Are our tools helping us?

In theory, the web is for everyone. It should work on whatever hardware you (have to) use, and whatever browser is on it. It should also work with whatever assistive tech you use, like screen readers. In practice things are not as ideal. In this episode we discuss this from a design prespective. We talk about the <em>fictional</em> 80% of people that most sites are designed for. Apart from this utilitarion approach we discuss design approaches based on intent, and result based design. See the website for a complete transcript.

In this episode we discuss design intention, micro decisions, whether coders stand to benefit from learning design, and how every designer should be more like Nils Binder. See the website for a complete transcript.

As designers we use all kinds of patterns. But has anybody ever really tested these? And did we consider everybody when we did? In this episode we talk about the testing we do, about the testing we did, about assumptions. And we tell some tales about testing gone horribly wrong. See the website for a complete transcript.

Since the dawn of the modern web, designers have been emulating traditional graphic design layouts and grids made for print. Why do we do this, and is there a better way? See the website for a complete transcript.

Many designers focus on the clearly visible things. But there are many parts of a website that are invisible. These parts are either neglected, or they are "designed" by developers. Real people would benefit if we paid some design attention to things like structure, error messages, and of course screen readers. See the website for a complete transcript.

Designers are notoriously bad at writing content. But shouldn't we really write at least some of the words for our interfaces? In this episode we discuss the relationship between content and design and the beneefits of using real words instead of dummy copy. See the website for a complete transcript.

We talk about the role that visual design tools play. In the past, tools like Photoshop offered stuff the web couldn’t do yet. Today the visual design tools offer a tiny subset of what is possible. Which contributes to the conservative nature of today’s design practice. See the website for a complete transcript.

In this episode we boldly assert that NO, the burger should not be taken off the menu, we should remove the whole navigation instead. See the website for a complete transcript.

In the fourth episode of Web Materials, we talk about the lack of attention for interaction in design tools, and about sucky defaults when it comes to focus states. We talk about things like :focus-within and :focus-visible. Later on we discuss the similarities between Vim and screenreaders, and we end this episode by praising Nintendo games. See the website for a complete transcript.

In the third episode of Web Materials, we ask whether there are truths in web design. We quickly answer "no", before spending an hour coming to more or less the same conclusion. See the website for a complete transcript.