Meow Media

I write about good and bad designs. Most of them are concrete, some are abstract, and once in a while things that are just unexplainable.

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Different problems requires different solutions

In the software development world, people would often go extra miles fighting over about what things are superior over others. A couple of examples:

“X CSS naming convention is better than Y!”

“X language is more versatile than Y!”

“X framework offers more functionalities than Y!”

... And that’s just silly.

While I am sure that certain things or methodologies can be used across different projects, comparing them as if they are the only answers to everything doesn’t make much sense. This is even truer for larger projects where many more considerations have to be made in order to bring them to fruition.

So don’t hesitate to incorporate new practices or frameworks into your projects if they seem like a good match.

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I vote to talk about voting.

Back when presidential election was taking place in 2012, there were a bunch of students at the university rallying for campaigns and encouraging people to vote.

One day, while I was walking towards the student union with a friend, we crossed paths with two girls wearing similar shirts with some sort of political slogan printed on them. They saw us and yelled out "don't forget to vote".

My buddy responded with a laugh and the phrase "no thanks", before turning to me and nonchalantly offered his explanation, "I don't care, it's pointless".

I can still vividly recall the face full of disapproval seen on those two pretty faces.

There are two things we can learn from this incident:

1) Just let people do whatever the hell they want. It's none of anybody business as long as they are not breaking the law or causing direct harm to another person.

2) Suffrage is an important right; not many governments in this world provide that option to their citizens. That said, nobody truly knows the politicians other than themselves and investing all of your trust and emotions into somebody else is a dangerous act. If you are voting, don't do it just because you think that one person is going to solve all of the existing problems of this nation—do it because this is one of the most precious ways that you can fully exercise your freedom to think and act.

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Don’t hide your warning message.

I noticed something wrong when I was trying to order from Ted’s Bulletin: It wouldn’t let me add my order.

Curiously curious. Did I not complete the form? Or did I missed anything else?

Well, it turned out that there’s a maximum character limit to the optional instructions text field, but the warning message was hidden underneath it the form as it is a scrollable frame.

I wonder how many orders have they lost because of this little pesky issue.

[meowmedia]

A Perfect Job Is like a Used Diaper Without Poop.

"I have never worked a day in my life because I enjoy what I do."

This statement occasionally comes up when reading some artist/entrepreneur/(insert whatever occupation) talking about their career.

Seems rather questionable to me. I would think that even with the best career in the world, there would be things that you have to deal with that are not so enjoyable or tedious that would feel like work after all. Because perfection doesn't actually exist.

No human is perfect, thus by extension no society is perfect. Since everyone single of us has to operate within a society, how can there be such thing as a perfect career?

My guesses are either (1) they said because it sounds good even though it's far from the truth, or (2) they have romanticized their experience in the memory—Just like we would like to think our childhood being happy and carefree, but forgetting the fact that there you were often walking around with poops in your diaper.

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I recently gave my old laptop away so I needed to make some changes to various application account settings, such as deactivate the link of my Dropbox account.

Naturally, I got on its security settings page, unlinked all the inactive devices associated with the account... And then I noticed that it says the two-step verification is “Disable”? I was just using it a minute ago.

Turns out that it is just a function for disabling 2FA, not that the 2FA itself is “disable(d)”. A bit confusing there.

One way to improve this might be to indicate the info of the activation in the default text color and display something along the line of “Activated on 07/07/2015” with the “Disable” function on the side.

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I was going through my newsletter stack today and came across this article. Before I delved into the article, I toggle these options back and forth a few times. The author basically provided two versions of the article for the reader: One that contains the entire article, and another one with a one-paragraph summary on top and extra sections unexpanded at the bottom.

This allows the reader to choose which version to read depending on the time available at hand.

Cool stuff.

[meowmedia]

I recently signed up a Slack account for my team. While pleasantly surprised how well the app works, I wasn't seeing any of my team members sign up for it.

Guess what? Turned out that their custom domain sign up page (name.slack.com/signup) doesn't explain what Slack does.

Of course people aren't going to sign up for unknown things.

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I like small, pleasant surprises—Things that cause the corner of my mouth to raise a bit.

This is a screenshot from Kickstarter's search page. As you can see, the search takes three criteria: A category, a location, and a sorting method. Well, instead of using the standard location keyword of "International", they chose to use "Earth". Also, "Magic" is one of the search criteria, although I am quite sure the it is not actually sorted using magic.

