Trends peak and go under. One of many designer’s superpowers is to spot the difference between a design trend and a revolution. Design systems have passed the trend phase and have entered to revolutionise the way designers, developers and other stakeholders are working. There is a buzz around design systems as a whole, and some misconceptions on what it is, what it does and why it exists. Let’s clear that up.
Call me traditional, but I think that different understanding of the same terminology is the beginning of the miscommunication cycle. Let’s get those out of the way since we will hear them when talking about design systems.
Design: a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of something.
System: A system is a group of interacting or interrelated entities that form a unified whole.
Components: a part or element of a larger whole.
Component library: a storage place where the coded user interface components are stored and documented.
Standards: a level of quality.
Principles: a proposition that serves as the foundation for a system.
A Mini-History Lesson
Feel free to skip this if you aren’t a history nerd. The point is, that, design systems are not a new concept and have matured over the decades. Design systems as we know them today are a new concept. However, like most new ideas, they are hardly “original” and have stemmed from similar ideas before them. Here I will cover a brief history of it.
1977- Pattern Language, a design system for architects
15 Principles of Wholeness “A Pattern Language” by Christopher Alexander
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction is a 1977 book on architecture, urban design, authored by architects Murray Silverstein, Sara Ishikawa and Christopher Alexander. The book is considered by many as the start of design systems which the authors refer to as “pattern language”. A closer look at the book would reveal that most of their inspirations and examples come from medieval towns. Thus, the idea of a pattern language isn’t new, it just wasn’t accessible. Pattern language has revolutionised the thinking about those systems, in a way making it accessible to ordinary people, not only professionals to improve their houses, towns or schools by using those design tools. This book has lead to the next point→ Pattern Libraries
1986/1994- Pattern libraries
Book Cover – User Centred System Design(1986) by Norman and Draper
Although the idea of using “pattern language” in design was mentioned in” user-centred System Design”(1986) by Norman and Draper, it did not gain traction until the rise of web-pages during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Designers and especially developers found themselves needing to reuse components in different pages etc. Thus after the book “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software” came out in 1994, the idea has gained popularity. The Pattern Languages of Programming Conference (1994-present) became an annual event.
2016- Atomic Design
Atomic Design by Brad Frost
With the rise of different screen resolutions and devices, designers tasks grew immensely, and quite frankly, became unmanageable. Resulting in inconsistent UI’s across the board. The struggle was real. Atomic Design by Brad Frost, had solved problems and provided a system of thinking about these UI components in a scientific approach of Atoms, Molecules, Organisms, Templates and Pages. Many of the UI consistency issues were tackled. Some design principles were still lacking.
2014/2016- Google Material Design
Part of Google Material Design
2016 the birth of design systems as we know them today. Without a doubt, Google has pioneered the first complete and open-source design system. It has been used by countless companies either as is or as a template to build their design systems.
If you are interested in a deeper dive inside the history of Design systems, I highly recommend this blog post named “A HISTORY OF DESIGN SYSTEMS”
What is a design system?
A possible configuration by UXPin
Simply, a bunch of reusable components, guided by simple to understand standards and principles and can be assembled like lego pieces to create any number of applications. For designers, this could be done using design software such as Sketch, XD, Figma and many others. As for developers, this means using coded components libraries in for example react. For other stakeholders, this could mean referring back to standards and principles that can guide decision making.
A component library is not necessarily a design system.
Although a component library is one of the core elements in the design system, it won’t solve all the problems. Simply put, the component library answers the “What”, as for the rest of the design system answers the “Why”. In other words, how are those UI components used and why? Without understanding this critical step, we will still have inconsistent experiences despite having similar-looking user-interfaces. There are efforts being made, to unify the entire design system inside a single component libraries, but the process is still in its infancy stages.
What is included inside a design system?
Design systems are not a template to follow, nor does it come with a set configuration. It has to be customised to an organisation’s need. The size of the system could also have an impact on the things included. I.e. a fortune 500 company’s does not compare with a start-up’s design system.
Things that could be included but not limited to
- Design Tokens
- Tone of Voice
- Brand image
- Visual language / Look & feel
- Design principles
- Graphic guideline
- Code libraries
- Separate documentations
- Team and contributors
Who uses it?
