Linda Rosa

My little corner of the Internet: Products, Tech, Design, Travel, DC Living 

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You can actually work super hard and give everything you have, and lose. It was the best message for me,” she said. “The reality is, sometimes, you lose. And you’re never too good to lose. You’re never too big to lose. You’re never too smart to lose. It happens and it happens when it needs to happen.

 From NYT “What Beyoncé Won Was Bigger Than a Grammy”  by Myles E. Johnson 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/opinion/what-beyonce-won-was-bigger-than-a-grammy.html

[lindabrosa]

📚Library of Congress - Young Readers Center 📚

This weekend the Library of Congress opens up a space to its young readers! The  Young Readers Center will makes its debut January 28th from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and remain open for readers age 16 and younger every Saturday.

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Indigo lunch for Friday team outing 🙏🏽 (at Indigo DC)

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Hello, kitty. Highly amused by the art-popup at The Fridge. (at The Fridge)

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Veterans in Tech

What are the best products created by vets? A collection on ProductHunt makes an attempt to find out! Add yours to the list, or upvote your favorites,

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Openair 2016: When Online and Offline Worlds Intersect

Airbnb is hosting a great event next month with industry leaders and technical talks focused on identity, trust, inclusion, and managing risks while connecting online and offline worlds. Check it out!

[lindabrosa]

Bring Your Own Team

We can’t always choose who we work with, or can we? Stripe is challenging applicants and future hires to come up with their ideal team. Work at Stripe with a set of coworkers who can help you achieve anything thrown at you....interesting concept don’t you think? Who would you choose? How big would your team be? What role would you take on? Take a chance, and apply! More about Stripe’s BYOT: https://stripe.com/blog/bring-your-own-team. .

[firsttimeux]

Reddit mobile app first time user experience

The good bits:

Reddit employs a free sample approach to onboarding. Sometimes, getting users immediately to content is all that’s needed. On app launch, users are shown a single value proposition screen which allows them to sign up or begin exploring via “Skip for now.”  The subsequent experience drives interest in deeper engagement by exposing popular posts (and their hilarious comments) in a breadth of categories. Reddit knows that its fresh content is what drives users, and that its website already provides that content account-free. Its mobile app doesn’t make the mistake of forcing all new users to have accounts or to have them watch an intro slideshow.

New users are able to fully explore all the subreddits Reddit offers in the second, “Categories” tab of the app.

The signup flow is simple, and it includes the ability to unmask their password as they type, and to continue using the app without being forced to exit for email verification.

Once an account is created, the new user receives a welcome message in the “Messages” tab to introduce them to the basics of contributing to Reddit. There is also a subreddit for community support at r/redditmobile.

To be improved:

When signed in, the new user will find their “Categories” tab evolved–in that it’s suddenly sparse. Unlike not-signed-in-users who see all categories exposed by default, account owners need to manually search for and subscribe to specific categories in order to make them display here.

Although new, account-less users can browse content, the majority of interactions in the app require an account. Instead of these interactions triggering opportunities to enter  Reddit’s signup flow, the app just shows repetitive toasts reminding the user that certain features are locked.

The app misses opportunities to leverage its empty states for education. Inline cues can be used to provide education on these blank slates, making something that is empty, actionable and informative. But Reddit’s app doesn’t use these to its advantage. Before a new user is signed up, for example, the content on the “Messaging" and “Profile” tabs is only that of a generic sign-up prompt. When the new user does sign up for an account, the new links shown in the “Profile” tab lead to either a blank screen or an unhelpful “Wow, such empty” message.

[lindabrosa]

Accessible Twitter: Add alt-tags to images within app

Today Twitter made advancements on its 4th most request feature:  The ability to provide alternative text for images! As of now, the feature is limited to their iOS and Android apps. See how it works, and learn more about Alt text support for Twitter cards and the REST API image from twitter’s blog

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All about the Kit

Fascinating work announced today by Apple on the intersection of health and tech: “Mount Sinai and Stanford Medicine will be the first ResearchKit developers to use the new 23andMe tool, which will be available later this month. Mount Sinai's Asthma Health app tracks the symptoms of more than 8,800 iOS users with asthma to determine potential triggers of attacks. Stanford's MyHeart Counts app follows the physical activity of 50,000 iOS users to figure out ways to prevent heart disease. Any 23andMe customers involved in these two studies can upload their genetic data to the apps after giving informed consent. via Verge” 1. Genetic testing company 23andMe created a tool to help researchers using Apple’s ResearchKit integrate genetic information. Read more 2. CareKit is intended to help developers build apps that track users’ health data. The open sourced framework will become available in April.  3. First CareKit app is for Parkinson’s. The app helps Parkinsons patients track their medicines with a ‘Care Card,’ as well as log their progress throughout the day. Patients can send that information and health updates to their doctors, who can then update their treatments and medicine within the app. Read more here

