And so, when I was listening to the latest episode of The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart, I was struck by how the left and right may actually be more aligned on DEI than the headlines lead us to believe.

In the episode, Stewart was interviewing former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican. When the topic of DEI came up, they got into a discussion of merit vs. diversity in the context of the Secretary of Defense role. Both agreed that, in terms of merit, General Lloyd Austin was a much better hire than Fox’s former weekend host Pete Hegseth. The fact that Austin is also Black has no more impact on his being a better candidate than the fact that Pete Hegseth being White makes him a worse candidate. What Austin does bring to the table, however, is first-hand knowledge of what it’s like to rise up the ranks as a Black soldier. That’s a significant knowledge gap when it comes to the U.S. military, whose top brass isn’t representative of the diversity of its personnel.

This is something that Christie actually points out when discussing becoming the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey back in 2002:

When I got there, I just did a lot of walking around the office to see, okay, who’s here? Jon, it was the whitest, malest office I had ever been in in my life. And I was coming from private law practice.

He, rightly, saw this as a problem and wanted to address it. He told his staff

[We need] to go out and recruit candidates who are African-American, Latino, Asian, women. Bring them to me. If they’re not good, I’m not going to hire them. But I’m convinced we’re not seeing them.

His approach to address this was perfectly rational and aligned with the approach Jon had discussed mere moments before:

What I found was hiring has a certain inertia to it, right? Generally, the people that started whatever industry or whatever office did, generally hire close to people that resemble them. So I’m not even talking about White/Black. I’m talking about like… I’ll just go with late-night comedy, right?

David Letterman revolutionized late-night comedy. He did it with a lot of Harvard, Lampoon, SNL, same way, writers. The comedy writing industry was for a long time — not necessarily out of malevolence or prejudice — the inertia of it, the status quo of it, was nerdy white dudes from Harvard and the other Ivy Leagues.

But even when we went to like, “Oh, we’re going to do blind submissions,” what we didn’t realize is all the agents are also steeped in that same status quo. So all the resumes — even when we would get them — still predominantly [trails off]. When we went specifically to say — now, this is what you would consider DEI — “Give us not that. Open it up to make sure you give us women, people of color, other writers, so that we can at least see what that is.” And all of a sudden, we found these incredible writers. Now, you could say, “Oh, you put diversity over competence,” but that’s the red herring. We didn’t. We opened up what were stagnant pools. Pools that were incestuous. And we opened up those tributaries. Isn’t that what increases competition, not decreases it?

What’s fascinating here is that they are both making the same point. As Christie says later

We then went about this process of hiring a large number of African-American, Latino, and Asian prosecutors, but I would tell you that every one of them checked both boxes. They checked the box of, “they now look more like the community we represent than we did before.” And these are really good lawyers.

So these two men from very different political viewpoints totally agree on the importance of representation. So where’s the issue?

# The Issue is Tokenism

When Stewart highlighted how aligned their two perspectives were and Christie pushed back, stating that DEI policies were problematic:

I think there have been a number of areas where there are people who hire certain folks just for their diversity. I’ve seen it happen here in New Jersey, in the government since I left. Where people say, “I am going to make sure that I have one of every…” It’s almost like a half a Noah’s Ark. “I’m going to have one of these and one of these and one one of these and one of these.”

Stewart questioned that:

But you just told me that’s what you did in the prosecutor’s office.

But Christie didn’t see it that way:

No, what I did was get them in to interview them. If it turned out, Jon, that they were also really good lawyers, they got hired. I’m talking about something different. I’m talking about predetermining the outcome in the way that you just talked about — and I believe that legacy admissions predetermined the outcome — that there have been some in charge of government across this country who have predetermined determined outcomes and said, “I am going to have this many African-Americans, this many Latinos, this many Asians, this many lesbians, this many gay men…” I think that when people see that, they say to themselves, “That’s not right either.”

What he’s talking about is what I’d call performative DEI. It’s not substantive, but attempts to give off the appearance of being so. It’s the DEI equivalent of greenwashing.