Countless top organisations have started to utilise design systems to scale the design, lower the cost and improve usability. It’s quite rare to find an industry leader currently, that doesn’t have a design system in place.
Spotify as an example has documented its transition to using a design system and the effect it had on their organisation.
“Design systems help teams stay aligned so their output stays intentional.” –Stanley Wood, Design Director at Spotify. Read about their transformation here “Design Does Not Scale”.
Before the design system implementation
After the design system implementation
Another organisation that has written extensively about its design system as a key factor to their success and survival is Airbnb. More about Airbnb Design here.
Design systems as a way of working
Regardless of how detailed and meticulous the documentation is, verbal communication between all stakeholders remains a key point to create a successful design system. In other words, design systems are more than lego pieces with rules, they are a way of working and communicating. They help to awaken and revive the design thinking mentality in both designers and non-designers. The idea is not to follow rules robotically, but provide a a framework that would speed up the innovation progress. Many intangible yet critical issues to be address in a design system, that might not be apparent on face value.
What can a design system help with in real life?
Some of those benefits overlap but might be more interesting for certain groups than others. So divided it into three groups.
Although designs systems require time to be setup, and get going, creating complex UI’s between designers and developers becomes potentially faster, ideation takes less time since we know what we have to play with. In essence, designers can draw wireframes on a whiteboard and developers can develop that from the components existing without the need for a pixel perfect design in the middle. Still, some designers prefer to craft pixel-perfect designs using pre-designed components. Airbnb has designed an AI that translates paper wireframes to coded layouts using their design system. Read more about that here.
2. For stakeholders: Design Debt Reduction
Design vs tech debt in small teams usually creates a prioritisation nightmare. Product owners, designers and developers will be pleased to know that once the design system is in place, there will be fewer discrepancies and inconsistencies to fix in future sprints. Developers will be using ready components and thus create fewer bugs. This will automatically reduce the design debt.
3. For users: Boost Coherency and Predictability
Users, usually won’t and shouldn’t care about the top two benefits, when it comes down to usability though, users expect modern software to behave predictably. A design system will create a consistent experience across all UI’s and components. Design standards will help in the way everything behaves. Design principles will guide the team to take new decisions faster.
Design systems, like any other solution, doesn’t come with-out challenges. Some of those might be that designers feel that the design system puts some constrains on creativity. Others, think that it might hinder exploration, re-alignment and reflection. Other worries might involve the inflexibility of systems overtime. Thankfully, being aware of these pitfalls can greatly reduce the risk of these issues realising. Even if some of those challenges happen, there are solutions to overstep these hurdles. What is a challenge, is the constant amount of work and resources required to design and develop an effective system to transform your organisation.
A good design system is an ever-evolving one!
How to create a successful one? Create a living, breathing system that’s flexible, maintainable, stable, scalable, and is designed for the long-term. Of course, that is no easy task, if you are interested however, we will be happy to guide you through it.
Depending on your current organisational culture, the transformation from face-to-face meetings to virtual ones can be tricky. There are some aspects that you should consider before planning a virtual meeting, for example event purpose, targets, group size and locations, since they impact on how you should run your event.
There are some common practices that are easy to learn and apply to your to all your virtual meeting. To help you succeed in your digital encounters, we collected our best practices into five phases, following a common meeting flow: 1. Before, 2. Start, 3. During, 4. Close, 5. After.
Let’s go through each phase, one by one:
Decide which tools you are going to use
When deciding which tool to use for a call, Microsoft Teams, Skype, Google Hangouts, Zoom and Slack are currently the most popular meeting tools. All have their pros and cons, but you’ll manage with each of them. If you want to participate people, you also need some kind of shared workspace. Some tools come with this already, like Skype for Business or Zoom, and some don’t. In those latter cases, you need to choose a separate tool for collaboration.
We recommend trying out these combinations:
- Teams /Zoom /Slack + Sharepoint Powerpoint /OneNote
- Google Hangouts + Jamboard /Docs /Pages
- Teams /Zoom + Mural /Miro (for more advanced workshopping)
Setup a shared space
- Make sure all your teammates have access to shared meeting files
- Prepare the materials you’re going to present and work on
Test the equipment
- If you’re able to use video stream, test your camera before the session starts
- If the participants are new to you, you have a big group of attendees or the meeting is going to be a lengthy one: start 10-15 minutes earlier to check that everything is working properly. You can also have a check-up session a day before the actual meeting – in that case the participants will have more time to fix their tools, if any problems occur.
