Reading list

• Forbrukerrådet (The Consumer Council) here in Norway might not always be at the tip of the spear on related issues that arise in the world of tech internationally, but they tend to be very factual and thorough once they do. That seems to be the case on their report and seminar on manipulative design. The seminar is out in its entirety here.
• NRKbeta offers a cautionary tale on how an OTA uses 12 highly questionable tricks to yank the price through a user journey. Using fear seems particularly effective. We appreciate some focus on these issues. This is how the battle is fought out there, and it's a little daunting for service designers such as ourselves. The amount of constraint and self-discipline brands have to muster is increasing, and we need these types of checks and balances to raise awareness not only on the consumer level, but on the provider side.

Design of the week

• Wow, this is neat. The Peculiar Case of Japanese Web Design at sabrinas.space takes a proper deep dive into the paradox that Japan, known for its minimalist lifestyles, is also home to oddly maximalist websites. Using AI to map the top sites around the world offers interesting insights. The further north ease, the more dark and empty are our designs. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Japan is firmly placed in light and dense. That's just a mere percent on all the interesting angles this project offers.
• Another design related space relying heavily on content that speaks for itself, the Fashion Research Library is worth points your attention to. It's a comprehensive collection of printed material related to fashion, which is an often overlooked part of the package that defines fashion as we know it. They explain it much better themselves.
• Aware yourself on Tradecrafts 168 Flashcards to learn cognitive biases. The quiz is spread across four problems. It builds on another interesting piece, the cognitive bias cheat sheet.

Tech of the week

• We're nudging our clients to use various analytics services that don't require cookies. The long standing tendency is defaulting to overly intrusive and complex services. One feature in particular is the gateway to intrusion, namely the ability to distinguish unique visitors. Normally offers this nice piece on how to solve it.
• A sweet 12-part tread guiding you through the Next.js 13 upgrades.
• ChatGPT is a sibling model to InstructGPT which interacts in a conversational way. That's cool and all, but we particularly like the product page that explains the whole thing in a quite... well, conversational way, clearly outlining the model and its limitations. Honest and factual.
• Here's a comparison on how said ChatGPT replies to a complex question, as opposed to Google. Gloves are off.
• It gets even better when this guy asks ChatGPT an even more dense tech question. Minds blown emojis and all.
• Lastly, try it yourself here.

We hope the next week proves as informal as this one. Here's to you, our steadfast heap of regular readers. Mr. W, Petter, and what's-your-name, your much appreciated and will not be forgotten.