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Broken by Design — overreacted

Security is important. Nobody wants to be the person advocating for less security. So nobody wants to say it. But somebody has to say it. So I guess I’ll say it. The way npm audit works is broken. Its rollout as a default after every npm install was rushed, inconsiderate, and inadequate for the front-end […]

Flawed Products Harm – A Framework to Respond – Boxes and Arrows

Technology products are embedded in every aspect of daily life from homes, cars, phones, schools, workplaces. They’re in entertainment, healthcare, safety, and beyond.  While technology is often billed as making things easier, faster, cheaper, and fairer, it can cause harm at scale.  People face frustration, harassment, financial loss, physical harm, and more.  What are “Flawed […]

Forget the Trail of Breadcrumbs – Boxes and Arrows

Enterprises often have a simplistic understanding of navigational structures in UX Design. Companies shy away from messing with known organizational schemas for fear that their users or customers will become confused and run away. We don’t give our users enough credit. As a result, most software navigational structures either reflect hierarchical departmental company/brand organization (because […]

So Long (for Now!) and Thank You.

In 2006 I started a lighting blog while working full-time as a staffer at The Baltimore Sun. By early 2007, it became obvious that I didn’t have the personal resources to give 100% to both Strobist and my job at the newspaper. That’s exactly the position I find myself in today. For the past year […]

Asynchronous Design Critique: Getting Feedback

“Any comment?” is probably one of the worst ways to ask for feedback. It’s vague and open ended, and it doesn’t provide any indication of what we’re looking for. Getting good feedback starts earlier than we might expect: it starts with the request.  Article Continues Below It might seem counterintuitive to start the process of […]

Strobist: SLC-1L-13: Conservancy Critters

When lighting with small subjects, a speedlight is generally all you’ll ever need. Further, because of the scale and distances involved, even with a small flash you’ll be working at low power settings. For these photos of some of the resident animals at the Howard County Conservancy, we used a single speedlight generally at one-eighth […]

On Funding — The Denominator Effect

I recently wrote a post about funding for investors to think about having a diversified portfolio, which I called “shots on goal.” The thesis is that before investing in an early-stage startup it is close to impossible to know which of the deals you did will break out to the upside. It’s therefore important to […]