury proceedings. Court documents do not indicate whether he was charged or prosecuted.

Baldwin, who has previously lived in Nashua, Iowa, and Springfield, Mo., was a cross-country truck driver for Marten Transport at the time.

Baldwin’s name also surfaced during a 1992 homicide investigation in Iowa. His ex-wife told police then that Baldwin once bragged about “killing a girl out west by strangulation and throwing her out of his truck,” court documents say.

Waldock said investigators were “hopeful” to solve other cases with Baldwin’s arrest.

One case of interest is the 1992 death of Tammy Jo Zywicki, 21, an Iowa college student who was last seen after her car broke down on an Illinois highway. A white man who was driving a semi-trailer was seen near her vehicle. Zywicki’s body was found in rural Missouri, stabbed to death.

Another is the 1992 killing of Rhonda Knutson, 22, a truck stop convenience store clerk in northern Iowa who was bludgeoned to death during an overnight shift. Investigators have released sketches of two men who were in the store, including one trucker. Baldwin lived in nearby Nashua then.

In 1997, Secret Service agents raided Baldwin’s apartment in Springfield, Mo., after learning he was making counterfeit U.S. currency on a personal computer. He and two female associates were indicted on counterfeiting charges. Baldwin was sentenced to 18 months in prison and released in 1999.

In 2008, a fire destroyed a Nashua building where Baldwin operated a candle business and damaged two adjacent buildings, including one that housed the town’s newspaper. The cause of the fire was never determined.

Baldwin is being held at the Black Hawk County jail pending extradition to Tennessee.

The charges stunned Jazz Baldwin, 32, of New Hampton, Iowa, who said she learned two years ago that Baldwin was her father after he purchased a DNA test kit. The two had been in contact over Facebook since then, she said.

“I heard rumors about his ‘possible crimes’ but always thought they were bogus,” she wrote in a Facebook message. “Murder was NOT on the list of things we thought he had done and gotten away with.”







3

Why's it so hard to get the cool stuff approved?

The classic adage is “good design speaks for itself.” Which would mean that if something’s as good of an idea as you think it is, a client will instantly see that it’s good too, right?

Here at Viget, we’re always working with new and different clients. Each with their own challenges and sensibilities. But after ten years of client work, I can’t help but notice a pattern emerge when we’re trying to get approval on especially cool, unconventional parts of a design.

So let’s break down some of those patterns to hopefully better understand why clients hesitate, and what strategies we’ve been using lately to help get the work we’re excited about approved.

Imagine this: the parallax homepage with elements that move around in surprising ways or a unique navigation menu that conceptually reinforces a site’s message. The way the content cards on a page will, like, be literal cards that will shuffle and move around. Basically, any design that feels like an exciting, novel challenge, will need the client to “get it.” And that often turns out to be the biggest challenge of all.

There are plenty of practical reasons cool designs get shot down. A client is usually more than one stakeholder, and more than the team of people you’re working with directly. On any project, there’s an amount of telephone you end up playing. Or, there’s always the classic foes: budgets and deadlines. Any idea should fit in those predetermined constraints. But as a project goes along, budgets and deadlines find a way to get tighter than you planned.

But innovative designs and interactions can seem especially scary for clients to approve. There’s three fears that often pop up on projects:

The fear of change. 

Maybe the client expected something simple, a light refresh. Something that doesn’t challenge their design expectations or require more time and effort to understand. And on our side, maybe we didn’t sufficiently ease them into our way of thinking and open them up to why we think something bigger and bolder is the right solution for them. Baby steps, y’all.

The fear of the unknown. 

Or, less dramatically, a lack of understanding of the medium. In the past, we have struggled with how to present an interactive, animated design to a client before it’s actually built. Looking at a site that does something conceptually similar as an example can be tough. It’s asking a lot of a client’s imagination to show them a site about boots that has a cool spinning animation and get meaningful feedback about how a spinning animation would work on their site about after-school tutoring. Or maybe we’ve created static designs, then talked around what we envision happening. Again, what seems so clear in our minds as professionals entrenched in this stuff every day can be tough for someone outside the tech world to clearly understand.

    The fear of losing control. 

