Learning to recognise the impact past experiences have on present behaviour can unlock your true potential

Reducing complexity and friction between members is important

Safeguard your professionalism by recognising your strengths and standing firm in the way you conduct business

At the core of positive workplace communications is the management of employee relationships.

Vinita Shrivastava, Senior Director at Harman India, on how to ensure loyalty while helping employees reach personal goals

There’s enough ‘noise’ in our organisations; what we need is honest and caring communication

Handling the organisation’s ‘resources’ in a ‘humane’ manner is the way forward for HR

The pandemic has brought into focus the role of the Chief People Officer, who has to handle unprecedented circumstances that are not covered in the rule book

Farmers of Navalgund block were facing challenges in finding direct market and bringing down input cost. There was a need to establish an FPO (Farmers Producers Organisation), which materialised in 2016

Global shortage of 400 million kg of tobacco spurs export demand for the crop; premium leaves fetch farmers in Prakasam and Nellore districts a record ₹210 a kg during e-auctions

Farmers associated with as many as 16 farmer outfits from the States Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand would be participating

Reduced import duty on produce and relaxed norms will affect farmers and traders here, they say

Food Secretary assures to curb price rise during festive season

The multi-state cooperative has so far earned Rs. 22 crore profit from April during the current financial year

Farmers are afraid to go to the fields because of sporadic firing by armed miscreants from higher grounds 

The Board is expected to help develop and grow the spice’s market in India, which controls over 62% share of the turmeric world trade

Minister Carlos Fávaro offers transfer of technology to India to boost cooperative production

A higher MSP will not only ensure better remunerative returns to coconut growers but also incentivise farmers to expand copra production, government says

Govt prepared to extend necessary support to the company in expanding its oil palm and dairy businesses 

Centre says the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee is a statutory body and the committee had examined relevant scientific data before giving the go-ahead for the environmental release

The Food Minister says the role of FCI is not only to deliver ration, but also to instill confidence in farmers and beneficiaries by bringing in transparency, efficiency and accountability

‘We intend to bring a revolutionary change in the agriculture sector with a special focus on promoting animal husbandry,’ Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu tells the hill State’s milk producers

PM Modi made his comments while inaugurating the pilot project of “world’s largest grain storage plan”, which is being done across 11 States

BKS terms the government’s attitude towards farmers’ demands “regrettable”; seeks MSPs, abolition of GST on agri inputs, and increase in Kisan Samman Nidhi income support payments for farmers

Outbound shipments now feasible if global buyers pay at least $770 a tonne for Indian onions

The decision assumes importance as it comes before the crucial Lok Sabha polls in key onion belts like Nashik, Ahmednagar and Solapur in Maharashtra

Reserve Bank of India’s annual report highlights MSPs, foodgrain stocks, and challenges faced by agriculture in 2023-24

Shivraj Singh Chouhan has also been allocated the Rural Development Ministry in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new Cabinet

Dr. Sitko warns that the West Asia and Ukraine situation will continue to impact fertiliser and oil prices. He urged reducing dependence on imported fertilisers and boosting domestic production

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...)

The guerrillas are handing weapons over to the UN, but they are in fear. Thomas Mortensen reports from Urabá.

He puts his life on the line to protect the Democratic Republic of Congo's national parks.

How Senegal is trying to involve the diaspora to curb emigration. By Sofia Christensen

The author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist talks to Graeme Green about extremism, the refugee crisis and feeling at home in the past.

Browsing the Web on your smartphone these days can feel like a gauntlet: accept this cookie consent, close this newsletter promo, avoid this app install banner. This morass of attention-seeking actions makes it hard to focus on content. Enter Apple's Distraction Control feature.

There's more than 7 billion active smartphones on the planet. This is the Web they are getting.

I won't get into how the Web became a minefield of pop-ups, banners, overlays, modals, and other forms of annoyance. For that you can take a look at my Mind the Gap presentation which goes into depth on why and what designers can do about it. But it's pretty clear the average mobile Web experience sucks.

And when things suck, people usually decide to do something about it. In this case, with iOS 18, Apple is giving average folks a chance to fight back with Distraction Control. When turned on, this new feature allows anyone to remove distracting elements on Web pages complete with a satisfying animation.

Newsletter pop-up? Boom, gone. Mobile app banner? Boom. Interstitial ad? Boom. Is it perfect? No. Elements might come back after you remove them if the page is reloaded. Accessing the control takes a few taps. But it's a way for people to fight back against Web clutter and we need more.

