How the ban of TikTok and launch of Instagram Reels in India with restrictions and biases lead to exclusion of tier 3 and tier 4 city users mostly lower castes.
Read more at the link
Author: Naushad
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Portfolios are part time jobs
Image of Calendar reminder about work
Exclusion
Excludes people with less timeBias
NDA
Abstraction
Companies : Show Me your Portfolio
Also Companies: Here is your NDA. -
Amazon App splash screen dark pattern
Amazon App Launch page So I checked the Amazon app after a few months. Just for reference, Amazon App Logo changed from this to this.
At first I was looking for the old Amazon logo by memory, after finding no results, i realized, the logo has changed.
Amazon App Logo Icon Changes What got me irrirated was the splash screen was now full lenght screen. With no way out for the user.
Look at the full screen below
Amazon App Splash Screen no exit routes Turns out they’ve force you to choose a Prime plan. There is no way to exit the flow. Youur only option is to close and restart the app.
Now imagine users who don’t know restart is an exit route.
Implications
- The Gen X userbase in India would be forced to add a card.
- The subscription would continue and they would get a shock.
This is what happens when unethical and immoral business requirements enforce a user experience against the user needs/wants.
How to get rid of this
Businesses with the technology and monopoly would always have control and dicatate what their users can and can not get. In my understanding regulation is the only way to tackle this. I am not sure if such dark patterns are covered in the regulations like this California ban on dark patterns. If not, it should. Such regulations are a good starting point.
Update
So i checked the amazon app again yesterday and was pleasantly surprised that they have updated the splash screen to make it more explicit and made the options to continue without forcing to signup for prime.
Apart from the actions, we can see clear description in text on what the user can expect.
Updated Amazon App Splash Screen with Clear actions and descriptions. #darkpatterns
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On using flags to represent languages
Recently, i came across this new website of RockyLinux which is a successor of CentOS as CentOS was killed by RedHat and people wanted a similar operating system that they could rely on.
One of the former founders of CentOS took on the task of creating the variant of CentOS that people would make together and want.
They also setup a site rockylinux.org to communicate the projects vision and clarity. Being a global community project, it was obvious to have make the website multilingual. A contributor in the Github repo made a contribution to show the multiple languages by referring to the flags.
While all this sounds great, another contributor pointed out that using flags for represent languages is not good and in can be offensive as well. He also posted a link to http://www.flagsarenotlanguages.com/blog/why-flags-do-not-represent-language/.
Flags are not languages is a website by James Offer a UX Designer who has worked extensively on multilingual software. That’s where he shares the learning’s about designing multi-lingual experiences.
Throughout my design career i never had this consideration that representing languages by flags is not just incorrect but also could be offensive.
Some of the important reasons are that nations do not equal to languages.
- People residing in another country could know other languages that they prefer over other language.
- A country may have more than one language that a flag can represent. E.g. India where more than 25 recognized languages are there.
- you can read up more in the link that i have posted above.
As a learning, it is good to use explicit languages instead of country flags. Some other alternatives are also suggested
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Hire for ability and skills while being cognizant of the contextual limitations.
I came across this LinkedIn post by Patrick Neeman. As a designer who has worked in multiple contexts i can relate to it. I have worked at large organizations where the design team was in double digits to startups with 2 designers and solo designer. Having seen all the constraints be it business, politics, technology or design maturity, i can appreciate the limitations that designers have in exercising their skills. I have also experienced that the hiring managers do judge candidates basis what candidates did without taking cognizance of the context.
Some more contexts that the decision makers should be conscious like, access to users, nature of product (Enterprise vs Consumer), focus on interaction with no focus on research.
Post
A designer’s success is so much about the situational context that it alone can determine what they were able to deliver in an environment. We judge on delivery versus what was even possible to deliver.
Patrick Neeman
This needs to change.
There should be an open conversation about the organization they worked for and whether or not it was even possible to move the needle. Authenticity and transparency should be the rule during interviews, not the exception.
The situation may take many forms: a code poor base, a non-strategic business model, poor management, or an underfunded UX team that doesn’t have the resources to do their job well.
All of these are beyond the designer’s control. That should be the start of the conversation, not the end.
In a realistic world, they’re acknowledged upfront — an excellent way to discover them is the STAR interview format — and then discuss what was learned.
Candidates can be judged based on the skills they bring to the organization over a Potemkin Village resume that drafts off of others more so than the skills they bring.
That would level the playing field more that anything else: it would open opportunities up to candidates that have been in difficult environments and shown resilience in the face of adversity versus a big name on the resume.As Patrick rightly puts across, the decision makers which includes recruiters and not just hiring managers, must make this as conscious consideration in their hiring process. It will also contribute if the candidates who experience this, share the concerns with the recruiters.