Archive for category: Random Stories

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/becoming-design-thought-leader/

What does it take to emerge as a thought leader in the design community? By ‘thought leader’, I refer to an individual who can voice an opinion about design or designers that resonates, gets blogged about, retweeted, and sparks debates among thousands of professional designers and others in related fields.

We will delve into some common characteristics of such individuals and discuss ways you can potentially reach that stature.

How to Quit Acting Like an Amateur Designer

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How to Quit Acting Like an Amateur Designer

Everyone has at least one designer friend who just gives off an air of unprofessionalism. Perhaps it’s even… Read more

Excel as a Designer

Producing high-quality work is the primary key to becoming a leader in any industry, particularly in the design field. Your work should essentially speak for itself. No one will heed a designer whose work lacks quality. While not everyone may agree that your design solutions are the best for the problems you address, almost everyone can acknowledge a high-quality design when they see one.

The significance of this trait cannot be overstated. Designers can be a very discerning, highly critical group – it’s part of the job. Getting unanimous agreement that your work is “good” may never happen. However, they can concur that you’re a seasoned professional who is proficient in tools like Photoshop or Illustrator.

Mastering your craft and honing it to perfection is crucial if you aspire to lead others in the industry.

How to Become A High-Demand Designer

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How to Become A High-Demand Designer

Discover the high demand for designers in today’s job market. Learn which skills are most sought after and… Read more

Be Visible

To be heard, you need to be visible to others in the design world – not just within your specific niche, but anywhere your ideas can make an impact.

If you’re a web designer, this means print designers, software designers, product designers, and anyone else related to your industry should also be aware of you and able to engage with your ideas.

Strive to spread the word about yourself and get people talking about you. This could be through blogging, social media, or even going viral on YouTube.

Promoting yourself is a constant challenge that every designer could do more of, but it’s particularly crucial if you want to be a thought leader. If no one knows who you are, then your words will only matter to you. And perhaps your parents.

Be Accountable

Your credibility as someone worth listening to is built on how accountable you are for your words. If you voice opinions anonymously and never respond to challenges to your ideas, people will notice, and at best, you’ll be ignored in the design world, or at worst, ridiculed.

This doesn’t mean you have to disclose every single thought you have on every topic. In fact, that’s likely an imprudent strategy if you’re trying to build a reputation as someone worth listening to. However, you should aim to own your ideas and make it clear to others that you can support and defend them if necessary.

Continually strive to raise the standard, not just with your work, but also with what you communicate to fellow designers. Once people recognize you as someone who always fosters engaging conversations, they will be inclined to participate and respect your ideas.

Have an Opinion

This is a given. If you don’t have any opinions about design or designers, or if you never express them, you’ll remain in obscurity.

It doesn’t matter if your opinion is controversial or even upsets some people – the design community needs to be continually challenged and introduced to new ideas for designers to maintain their “edge”. Even – no, especially – if those ideas provoke them or make them think.

As I mentioned earlier, designers can be judgmental and somewhat harsh at times. And honestly, you wouldn’t want it any other way. If the design community passively accepted every idea with equal regard, the quality of the designs being created would significantly decline.

Designers need some resistance for their ideas; constructive criticism makes youa stronger and more innovative designer. As a thought leader, when you voice a controversial opinion, designers will either strive to prove you right, or they’ll attempt to prove you wrong. Either way, they won’t remain idle.

Be Patient

Lastly, remember that becoming a thought leader in the design community is not an overnight process. It will take years of building your reputation and becoming widely recognized enough to not only be heard but also respected by your fellow designers. Remember, being an exceptional designer comes first, and everything else follows.

The post How to Establish Yourself as a Leader in Design Thinking appeared first on Hongkiat.

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2023/07/jell-os-retro-rebrand-may-just-be-the-smartest-design-move-of-the-year/

The new logo design aims to capture the nostalgia and inherent lightheartedness of America’s former favorite dessert product.