- Remember to have a backup plan for those who have troubles joining the call, seeing the screen, using the collaboration tools etc. (Believe us, this happens quite often.)
There are a lot of things to consider, so always prepare well
- Make sure you have a clear agenda for the session.
- Flow: If the meeting includes workshopping, it’s best to timebox everything. Plan and walk through the whole agenda. If you haven’t organised remote meetings or workshops before, it’s good to rehearse with your colleagues beforehand.
- If the meeting includes ideation, it’s good to share background information about the ideation topic beforehand.
- Send information about the event beforehand to participants: agenda and system requirements. Encourage them to choose a good (quiet) location and ensure their tools are working. Give your participants also the possibility to get prepared.
- Consider recording the meeting, especially if some invitees can’t participate. Remember always to ask for recording consent, beforehand though!
- If you’re using a company meeting room for your meeting/workshop, it’s good to reserve the room 15 minutes before the event. You will need some time for getting organized.
- Consider having a co-host: If you’re workshopping with a large group, having someone helping you out with facilitating the event is useful. It decreases your organising pressure and usually shows in the participants’ satisfaction. While one host is presenting, the other one can concentrate on fixing possible practical challenges. Just remember to practice the choreography beforehand with your peer.
Start with a check-in with all the participants
- Make sure everyone can hear each other. Say hello to every person individually, so they can reply out loud.
- Start your session by going through the purpose, target and the agenda for the meeting. Inform about the possible different phases that are included in the meeting (e.g. presentation, ideation, voting, discussions in pairs). Note: Unclarity breeds passiveness.
- Tell why you have invited these people in your meeting and tell about your expectations towards the participants
- Ask about expectations (utilise e.g. chat for this)
- Ask participants to inform in the beginning, if they need to leave early.
- Introduce people to each other (faster), or let them introduce themselves (takes more time)
- Use “ice-breakers”, to set a relaxed mood (ask us for details)
- Create a safe space for everyone to talk. Be an example.
Set working instructions
- Introduce roles, if there are any specific ones.
- Require focus: Phones should be put away. Microphone are supposed to be on mute if the person isn’t talking. Ask participants to close all other apps on their screen and focus solely on this meeting.
- Inform about possible breaks that you’re planning to have.
- Inform how to behave, if a participant needs to leave suddenly.
- Go through the tools and workshopping methods used.
- Set a protocol on how participants are allowed to speak (e.g. using icons, writing in chat, and starting with their name when they speak).
- Only one person should talk at a time, although there should not be long monologues.
Use video if possible
Video stream helps to engage and keep focus. However, it may also slow down the connection and cause other technical problems. Utilise video stream at least in the beginning of the session, to get more connected with your participants.
Keep the energy high
Following a long meeting or workshop remotely is tiring. Maintaining the focus can be hard for everyone.
Use your tools to engage and interact, to keep the energy levels high!
- If the meeting lasts more than 1.5 hours, have short breaks (remember to be very clear about the continuation time).
- Use “energizers”, if you feel that people are getting passive (ask us for details)
Keep the focus clear
- Keep the agenda visible, or at least easy to find (e.g. post it in the meeting chat, once everyone has arrived)
- Keep the current topic visible on screen to maintain focus.
- Write the meeting memo so that everyone can see it.
- Ensure action points are documented, reviewed, and have action owners.
Break up in small groups, if relevant
- If you’re ideating something, breaking up into smaller groups is a good idea. Some call tools enable this (like Zoom). Remember to give the groups clear instructions about the topic and the amount of time they’re allowed to use for it.
- “Me-We-Us” is a good method for ideating and problem solving (ask us for details)
- Working in smaller groups at times boosts energy within the team.
- Remember that dividing into small groups also requires some time, to get people oriented
- The smaller the groups, the less time they will need for working on tasks. Sometimes even 2 minutes can seem like a very long time.
Be strict with airtime
The great thing about remote meetings is that they can be more equal than live events for participants. Make sure same the people don’t dominate throughout the meeting and invite the silent ones to speak up their minds (you can try using a timer, for example).
