The Things Junior UX Designers Should Do More Of (Not Just Design)

The Things Junior UX Designers Should Do More Of (Not Just Design)

Hardik Gandhi   January 17, 2018

As a designer starting out in the beginning of your career, you may not know what to expect during your first job. You could be given lots of work and because you are the new designer on team, you do things without question. You might think you are expected to know everything because nobody said you should seek out the things you need to help you.

Having worked in the design industry almost every summer in college, I’ve learned a thing or two about how a new designer, such as myself, can navigate through challenges and learn in environments based on implied messages of what we should or shouldn’t do. Knowing the basic tools and techniques of good design is essential, but it’s the small details surrounding how we work which can help us progress and open doors. Here are a few tips that growing designers should take into consideration during their first year on the job to accelerate career growth.

Asking for Help Doesn't Make You Stupid

It’s okay to ask for help, but the issue that some designers may allude to when they say asking for help is a big no-no is the phrasing. Instead of directly asking for help, ask for feedback and advice. If you need help with doing research, join a research session. If you need help with moving forward in a project, ask designers to join you in prioritizing ideas. This will provide you with direction. Instead of receiving a hard-cut answer, you receive validation and perspective, things that will help you develop your own point of view. Designers don’t receive answers, they problem solve to get there.

Saying “No” is better than saying “Yes” all the time*

Note the asterisk. You are in control of what you want to do. You can decide when you reply to that e-mail or if you want to go that meeting. We are often given so many things to do that we can’t do all of them, yet we think we have to. Many designers, especially in the beginning of their career, do everything they are told to do, and this distracts them from the work they need to do the most. Decide on what is most important to help get your work done and prioritize.

Don’t say yes for the things that get in the way of producing quality work.

Delegating tasks and prioritizing is hard, but if you can do that, you will get so much done (and more). It’s okay to say no for valid reasons because it tells people that you know what’s important.

Speak up

During a critique, we are excepted to provide feedback for our peers, but not everyone does it because they might be self concious of their thoughts, or they don’t make the effort to help. Don’t be selfish with ideas. Ideas are meant to be expressed and help our fellow designers design for the people. Feedback is a gift. Feedback is what results in more iterations and better experiences.

Take Breaks

I used to work hard constantly, whether it was at home, with friends and family…You name it. But then I realized, without fault, I will be working for the rest of my life and work isn’t ever really “done”. I was taking the time to work on something fleeting, when I could have been spending time with the people I loved and the things I loved to do outside of work. Also, too much work can increase stress which can increase burnout. It makes sense to do as much work as you can to get to a certain job or rank, but that takes time. Just do what you can and relax when you feel overworked or exausted. In the end, health is more important than work because without health, we can’t work.

Be Present

As tempting as it is to work from home, especially for people who have the privilege of doing so all the time, it is crucial to be present. Even if the quality of work has not been affected, as designers, collaboration is such an important aspect of the way we do things. Being present in the office can make all the difference, especially when working with the people on your team. It’s not a team if everyone isn’t present.

If you have any questions about design, message me on LinkedIn and I’ll write about it!

Links to some other cool reads:

• I interviewed at Facebook as a new grad. Here is what I learned about design
• Standing Up as a Design Leader
• Journey Mapping is the Key to Gaining Empathy
• Prepping for Design Interviews (My Microsoft Onsite Experience)
• UX is Grounded in Rationale, not Design
• The Types of Design Research every Designer should know NOW
• When did Design become so Easy?

How to catch a criminal using only milliseconds of audio

How to catch a criminal using only milliseconds of audio

Hardik Gandhi   January 16, 2018

Scientists can tell far more from your recorded voice than you might think. Image: Pixabay

Simon Brandon, Freelance journalist

This article is part of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting

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A prankster who made repeated hoax distress calls to the US Coast Guard over the course of 2014 probably thought they were untouchable. They left no fingerprints or DNA evidence behind, and made sure their calls were too brief to allow investigators to triangulate their location.

Unfortunately for this hoaxer, however, voice analysis powered by AI is now so advanced that it can reveal far more about you than a mere fingerprint. By using powerful technology to analyse recorded speech, scientists today can make confident predictions about everything from the speaker’s physical characteristics — their height, weight, facial structure and age, for example — to their socioeconomic background, level of income and even the state of their physical and mental health.

