7: Exclusion in design, gut versus procedure & packaging design

By Team Stark • Issue #7 • View online

Hey! Welcome to A Stark Difference in Design: A collection of articles, news and inspiration on designing world-class products for everyone. We try to curate signal in a world full of noise. 📝

Tidbits from the web

By Rebecca Bedrossian, Global Content Director, POSSIBLE

+ Recognizing exclusion is the key to inclusive design

…recognizing exclusion is a skill we can build. It’s an actionable starting point for thinking in new ways about how well a design does or doesn’t meet a person’s needs or preferences. Once we learn how to recognize exclusion, we can begin to see where a product or experience that works well for some might have barriers for someone else. Recognizing exclusion sparks a new kind of creativity on how a solution can be better.

Packaging that gamers with disabilities can open with just teeth

+ Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller packaging

In a previous newsletter, we highlighted Microsoft’s Adaptive Controller for gamers with disabilities. Completely wowing the community with the product, they went ahead took it up a notch with their beautifully designed packaging that can be opened by using teeth alone.

No annoying twists or ties, the packaging (including the outside) includes loops, multiple access points, hinges, levers, and ribbons to make it as easy as possible to unbox it. Well done, Microsoft. What a well executed design challenge we’ve yet to see until now. 👏🏼

Trust your instincts or rely on procedure

+ Trust your instincts or rely on procedure — when to design with intuition

Your design instincts, formed in the years of practicing your craft, should not be easily dismissed. Your intuition and instincts are not something to be afraid of or embarrassed by. But they are not something to blindly follow either. Only when you are fully aware of trade-offs will you be able to design faster by relying on your intuition and design better by properly exploring and iterating.

We’d argue this is one of the best design articles we’ve ever read. It touches on a controversial topic in the design community and lays out the pros and cons to said scenario(s). We love the quadrant design illustrated to help determine when to design with intuition versus procedure. Ultimately arguing: what’s the cost of being wrong?

Bookworms

+ The Code Book

The Code Book tells the story of the most powerful intellectual weapon ever known: secrecy.

Throughout the text are clear technical and mathematical explanations, and portraits of the remarkable personalities who wrote and broke the world’s most difficult codes. Accessible, compelling, and remarkably far-reaching, this book will forever alter your view of history and what drives it. It will also make you wonder how private that e-mail you just sent really is.

Updates on Stark:

Using Stark for Sketch to measure color accessibility

+ Using Stark to measure color accessibility

This should truly be something that should become part of your every day as a designer working with UI design or any type of design really; to be able to check how the world is seeing or interacting with my design.

Thank you Alberto Orsini for the awesome video showcasing how you use Stark as part of your workflow to design Refine AI.

+ Complete the survey, win a virtual hug!

We’re in the process of creating our roadmap for the next 12 months. We got tons of great insight so far. Including this one last time. If you love Stark, and haven’t filled it out yet, we’d really appreciate it.

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Liked this newsletter? Let us know! We’re always talking shop on Twitter @getstarkco.

⚫️ The Stark Crew ⚪️

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