# DEI Cannot be Performative

When people hire folks or celebrate folks for their diversity rather than their diversity plus their competence or talents, it undermines the legitimacy of DEI programs that are attempting to do what they both discussed being important: representation.

As they both said, we need to screen in job applicants who wouldn’t otherwise consider applying for roles in our organizations. Christie talked about this too:

The aha moment for me on that concept and why it was the right way to go was there was a young guy that I hired very early on: African-American, University of Michigan, University of Penn Law School, clerk for Alan Page — the former Minnesota Viking, defensive tackle in the Supreme Court of Minnesota— He’s from New Jersey, grew up in Maplewood. I said to him, “Why didn’t you ever apply here before?” He said, “Because I knew people like me wouldn’t get hired.”

Hiring is just part of the process though. You can widen the applicant funnel and bring in a more representative — which is to say diverse — applicant pool with relatively little effort. Where things often fall short is retention.

# Is Your Organization Even Ready?

If your organization isn’t excited at the prospect of a more diverse workforce and prepared to support them when they are onboarded, you need to press pause and get prepared. Similarly, if your company is eager, but very homogenous, you’ve also got work to do. No one wants to come into a job and feel like “the only” or “the token” anything. And even if they were the most qualified applicant for the position, some jackass will say something that implies they are. It’s a tale as old as time and you need to be prepared for that reality.

The first thing you need to do is educate. You need to help folks on your team understand the gaps in your collective knowledge & experience. They need to see that a more diverse team can help fill those gaps. The data that shows that more diverse organizations are more successful. Share that! I’m guessing most of your team is there because they want your organization to be as successful as possible.

And make sure they understand the historical barriers folks from different communities have faced in getting access to jobs at organizations like yours… even when they were equally or more accomplished than folks from the dominant group. As Stewart said on the show:

It’s not rigging [the system] in a different direction, it’s unrigging it.

It’s also important to note that the process here needs to be inclusive as well… call people in, don’t call them out. Everyone is on their own journey and deserves the space to fail and learn from their mistakes. If someone says something offensive, let them know that it’s offensive and why. Tell them what they should say — if anything — instead.

If you approach people with empathy, you’re much more likely to get a positive response. And, Twitter aside, most folks aren’t out in these streets trying to be trolls. People are a product of their own experiences and those experiences can be quite different from yours. Help your colleagues broaden their perspectives with positive reinforcement, not chastising.

That said, you also need the proper mechanisms in place to address non-inclusive behaviors when they become a pattern or reach a certain threshold of severity. Those mechanisms need to outline the consequences for such behavior. The severity of the consequence needs to align with the severity of the harm, but it may need to escalate in severity for repeat offenses. Depending on the size of your organization, coming up with these policies and consequences could be a group activity to ensure both awareness and buy-in.

# Embrace DEI and Pave the Way for Mediocrity

To be clear, neither Jon Stewart nor the progressive left are pushing for diversity quotas like Christie seems to think they are. But there are folks out there who are. These performative DEI programs have got to go. As my colleague and friend Ebele Okoli says “bake it in, don’t cake it on.”

Don’t hire or promote someone just because you think their headshot would help to melanate your About page. That’s not what DEI is about and it doesn’t help us to reverse the dire course the U.S. government and cowardly companies are taking currently. DEI needs to be a part of every process in your organization on order to give everyone — white men like me included — an equal chance to succeed.

Cast a wide net. Hire and promote for competence and to address the knowledge gaps your team absolutely has. Foster an inclusive workplace that values the different lived experience and perspectives brought to the table by each and every employee. That is how you succeed with DEI. It’s also how DEI will help your organization succeed in its mission and grow to hire more folks.

And as more of the incredibly talented people out there get hired on at organizations like yours, all boats will rise, creating more jobs and space for mediocre people of all stripes to get hired and rise up the ranks too. But they won’t get there just because or who they know, what they look like, or because they tick a particular box on your diversity bingo card.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi1NXGgsM3s

I love her calls to action as well!