One of the leading scientists in this field is Rita Singh of Carnegie Mellon University’s Language Technologies Institute. When the US Coast Guard sent her recordings of the 2014 hoax calls, Singh had already been working in voice recognition for 20 years. “They said, ‘Tell us what you can’,” she told the Women in Tech Show podcast earlier this year. “That’s when I started looking beyond the signal. How much could I tell the Coast Guard about this person?”

Rita Singh is an expert in speech recognition

What your voice says about you

The techniques developed by Singh and her colleagues at Carnegie Mellon analyse and compare tiny differences, imperceptible to the human ear, in how individuals articulate speech. They then break recorded speech down into tiny snippets of audio, milliseconds in duration, and use AI techniques to comb through these snippets looking for unique identifiers.

Your voice can give away plenty of environmental information, too. For example, the technology can guess the size of the room in which someone is speaking, whether it has windows and even what its walls are made of. Even more impressively, perhaps, the AI can detect signatures left in the recording by fluctuations in the local electrical grid, and can then match these to specific databases to give a very good idea of the caller’s physical location and the exact time of day they picked up the phone.

This all applies to a lot more than hoax calls, of course. Federal criminal cases from harassment to child abuse have been helped by this relatively recent technology. “Perpetrators in voice-based cases have been found, have confessed, and their confessions have largely corroborated our analyses,” says Singh.

Portraits in 3D

And they’re just getting started: Singh and her fellow researchers are developing new technologies that can provide the police with a 3D visual portrait of a suspect, based only on a voice recording. “Audio can us give a facial sketch of a speaker, as well as their height, weight, race, age and level of intoxication,” she says.

But there’s some way to go before voice-based profiling technology of this kind becomes viable in a court. Singh explains: “In terms of admissibility, there will be questions. We’re kind of where we were with DNA in 1987, when the first DNA-based conviction took place in the United States.”

This has all proved to be bad news for the Coast Guard’s unsuspecting hoaxer. Making prank calls to emergency services in the US is regarded as a federal crime, punishable by hefty fines and several years of jail time; and usually the calls themselves are the only evidence available. Singh was able to produce a profile that helped the Coast Guard to eliminate false leads and identify a suspect, who they hope to bring a prosecution soon.

Given the current exponential rate of technological advancement, it’s safe to say this technology will become much more widely used by law enforcement in the future. And for any potential hoax callers reading this: it’s probably best to stick to the old cut-out newsprint and glue method for now. Just don’t leave any fingerprints.

Have you read?

• Could the next frontier of biometric security be your ears?
• Can voice recognition really unmask a terrorist?
• Will voice recognition kill the keyboard?

The big secret about “tech people”, fixing things and how to control your technology

The big secret about “tech people”, fixing things and how to control your technology

Hardik Gandhi   January 15, 2018

Hint: it’s neither hard nor dangerous

In this article, I’d like to talk about the “divide in technology” and how you can become proficient at solving tech problems even if you have never done it before.

The Gap

There is a fundamental divide in how people deal with tech problems. It seems that some people see computers, smartphones and other technical devices as “black boxes”, most of the time doing what they want, but at times showing frustrating errors or just plainly stopping to work.

Others (with a winking eye referred to as “tech people”) see those devices as a system of parts: hardware, software and things that run on the internet. While errors and failures are certainly annoying, they are merely symptoms that some part of the system is malfunctioning. And since it’s technology, the various components can be fixed.

The difference between those groups is that the first group is intimidated by technology — you might hear someone say “Oh, he (the computer) doesn’t like me”, as if it’s a personal thing and the technological system can be blamed. The other group doesn’t put the blame on the system as a whole, vicious entity, but instead treat it as it is: a collection of parts.

It’s no shame to belong to group one, after all, technological education and systems thinking is rarely taught and if you never had someone else introduce you to the topic, you were likely never exposed to the ideas behind it. However, I encourage you to read on and discover it’s quite easy to understand and to switch over to the “tech” side in no time.

Why should you do this? Because it gives you power and control over the things you own. You are absolutely capable of fixing and repairing both software and hardware problems, once you understand the basics. And each time you succeed in fixing something, you will gain confidence and experience. Plus, it’s actually pretty fun.

