You can be sceptical of “design trends” in general, and “design trend lists” in particular, but the people at the awwwards see their fair share of outstanding web work.
So here’s their list of things they like (or see often enough to merit inclusion in this list)
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Our Attention Span is dropping
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Graphic showing the change in the rise and fall of attention to a subject.
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I love long-term studies that show how quantifiable phenomenons change - like the fact that the placebo effect is getting stronger, even though nobody knows why.
Recent research suggests that there is some evidence that our collective attention span is getting narrower.
The research performed by scientists at the Technical University of Denmark suggests that our interest in topics now rises more quickly, but also falls more quickly, generally reducing the time when something is considered “hot”.
And here’s the interesting thing: They found that this trend is not the result of fast paced social media or “snackable content” (is that still a thing?), but that it started at least 100 years ago.
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Runners talking about live, the world, and everything else - while running
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I don’t know about you, but when I exercise, I feel my mind and body connect to each other, and as an extension also to the rest of the world. It is during these times when I feel whole and complete in the most basic sense of the word.
No wonder you can make people open up and drop their defences and talk about what is really important to them while they run.
What a lovely film.
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The CIA’s Phoenix Checklist
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The most important thing about new endeavours is the setup - if you get the start right, everything down the road gets much easier.
While doing that it is equally important to think about what you’re about to do, and what you’re not going to do. What you do know, and what you don’t know.
What you need, and what you don’t need.
This allows you to identify your blind spots, biases and uncertainties early on, giving you the chance to either eradicate them, or incorporate them in your project setup.
For whatever reason, the CIA came up with what they called the “Phoenix Checklist” that is a pretty comprehensive set of questions to think about the problem you want to solve, and how you want to solve it.
Here are my favorite questions:
What isn’t the problem?
Wether it’s hard to answer this question or not is a direct indicator of how clearly defined your problem is. If you struggle answering this question in a clear, concise and confident manner, you do not understand the problem enough to start working on it.
It is still stuck in the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash, and your efforts might be unfocused and prone to outside intervention (read: a boss or client that keep changing their minds).
Suppose you find a problem related to yours that has already been solved. Can you use it? Can you use its method?
Most of the time, the methods we use to solve problems do not require our creativity. Applying those methods to the problem does. So, did you ever do a similar project? Do you know of a similar project done by someone else? Can you use their methods? If so, do. Steal like an artist.
And if you cannot think of another problem that looks similar, try this:
What is the unique set of qualities that makes this problem what it is and none other?
So, if this is a truly unique and new problem (for you), why is that so?
Answering this question creates a path that leads to two possible outcomes:
Either, it produces a list of characteristics that are new to you and need special care, or - if you come up empty - it shows you that this problem actually is not unique at all, allowing you to look for similar problems and the methods used to solve them (see above)
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This edition of Let’s be Fwends is a week late, and its logical predecessor (the edition scheduled for 24.4.) didn’t happen at all, so it looks like I finally not only dropped the ball but it also appears to have rolled into a remote corner of the living room that’s super hard to reach.
But nothing could be farther from the truth.
Well, I did drop the ball, kinda, but my excuse is pretty solid: Last month was completely filled by the task of moving our household from one end of Austria to the other one - in one Go, including a 12 month old toddler.
We moved from Vienna, the second-most-populated german-speaking city (1.9 million inhabitants in the city proper, and 2.8 million in the greater metropolitan area) to Andelsbuch, population 2.565
From roughly 4.000 inhabitants per square kilometre to 131 inhabitants / square kilometre …
Although most western cities continue to grow (mostly by people moving into the city), there’s a small trend called De-Urbanisation or Counter Urbanisation where inhabitants of cities leave their cities in favour of living in more rural areas.
The reasons for this are manyfold - and technology is amplifying this trend: With broadband internet available even in rural areas, most office workers can work from literally anywhere and are not bound to the cities.
(An interesting thing: The internet connection I get here in the country is magnitudes better than the one I had in Vienna. Here, it’s Fibre-to-the-Home, while in Vienna, we were stuck with good old copper lines)
While not the main motivation for the move, living in the country means much easier access to nature.
I mean, look at that view from my home office:
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And this little lake and creek are literally a 15 minute walk from our home:
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I can’t wait to explore the surroundings. It is so beautiful here.
As you might have noticed, I think about how we can organise work, and how work could work differently a lot. So you can also consider this to be some sort of self-experiment: Is it possible to run a business that is typically only found in cities (consulting and coaching) from a rural area? What are the tools and structures you need to successfully do this job remotely?
I’ll let you know what I find out.
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Wether you're a trailblazer or a follower, wether you see a wall or a tree when you look out of your window, wether you run or cycle or crossfit or are an expert in extreme couching: Thank you for reading Let's be Fwends, you rock! 🤘
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