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Employee Experience Almost a year ago, Airbnb announced a shift in its people and operations departments shifting human resources programs as we know it. It would focus on “workplace as an experience” and work toward enhancing and supporting this experience. Mark Levy, Global Head of Employee Experience at Airbnb, defined the move as:

“At Airbnb we are focused on bringing to life our mission of creating a world where you can #belonganywhere, by creating memorable workplace experiences which span all aspects of how we relate to employees, including how we recruit them, develop them, the work environment we create with them, the type of volunteer experiences we offer them, and the food we share together.

I’m curious to learn more about these efforts and lessons learned -- do you know of any other companies taking on different approaches to HR over the past year?

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Point of Cloud exhibit at the DC Yards Parks #publicart

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EarlGrey

Google announced it has open-sourced EarlGrey, a testing framework for iOS apps. 

NextWeb describes it as:

EarlGrey offers features like built-in synchronization that makes it easier to write tests, as well as extensible components for determining element selection and interaction.

EarlGrey is now found on Github.

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Refresh DC: Inclusive Design

There’s a neat Refresh event tomorrow night on inclusive Design for various audience needs. One of my favorite topics, so I’ll be there! If you care to join,  details below or sign up!

No Screen First: An Evolving Approach for an Inclusive Audience What is a “visualization” for someone who can’t see? How do you take something inherently visual—a rich, highly interactive data visualization—and make it usable for people across the spectrum of visual impairment, from color deficiency to blindness? How can we evolve our design and development approach to create solutions that work for everyone? Senior Designer, Nguyet Vuong and Web Developer, Tommy O’Keefe from Atlantic Media Strategies team up to discuss what it means to design and develop for an inclusive audience in an agency setting and how no-screen-first is their evolving approach to integrating accessibility into their workflow. They’ll explore strategies and discuss learnings for creating accessible experiences that are inclusive and future-friendly Getting to ISLISL is located at 641 S St. NW (1st Floor) in DC's historic Shaw neighborhood, just around the corner from the Shaw-Howard station on Metro's Green and Yellow lines. We'll kick things off promptly at 7pm but come by a little early to get settled!

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Instagram Two-Factor Authentication, Keeping Your Photos Secured

Today, Instagram announced it will start offering two factor authentication for user logins. According to Wired, 

“When you opt in to the two-factor system, first you’ll need to give Instagram your phone number. Then whenever you enter your username and password, you’ll get texted a string of additional digits. Pop that single-use code into Instagram, and you’re in. “

What’s the difference between two-step authentication and two-factor authentication? Good question!

 I liked the definitions from the good ole’ folks on Stackoverflow: Single-factor authentication, e.g.: PIN or password. Two-factor authentication, e.g.: Single-factor plus a software- or hardware-generated token code, or a smart card. "Two-step" authentication, e.g.: Single-factor plus a code sent to the user out-of-band. Usually, the second step in two-step authentication involves the user receiving a code via e-mail or SMS and entering it alongside (or after) their pin/password on the website/app being used. The e-mail inbox or receiving phone could be considered as "something you have", thus qualifying this as two-factor authentication. However, the code that is actually used (and the credentials used to access the account/device which receives the code) in the second step is still a "something you know".

Safe Instagramming!

[lindabrosa]

What is success?What is happiness? What am I working toward?

Delivering Happiness, Tony Hseih. pg. 52

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Design + Agency

Today, InVision hosted an event on design & agency with designers from the New York area. It was live streamed (recording will be posted soon.) Follow the conversations on Twitter using #DesignPlus. My favorite #DesignPlus live tweets posted by @InvisionApp: 1. Don't waste your time. Make things you love. 2. Remember that your design lead doesn't always have the answers.Your relationship is a collaboration. 3. Celebrate little wins every day to build a culture of optimism and happiness. 4. Do pro bono work to stay inspired! Do not spend your day just working for a paycheck. Share your talent with people who need it. 5.. Valuable creative advice: "don't take it personally," "learn to say no (but make it sound like yes," "do stuff you're proud of."