Related talk: Delivering Critical Information & Services

I think we all recognize how much Ethan’s seminal article “Responsive Web Design” (and his follow-up book) shook up our industry. It changed the way we look at visual design and kindled (or in some cases re-kindled) an interest in catering an experience to mobile devices. But simply incorporating responsive design’s three core strategies—fluid grids, flexible media, media queries—is not the goal; meeting our user’s needs is. Responsive design is not an end in itself… it’s just the beginning.

We need to embrace the heterogenous nature of the Web—myriad connected devices with vastly different screen sizes (if they even have screens), network connectivity, and capabilities in use by countless individuals, each with their own special needs—and craft experiences that will work anywhere at any time. We need to build robust systems that adapt in ways far beyond aesthetics. I designed this workshop to explore the rich variety of use cases that often get overlooked in the course of building web projects and to show how we can begin considering them as early as possible.

When I was starting out, I gave “workshops” that basically amounted to a half-day or (worse) a full day for folks to listen to me blather on about one topic or another. People liked them, but I wouldn’t call them fun. And, in hindsight, I question how much value people got from an extended survey of what’s possible without the opportunity to put that knowledge to use. Workshops should encourage attendees to get their hand dirty.

I kick this workshop off with a relatively brief discussion of the considerations that we should be aware of—beyond screen size and pixel density. I also provide examples of how to adapt interfaces so they rise to meet our customers’ needs. Then I throw out a list of common interface patterns—modals, tabs, etc.—and turn the floor over to the attendees, asking them to build small teams that each examine a single pattern in detail with these considerations in mind. They then spend the rest of the workshop planning out how that interface would adapt to consider factors like accessibility, screen dimensions, device capabilities, JavaScript availability, and so on. All the while, I circulate among the groups, asking and answering questions, pressing them to go a little further with each iteration. Some teams sketch, some prototype, and all spend a lot of time debating, which is awesome!

I leave the last hour or so for a group discussion of what each team’s accomplished. It gives them a chance to talk through their approach, what they learned, what their pain points were, and how they overcame them. Not does it celebrate their work, but it helps the other attendees discover novel ways to approach these common UI constructs.

It’s been a blast and I have learned so much from the teams I’ve coached. Each workshop is completely different because each group of attendees is completely different. I’ve run it with groups ranging from 12 to 120, for internal teams at large companies to mixed audiences from all over the world. Everyone who has attended one of these workshops has brought a unique perspective and helped us all get better at our jobs. That’s been one of the best parts of this experience for me.

If a workshop like this sounds up your alley, I’ll be giving it a few more times in 2016. Your next opportunity will be at EnhanceConf in London in early March. Later in the year, I’ll be giving it as part of Sparkbox’s Build Right: Maker Series. I’d love the opportunity to work with you if you can make it!

I was crestfallen.

Thankfully, apart from the very finger-unfriendly hellscape the screen had become, the rest of the phone completely functional. If I was careful where and how I swiped, I could do pretty much anything I needed to. And I did exactly that for a few days while I looked into my options for fixing it.

It was an iPhone 6 I purchased right when they came out, so a warranty repair was not an option. And I don’t see the point of paying for phone insurance or Apple Care¹, so I was on my own to cover the cost of the repair. No biggie; it was my fault for putting it in the loose pocket of my pajama pants anyway.

I began researching my options:

1. I could cover the broken phone with a rugged case and just deal with it.
2. I could use one of our old iPhones until the next version came out.
3. I could upgrade my phone with AT&T.
4. I could self-repair as the process is pretty straightforward, but in talking with a friend who repairs smartphones for a living, I discovered the replacement screens weren’t that great.
5. I could have Apple repair it.

Apple offers screen repair for $109, which isn’t too bad, but that takes a few days to ship the phone back and forth. They offer an expedited option where they just send you a new phone, but at $299, it seemed silly.

I contacted the local authorized Apple repair center to see if they could do the repair, but it turns out that they would just be sending it on to Apple anyway, so it seemed like my best bet would be to go back to the source. After all, who could know better how to replace a broken iPhone screen (and digitizer, since they’re fused) than Apple Support?

I chatted with an Apple Support rep about doing the repair and confirmed that the repair would cost $109. The rep told me, however, that they would need to authorize my card for $299—the out-of warranty replacement cost—in case they discovered other damage to the phone. I agreed (it was my only option) with the understanding that Apple would run some diagnostic utilities to determine what (if any) additional issues the phone might have.

