In his Slow Design for an Anxious World presentation at An Event Apart in Denver, Jeffrey Zeldman espoused the benefits of design that aims to increase comprehension and intentional use. Here's my notes from his talk:

• We live in fast times and care a lot about making things faster for people. In this world, "slow" is often associated with friction. But some things are better slow.
• Fast is best for transactional customer-service designs. We optimize our checkout flows for efficiency and our code for performance. Likewise, service-oriented content must be designed for speed of relevancy. Getting to content like driving directions, return policies, and more should be quick and easy for customers.
• Slow is best for comprehension. Reading slowly helps us understand more of what we read and even transactional sites have some content that we want people to understand more deeply.
• There's lots of resources for site optimization but few for slowing people down so they appreciate and understand our content.
• Legibility means you can read what's on the page. Readability is where the art comes in. You don't need to be a graphic designer to improve readability. When focusing on readability you're focusing on absorption not conversion.
• Improving readability means putting the focus on content and removing distractions. The service Readability optimized Web pages for this by removing ads, third party widgets, and more.
• Considering different reading modes like in bed, at breakfast, on your lap, etc. can trigger ideas for layout and type for sites. For example, big fonts can help you lean back and take in content vs. leaning in and squinting.
• Big type used to be a controversial design choice on the Web but now has been adopted by a number of sites like Medium, Pro Publica, and the New Yorker.
• To be readable: use big type (16px should be your smallest size); use effective hierarchy for type; remove all extraneous elements in your layout; art direction helps you call attention to important content; make effective use of whitespace.
• Art direction can bring unique emotion and resonance to articles online. In a world of templates and scalability, distinct art direction can help people take notice of intentional high value content.
• Macro-whitespace is the bigger columns and padding around content we often associate with high-end luxury brands. Micro-whitespace is the space in between letter forms and between the lines of type. Consider both in your designs
• Ensure your content is branded so it stands out. When all content looks like the same it all appears to have equal value. Have a brand that sticks out to be more trusted.
• With all these techniques we're trying to get people to lean back and have a good "readable" experience on the Web.

In his The New Design Material presentation at An Event Apart in Denver, Josh Clark outlined how designers can integrate Machine Learning and other new technologies into their product designs. Here's my notes from his talk:

• Designers and front-end developers have a role to play in Machine Learning and new technologies overall. But how?
• Sometimes we get fascinated with the making of the product instead of enabling the service of the product (the end user experience). We sometimes care more about using the latest frameworks or technologies than making meaningful experiences.
• The last decade of digital design was shaped by mobile, the next one is already being shaped by machine learning. Machine learning is our new design material, how can/should it be used?
• When you encounter a new design material, ask: what can it do? how does it change us (both makers and society)?
• How can machine learning help us? If we could detect patterns in anything, how can we act on them? Recommendation (ranking results that match a context); Prediction (most likely result); Classification (grouping items into defined categorization); Clustering (discover patterns/categories based on item attributes); Generation (machines can make something).
• Get comfortable with casual (almost mundane uses of machine learning) uses of machine learning. We can add a little intelligence to many of our products using these techniques.
• While there are some early attempts at using machine learning to create Web designers, machines are really best at time-consuming, repetitive, detail-oriented, error-prone, and joyless tasks.
• How can we let people do what they do best and let machines do what they do best. How do we amplify our potential with machines vs. trying to replace things that we can do? Machines can help us focus our time and judgement on what matters (via pattern matching and clustering).
• What can machine learning amplify for us: be smarter with questions we already ask; ask entirely new kinds of questions; unlock new sources of data; surface invisible patterns.
• The job of user experience designers and researchers is to point machine learning at problems worth solving.

Characteristics of Machine Learning

• Machine learning is a different kind of design material. It has different characteristics we can learn.
• Machines try to find patterns in what we do but we're unpredictable and do weird things, so sometimes the patterns machines find are weird. Yet these results can uncover new connections that would otherwise be invisible.
• We need to design for failure and uncertainty because machine learning can find strange and sometimes incorrect results. This is different than designing for the happy path (typical design work), instead we need to design for uncertainty and cushion mistakes by setting the right expectations. Match language and manner to system ability.
• It's better to be vague and correct than specific and incorrect. Machines focus on narrow domains and don't understand the complete world. It's not real intelligence but scaled "interns" or "infinite tem year olds".
• Narrow problems don't have to be small problems. We can go deep on specific medical issue identification or identify patterns in climate change.
• We don't always understand how machine learning works, the systems are opaque. To help people understand what signals are being used we can give people some feedback on what signals inform recommendations or clustering.
• Because the logic is opaque, we need to signal our intention. Designers can help with adding clarity to our product designs. Make transparency a design principle.
• Machine learning is probabilistic. Everything is a probability of correctness, not definitive. We can surface some of these confidence intervals to our end users. "I don't know" is better than a wrong answer.
• Present information as signals, not as absolutes. Point people in a good direction so they can then apply their agency and insights to interesting insights.
• What do we want form these systems? What does it require from us? Software has values embedded in it (from its makers). We don't want to be self-driven by technology, we want to make use of technology to amplify human potential.
• We're inventing the future together. We need to do so intentionally.

How H&M, Zara and Marks & Spencer are buying viscose from highly polluting factories in Asia. By Natasha Hurley.

It’s against the Constitution, and means Norway will not respect the Paris Agreement, argues Tina Andersen Vågenes.

Kim Jong-un's headline grabbing aggressive irrationalism takes some beating (though he might have met his match in recent times...)

We talked to homeless in different countries and they revealed housing insecurity's different causes around the world.

