I don't understand why all these comments are against web dev. Creating an html file is quick, easy, and most importantly for kids, you instantly get visual results! You don't even need to open ugly terminal consoles, you could just use something like JS Bin (https://jsbin.com/) or JSFiddle or CodePen.
I used to volunteer with CoderDojo, a non-profit that hosted intro to coding workshops for kids of all ages (including 7-year-olds). Maybe you can find something like that local to you? I don't know if the organization still exists, but this is one of the lesson plans we used, which I think still holds up today (except the last part, you don't need jQuery anymore lol):
I remember the kids also enjoyed trying out Inspect Element on existing webpages – I joked that you could pretend to change your grades to A+'s (temporarily of course), though hopefully grades are not of concern to a 7-year-old yet :)
I wish I had a proper write-up of this project, but I tried to make something like this in college once. I wanted to make a thing where you could type a word and then letters would move to spell that word. I didn't accomplish that fully, but managed to just get the "moving" functionality sort of working. Let's see what I remember about it...
For the board: I just used a large magnetic whiteboard in a classroom.
For the pieces: I made alphabet letters, kinda like scrabble tiles but ~3x3 inches each, with magnets so that they could stick to the whiteboard.
For moving the pieces: I followed various online tutorials (I forgot which) to make an XY plotter, kinda like this:
I used two stepper motors that were somehow attached to the whiteboard using suction cups.
However, instead of moving around a pen that would draw stuff, my XY plotter moved around an electromagnet. This was all controlled by an Arduino and keyboard. So the user could move the electromagnet, turn on the electromagnet to pick up a letter tile, move the letter, and turn off the electromagnet to disengage.
Of course, none of this worked perfectly, but I still learned a ton, and maybe gives you some inspiration!
I will admit I was briefly even more confused reading that the "west coast" model includes New Jersey (an east coast state) and the "east coast" model includes Stanford (a west coast university)... but whatever lol.
genuine question because I've never heard this phrase, and search engines did not yield useful results: what do you mean by "east coast school of thought"? and then is there a corresponding "west coast school of thought"?
I recommend The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra! I read it the summer before college and their visuals and analogies really helped me grasp basic concepts.
Are you trying to learn to use Figma specifically? I think you can just pick it up and start using it pretty easily. Good design principles are ultimately tool-agnostic though.
- The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman is the classic for learning design.
- Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug is another classic, and very digestible.
Ultimately, good design is informed by research - what is the problem you're trying to solve? What is the user's goal and how can you make that easy for them to achieve? What are you trying to communicate? Start with interviewing 5+ potential users, distilling that data into actionable opportunities, and sketching wireframes on paper before jumping into Figma.
But then where do you go once you're done viewing that one specific profile? You probably close the tab because you finished catching up on their tweets, and/or go to some other webpage that they linked to in one of their tweets.
The suggestions implore you to continue browsing on Twitter, instead of leaving Twitter altogether. The cynical take is that the purpose is to drive engagement and revenue, while the UX design take is that this helps users find more conversations that they're interested in, that they wouldn't otherwise find ("you follow Foo, people who follow Foo also follow Bar, so you might like Bar").
This goes for a lot of services – why do YouTube recommendations take up the majority of its homepage? Why are Instagram account suggestions pinned to its sidebar? Why are there news article recommendations below the article that you just read? Suggestions are meant to help users discover content. It's like how there were curated link directories before search engines existed, to help users discover new websites on the internet. This is the same idea, but limited to a specific platform so that you spend time on only their share of the internet.
As an extreme example, what if all forms of suggestion/recommendation/curation features on all platforms were gone, and only a search bar exists? Then your engagement is limited to the scope of your own thoughts, and you would just leave when you have nothing in mind that you want to search (and thus see fewer ads, generate less revenue, etc). I think there is a balance to be achieved, but companies certainly error on the side of more opportunities to drive engagement.
Anyway, your best bet is probably to cook up a browser extension/script to hide what you don't want to see. Maybe it even exists already. Though of course, the DOM probably changes all the time.
It certainly depends on what their goal is afterwards, is it to go into frontend webdev like React or just learning JS as an intro to computer science in general? There's going to be a jump from coding in Codecademy tutorials to building a project from scratch, but I think their interactive interface is very friendly for beginners.
Based on this job posting[0], it sounds like they're designed in-house? I would love to learn more.
> The Editorial Design team aims to design category-defining print and digital experiences that resonate with readers of Increment, our quarterly software engineering magazine, and Stripe Press, our book publishing imprint focused on ideas for progress.
> contribute to the layout of Increment’s quarterly print issues from initial design to print production
> collaborates seamlessly with illustrators, editors, writers, other designers, and agency partners.
1. books I had already read and enjoyed before
2. books that were already on my list (either from friends or other recommendations)
3. books I hadn't heard of
That said, I haven't read a book from #3 yet, so I can't fully vouch for it, but #1 and #2 are positive signals to me.