A gang of non-conformists

Venus 23 in sum

Cracking open a Cold One

Ork Report

Cost-benefit analysis

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Hayden Library - QH440.G46 2018

Hayden Library - QH450.5.T195 2019

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Hayden Library - QH442.Z44 2018

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Hayden Library - QH515.S46 2018

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Hayden Library - QH513.5.S55 2019

Hayden Library - QH527.F66 2017

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Dewey Library - QH507.L47 2019

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Dewey Library - QH501.D38 2019

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In his Beyond Engagement: the Content Performance Quotient presentation at An Event Apart in Chicago, Jeffrey Zeldman introduced a new metric for tracking how well Web sites are performing. Here's my notes from his talk:

• The number one stakeholder request for Web sites is engagement: we need people using our services more. But is it the right metric for all these situations?
• For some apps, engagement is clearly the right thing to measure. Think Instagram, long-form articles, or gaming sites. For others, more time spent might be a sign of customer frustration.
• Most of the Web sites we work on are like customer service desks where we want to give people what they need and get them on their way. For these experiences, speed of usefulness should matter more than engagement.
• Content Performance Quotient (Design CPQ) is a measure of how quickly we can get the right content to solve the customer's problem. The CPQ is a goal to iterate against and aim for the shortest distance between problem & solution. It tracks your value to the customer by measuring the speed of usefulness.
• Pretty garbage: when a Web site looks good but doesn't help anyone. Garbage in a delightfully responsive grid is still garbage. A lot of a Web designer's job is bridging the gap between what clients say they need and what their customers actually need.
• Marlboro's advertising company (in the 50s) rethought TV commercials by removing all the copy and focusing on conveying emotions. They went from commercials typically full of text to just ten words focused on their message.
• Mobile is a great forcing function to re-evaluate our content. Because you can't fit everything on a small screen, you need to make decisions about what matters most.
• Slash your architecture and shrink your content. Ask: "why do we need this?" Compare all your content to the goals you've established. Design should be intentional. Have purpose-driven design and purpose-driven content. If your design isn't going somewhere, it is going nowhere.
• We can't always have meetings where everybody wins. We need to argue for the customer and that means not everyone in our meetings will get what they want. Purpose needs to drive our collaborations not individual agendas, which usually leak into our Web site designs.
• It’s easy to give every stakeholder what they want. We've enabled this through Content Management Systems (CMS) that allow everyone to publish to the site. Don't take the easy way out. It’s harder to do the right thing. Harder for us, but better for the customer & bottom line.
• Understanding the customer journey allows us to put the right content in the right place. Start with the most important interaction and build out from there. Focus on key interactions and build out from there. Sometimes the right place for your content isn't your Website -for video it could be YouTube or Vimeo.
• Customers come to our sites with a purpose. Anything that gets in the way of that is a distraction. Constantly iterate on content to remove the cruft and surface what's needed. You can start with a content inventory to audit what is in your site, but most of this content is probably out of date and irrelevant. So being in a state of constant iteration works better.
• When you want people to go deeper and engage, to slow down... scannability, which is good for transactions, can be bad for thoughtful content. Instead slow people down with bigger type, better typographic hierarchy, more whitespace.
• Which sites should be slow? If the site is delivering content for the good of the general public, the presentation should enable slow, careful reading. If it’s designed to promote our business or help a customer get an answer to her question, it must be designed for speed of relevancy.

At the Micromobility conference in Richmond, CA Horace Dediu talked through why micromobility solutions need to exist and why they are set up to succeed today. Here’s my notes from his talk on The Reason for Micromobility:

• The wealthiest nations have always been those with the highest rates of urbanization. Across the World, urbanization continues to increase in all countries and is expected to reach 50% in most countries by 2025. 6.7 billion people will live in cities by 2050. This is easy to predict so you can plan on it happening.
• In cities, people are closer together and interact more. That’s how you create wealth and prosperity so it’s no wonder this trend will grow.
• The World today consumes kilometers through land, air, and sea kilometers. 52 trillion kilometers are traveled per year across the globe. Half of these miles are in cars and low efficiency. In developed countries today (US and Europe), most trips are in personal vehicles like cars. Some of these car miles need to be reallocated.
• The most common distance traveled by New York taxis is 1.4 miles. Less than 2% are 5 miles or more. 90% of all cars in trips are less than 20 miles. 162 billion trips per year in the United States are less than ten miles. Short trips consume more time and cost more money than long trips as well.
• The addressable market for micromobility today is zero to five miles. That adds up to 4 trillion kilometers per year.
• Cities are going to be the predominant place people live. Short trips are going to be the dominant type of travel. They’ll consume the most time and account for the most consumer spending.
• There’s a remarkable consistency for modes of travel across the World. Cars are used the same in the US as in the UK and Switzerland. Scooters have a shorter average distance (.4 miles) than e-bikes (.8 miles). Each mode (of transportation) has a clear distance distribution and thereby unique characteristics.
• We can begin to segment the transportation market by distance traveled. Regardless of vendors, modes of transportation cluster along similar usage models.
• Given these usage model differences, can we move automobile mobility to micromobility? There’s currently a gap between average car distances and average scooter/bike distances. However we see cabs and powerful 2-wheelers beginning to cross this chasm.
• There’s trillions of car kilometers that can potentially be moved to more efficient solutions. That’s the challenge for micromobility today.
• The first experiments in micromobilty have been very successful in delivering many miles. Bird hit 10M rides in 320 days since launch. Lime hit 10M in 400 days. The slope of growth for these companies is steeper than for Uber and Lyft. 100M rides per year is the run rate for several of these companies.

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.

A group of Indian Ocean islanders, forcibly removed from their homes 50+ years ago and deported to England, are still fighting for recognition and basic rights. By Alexi Demetriadi.

In today's world if the diamond is over one carat in size it will usually come with a certificate from the laboratory specifying the inclusions, color and size. The carat itself is made of one hundred particular parts called points. While it is possible to estimate the weight of a mounted diamond, the lab uses ultrasensitive scales to achieve an exact weight, measured 3 decimal places, although the third decimal place is not usually mentioned at the retail level.

The Indian government on Tuesday released the report from a Committee that studied the impact of futures trading on agricultural commodity prices. The Committee under chairmanship of Prof. Abhijit Sen, Member, Planning Commission was appointed on 2nd March, 2007.

In a recent call to Filipinos, president Arroyo said they should boil rice with sweet potatoes or they should go for cheaper cereals to avoid going hungry as rice prices soared to record levels. "This is a once-a-millennium global crisis. We have an action plan," Arroyo said, noting that residents of the central island of Cebu are already using cheap sweet potatoes to beat the crisis.

Revenue from operations stood at Rs 15,711 crore, up 4.69 per cent against Rs 15,006.3 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal.

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