Everything is just a collection of parts

As mentioned in the intro, every piece of technology is a quite elaborate collection of parts, divided into hardware and software. The hardware is the actual thing that you carry around, most of the times small boards or chips that fulfill a certain function.

Two good things: those components are similar on almost all systems (I’m talking about computers, tablets and smartphones).

They all have a processor unit (doing the computations), a permanent storage (where all your photos are for instance) and a temporary storage (supplying the files that are in use right at the moment to the processor).

Those three are absolutely necessary for the basic functions. Then, of course, you have things that support everything else: batteries, screens, sensors, input devices (keyboards, trackpads), wireless chips and a series of boards connecting everything together.

The second good thing is that you don’t need to understand how each of those components work (or even how the system works at all) and you can still fix the system as a whole.

On top of this, there is software: an operating system and applications running on this system. Again, you don’t need to understand how this all works, just be aware of its existence.

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

It seems like a tired old joke, but it’s quite true. More than half of all errors on almost all systems can be “fixed” by turning off the system and restarting it.

This allows the system to begin with a blank slate, it reloads the software and starts all calculations afresh.

It is truly the one thing that a “tech person” will do first when trying to fix a problem. Switch everything off (completely, ideally also disconnect the power), then back on. You will be surprised how many errors are never showing up again! This technique can be adapted to resetting and reinstalling software, but we’ll get into that in a later article.

Turn it off. Turn it back on. Fix most of your errors.

You can’t really break something

I find that most of the time, people are not trying to fix things because they are afraid to damage those things permanently.

Another good thing (this article is full of positivity): you can’t really break something as long as you don’t physically break part of the system. Keeping your technology dry and reasonably clean is a good way to start.

It’s also quite unlikely that you damage your software beyond repair. Rest assured that there is almost always a way to completely reset everything. Which brings us to the next point and then we will go into the details.

Store your files securely

As mentioned above, your files are stored on the permanent storage (hard drive) of your device. Luckily, in the last decade it has gotten incredibly easy to also store all your files in the “cloud”, meaning a separate computer somewhere on the internet, owned by a company.

The most famous of these services, like Dropbox, iCloud, GoogleDrive and OneDrive are reliable and widely used, while alternative might be suited to special needs.

I won’t go into any detail on how to choose the best service, you should be fine with typing “best cloud storage providers 2018” into Google.

The point is: while I said you can’t break anything on your system, you might lose your files, programs, settings and achievements if you don’t save them on another device first.

Use a cloud storage, external hard drive or another computer to move important documents out of your system for the time of the repairs.

Things change, for better or for worse, it’s never just you

You know the saying: never change a running system. Many software developers don’t seem to heed this, they are constantly updating, improving, iterating and changing.

Most of these changes are benign, while sometimes they break the very thing that you rely on for your work. It is annoying, it costs energy and time.

Yet, we all have to accept it, sort of the price we pay for getting accelerated technological progress.

And despite the myriads of different technological configurations, operating systems, smartphones and programs there are, there is a high chance that someone, somewhere has already had the same problem and found a solution and shared it with the world.

Which brings us to…

The big secret

This is the big one. The secret you have been waiting for. How do “tech people” actually fix things?

The answer, of course, is a simple process.

They google the error and then follow whatever other people have tried.

Yes, that’s all. That is how most of the errors get solved and how most things get repaired and in fact, how most things are learned.

You just google what you are trying to do and then spend some time going through the answers. It might not be the first answer that helps you, but chances are that somewhere in the first five answers, something will.

The art is within the right phrasing of the question. I’ll walk you through an example: recently, my 3D software “Blender” started to display black boxes instead of the usual interface. It was mildly annoying, so I tried to fix it.

Here is how you construct the google query: type the program name first, then add a short and succinct description of what’s wrong. For instance: “blender 3d displaying black user interface”. Here is what Google gives me:

Click on the first answer.

And I simply go to the first answer, which is a site called stackexchange.com. It is a platform/ community where lots of tech questions are answered and it is quite trustworthy. Reading the question that someone else asked, I think that they have the same issue. And behold, below there is an answer.