A day or two later I got the mailer to send the phone to Apple, I shipped it to them and waited. They confirmed receipt of the phone the next day and, two days later, I got an email saying the phone was en route back to me. I was thrilled with the quick turnaround!

Then Kelly asked me why Apple had charged us $329. I said I wasn’t sure. The authorization was for $299, but the repair service was only supposed to be $109 (plus tax and shipping, naturally). Perhaps they billed the whole amount and then returned the unused portion in a separate transaction. We decided to wait and see what would happen.

The next day, a phone arrived. I say a phone because it was not my phone. Apple Support had sent me a refurbished replacement phone and charged me the full replacement cost. Why? “After thorough diagnostic testing, it has been determined that a replacement iPhone (enclosed) is necessary.” Vague.

I was curious what their tests had revealed. What gremlins were lurking in my heretofore fully-functional device? I decided to investigate with another support rep and was not thrilled with what I found.

Note: I spent the next few hours in a chat session with two different reps at Apple Support. Both were incredibly friendly and did everything in their power to help me get to the bottom of why my screen repair had turned into a complete replacement. Credit where credit is due.

In the conversation with the first rep, Josh, I made it clear that the phone was working perfectly before I sent it to them. It merely needed a new screen/digitizer. I offered that I was disappointed to see that they’d replaced it without explaining what would require that level of remediation and without giving me the option to have the phone returned to me as-is. From the beginning, he clearly saw where I was coming from:

Oh good grief, I’m really sorry you’ve had to deal with this. That’s not at all what we want from this process.

After a few minutes of doing some research, he came back to me:

So basically from what we’ve been discussing, the service center does run a plethora of tests on the phone once it’s sent in. That’s to be sure that it’s working properly in all ways, rather than just the screen repair itself, though trust me, I do fully understand that the only thing you wanted was the screen to be repaired, so I’m just compiling all of the data to see what happened.

A few minutes later…

[I]t’s looking like basically what ended up happening was there were tests that were run which will test the phone for a bit of additional damage than the tests that were run. From there, they look into what will give you the longest lasting phone, basically so that you don’t run into an issue with what their diagnostics tests detected down the road, and then need to pay again for it to be repaired.

I replied

[That] assumes I plan to keep the phone long enough for it to become an issue… I appreciate them looking into potential issues, but making unilateral decisions about how to proceed is not good customer service in my opinion. Letting someone know what the issue is and how much the repair would cost is just common courtesy. Even my car dealership does me that courtesy.

Josh was right there with me:

Exactly, which I know is not always a proper assumption, and I can entirely agree. I’m even still looking into additional data for you. I really don’t like how this was handled, so I’m seeing if I can come across anything additional on the matter.

He asked if I knew of any other damage to the phone and I told him that it was always in a case and I was not aware of a single other issue with the phone, cosmetic or otherwise.

He was completely empathetic:

I’m really sorry about this whole thing, Aaron. It’s looking like some sort of damage was found with the phone, which is what caused that price to be charged, rather than just the screen repair, so ultimately they decided that it would give you a longer lasting phone to replace it, so that way you wouldn’t have to deal with the hassle of having additional issues down the road. Honestly, I cannot express enough how much I understand the situation, and especially at least being informed or asked if that can be done. That’s just why the full out of warranty/replacement charge has to be held initially, is so that they have authorization to run those tests, and if needed, replace it, rather than just repair it. I’m so sorry that the process wasn’t elaborated to you, and that they didn’t at least let you know of what was going on.

I reiterated that someone really should have asked if I wanted the additional work done. I understand Apple’s “heart” might be in the right place, but they failed to do what I had hired them to do. They didn’t consider my wishes or expectations in their process at all. Nor did they give me an opportunity to decline the replacement and get my broken phone back.

Josh pleasantly informed me that by agreeing to the repair, I was out of luck:

[Replacement] was actually authorized to be used when you initially setup the payment. When the full $299 (plus taxes and shipping) was held from your card, that was authorized that if needed, it could be used for the repair if additional damage was found. Since it was found, they used the remainder of that money to replace the phone instead.

