A Stark Difference

Around the web

Article

People Born Blind Are Mysteriously Protected From Schizophrenia

"This view of the brain argues that rather than perceiving the world around us in real time, our brains create a model of what’s out there, predict and simulate what we experience, and then compare our predictions to what’s actually happening—using any errors to update or change the model in our minds. The accuracy of your past predictions are crucial for the accuracy of your overall model—it's what you're comparing new inputs to, and how you're making any adjustments."

This was an incredibly fascinating read. Continually marveling at the complexity of the brain, but with this topic in particular, it’s interesting to see if these possible explanations can open new doors for understanding Schizophrenia as a condition.

Article

What color is your name? A new synesthesia tool will show you.

After years of struggling to describe her synesthesia, Bernadette Sheridan created a website that shows people what she sees.

Synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. To date there are at least 80 different types of Synesthesia.

The Synesthesia.me site includes an interactive tool for seeing what your name, or any name, looks like. Very very nifty. 

Article

User Testing for Healthcare

User testing is one of the most crucial parts of your product design and development process. At thoughtbot, before kicking off a project with a new client, they recognized that their conversations would more than likely touch on sensitive topics, like the health of loved ones, choosing in-home or out-of-home care, or quitting a job to give care full-time (since they were dealing with caregivers).

They put together a phenomenal set of tips and instructions on helping you navigate big topics like that in user testing, and the best way to approach them.

News

Twitter rolls out two new accessibility features

Over the course of the last few weeks, Twitter has thankfully and finally launched two new awesome features for those who use and benefit from accessibility features.

1. Alt-Text on GIFs when you tweet from the web browser
2. Increased contrast on Twitter.com

You can find both features under the Accessibility tab in the General settings.

From Stark

🌟 Stark on YourStacks from ProductHunt

“It’s a valuable tool that makes designs better for everyone.”
— @heidi_helen

Thanks for spreading the love on Stark, friends. And if you haven't yet, go toss Stark into your stack!

🤔 How do you present work?

We've been trying to sort out the best way to deliver designs to all of you for anything we're cooking up. We want to make sure we can easily and clearly share work with all of you in hopes of, yes sharing, but also gaining feedback—specifically when it isn't a prototype (yet) but rather, static imagery.

Having said that:

• How do you present work when it's asynchronous communication?
• Is it something like the image below (not a great example but want a baseline for us to discuss without injecting too much opinion in) and have the copy/explanation/questions around feedback here in a text box?

Would love your thoughts!

🖤 Community love of the week 

Shout out to Carolyn for using Stark to test all the colors. We're glad to see you're "back on your bullshit".