    We’re all about learning from past mistakes. So lets say, after dealing with that fear of the unknown on a project, next time you go in the opposite direction. You invest time up front creating something polished. Maybe you even get the developer to build a prototype that moves and looks like the real thing. You’ve taken all the vague mystery out of the process, so a client will be thrilled, right? Surprise, probably not! Most clients are working with you because they want to conquer the noble quest that is their redesign together. When we jump straight to showing something that looks polished, even if it’s not really, it can feel like we jumped ahead without keeping them involved. Like we took away their input. They can also feel demotivated to give good, meaningful feedback on a polished prototype because it looks “done.”

    So what to do? Lately we have found low-fidelity prototypes to be a great tool for combating these fears and better communicating our ideas.

    What are low-fidelity prototypes?

    Low fidelity prototypes are a tool that designers can create quickly to illustrate an idea, without sinking time into making it pixel-perfect. Some recent examples of prototypes we've created include a clickable Figma or Invision prototype put together with Whimsical wireframes:

    A rough animation created in Principle illustrating less programatic animation:

    And even creating an animated storyboard in Photoshop:

    They’re rough enough that there’s no way they could be confused for a final product. But customized so that a client can immediately understand what they’re looking at and what they need to respond to. Low-fidelity prototypes hit a sweet spot that addresses those client fears head on.

    That fear of change? A lo-fi prototype starts rough and small, so it can ease a client into a dramatic change without overwhelming them. It’s just a first step. It gives them time to react and warm up to something that’ll ultimately be a big change.

    It also cuts out the fear of the unknown. Seeing something moving around, even if it’s rough, can be so much more clear than talking ourselves in circles about how we think it will move, and hoping the client can imagine it. The feature is no longer an enigma cloaked in mystery and big talk, but something tangible they can point at and ask concrete questions about.

    And finally, a lo-fi prototype doesn’t threaten a client’s sense of control. Low-fidelity means it’s clearly still a work in progress! It’s just an early step in the creative process, and therefore communicates that we’re still in the middle of that process together. There’s still plenty of room for their ideas and feedback.

    Lo-fi prototypes: client-tested, internal team-approved

    There are a lot of reasons to love lo-fi prototypes internally, too!

    They’re quick and easy. 

    We can whip up multiple ideas within a few hours, without sinking the time into getting our hearts set on any one thing. In an agency setting especially, time is limited, so the faster we can get an idea out of our own heads, the better.

    They’re great to share with developers. 

    Ideally, the whole team is working together simultaneously, collaborating every step of the way. Realistically, a developer often doesn’t have time during a project’s early design phase. Lo-fi prototypes are concrete enough that a developer can quickly tell if building an idea will be within scope. It helps us catch impractical ideas early and helps us all collaborate to create something that’s both cool and feasible.

      Stay tuned for posts in the near future diving into some of our favorite processes for creating lo-fi prototypes!



      • Design & Content

      3

      So You've Written a Bad Design Take

      So you’ve just written a blog post or tweet about why wireframes are becoming obsolete, the dangers of “too accessible” design, or how a certain style of icon creates “cognitive fatigue.”

      Your post went viral, but now you’re getting ratioed by rude people on the Internet. That sucks! You were just trying to start a conversation and you probably didn’t deserve all that negativity (except for you, “too accessible” guy).

      Most likely, you made one of these common mistakes:

      1. You made generalizations about “design”

      You, a good user-centered designer, know that you are not your user. Nor are you every designer.

      First of all, let's acknowledge that there is no universal definition of design. Even if we narrow it down to software design, it’s still hard to make generalizations. Agency, in-house, product, startup, enterprise, non-profit, website, app, connected hardware, etc. – there are a lot of different work contexts and cultures for people with “designer” in their titles.

      "The Design Industry" is not a thing, but even if it were, you don't speak for it. Don’t assume that the kind of design work you do is the universal default.

      2. You didn’t share enough context

      There are many great design books and few great design blog posts. (There are, to my knowledge, no great design tweets, but I am open to your suggestions.) Writing about design is not well suited to short formats, because context plays such an important role and there’s always a lot of it to cover.

      Writing about your work should include as much context as you would include if you were presenting your portfolio for a job interview. What kind of organization did you work for? Who was your client and/or your stakeholders? What was the goal of the project? Your timeline? What was the makeup of your team? What were the notable business rules and constraints? How are you defining effectiveness and success?

