Pixels of the Week is my weekly-ish curated newsletter for designers, UX folks, devs, and anyone building accessible, inclusive, usable (and let’s be honest, awesome) digital products. This edition includes reflections on why you can’t make something accessible for everyone, the need for accessible ads, and deceptive UX patterns. Plus: design fundamentals, a cosmic UI component library, flags dataviz, and webzines for your inspiration!

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Now: what I’m currently up to

So, very poor weather here, but it won’t stop me from enjoying the Luxembourg Xmas market that was apparently featured in on BBC article, so, yeahy! I’m slowly but surely going back on tracks, even though I slowed down a little my activities after my sick leave. This week, there’s been some interesting student mentoring time, and I’ve recorded a nice podcast about accessibility in enterprise UX that should be available next year, can’t wait. By the way, I really enjoy the podcast format, so, if you are looking for a guest,just drop me a message!

Most popular content this week

You Can’t Make Something Accessible to Everyone (3min) Good reminder that passing all the WCAG2.2 level AA criteria doesn’t automagically make your website accessible for everyone. Because it’s about people. And people are complex with different needs, using different technologies, etc. But, we can be honest about what we support and keep improving. By Adrian Roselli

Interesting articles that caught my attention

Ads and accessibility mismatch (8min) some interesting examples of how poorly designed ads are those days, from contrast issues to problems when resizing them, zooming, missing alt texts, and how to improve those. Because everyone should be able to read ads if they want to!

The Fundamentals Problem (7min) Anyone can make something that looks designed, but that doesn’t mean that design has happened. An interesting essay by Christopher Butler, on, how even if anyone can build a page with a CMS, or ask AI for a design, most people don’t have the fundamentals for good design: hierarchy, contrast, rhythm, flow, and understanding “what do people want”. Missing strategy and misunderstood fundamentals will hurt design. I love the conclusion: “The new things come and go, but the old questions remain. Maybe that’s the only real answer: keep asking the old questions, even when the new tools make it seem like you don’t have to.”. Yup, invest in the fundamentals!

Workshopping UX Research with Stakeholders (15min) Three types of UX-research workshops help teams understand UX research, build empathy for users, and apply insights to design concepts: research alignment (interactive gallery, insight discovery, assumption comparison), empathy workshops (persona walkthrough, journey mapping, empathy mapping) and research application workshops (opportunity mapping, “how might we” ideation, design studio sketching). by Kate Kaplan (NN/G)

The Architecture of Anxiety and Shame, Part Two (12min) let’s talk deceptive patterns, meet the roach motel: when it’s easy to sign up, but extremely difficult to cancel. The sad goal, is to make it so tiresome for the users, adding friction and cognitive fatigue, that they give up on trying to cancel, and keep paying. It often also involves forced continuity, through auto-renewals, or hidden opt-outs or removal of stopping points in the user journey. Forced continuity is your captor. The roach motel is where you are being kept hostage. It’s sad, but then it’s on the user’s to get out of those: recognize the pattern, bypass the interface (for example block the payment at bank, not service level), set reminders on trial periods, renewal periods, contact support directly, etc. Those shady patterns get even worse for users with ADHD or executive function challenge, and I really wish we stopped doing that to our users! When systems are designed to trap us, the emotional cost is real. Great read by Todd Libby.

Inspiration: fun experiments, beautiful art, and great ideas

FranSans is a nice monospaced display font that is inspired by the destination black and yellow displays that you can find in the rail service in San Fransisco. It’s really cool!

Cosmic UI Tired of liquid glass already? Meet cosmic UI, a fun set of futuristic very components, with a cyberpunk look and feel.(to be clear, they have many accessibility issues, this is more for inspiration and for the joy of having something fun than for using in actual projects)

Flag Stories for my dataviz and flag enthusiast friends, here’s a project that analysis flags around the world, their colors, symbols, layout, changes, and so much more (too bad the contrast is meh though, hard to read white on light gray). By Ferdio

Books

Virtual Zine Library: a collection of hundreds of free downloadable PDFs and links to online readable zines! You can browse by categories.

Useful tools & resources

AD/NO Find your next “rabbit hole” by combining a random adjective and noun. (via cassido)

Book Recommendations a little tool that recommends you books based on your previous reading (you can even important goodreads, it didn’t work for me though but maybe because my profile is set to private)

Tutorials

How to Create 3D Images in CSS with the Layered Pattern (13min) I love a good “let’s have fun with CSS” tutorial, this one by Sunkanmi Fafowora brings CSS to the edge of what you can do with 3D effects using layers and typography.