Utilise the meeting chat
All call tools enable chat. For quickly collecting feedback, ask participants to write their thoughts in the meeting chat. Then allow few minutes for everybody to read the comments before proceeding.
Summarize and review
- Did you reach the target?
- What are the next action points?
- Do all action points have owners and deadlines?
Ask feedback: Was the session useful for them? What felt important? What could be improved next time? Remember to thank everyone for their time and input!
Share the materials
Share the possible recording, workshop materials, meeting memos and action points to participants.
To summarize things up
Some things to remember:
#Virtual space relies heavily on sound and you lose a lot of the non-verbal communication. Thus, you need to pay more attention to interaction with participants. Read more about the topic here: How to have a great virtual meeting
#Thank people for attending your meeting. Time is valuable, and yet they have decided to use it in your event. Show that you appreciate their time, and they will be happy to join your next session!
Wish to get more tips?
We are happy to help you in facilitating your virtual meetings successfully. Please don’t hesitate to contact us at: .
Jonas Rajanto, Grape People, Basics of Virtual Facilitation
Recently I attended the Service Design Network´s event of Doing Good in Design: Social Impact and Ethics In Service Design. I thought I would share my notes and maybe you will also pause for a minute to really think about the impact of your work on the world. I sure did.
Miko Laakso from DNA (the host of the event) shared some wise words from Victor Papanek (1970):
“You are responsible for what you put in the world.
And you are responsible for the effects those things have upon the world.”
The main part of the evening was facilitated by the guest speaker Jethro Sercombe who works with social impact projects in Australia, projects like enabling better opportunities for homeless youths in rural areas of Australia.
We briefly touched upon the principles of ethical design:
Jethro reminded us about the position of power we take and bring into situations as designers, and how that can have a negative or misleading impact on the interaction and thus the outcome of the research. This applies not only to designers, but any profession and any situation. We all have and take power positions. That is why with great power comes great responsibility.
Jethro presented six different bases of power (by French and Raven (1960, 2008)):
How do we acknowledge our power position and dismantle it in order to create a safe place for the ones we are interviewing or observing (or for any human interaction for that matter)?
In designing for social impact, the object is different from commercial projects. We usually design for users or potential users of the service, when designing for social impact the object is families or communities – the community experience. See how this shift in perspective will impact your thinking.
Great questions to think through in the design process are:
- Who are we excluding with our design?
- How can we minimize the influence of our own biases (and yes, we all have them)?
- How can we anticipate the short-term and long-term effects of our design?
Working in smaller teams using the futures wheel
Next, Jethro divided us into smaller groups for ideating a billion-dollar business idea around: “What might an Uber or Airbnb of healthcare or childcare look like?” After a few minutes of individual time for ideating business ideas on post-it´s the team voted the most potential business idea. I will share our team´s idea to illustrate the process, not because it was any good or proposing any of you to actually run with the idea ?
We voted for a “health taxi service” (Uber of health care) in which trained nurses are the drivers of well-equipped taxis that anyone can order to their home for health checking purposes.
Now Jethro told us our business was booming and in fact, our “health taxi” had become a Unicorn that ruled the health market. By using a tool, the futures wheel, we were supposed to come up with utopian and dystopian scenarios with newspaper headlines of what our business was going to look like according to those future scenarios.
In the Utopian (desired future) scenario our “health taxi” business pivoted into a data-AI driven company utilising all existing location-based health data gathered by all taxis. Since ordering the health taxi to your front door was so easy, people used it more often than traditional services. This enabled the company to move from “sick care” into preventative health care finding patterns and probabilities from the data. A newspaper headline was: “No more sicknesses and longer life expectancy for health taxi users”.
In the Dystopian (undesired future) scenario our “health taxi” business was in fierce competition with other health taxi services and due to legislation lagging behind there were a lot of fake nurses driving the taxis mistreating patients and giving false advice to people. Traditional health care centres were shut down a long time ago when the government decided to buy the services from the health taxi companies. Trust in health services dropped dramatically and media reported of mistreatments on a daily basis. The newspaper headline read: “Health taxi strikes again: yet another 10 people died during Christmas time for mistreatment”.