I countered:

I understand that you required the $299 + tax in order to start the repair, but that was my only option if I wanted you guys to do the $109 screen repair. Like I said, had I suspected anything else was going to be done to the phone, I would have taken my chances buying a replacement screen and doing the repair myself. … I typically replace my phone every other version, so I would have limped along with the broken screen even rather than pay the full replacement fee.

Josh, to his credit, was still on my side:

Right, trust me, I fully understand, or alternatively we could have taken it into the local Apple Authorized Service Provider, which would have been able to diagnose the phone as well in order to determine what had to be done, and then give you a price right then and there. … I’ve actually covered cracked screens in cling wrap so that I didn’t need to risk furthering the damage, or hurting myself. I can also fully understand the process of not expecting that there was any further damage, since you were able to sue the phone just fine, and that’s why you ended up getting it setup that way.

Ultimately, however, it didn’t really matter:

Basically, again, as much as I wish there was something that could be done on the matter in order to basically reverse what happened, it’s just not possible. Since it was authorized when it was initiated, and I do see where the previous advisors let you know that the full charge would be taken if additional damage was found, but if the only damage found to the phone was the screen cracks, then all but the screen repair fee of $109 plus taxes and shipping would be reimbursed. It’s just that additional damage was found, which is what caused that full charge to be taken.

After a bit more back-and-forth, Josh recommended I file a complaint with Apple (I have), said he would make sure the process was reviewed internally, and connected me with a Senior Advisor, Alexander, to help me get a few more details regarding the “damage” that prompted the replacement. I thanked him for his time and for his empathy toward my situation.

The next few minutes involved getting Alexander up to speed with what had happened. He was equally helpful:

Okay, I know how a sudden cost like this $299 can be concerning, especially when you don’t feel adequately informed on the situation. I can certainly clarify anything and get this figured out with you though.

Then he dropped the bombshell:

So the main bit of information that I want to address is not that the phone was replaced to address issues that may arise down the road. In this case, a screen replacement was attempted and did not yield a functioning device. When that occurs, our only option is to replace the device. I do see from your chats with Michelle and Teresa that they advised this was the procedure that we have

Wait. What?! They didn’t find any problems. In replacing the screen, the tech bricked the phone.

No, not at all. Just that they were unable to have a fully functioning unit after a screen replacement. That does not mean that the tech bricked the phone or messed up when replacing the screen, it means the phone was not able to work after the screen was replaced.

Um, sounds to me like they bricked my phone. Alexander tried to clarify, but was ultimately saying the same thing:

While the issue was only a cracked screen, that does not mean that the screen can be replaced and yield a functioning device. Unfortunately we can never know if a screen replacement will work until we try.

So… iPhones are only occasionally repairable. In other words, it’s a crapshoot. Comforting. No one had mentioned that they could brick the phone when attempting to repair it:

I was never advised that the repair could yield a non-functioning device. This is even more strange than I expected.

Alexander towed the company line:

I’m looking at the chats you had with us when setting up the repair, and both advisors did say how it could be $299. I also don’t see anything from either one that says the depot would reach out to you if the repair price was not going to be $109. I’m really sorry that this happened to you Aaron, but this is how our process works and everything looks to have been done correctly here. … I see them saying that they will attempt to replace the screen and if that works it would be a $109 repair. If there were additional issues, it would cost more up to the $299 max for a full replacement unit.

I clarified that they had said it could cost more. There’s a difference between “could” and “would”. I mentioned that I could have just kept the broken phone and upgraded with AT&T and spent less money. Alexander didn’t miss a beat:

That certainly was an option you could have taken Aaron, and I do sympathize with not taking that option to end up paying more than you expected. I really wish the repair process was clearer for you, and I can only advise that you leave some feedback about the repair process to us at Apple Feedback. I don’t see any mention in these chats of the depot contacting you if the cost would be more nor an advisor stating that would be the case.

