full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Margaret Gould Stewart: How giant websites design for you (and a billion others, too)

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Now, the first thing that you need to know about designing at scale is that the little things really matter. Here's a really good example of how a very tiny design element can make a big impact. The team at Facebook that manages the foaebcok "Like" botutn didceed that it needed to be redesigned. The button had kind of gotten out of sync with the etlovuion of our brand and it ndeeed to be modernized. Now you might think, well, it's a tiny little button, it probably is a pretty straightforward, easy design assignment, but it wasn't. Turns out, there were all kinds of cintrntsaos for the design of this button. You had to work within sieicfpc height and wdtih parameters. You had to be careful to make it work in a bunch of different languages, and be careful about using fancy gradients or borders because it has to degrade gracefully in old web browsers. The truth is, designing this tiny little button was a huge pain in the butt.

Open Cloze

Now, the first thing that you need to know about designing at scale is that the little things really matter. Here's a really good example of how a very tiny design element can make a big impact. The team at Facebook that manages the ________ "Like" ______ _______ that it needed to be redesigned. The button had kind of gotten out of sync with the _________ of our brand and it ______ to be modernized. Now you might think, well, it's a tiny little button, it probably is a pretty straightforward, easy design assignment, but it wasn't. Turns out, there were all kinds of ___________ for the design of this button. You had to work within ________ height and _____ parameters. You had to be careful to make it work in a bunch of different languages, and be careful about using fancy gradients or borders because it has to degrade gracefully in old web browsers. The truth is, designing this tiny little button was a huge pain in the butt.

Solution

  1. button
  2. specific
  3. decided
  4. facebook
  5. evolution
  6. needed
  7. constraints
  8. width

Original Text

Now, the first thing that you need to know about designing at scale is that the little things really matter. Here's a really good example of how a very tiny design element can make a big impact. The team at Facebook that manages the Facebook "Like" button decided that it needed to be redesigned. The button had kind of gotten out of sync with the evolution of our brand and it needed to be modernized. Now you might think, well, it's a tiny little button, it probably is a pretty straightforward, easy design assignment, but it wasn't. Turns out, there were all kinds of constraints for the design of this button. You had to work within specific height and width parameters. You had to be careful to make it work in a bunch of different languages, and be careful about using fancy gradients or borders because it has to degrade gracefully in old web browsers. The truth is, designing this tiny little button was a huge pain in the butt.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
billion people 2
allowed people 2

Important Words

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  28. languages
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  31. modernized
  32. needed
  33. pain
  34. parameters
  35. pretty
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  40. sync
  41. team
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  47. work