Dirk HCM van Boxtel

Dirk HCM van Boxtel

Community Staff Sydney Australia & the Netherlands Waldorf & Statler @ the balcony (creative director & digital strategist) Joined almost 10 years ago via an invitation from Dave T.

  • 26 stories
  • 1505 comments
  • 569 upvotes
  • Posted to Are design articles ruining your product?, in reply to Jake Fleming , Feb 03, 2022

    How 'bout now?

    0 points
  • Posted to Is human-centered design causing us suffering?, Sep 03, 2019

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

    And a good day to you too! :]

    9 points
  • Posted to What do you look for in a note taking app?, Feb 03, 2019

    Easy and/or smart tagging/grouping.

    Trick is I want to be able to find notes at my whim.

    I have tonnes. And some of them are more serious than others. being able to find them would be awesome.

    I mainly use Google Keep and Evernote, for two "levels" of notes. Keep is simple and quick (grocery-list type), whereas Evernote are serious, informative and tend to be longer.

    I use mobile, native and in-browser, depending on where I am.

    Hope that gives some perspective on my request :)

    0 points
  • Posted to Do you read «Case studies» and find it useful?, in reply to Corin Edwards , Dec 06, 2018

    Any place that writes their copy in a hierarchically cascading way really :) there's tonnes!

    One of my favourite articles is this one, for that very reason:

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-16/north-korea-missile-range-map/8880894

    3 points
  • Posted to Do you read «Case studies» and find it useful?, in reply to Paul Mit , Dec 05, 2018

    The article you just linked? Yeah! Works pretty well!

    I'd still like some of the content to be in bold so we could quickly be able to read the highlighted part to dive 1 level deeper without reading every single word :) Just like in this paragraph right here. See how it still says the same thing when you only read the bold part?

    1 point
  • Posted to Do you read «Case studies» and find it useful?, in reply to Paul Mit , Dec 05, 2018

    By that, I was referring to anything that's easy to absorb in as little time as possible.

    It means strong headlines that state the contents of the paragraphs underneath, short paragraphs each containing its own piece of information, and highlighted (bold) core sentences that, when scanned, still tell the whole story.

    I'm a copy-writer myself so I'm going to shamelessly link to my own article here. Since those are the things I think about while I write.

    https://medium.com/@aboutadirk/useful-feedback-a-lesson-in-communication-7946784ccb1d

    It's not a case study, but it's the writing style that allows you to quickly take in the contents.

    3 points
  • Posted to Do you read «Case studies» and find it useful?, Dec 04, 2018

    I read anything I can get my grubby hands on, as long as it contains information related to the topic I'm trying to learn more about.

    And if it's written in a smart way (scannable) I'll absorb even more of it.

    3 points
  • Posted to Useful feedback: a lesson in communication (... just make it POP!), in reply to Adam Fisher-Cox , Dec 03, 2018

    Conditioning, phrasing, they all matter.

    For me, that's worked in the past, and will work in the future, because I say it candidly.

    Perhaps for you, it could work better to say "that's great! but between you and I, ultimately, it's really not about whether you and I like it or not - but more about whether this gets the job done!"

    Or whatever wording fits you best.

    The idea is that rejection of a compliment allows you to also reject the opposite. It sets a precedence. That's how the brain works anyway - if you reject the positive, you can refer to that later as an example of how "I don't like" is a lot like "I do like", in nature.

    0 points
  • Posted to Useful feedback: a lesson in communication (... just make it POP!), Dec 03, 2018

    This article by the way, was made possible by you guys here on DN :]

    I've had so many discussions about this topic here, that I felt like actually writing about it.

    I don't think I'll ever write about a topic that I care more about than this particular one. I feel we have a lot to work on, both to change our own thinking and behaviour, and to change public perception about us designers.

    Anyway, would love for this to spark some debate over here on DN as well.

    It's a topic that's worth talking about. Life's all about empathy and understanding each-other. This means us understanding our stakeholders, as well as the other way around.

    Stay awesome peeps ♥

    0 points
  • Posted to Microsoft’s new Office icons, Dec 03, 2018

    Let me phrase this differently:

    Pretty implies taste (all about looks)

    • On-brand implies it fits with the rest of the site
    • They stand out implies they're different from the rest
    • Visual cohesion implies the design has consistency and isn't all over the place
    • Fitting the brief implies you met a goal as to the looks

    Et cetera.

    "Pretty" is in the eye of the beholder, and a terrible measuring stick. Especially when the stakeholder is not the same as the target audience (90+% of the time the case)

    So I guess my point is - let's ditch the subjective words. Let's make this about WHY things look a certain way. Not about "how we feel", but about "how we think".

    And before someone goes there: if the goal is to make an audience feel [x], then the question becomes: why do we think this make the audience feel [x]. So when someone says "this doesn't make me feel [x]", we can argue that it makes the target audience feel that because of reasons y/z. It's always back to what we know.

    .edit: we've got ALL these rules on what's aesthetically pleasing. Golden rule, rule of threes, reasons why certain colours resonate with certain emotions or audiences, research into what fonts read best, what fonts read worst, and why sometimes a worse reading experience makes people retain information better... THAT is what we should be using to discuss and argue. Not "yeah, well, that's just like, your opinion, man."

    0 points
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