      Without these kinds of details, it’s not possible for other designers to know if what you’ve written is credible or applicable to them.

      3. You were too certain

      A blog post doesn’t need to be a dissertation. It’s okay to share hunches and anecdotes, but give the necessary caveats. And if you're making claims about science, bruh, you gotta cite your sources.

      Be humble in your takes. Your account of what worked for you and why is more valuable to your peers than making sweeping claims and reheating the same old arguments. Be prepared to be told you’re wrong, and have the humility to realize that your perspective is just your perspective. Real conversations, like good design, are built on feedback and diverse viewpoints.

      Together, we can improve the discourse in our information ecosystems. Don't generalize. Give context. Be humble.




      3

      Reel 3.0: New Color Schemes, Portfolio Styles & More!

      We’re very excited to announce a new major update for our Reel theme. The new 3.0 version brings new color schemes and many improvements to the Portfolio Showcase widget. What’s new in 3.0? 5 New Color Schemes + 2 New Theme Styles Full-width header option New styles & options for Portfolio Showcase widget 5 New Color Schemes After long research […]




      3

      Why's it so hard to get the cool stuff approved?

      The classic adage is “good design speaks for itself.” Which would mean that if something’s as good of an idea as you think it is, a client will instantly see that it’s good too, right?

      Here at Viget, we’re always working with new and different clients. Each with their own challenges and sensibilities. But after ten years of client work, I can’t help but notice a pattern emerge when we’re trying to get approval on especially cool, unconventional parts of a design.

      So let’s break down some of those patterns to hopefully better understand why clients hesitate, and what strategies we’ve been using lately to help get the work we’re excited about approved.

      Imagine this: the parallax homepage with elements that move around in surprising ways or a unique navigation menu that conceptually reinforces a site’s message. The way the content cards on a page will, like, be literal cards that will shuffle and move around. Basically, any design that feels like an exciting, novel challenge, will need the client to “get it.” And that often turns out to be the biggest challenge of all.

      There are plenty of practical reasons cool designs get shot down. A client is usually more than one stakeholder, and more than the team of people you’re working with directly. On any project, there’s an amount of telephone you end up playing. Or, there’s always the classic foes: budgets and deadlines. Any idea should fit in those predetermined constraints. But as a project goes along, budgets and deadlines find a way to get tighter than you planned.

      But innovative designs and interactions can seem especially scary for clients to approve. There’s three fears that often pop up on projects:

      The fear of change. 

      Maybe the client expected something simple, a light refresh. Something that doesn’t challenge their design expectations or require more time and effort to understand. And on our side, maybe we didn’t sufficiently ease them into our way of thinking and open them up to why we think something bigger and bolder is the right solution for them. Baby steps, y’all.

      The fear of the unknown. 

      Or, less dramatically, a lack of understanding of the medium. In the past, we have struggled with how to present an interactive, animated design to a client before it’s actually built. Looking at a site that does something conceptually similar as an example can be tough. It’s asking a lot of a client’s imagination to show them a site about boots that has a cool spinning animation and get meaningful feedback about how a spinning animation would work on their site about after-school tutoring. Or maybe we’ve created static designs, then talked around what we envision happening. Again, what seems so clear in our minds as professionals entrenched in this stuff every day can be tough for someone outside the tech world to clearly understand.

        The fear of losing control. 

        We’re all about learning from past mistakes. So lets say, after dealing with that fear of the unknown on a project, next time you go in the opposite direction. You invest time up front creating something polished. Maybe you even get the developer to build a prototype that moves and looks like the real thing. You’ve taken all the vague mystery out of the process, so a client will be thrilled, right? Surprise, probably not! Most clients are working with you because they want to conquer the noble quest that is their redesign together. When we jump straight to showing something that looks polished, even if it’s not really, it can feel like we jumped ahead without keeping them involved. Like we took away their input. They can also feel demotivated to give good, meaningful feedback on a polished prototype because it looks “done.”

        So what to do? Lately we have found low-fidelity prototypes to be a great tool for combating these fears and better communicating our ideas.

        What are low-fidelity prototypes?