Turn off nVidia shadowplay, thanks J. Larsen!

I know that shadowplay is a program for my graphics card, so I turned it off.

It fixed the issue, no more black boxes.

If I didn’t know how to turn it off, guess what: I’d google it (“turning off nvidia shadowplay”). There are tutorials for everything online.

This principle works with any error message, too.

Just don’t click it away angrily, look at it, read it and if you don’t understand it, copy the exact words into Google, combined with the software from which it came, for instance “windows 10 error 0x80200056”. It looks like gibberish and I have no clue what it means, but other people do!

Put it into Google, read the first answer (like seriously, read it like a really good recipe) and follow it.

Remember, you are quite unlikely to break anything, so just follow the steps.

And then there is this case:

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wisdom_of_the_ancients.png

Yes, there is a chance that your problem is absolutely rare and unique. It happens to all of us. We live with it. We reinstall the whole system. We buy a new computer. But we can always say that we tried.

I’ll probably go into a little more depth on this next week, but for now, you have a basic understanding of your tech!

The more you fix and try and change, the more confident you will become.

Soon, you will be one of the “tech people”.

Apple Will Reject Your Subscription App if You Don’t Include This Disclosure

Apple Will Reject Your Subscription App if You Don’t Include This Disclosure

Hardik Gandhi   January 15, 2018

Have you read Paid Applications Agreement, Schedule 2, Section 3.8(b)?

If you’ve ever submitted an app to the App Store, you know the frustration when Apple rejects your submission. Even more so when you thought you’d followed all the rules. As it turns out, Apple can bury requirements wherever they want, and it’s your burden to keep up.

About a year ago, Apple started rejecting apps that didn’t comply with Schedule 2, Section 3.8(b) of the Paid Applications Agreement, a verbose list of self-evident truths about subscriptions. The Paid Applications Agreement is a 37-page document that you had to agree to before you could submit your app. It is only available via iTunes Connect in the form of downloadable PDF.

The actual contents of Schedule 2, Section 3.8(b):

I really like the part about privacy policies.

3.8(b) requires that you “clearly and conspicuously disclose to users” all of the above bullets. The first few items seem harmless enough but then we start to get off into the weeds.

Apple wants you to reproduce, “clearly and conspicuously”, all the details of auto-renewing subscriptions. This information should be part of the standard StoreKit subscription purchase flow. None of these bullets have anything app specific to them. They are just boilerplate legalese.

iOS’s purchase UI, more than enough information.

Apple has an iOS level user interface flow for in-app purchases that is quite good as of iOS 11. This view already covers most of the in-the-weeds bullets, except telling users about the 24-hour renewal policy.

Requiring every developer to implement their version of 3.8(b) is costly and creates a fractured experience for the user. Apple should be putting it in the standard sheet. But it’s Apple’s walled garden. When they say jump, you say “fine, whatever.”

How to Comply With 3.8(b)

According to recent rejections that I’ve seen (as of Jan. 8th, 2018), reviewers are being more particular about what your purchase flow requires. From a recent rejection:

Adding the above information to the StoreKit modal alert is not sufficient; the information must also be displayed within the app itself, and it must be displayed clearly and conspicuously during the purchase flow without requiring additional action from the user, such as opening a link.

All of the information in 3.8(b) must be “displayed clearly and conspicuously during the purchase flow without requiring additional action from the user, such as opening a link.” Your beautiful and compact purchase flow must include in it, somewhere, nine bullets written by a lawyer.

Confide, recently updated, achieved it with the following:

According to one reviewer, being below the fold with a leading arrow qualifies as “clearly and conspicuously.”

For another data point, I know of one recently rejected developer who had the same information, but in another view that was linked from the purchase flow with a button. This did not qualify (according to one reviewer).

A Template

Include a customized version of the following “clearly and conspicuously” in your purchase flow:

A [purchase amount and period] purchase will be applied to your iTunes account [at the end of the trial or intro| on confirmation].

Subscriptions will automatically renew unless canceled within 24-hours before the end of the current period. You can cancel anytime with your iTunes account settings. Any unused portion of a free trial will be forfeited if you purchase a subscription.

For more information, see our [link to ToS] and [link to Privacy Policy].