In her How to Use AI to Build Accessible Products presentation at Smashing Conf New York, Carie Fisher discussed using AI coding tools to test and suggest fixes for accessibility issues in Web pages. Here's my notes on her talk.

• AI is everywhere. You can use it to write content, code, create images, and more. It impacts how everyone will work.
• But ultimately, AI is just a tool but it might not always be the right one. We need to find the tasks where it has the potential to add value.
• Over 1 billion people on the planet identify as having a disability. Accessible code allows them to access digital experiences and helps companies be complaint with emerging laws requiring accessible Web pages and apps. Businesses also get SEO, brand, and more benefits from accessible code.
• AI tools like Github Copilot can find accessibility issues in seconds consistently, especially compared to the manual checks currently being done by humans. AI can also spot patterns across a codebase and suggest solutions.
• Existing AI coding tools like Github Copilot are already better than Linters for finding accessibility issues.
• AI can suggest and implement code fixes for accessibility issues. It can also be added to CI/CD pipelines to check for accessibility issues at the point of each commit. AI can also serve as an accessibility mentor for developers by providing real-time suggestions.
• More complex accessibility issues especially those that need user context may go unfound when just using AI. Sometimes AI output can be incomplete or hallucinate solutions that are not correct. As a result, we can't over rely on just AI to solve all accessibility problems. We still need human review today.
• To improve AI accessibility, provide expanded prompts that reference or include specifications. Code reviews can double check accessibility suggestions from AI-based systems. Regularly test and refine your AI-based solutions to improve outcomes.
• Combing AI and human processes and values can help build a culture of accessibility.

In his Is Atomic Design Dead? presentation at Smashing Conf New York, Brad Frost discussed the history of design systems and today's situation especially in light of very capable AI models than can generate code and designs. Here's my notes on his talk.

• Websites started as HTML and CSS. People began to design websites in Photoshop and as the number of Web sites and apps increased, the need for managing a brand and style across multiple platforms became clear. To manage this people turned to frameworks and component libraries which resulted in more frameworks and tools that eventually got integrated into design tools like Figma. It's been an ongoing expansion...
• There's been lots of change over the years but at the highest level, we have design systems and products that use them to enforce brand, consistency, accessibility, and more.
• Compliance to design systems pushes from one side and product needs push from the other. There needs to be a balance but currently the gap between the two is growing. A good balance is achieved through a virtuous cycle between product and systems.
• The atomic design system tried to intentionally define use of atoms, molecules, organisms, templates, and pages to bridge the gap between the end state of a product and a design system.
• As an industry, we went too far in resourcing design systems and making them a standalone thing within a company. They've been isolated.
• Design system makers can't be insular. They need to reach out to product teams and work with them. They need to be helping product teams achieve their goals.
• What if there were one global design system with common reusable components? Isn't that what HTML is for? Yes, but it's insufficient because we're still rebuilding date pickers everywhere.
• Open UI tracks popular design systems and what's in them. It's a start to seeing what global component needs for the Web could look like.
• Many pattern libraries ship with an aesthetic and people need to tweak it. A global design system should be very vanilla so you can style it as much as you want.
• The Web still has an amazing scale of communication and collaboration. We need to rekindle the ideas of the early Web. We need to share and build together to get to a common freely usable design system.
• AI models can help facilitate design system work. Today they do an OK job but in the future, fine-tuned models may create custom components on the fly. They can also translate between one design system and another or translate across programming languages.
• This methodology could help companies translate existing and legacy code to new modern design systems. Likewise sketches or mockups could be quickly translated directly to design system components thereby speeding up processes.
• Combining design system specifications with large language models allows you to steer AI generations more directly toward the right kind of code and components.
• When product experiences are more dynamic (can be built on the fly), can we adapt them to individual preferences and needs? Like custom styles or interactions.
• AI is now part of our design system toolkit and design systems are part of our AI toolkit.
• But the rapid onset of AI also raises higher level questions about what designers and developers should be doing in the future? We're more than rectangle creators. We think and feel which differentiates us from just production level tasks. Use your brains, your intuition, and whole self to solve real problems.

Revamped accelerator will soon be smashing electrons and positrons together

Exhibition: 20 Apr 2018 - 21 Apr 2018, NEC, Birmingham, United Kingdom.