Rounding Third

Hello

We hope this latest edition of Rounding Third finds you well. If this issue had a theme, it would probably be "hot takes". We've gathered some interesting opinions on topics we've been discussing at the office for months, everything from Google's aggressive pursuit of a more secure Internet to the underappreciated importance of microcopy.

Inside Baseball

February / March Update: Improving Lists

Check out this month's update on the blog to see our design solution for customizing table columns in Ballpark's list views.

Water Cooler

Why Shortcuts Matter for Accessibility

Apple’s new Shortcuts app for iPad and iPhone can make common tasks way more convenient for everyone, but it’s an accessibility game changer. - Kerry

Moneyball

The Resilience of Costco

In business, one of the trickiest things to identify is what you actually sell. What does a creative agency sell, actually? Is it hours? Results? Sketch files? Code? Branding? Advice? Process? It’s a hard question to answer. Think about Costco: do they sell bulk products that have been curated for their value? Or, are they selling access to those things? Check out this slide deck to see why knowing what you sell can help you build a resilient business. - JD

Tools of the Trade

UIRecipes: Learn UI Design in 15 Minutes A Week

These days, it’s easier than ever for designers to find examples of slick and trendy UI patterns. But just because it’s pretty, is it the right solution from a UX perspective?

UI Recipes helps designers navigate this tension. Each week, they pick a specific user task and analyze the latest design trends and best practices for usability. This gets turned into actionable UI guidelines for designing a similar task, which are sent out via email every Wednesday at 10 am.

These “recipes” are a great way for non-designers to learn UI design by following the best practices, and for designers to quickly find various ways of solving a design problem for a given user task.

It’s well worth the 15 minutes, and even better, it’s free. - Matt

Pushing the Pixels

Ideo breaks its silence on design thinking’s critics

I had trouble deciding how to summarize this article because it's about 95% longer than it needs to be. It should be titled "guy says people complaining about his thing aren't doing it right." Pick your favorite summary below:

Option 1: Ideo partner Michael Hendrix brings us this week's new phrase: "theater of innovation".

Option 2: Ideo partner Michael Hendrix has a message to all the design thinking haters: you're doing it wrong.

Option 3: It takes more than "a bunch of Sharpie markers and Post-its" to be innovative.

- John

How to Think like a Front-End Developer with Eric Meyer

Chris Coyier, Dave Rupert, and Eric Meyer grapple with a harder-than-expected question: Do you consider yourself a front-end developer? - Andrew

A Brief History of the Numeric Keypad

This story has a strong 99% Invisible vibe (see the Octothorpe episode) which means I love everything about it. We learn about cash registers, calculators, telephones, and usability studies conducted by psychologists in the 50s and 60s. And, if you can read Latvian, there’s an older, similar article referenced in the comments. - Patrick

Git Push, Git Paid

Google and HTTP

Dave Winer makes a strong, if defensive, counterargument against Google’s push to make HTTPS the new standard web protocol. - Andrew

How my role as CTO has changed as we've grown to 100 engineers

As a fan of Gusto, I enjoyed reading this blog post from one of the founders on how his job changed from coding to being a people manager along with the growth of the company. - Caitlin

Inspirational Things

My Favourite Microcopy

The tiniest bits of copy are sometimes the difference between a mediocre user experience and a truly rad one. Here are some great examples of on-brand microcopy that helps users understand what’s next, why this, and how to choose between options. - Kerry

Apple’s New Map

An in-depth comparative analysis of Apple's new maps versus the old ones. Incredible detail! – Calvin

Closer

That's it for this month. We'll see you right back here in your inbox at the end of April.