Put it on the screen where you initiate the in-app purchase, below the fold might be OK, but you might want to put something to lead users there.

UPDATE: Readers are telling me it may also be required that you include it in your app store description. It’s a much easier change to include so I recommend you add it there to.

Why has Apple Taken a Legal Problem and made it Ours?

Apple shouldn’t be burying submission requirements in the bodies of contracts that nobody will read. If Apple wants developers to know something, they should put it in the App Store Guidelines, HIG, or developer documentation. The cost of making changes in a software project right at the end can be astronomical. Dropping a bomb like this on developers at submission shows a total lack of regard for our costs.

Why didn’t they just update the iOS in-app purchase sheet? I speculate that Apple discovered some legal exposure from in-app subscriptions and fixed it with lawyers instead of designers. This problem could be universally solved with an iOS update, but I think some side effect of Apple being a vast, lumbering bureaucracy made forcing 3.8(b) onto developers the more politically convenient path. Apple, if you are reading this, please either update the iOS sheet or move the requirements to the App Store guidelines, so fewer developers get caught unawares.

RevenueCat is the best way to implement subscriptions in your mobile app. We handle all the complicated parts so you can get back to building. Request an invite today at https://www.revenuecat.com/

The Video Game Experience

The Video Game Experience

Hardik Gandhi   January 09, 2018

 

Table of Contents:

1. Top Three & Honourable Mentions
2. First Person & Third Person
3. Roleplaying & Strategy and Tactics
4. Independent & Virtual Reality

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Independent

Best: Rumu

Rumu is a very unique game, and of all the games on this list, I think it’s the one that has the most unique UI. This is most likely due to the fact that Rumu has pioneered the ‘Sentient Vaccuum Cleaner’ genre, and there’s simply no game similar enough to pull inspiration from. Because of this, I’ll briefly summarise the elements I liked the most, so you have an idea of what I’m talking about.

It’s fitting, then, that Rumu’s UI pulls from a number of different genres and also remains quite unique. Rumu (The titular vacuum cleaner himself) has a radial menu to manage it’s quest log and inventory. That’s about where the traditional UI ends, and you start to see some bespoke elements.

Tutorial tips for controls appear outside the environments. This is a nice detail, as it serves not only to communicate the key bind but also as a hint of what you’re supposed to do in any given space.

A similar method is used for doorways or vent spaces — each is earmarked with text or iconography to indicate whether the player can pass through. The difference is actually really important, because it serves to split how the player treats information throughout the game — if the information is inside the room, it’s something to be learned. If it exists outside of the game space, it’s something that little Rumu already knows.

There’s a ‘Datavision’ function that allows Rumu to see how the various smart devices and intractable objects connect. It’s a great way to declutter the environments when the player is being task oriented, and it also often hides hidden easter eggs or gadgets.

One of the smartest UX features of Rumu is how it uses it’s palette and art style to generate emotion. A clean, white kitchen feels calm and simple, while crawling through vents on a sinister dark background gives the game a sense of urgency and danger.

Rumu is beautiful, functional, unique, and incredibly evocative. It’s UX blends perfectly with the narrative of the game, and aids in the storytelling.

Conclusion:
Independent developers are constantly coming up with new, interesting ways to interact with their games. There’s even a few on this list: Hand of Fate 2 and Tooth of Tail both innovate in a well-trodden genre.

Rumu’s a little different, because the robot vacuum cleaner genre isn’t quite as mature as, say, first person shooters. Despite this, the interactions in Rumu feel natural; the spacial and diagetic elements are what I’d expect a robo-vacuum to see in the world, and the meta UI tips help move the player along without breaking the (sometimes literal) fourth wall.

I look forward to seeing the robot vacuum cleaner genre evolve.

Worst: Stationeers

Picking this game sparked an internal debate in my mind over having a ‘Worst’ section at all, but in the end I decided it’s always better to get your feelings out than internalise them.

I really enjoyed Stationeers; I played almost six hours straight in my first run through. It’s an incredibly complex space space station construction game. Most of it’s UI is inoffensive: a simple HUD with your vitals and atmosphere stats, and a slot-based inventory system.

It all falls apart for me in the item management. Rather than go into specifics, I’ll give you an example: I need to take the empty battery out of my welding torch, and replace it with a full one.