Original Source: https://1stwebdesigner.com/practical-guide-conducting-ux-surveys/

UX surveys can be pivotal tools for designers seeking to understand user preferences, opinions, and behaviors. They foster alignment between design strategies and user expectations and can improve product or service usability. Our overview unravels the process of conducting UX surveys, highlighting how both quantitative and qualitative approaches can yield essential user insights.

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Conducting UX Surveys: Their Role and Execution

UX surveys serve as channels to collect insights directly from users about a product or service. They come in various forms, from online questionnaires to in-person discussions. These surveys aim to acquire both qualitative and quantitative data about user satisfaction, ease of use, and areas of potential improvement.

Conducting UX surveys follows a structured process. You begin by setting clear goals, and deciding what you aim to learn from the users. Then, you design a set of questions that invite insightful and actionable responses. Following the data collection, the task of data interpretation begins, leading to design changes that respond to the user’s needs.

Quantitative vs Qualitative: A Balancing Act

Quantitative surveys are useful when your goal is to collect numerical data. These types of surveys are great for tracking metrics such as usage frequency, user demographics, or user preferences. They offer the advantage of capturing data from a large audience, which can then be statistically analyzed to discern broader patterns and trends.

However, qualitative surveys offer something different. They are used when you want to dive deeper into the user’s thoughts, emotions, and experiences. Crucially, open-ended questions are the cornerstone of qualitative surveys, encouraging users to express their opinions freely. Although they might not yield broad statistical data, qualitative surveys provide detailed, nuanced information that can be invaluable for your design process.

Effective UX Survey: The Practical Steps

A well-designed UX survey is a careful process, requiring both strategic thinking and an empathetic understanding of your users. We’ll observe some of the indispensable steps that can guide your survey creation.

Objective Setting

Every UX survey must start with clear objectives. Whether you’re seeking to understand user behavior, assess user satisfaction, or gather feedback on a new feature, defining these goals will steer the development of your survey. It influences the kind of questions you will ask, the selection of respondents, and even the choice of the survey method. Clear goals ensure the collected data is genuinely useful and purpose-driven for your design strategy.

Drafting and Revision

The initial draft of your survey questions serves as a blueprint that should ideally be subjected to a review process. Don’t hesitate to involve your team, respected peers, or mentors in refining the questions. Their feedback will help eliminate ambiguities, prevent biased questions, and ensure the questionnaire resonates with your target audience.

Choosing the Right Platform

Selecting the most suitable platform for your UX survey significantly affects response rates and data quality. The nature of your survey – whether it’s a quick poll, an in-depth questionnaire, or an interactive survey – plays a huge role in this decision. Other factors to consider include the complexity of your survey, the technical competency of your target demographic, the platform’s user-friendliness on various devices, its visual appeal, and cost-effectiveness.

Question Design

The construction of your questions can be vital for the insights you gather. Close-ended questions, such as multiple-choice or Likert scale items, provide structured responses that are easier to analyze and compare. Meanwhile, open-ended questions encourage users to express their thoughts freely, providing deeper context and insight into their experiences. The key is to strike a balance: ask specific, direct questions to capture hard data, and open-ended ones to allow space for unexpected but valuable feedback.

Strategic Question Ordering

The placement of questions in your survey requires careful thought. Given the reality that some respondents will not complete the entire survey, it’s practical to position the most critical questions at the beginning. With this, you can somewhat secure the most valuable data, regardless of whether the user completes the entire questionnaire. Still, ensure a natural flow that doesn’t feel abrupt to the participant.

Testing the Waters

Prior to a full-scale launch of the survey, it’s beneficial to conduct a pilot test with a smaller, yet representative, sample of your user base. This approach allows for the identification and rectification of any potential issues – from ambiguous questions and technical glitches to unexpectedly long completion times. Moreover, pilot testing provides an opportunity to assess the survey’s ease and relevance, ensuring that the final version is as refined as possible before it reaches all users.

Wrapping Up

UX surveys can yield valuable user perspectives, but they should be seen as guides rather than definitive decision-makers in design choices.

