Vernon > Recent Status Updates

“The driving question is, “What do we need to be able to make with our design system?”

“The design system team is trying to solve problems of consistency, but product teams are mostly trying to meet their already aggressive deadlines. Anything that might slow them down—like investing time and mental space in learning a new tool—is considered a nonstarter.”

“How can you move your organization toward a more connected system?”

“Downloading files is working with duplicates; it’s your own copy of the original set of files. Downloading means you have your own version, which means the version of Bootstrap [or whatever] in your files isn’t connected to the official version of Bootstrap anymore.”

“Most design systems fail because they aren’t integrated early enough into the grain of how an organization operates”

“there are no clear expectations or boundaries for accessibility practitioners.”

“To do sustainable work in the accessibility field, we need to constantly make choices to be anti-ableist.”

A familiar detrimental sense of urgency:
“We don’t have time to make this product accessible. That takes a lot of work, and this is only an MVP. We’ll do it later.”

“Workers often weren’t trained to do accessibility work and it’s not accommodated in their existing processes and workflows.”

“I think it is really hard-to-impossible to actually grow institutional knowledge when your ratio is that skewed, unless you have some people who are really good at knowledge management and would be able to help.”

“an organization that is more mature will practice continuous integration, that is, it will make processes more efficient and effective on a continual basis.”

Actively share knowledge and establish trust with colleagues, managers, and leadership, over time and through small, incremental changes.

“A large part of accessibility work is fighting against the ingrained culture that devalues it. This is the case even if accessibility is on paper as part of an organization’s values.”

“Share your organization’s component library documentation, which includes a whole overview of accessibility and documentation for individual components.”

“This is the difference between accessibility as compliance and accessibility as usability, where a compliant product may pass automated and manual testing with flying colors but fall short for actual disabled users.”

“What we need is for non-experts to get better at integrating accessibility information and literacy into their work.”

“Accessibility needs to be treated the same way security is being treated right now: Where there are resources, it’s a requirement, and it’s fully funded as a priority.”

“Design for the most vulnerable first”

“Our job as designers is not simply, “Make cool shit.” We have to find a way to define our jobs in a way that allows us to be more human toward one another.”

“a core tenet of bias-informed design: consider the unhappy path just as thoroughly as the happy one.”

“Are you keeping users aware and informed? Are you inviting their input? Are you responding to that input and providing feedback on how it influences decisions?”

“notational bias, the presumption that the way you see the world, expressed through how you document it, is all there is.”

Rather than presume a solution, frame the problem instead. It leads to “better collaboration and better results.”

“designers love the phrase “How might we…”—because it opens up the conversation to solutions.”

“enable users to think carefully where it matters.” Where users need to slow down is where “friction is good.”

“It’s the perception of ease that draws us in, not the reality of it. And it’s the perception of difficulty that turns us away.”

We want to understand bias because that’s how “a tired, busy user [makes] most of their decisions … 95 percent of the time.”

“Help your audience understand icon context by pairing it with specific text describing the content or action. Doing so will help convey meaning that is accessible for people of all backgrounds.”

“Try asset-framing: defining the audience or strategy by a positive feature. It helps us short-circuit the brain’s tendency toward negative narratives, stay centered on our audience, and prioritize their success.”

“The more collaboratively you protype and iterate, the more effective your solutions will be.