I have to press 5 to open my tool belt, use the scroll wheel to highlight the torch, press F to put it in my hand, press R to open the torch’s inventory, press E to change hands, press F to move the batter into my free hand.

Now I press 2 to open my suit inventory, scroll wheel to an empty slot, press F to place the flat batter in there. Scroll wheel to the full battery, press F to place it in my off hand. Press E to change hands. Press R to open the torch inventory. Press E to change hands. Press F to place the battery in.

That’s…15 key presses. I can see what they were going for with this system, but there’s got to be a better way.

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Virtual Reality

Best: Lone Echo

If UX as a practice is still in it’s infancy, UX for VR is a single-celled organism attempting mitosis for the first time. Nobody really has any idea what’s going to work and what’s not going to work, and so many games have great executions with a poor UX.

Lone Echo feels like someone looking at what VR will be doing five years from now, and dragged it screaming back into 2017. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that Lone Echo’s UX will help define the future of virtual and augmented reality interfaces.

There’s no HUD in Lone Echo, instead opting to have your UI displayed from various arm-mounted gadgetry. Jack, the player character, has a number of controls and panels along his suit, each of which the player can interact with to reveal various elements interfaces.

This actually annoyed me at first — I wasn’t sure why a robot need any sort of interface at all. However, the interactions available are just so neat and genuinely enjoyable, it becomes a very small nitpick. You will also witness other characters in the game use the same interface, which gives some internal consistency to the game.

Talking to someone, for example, is a matter of simply looking at them and tapping a button the controller. This spawns a list of dialogue options that you select with your finger. It’s a simple thing, but being able to quickly interact with the object your looking at feels great.

Any panels you summon are intractable with your hand. You can scroll and tap like you would on an iPad. It feels completely natural to work with, and there were very few times after the opening minutes where I had trouble with this interaction style.

Similarly, Jack’s wrist holds a number of functions and features that are activated using your opposite hand. Slide across your forearm to open your objectives. Tap the top of your wrist for your scanner, or the side of your wrist for your welder. The interactions are so second-nature after having used them a few times that I found myself not even looking at my hands as I did these simple tasks.

Most of what you see in Lone Echo comes from somewhere. The locomotion, the dialogues, the tool interactions, are all borrowed from games that have come before it. Lone Echo proves that these interactions are unequivocally the right way to do them, and if done right, can be so immersive and intuitive that the player doesn’t have to remember them, they just become the way things are done.

Just like the brilliant writing and slick graphics, Lone Echo’s UX is the reason it’s such a successful game. It keeps the player completely immersed in everything they’re doing, no matter how complex the task. At it’s best, the interactions in Lone Echo are actually fun to use. Menus that are fun! If that’s not a revolution, I don’t know what is.

Conclusion:
The most immersive experience I’ve ever had in a video game. Lone Echo bends over backwards to put you in the moment with objects that behave like the user expects they should, and an environment that is consistently interactive.

Lone Echo isn’t held back by trying to fit it’s UI into it’s narrative — it’s built it’s entire user experience around the narrative, instead. Lone Echo sets the standard for VR UX to come.

Worst: None

It’s a cop out, I know. Truth be told, I haven’t played a VR game that released in 2017 that had any truly awful UX. There’s plenty of games that make some missteps, or the occasional obvious error, but this is going to happen with a still-growing genre like virtual reality. For now, VR gets a pass.

If you got this far, thanks for reading! Hopefully you found something interesting in my choices. Please feel free to comment with your opinions, especially if there’s something great that I missed.

I’m

Who owns the internet?

Who owns the internet?

Hardik Gandhi   January 09, 2018

Six perspectives on net neutrality

This week, the Federal Communications Commission will vote on the future of net neutrality. Whether you’ve been following the political back and forth, skimming the headlines, or struggling to decode acronyms, the decision will have an impact on what we can do online (and who can afford to do it). Because the internet has effectively been free and open since the day it was born, it’s easy to lose sight of the impact this vote will have.

The reality is, the internet is a fragile thing. Open, crazy, weird spaces where people swap stories and secrets, create rad digital art projects, type furiously and freely with people seven time zones away — these spaces are rare. People build them, people sustain them, and now, people are trying to restrict them. If this week’s vote passes — which is looking increasingly likely — the internet’s gatekeepers will have more control over their gates than ever before.