Additionally, remember that a survey is a time commitment for your users. Avoid deterring completion or introducing response bias by overloading it with questions. Aim for a concise, engaging survey with a balance of question types.

Instead of duplicating data from analytics, use surveys to uncover user motivations, thoughts, and feelings that analytics can’t capture.

Lastly, consider both the user experience and your analysis capabilities when formatting questions. Open-ended questions offer rich insights but can overwhelm users and complicate analysis. Pilot-test these questions and refine them based on feedback. Some may work better as closed-ended questions for easier response and analysis.

For additional insights on managing broader yet valuable UX aspects, such as minimizing decision fatigue, feel free to check out this article.

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/linux-command-mkfs/

mkfs is a commonly used Linux command for creating a filesystem on a device or partition. The term mkfs is short for “make filesystem”. A filesystem is a way of organizing and storing files and directories on a storage device like a hard drive, SSD, USB stick, or other media. The type of filesystem you create affects how data is stored and retrieved, impacting performance and compatibility.

The mkfs command is a wrapper that will decide the appropriate filesystem creation utility based on the supplied filesystem type.

Be very careful when using the mkfs command because it formats the specified partition. Any data that existed on the partition will be lost. Always double-check that you are working with the correct device or partition, and ensure you have a backup of any important data before usingmkfs.

Here are some ways to use the mkfs command:

1. Create a Filesystem

The basic syntax for creating a filesystem is mkfs -t type device.

Example:

To create an ext4 filesystem on the /dev/sda1 partition, you would use:

mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sda1
2. Specify the Block Size

You can specify the block size when creating a filesystem with the -b option.

Example:

To create an ext4 filesystem with a block size of 1024 bytes, you would use:

mkfs -t ext4 -b 1024 /dev/sda1
3. Add a Label

You can add a label to the filesystem with the -L option.

Example:

To add the label “mydisk” to the filesystem, you would use:

mkfs -t ext4 -L mydisk /dev/sda1
4. Create a FAT32 Filesystem

To create a FAT32 filesystem, you would use the mkfs.vfat command.

Example:

mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1
5. Create a NTFS Filesystem

To create a NTFS filesystem, you would use the mkfs.ntfs command.

Example:

mkfs.ntfs /dev/sda1
6. Create a XFS Filesystem

To create a XFS filesystem, you would use the mkfs.xfs command.

Example:

mkfs.xfs /dev/sda1
Differences Between FAT32, NTFS, and XFS

FAT32, NTFS, and XFS are all types of filesystems, which are methods of organizing and storing data on a storage device, like a hard drive or USB stick. However, they differ in their design and features, which can affect performance, compatibility, and what they’re best used for.

FAT32 (File Allocation Table 32)

FAT32 is an older type of filesystem that’s widely compatible with many types of devices and operating systems, including Windows, Mac, Linux, game consoles, and more. However, it has several limitations.

For example, it can’t handle files larger than 4GB or partitions larger than 8TB. It also lacks some features that newer filesystems have, like data protection and recovery features.

NTFS (New Technology File System)

NTFS is a newer filesystem used primarily by Windows. It supports much larger files and partitions than FAT32, and includes features like file permissions (which help with security), shadow copies (for backup), and encryption.

However, while NTFS is readable on Mac and Linux systems, writing to NTFS drives can be tricky without additional software.

XFS (Extended File System)

XFS is a high-performance filesystem used primarily in the Linux environment. It’s particularly good at handling large files and large storage volumes, making it ideal for servers and high-performance systems.

XFS also includes features like journalling, which helps with data recovery in the event of a power failure or system crash. However, it’s not natively supported by Windows or Mac, which can make it less ideal for removable drives that need to be used across different systems.

The post How to Use mkfs in Linux appeared first on Hongkiat.

Original Source: https://www.creativebloq.com/news/twitter-x-rebrand

Musk’s chosen ‘logo’ is a Unicode character.