I stuck to my guns:

I agree they didn’t state that would happen, but I think in the repair world it’s pretty common. … Explicitly stating that would not happen might be a good thing.

Alexander conceded that the process was less than ideal:

I don’t disagree, but that does vary from place to place and device to device. Our procedures are in line with most of the mobile phone world on this though. I will certainly leave some feedback for those advisors to be more clear about this process when a repair is set up though.

We talked for a few more minutes, but it was clear I was out of options. I could file a complaint with Apple (and have), but I am skeptical they even pay attention to that stuff. I know they don’t chime in on their own forums. My only other option was to share my story with you, in hopes you might avoid a similar situation.

So consider yourself warned: If you send your phone to Apple for something as simple as a screen repair, they just may brick your phone and charge you for the convenience. Oh and the replacement phone only has a 90-day warranty. Hooray!

Here’s one example. In reaction to my post on why I think CSS variables are a bad idea, SASS core team member Chris Eppstein had this to say:

Authoring CSS shouldn’t be so onerous as to require the use of a preprocessor.

Fundamentally, I agree with his sentiment: A preprocessor should not be a requirement for authoring CSS. Thankfully, it never was; you can build amazing things using only hand-authored CSS. And if you find a preprocessor helpful to your process for one reason or another, great. But using a preprocessor never has been (nor should it ever be) a requirement.

But Chris was not railing against preprocessors. Instead, he is echoing a sentiment held by many people in the preprocessor community. He feels CSS is not as powerful as it could/should be and he hopes that one day soon preprocessors won’t need to exist because CSS will have all of the features they offer. Like variables.

I used to feel that way. I used to want variables… and mixins… and functions… and loops… and declaration block-level inheritance. But I’ve changed my mind.

Don’t get me wrong, I love these constructs. I use them nearly every day in the SASS I write and I am incredibly thankful for the hard work that has gone into their creation and maintenance. Chris alone has probably saved me several weeks worth of work over the last four years through his contributions to SASS and Compass. I definitely owe him a beer (or three).

Ok, so if my issue is not with the idea of programmatically generating styles, why would I not want these to be part of CSS, the lingua franca for design on the Web? Well, it’s pretty simple: Converting all of these constructs into something that is actionable by the browser takes time and processing power. Someone has to pay that cost and I wouldn’t feel right passing that cost on to my end users if there are better options.

This is a topic I bring up often in my conference talks and workshops: Every decision we make affects the user experience in some way.

When we add another JavaScript library or plugin, it’s no big deal from our perspective. We tend to have fast connections and faster processors. For our users it’s another story: It’s one more thing to request. One more thing to download. One more script to parse. One more thing holding up page rendering. One more reason to leave our site and seek out a competitor who actually values their time.

When we hide an img in the small screen version of our responsive design using display: none, the cost to us is quite minimal. It’s just one little declaration. What’s the harm? But the cost to our end users is quite significant: Longer load times, slower performance, and (in some cases) in real dollars if they are on a metered data connection. And they don’t even get to see the image they paid for!

When we decide to build a site using a front-end JavaScript MVC framework, it can make the development process go so much faster for us and we can reduce our need for a robust back-end infrastructure. I mean everyone has JavaScript these days… the browser is the new VM. But when we do this, our users suffer because we don’t give their browsers real HTML. Instead we force them to download a hefty framework so we can move all of the processing we would normally handle on a much faster, dedicated server to their questionably-capable machine instead. Oh, and if the browser encounters an error while parsing or executing the JavaScript execution, they don’t get anything at all. Welcome to the Modern Web™!

When I look around, I see our community spending a lot of time coming up with new tools and techniques to make our jobs easier. To ship faster. And it’s not that I’m against efficiency, but I think we need to consider the implications of our decisions. And if one of those implications is making our users suffer—or potentially suffer—in order to make our lives easier, I think we need to consider their needs above our own.

So yes, I would love a world where preprocessors are unnecessary, but I would much rather spend a few seconds (or even a few minutes) transcompiling my SASS into CSS in order to save my users even a few milliseconds. It’s the same reason I optimize my images, minify my JavaScript, use Gzip, and lazy load design and experience enhancements only in contexts where they provide a real benefit.