Because we live and breathe the internet, laugh and cry on the internet, connect with people who’ve tangibly changed our lives on the internet, we decided to gather some perspectives on this moment in time. Why it matters, how we got here, and what the future may hold. Here are some of the most insightful essays we’ve found on Medium to help us make sense of the fight to keep the net wild and free.

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In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. Now, he’s defending it. “I want an internet where consumers decide what succeeds online, and where ISPs focus on providing the best connectivity,” Berners-Lee emphasizes. Content and connectivity are two distinct markets, and they must remain separate. Conflating them risks blocking innovation, free expression, and the kind of creativity that can only thrive online.

What’s happening now is not just about net neutrality, law professor Lawrence Lessig argues, but about the foundations of our democracy. Tracing the history of the concept from its origins in the aughts (one of his students, Tim Wu, coined the term “net neutrality”), Lessig sees the rollback of Obama-era regulations as a symptom of a larger issue: a democracy that doesn’t serve its people.

Through statistical analysis and natural language processing, data scientist Jeff Kao shows that millions of pro-repeal comments submitted to the FCC were faked. Organic public comments, according to Kao’s analysis, overwhelmingly supported preserving existing regulations. The report calls into question the legitimacy of the FCC’s comment process, and the basis of chairman Pai’s intention to roll back regulations.

In part one of a five-part series on net neutrality, computer scientist Tyler Elliot Bettilyon takes us back to FDR’s New Deal. Piecing together the history of “common carrier” laws — those that govern everything from shipping to telephone lines — Bettilyon contextualizes today’s fight for a free and open internet.

Social psychologist E Price interrogates the idea that the internet we’ve grown to love is really as “free and open” as we’d like to think. “Internet activity is already deeply centralized,” Erika writes, and major social media sites are today’s answer to the Big Three TV networks of a few decades ago. The internet is closer to cable than we think, and it’s (probably) about to get even closer.

Why should the internet be a public utility? Economist umair haque debunks the “competition will lower prices” argument against internet regulation, and makes a compelling case for why going online, “just like water, energy, and sanitation,” should be a basic right: “It dramatically elevates our quality of life, best and truest when we all have free and equal access to it.”

Visit battleforthenet to write or call your congressperson in advance of the vote. You can also text a few words of your choice to Resistbot.

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Stop texting and driving, through empathy.

Stop texting and driving, through empathy.

Hardik Gandhi   January 07, 2018

Everyday I commute to work or drive I notice the amount of drivers that still text and drive. Observing drivers next to me as I pass them by while they go below the speed limit to “stay safe,” or seeing the person in front looking down every two seconds from their side view mirror, It’s alarming.

Who or what so important to risk lives for over a text message? Boss? Significant other? Do you think their recipient would continue the conversation knowing they were on the road? Probably not.

If you’ve ever texted and drove while with friends, did they tell you to stop? I hope they did, or you need new friends; just kidding, maybe…

Simple Implementation

If a sender is going at a speed faster than 10 miles per hour, the recipient would see a message displaying the speed below. (See image)

Privacy

Is it a privacy concern to allow recipients of messages to see you’re driving? I think not. Don’t want them to know? Then don’t text them!

With the new iOS driving feature that auto texts back, perhaps the speed doesn’t need to display since it was an auto generated text message.

Disable / Passenger?

If a passenger is texting, well…it will also show your speed, however it could be possible to implement a feature that only shows the speed once. Another option would be if a user types along the lines of “no I am not driving” it stops displaying speed.

Using the honor system and the thought that someone wouldn’t lie to a loved one about texting and driving, this feature would be quite effective to help stop people from texting while driving.

Empathy through others.

Imagine you’re texting your significant other, parents, or siblings, someone you care about. The speed is displayed so they ask if you’re driving — are you really going to lie to continue the conversation? I’d hope you stop, or your recipient stops responding.

It’s a very simple implementation that I feel through empathy of people that care about you, would cause offenders to stop. If it’s really important call them hands free!

What are your thoughts? Be sure to follow me as I do a larger case study on this idea that rewards drivers for not texting and driving!