        Low fidelity prototypes are a tool that designers can create quickly to illustrate an idea, without sinking time into making it pixel-perfect. Some recent examples of prototypes we've created include a clickable Figma or Invision prototype put together with Whimsical wireframes:

        A rough animation created in Principle illustrating less programatic animation:

        And even creating an animated storyboard in Photoshop:

        They’re rough enough that there’s no way they could be confused for a final product. But customized so that a client can immediately understand what they’re looking at and what they need to respond to. Low-fidelity prototypes hit a sweet spot that addresses those client fears head on.

        That fear of change? A lo-fi prototype starts rough and small, so it can ease a client into a dramatic change without overwhelming them. It’s just a first step. It gives them time to react and warm up to something that’ll ultimately be a big change.

        It also cuts out the fear of the unknown. Seeing something moving around, even if it’s rough, can be so much more clear than talking ourselves in circles about how we think it will move, and hoping the client can imagine it. The feature is no longer an enigma cloaked in mystery and big talk, but something tangible they can point at and ask concrete questions about.

        And finally, a lo-fi prototype doesn’t threaten a client’s sense of control. Low-fidelity means it’s clearly still a work in progress! It’s just an early step in the creative process, and therefore communicates that we’re still in the middle of that process together. There’s still plenty of room for their ideas and feedback.

        Lo-fi prototypes: client-tested, internal team-approved

        There are a lot of reasons to love lo-fi prototypes internally, too!

        They’re quick and easy. 

        We can whip up multiple ideas within a few hours, without sinking the time into getting our hearts set on any one thing. In an agency setting especially, time is limited, so the faster we can get an idea out of our own heads, the better.

        They’re great to share with developers. 

        Ideally, the whole team is working together simultaneously, collaborating every step of the way. Realistically, a developer often doesn’t have time during a project’s early design phase. Lo-fi prototypes are concrete enough that a developer can quickly tell if building an idea will be within scope. It helps us catch impractical ideas early and helps us all collaborate to create something that’s both cool and feasible.

          Stay tuned for posts in the near future diving into some of our favorite processes for creating lo-fi prototypes!



          • Design & Content

          3

          So You've Written a Bad Design Take

          So you’ve just written a blog post or tweet about why wireframes are becoming obsolete, the dangers of “too accessible” design, or how a certain style of icon creates “cognitive fatigue.”

          Your post went viral, but now you’re getting ratioed by rude people on the Internet. That sucks! You were just trying to start a conversation and you probably didn’t deserve all that negativity (except for you, “too accessible” guy).

          Most likely, you made one of these common mistakes:

          1. You made generalizations about “design”

          You, a good user-centered designer, know that you are not your user. Nor are you every designer.

          First of all, let's acknowledge that there is no universal definition of design. Even if we narrow it down to software design, it’s still hard to make generalizations. Agency, in-house, product, startup, enterprise, non-profit, website, app, connected hardware, etc. – there are a lot of different work contexts and cultures for people with “designer” in their titles.

          "The Design Industry" is not a thing, but even if it were, you don't speak for it. Don’t assume that the kind of design work you do is the universal default.

          2. You didn’t share enough context

          There are many great design books and few great design blog posts. (There are, to my knowledge, no great design tweets, but I am open to your suggestions.) Writing about design is not well suited to short formats, because context plays such an important role and there’s always a lot of it to cover.

          Writing about your work should include as much context as you would include if you were presenting your portfolio for a job interview. What kind of organization did you work for? Who was your client and/or your stakeholders? What was the goal of the project? Your timeline? What was the makeup of your team? What were the notable business rules and constraints? How are you defining effectiveness and success?

          Without these kinds of details, it’s not possible for other designers to know if what you’ve written is credible or applicable to them.

          3. You were too certain

          A blog post doesn’t need to be a dissertation. It’s okay to share hunches and anecdotes, but give the necessary caveats. And if you're making claims about science, bruh, you gotta cite your sources.

          Be humble in your takes. Your account of what worked for you and why is more valuable to your peers than making sweeping claims and reheating the same old arguments. Be prepared to be told you’re wrong, and have the humility to realize that your perspective is just your perspective. Real conversations, like good design, are built on feedback and diverse viewpoints.

          Together, we can improve the discourse in our information ecosystems. Don't generalize. Give context. Be humble.