Our users should never foot the bill for our convenience. We need to put their needs above our own.

It’s tough to connect with other people and we often fall into the trap of designing products for us and people like us. Jeffrey Zeldman characterizes the problem perfectly in his recent post:

If we keep throwing only young, mostly white, mostly upper middle class people at the engine that makes our digital world go, we’ll keep getting camera and reminder and hookup apps—things that make an already privileged life even smoother—and we’ll keep producing features that sound like a good idea to everyone in the room, until they unexpectedly stab someone in the heart.

Empathy is difficult when we are surrounded by others like us. We need to be surrounded by different people. Certainly gender and ethnic diversity is incredibly important here, but so is diversity of experience. As Jeffrey astutely points out, diversity in the room where Facebook’s “Year in Review” concept was given the green light would have—I have to hope—helped create some safeguards to keep some of their actual customers from being reminded of tragedies they experienced this year.

In all likelihood, the worst thing they probably discussed was an embarrassing hookup being celebrated, but I’ve had several friends lose children and loved ones this year, other friends battling serious illnesses, and still others who have suffered losses of different sorts. All bore their souls on Facebook in the past year and this feature has brought it back and, in some cases, celebrated these tragic events in a very uncanny and dispassionate way.

And Facebook isn’t the only company to blame for this sort of thing. Pretty much every social network suffers from similar issues. Reading the comments on the various press accounts of this story have revealed similar problems at LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, and others. We can and need to do better.

In order to address these issues, we need to flex our empathetic muscles. We need to create connections with people who are not like us. People who live in different neighborhoods. People who come from different countries. People who require alternate means to accessing our sites and services. We need to see that the world is full of differences.

Life is full of great joy as well as great tragedy. When we acknowledge diversity of experience and actually embrace it, we become better designers.

The modern.IE Podcast
Josh Holmes interviewed me about adaptive design, progressive enhancement, and a wide range of other things.

PKNCHA#15
I did a PechaKucha talk on empathy and the golden rule last December. The video is now on YouTube.

15 Pro Techniques for Beating Creative Block
I give my thoughts on the topic, but you can also read the fantastic thoughts of Dan Rubin, Trent Walton, Derek Featherstone, and Rachel Shillcock.

In an effort to continue spreading my wings beyond talking about code, I delivered a talk about empathy. Empathy is something I’ve written about here before both explicitly and as an underlying motivation for progressive enhancement and overall usability. Empathy is something I feel we need deperately in our lives and especially in our work—empathy for both our users and our co-workers.

Anyway, Marc was kind enough to record the talk. Let me know what you think.

To be honest, I was a little nervous about my talk, Designing with Empathy. I am a developer. I live and breathe code and this was my first attempt at delivering a completely code-free talk. And one on a fairly touchy-feely subject to boot. To my amazement, the talk seemed to resonate with the audience. I received lots of excellent questions and had a handful of in-depth conversations with attendees after stepping off the dais. I could not be more pleased with the talk’s reception and am looking forward to delivering it a few more times this year at Beyond Tellerrand in Düsseldorf, Germany next month and Reasons to Be Creative in Brighton, UK in September. You can check out my deck on Slideshare (or thumb through it below). Luke W also took some excellent notes during my session. The video is forthcoming.

I also debuted a new workshop in Orlando: Planning Adaptive Interfaces. The idea was borne out of the corporate training work I’ve been doing and Retreats 4 Geeks’ mentoring sessions: A brief introduction to progressive enhancement and adaptive considerations followed by actual hands-on group activities where teams plan and sketch out different ways to experience common website conventions, taking into account screen real estate, browser capabilities, assistive technology and more. The response to the workshop was excellent as well and I appreciated the opportunity to get into the trenches with the teams and help them tackle complex cross-device problems. I’ll be taking this workshop on the road to UXLx in Lisbon, Portugal and Beyond Tellerrand in Düsseldorf, Germany next month and a few other as-yet-unannounced conferences in Europe this Fall.

In this session, I explore why empathy is a good thing, how empathy empowers creativity, and how we, as a community, can inject more empathy into our work.