Nothing fancy here, just cheeky enough to differentiate itself from other sites' search pages.

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I hope Adobe would understand that, as I login in as a paid subscriber, I am not looking for a trial or choosing a plan, but only to download the CC apps.

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Play Framework has a debatable solution for downloading their logos: You right click the logo on top left corner of the page.

Unlike some other open source sites that host their logos on a separate page, such as Node.js, which can be found with just a quick Google search, Play Framework's approach makes it almost impossible to be found, unless stumbled upon by chance. 

[meowmedia]

Roommates.com has a very deceptive practice of luring you in to pay for their service.

Their dark pattern works like this: You sign up for an account to search for rental postings, and it prompts you through a process of setting up your account. It then takes you to a page that list all the matches with some basic info of each one. After you look through most of them, you chose a few candidates and you send them a message, hoping to get in touch and talk about the listing... But once you have received a mail, you cannot open it without paying for an upgrade. At this point, I pretty much guarantee that you would be thinking "I have to pay? Why didn't they tell me?"

It would be understandable if, during the registration process, you are clearly notified that certain features are only available to paid users. However, there is no heads-up in the registration steps, and you won't find out about these restrictions until you run into them later on, such as viewing higher resolution photos - Or in this case, opening a message sent out by another user - By then, you are more eager to pay for an upgrade than ever. 

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My boss interrupted my team in the middle of a brainless discussion (we were talking about how the US gov's "alien registration code" is not being used correctly to address extraterrestrial life form), and cheerfully recommended us to try out the Glide app.

Upon opening the app, I recorded a few video messages to send to GlideBot, and deleted them to check the handling of message deletion... And I noticed something: The deleted videos take up as much space as the undeleted ones, and you cannot interact with them. Which means, if for any reason you end up having to delete a dozen of videos inside a chat session, it will occupy a significant chunk of screen estate that results into multiple swiping.

Currently, it doesn't seem like Glide allows its user to download the recorded video. In this case, the only way to keep the videos is make sure you don't leave a chat session. So, if you are a goofball like me, you will end up deleting a ton of videos afterward... Less swiping will at least (hopefully) prevent you from getting repetitive strain injury.

[meowmedia]

Another "Unsubscribe" Not Done Right

I signed up an account on 500px few weeks ago to test their service. However, due to the fact that I am not much of a photographer, I have not logged on since then.

Today, I received this email from them. After a quick thought through, I came to the realization that I would never use their service again. So I scrolled down to the bottom of the email expecting an "unsubscribe" button:

... Except there isn't one. Instead, I saw a link that says "Manage your email notifications."

So I clicked that, and this is the page that opened up:

... I am quite disappointed.

There are two mysteries here. First is the absence of "unsubscribe" button: Why is it not in the email? Second, there are 13 checkboxes: Why isn't there a master option that checks/unchecks everything all at once? Better yet - Get the first step done right and you won't have to worry about the second one.

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Viral Doza uses a growth technique that I called "click robbery". In this case, the last picture is locked until you click on the Facebook like button or the Twitter share button. 

Interestingly, an identical article is also featured on Viral Nova, except the last picture is not locked.

Upon a closer look, the distinction between the two is that Viral Doza doesn't provide any info regarding the site owner or its background, while Viral Nova does. This led me to suspect that if Viral Doza is simply a copycat... Not cool, Doza, not cool.

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Stuff 'bout Dropbox for Team

Since my team has been using Dropbox altogether, it has branched out to more people throughout the organization. As you might have already guessed, a handful of people using the same Dropbox account to store and share large amount of files is a nightmare. As people have different ways of organizing (or messing) their files, it naturally becomes so that files are misplaced, naming conventions are violated, duplicates exist all over the place… so on and so on.

In this situation, I think the most productive solution is to have a main filing manager - that is somebody that is responsible for archiving and marking the major files that are shared among the team mates, before they are shoved into random corners of the Dropbox. At the same time, each individual team member creates a working file folder that is listed under their name (or project name, if more than a few people is involved or it is a long term project), once a certain project is finished the individual will report to the organizing manager in order to have the file marked and stored properly.

This may reduce the time-wasting frustrations such as:

not being able to locate files because the file path is unknown or unclear

inconsistent naming convention that causes difficult searching 

important files that are accidentally deleted

[meowmedia]

For your digital enjoyment.