Adani Ports arm has raised Rs 125 crore today by allotment of 1,250 rated, listed, secured, redeemable, non-convertible debentures (NCDs) of the face value of Rs 10,00,000 each

The deposit base of the private sector lender stood at Rs 11.46 trillion in Q4FY20 compared to Rs 9.23 trillion in the same period last year

TCS will hold its board meet the next day (April 16) for approval of its financial statements

The company, which follows January-December financial year, had posted a profit of Rs 346.02 crore in the same quarter a year ago, ACC said in a BSE filing

Net profit for January-March was $376 million, far below than expectations

Shares of the company were up nearly 2%, as it kept a tight lid on costs to weather the impact of the pandemic on its business

Analysts at MOFSL believe the Mumbai-based bank's credit cost may stay elevated led by higher slippages. Besides, asset quality could witness some pressure along with modest loan growth.

The private lender's net interest income (NII) came in at Rs 6,808 crore for the period under review

the bank reported a 17 per cent increase in its operating profit at Rs 5,851 crore in the March quarter

The net profit of the insurer jumped 16 per cent to Rs 531 crore in Q4FY20 from Rs 458 crore because of lower tax provision

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is creating a data-focused culture and a global machine-learning team.

Edmonton, Alberta : Brush Education Inc., 2020

Maidenhead ; New York : Open University Press, 2005

New York : Springer, [2007]

New York, NY : Routledge, 2020.

London : Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

London : Selden Society, 2019.

Thursday, April 30, 7:00 PM
SPILLOVER: ANIMAL INFECTIONS AND THE NEXT HUMAN PANDEMIC

Prize-winning science writer David Quammen will discuss “Spillover,” in which he tracks the animal origins of human diseases through the centuries, with David Rubenstein. Presented in partnership with National Book Festival Presents.

Location: Online only—this event will be streamed from both the Library's Facebook page and its YouTube site (with captions), and will be archived as a webcast on the Library’s website. Contact: specialevents@loc.gov

Thursday, May 7, 7:00 PM
HOW ONE 21ST CENTURY PANDEMIC, SARS, PREDICTED ANOTHER, COVID-19

Author and journalist Karl Taro Greenfeld will discuss his prescient book on the SARS epidemic, which foreshadowed the more devastating COVID-19 pandemic, with the Library of Congress’s Roswell Encina, chief of communications. Presented in partnership with National Book Festival Presents.

Location: Online only—this event will be streamed from both the Library's Facebook page and its YouTube site (with captions), and will be archived as a webcast on the Library’s website. Contact: specialevents@loc.gov

Friday, May 8, 5:00 PM
BEYOND SUNRISE, THERE IS A SONG WE FOLLOW: U.S. POET LAUREATE JOY HARJO IN CONVERSATION

U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo will discuss her poetry and her work in the laureate position with Rob Casper, head of the Poetry and Literature Center. Co-sponsored by The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP).

Location: Online only—this event will be streamed from AWP’s website, where it will also be archived.
Contact: juanita@awpwriter.org

Thursday, May 14, 7:00 PM
ONCE UPON A TIME I LIVED ON MARS: SPACE, EXPLORATION AND LIFE ON EARTH

NASA astronaut and scientist Kate Greene lived in a simulated Martian environment located on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawai’i, where she spent several months in isolation, doing research. She will discuss the stress, loneliness and other challenges of sequestration with Library of Congress Literary Director Marie Arana. Presented in partnership with National Book Festival Presents.

Location: Online only—this event will be streamed from both the Library's Facebook page and its YouTube site (with captions), and will be archived as a webcast on the Library’s website. Contact: specialevents@loc.gov

Thursday, May 21, 7:00 PM
WHY IT’S HARD TO KNOW THINGS, LATELY. AND HOW COVID-19 WILL GO DOWN IN HISTORY

Bestselling historian and Harvard professor Jill Lepore will discuss how the current pandemic, its effects and our reaction to them say something very real about America in this moment and in the historical record that will emerge from it with John Haskell, director of the John M. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. Presented in partnership with National Book Festival Presents.

Location: Online only—this event will be streamed from both the Library's Facebook page and its YouTube site (with captions), and will be archived as a webcast on the Library’s website. Contact: specialevents@loc.gov

For more information about upcoming events, please visit the Poetry and Literature Center's website.

The Toxic Cloud-Emitting Portable Dry Ice Maker in action.

Photographer Clay Enos goes from shooting super heroes on the set of Watchmen to taking random street portraits. He shows us how to do a street-studio portrait session with a sheet of white paper, some tape, and a camera.

Outdoor Darts isn't for the faint of heart.

We review two products you can use to put the brakes on your work day no matter where you are -- a travel hammock and a pressurized travel bottle that protects your carbonated beverage of choice.

A look inside the EBEX project, an experiment designed to detect a faint signal generated just after the birth of the universe. If successful, this signal could be a huge step toward achieving the "holy grail" of physics: a grand unified theory.

Check out the Pocket Artillery Mini Cannon in action.

No matter the danger&mash;a torrent of gizmos or an avalanche of snow—this North Face system will have your back (Saint Bernard and brandy not included).

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron offers an original story, new characters, and all new multiplayer features.

Just in time for summer, these new powerful squirtguns from Nerf will get your opponent soaked at long range.

Fred Armisen stopped by the Wired office after the SF Sketchfest tribute to his Peabody Award-winning show Portlandia, and we decided to let our robot Rob-EE do the talking.

The Loudest Soccer Fans on Earth

On the red carpet , Martin told Wired that his potential cameo would occur not in Season 3, but rather in Season 4 - though he acknowledged that HBO had not yet officially announced the next season of the hugely popular fantasy epic.