By using the futures wheel in your design process, you can challenge the customer to anticipate the long-term impacts of solutions through utopian and dystopian scenarios. Impacts can be considered on a micro or macro level like on people, community, society, globe (Earth). When both scenarios are ready the most important part of the exercise is to mitigate the risk of the dystopian world so it never becomes reality. This approach exposes the team to include a long-term perspective as part of the design process.
So, is doing good in design just about those who practice design for social impact in charities or governments or should we also take responsibilities as designers (or as developers) to ensure business decisions and solutions in the long-run cause no harm to people, communities, society or to mother Earth? I will leave you with this thought.
Ethical design: https://2017.ind.ie/ethical-design/
Bases of power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Raven%27s_bases_of_power
Futures wheel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_wheel
´Speculative design´ – a tempting path (go there with your own risk bearing in mind it can have a great impact in your thinking) for learning more about addressing big societal problems and looking towards the future: e.g. in https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/speculative-design/
If you want your product or service to succeed, engage users early on and in every step of the development. No matter how cutting-edge your technology – if it doesn’t fit users’ needs, they won’t use it. Constant feedback from users helps in keeping the focus on the important things. Which in the end saves money and makes the product enjoyable to use.
Picture this: It’s a typical Monday morning at work and you’re trying to get your routine daily tasks done. At hand, you have a task that requires you to use a system or program that is not actually your favourite for many reasons. But since you’ve done it many times before, you’ve become a master at it. Maybe you’re handling invoices or retrieving information about your customers from CRM. As you sip from your first cup of coffee you sigh: “If only there was an easier way to do this…”
Scenario A: Designing technology first
You realise that a new button called “AI assistant” has appeared on the screen. Since you’re a tiny bit intrigued by it, you might as well see what it’s about. So, you click the button and “Heidi Helper” pops up on your screen. It seems that Heidi wants some information from you in order to be helpful, but it takes a lot of time to understand her needs. Also, you’re quite unsure what Heidi can do for you in the end: Will she handle my invoice all together or just some part of it? Will she just gather information and do some data-crunching without me knowing what is happening? You’re starting to think: “Maybe, I should’ve just done the invoice like I usually do. I would probably be done with it already and could be drinking my second cup of coffee with my colleagues.”
Scenario B: Designing user first
You realise that a new button called “AI assistant” has appeared on the screen. You’re thrilled about it: “It’s finally here! At last, I can get some help with these routine tasks!” So, you push the button and “Heidi Helper” pops up on your screen. Since you were part of the design process, you know exactly what information Heidi needs from you to make you get the job done faster. You also know, that by inserting all the required data, Heidi can learn to combine relevant information together quicker than you could ever possibly be able to. So, by helping Heidi now, she will be your trusted ally in the future. You would never go back to working the way you did before her.
Which scenario would you choose: The one where technology is pushed on the users without proper reasoning or training or the one where the users were involved in the design process to make the technology fit their needs? The answer is simple, right?
How we involved users in the AI design process
In our project of designing an AI assistant, we wanted to make sure that the actual users of the assistant would be in the centre of the design process. Our goal was to a) understand how they use the system, b) identify the pain points in getting their tasks done with the system and c) design an AI assistant that would resolve the issues they are facing right now and ease their work.
Here’s the process we followed in our work:
- Assemble a multi-faceted team with experts in user research, UI design and data science
- Conduct user interviews and observations to understand how the system is used in completing daily tasks. Put emphasis on digging out how they feel about the system, how does it work in their favour and what are the things they struggle with.
- Conduct a workshop together with the users where you illustrate their work process on a canvas. In our case we wanted to understand the following aspects:
- All the phases to complete the task
- The data and information sources they need for each phase
- The challenges they face in each phase
- The initial solutions for each challenge
- Design a technical solution that responds to the challenges identified in the research phase. Communicate the benefits of using it in a comprehensible manner to the users and make changes if needed.
- Design the user interface for the AI assistant and demonstrate to the users how the assistant would actually work in their environment. Use a technology that allows the users to get acquainted and test the prototype by themselves.
By placing the users in the heart of the design process, you can provide an AI assistant that brings the most joy and helps the users get manual work done more efficiently and automatically. It should also be remembered to gather feedback from the users and analyse usage data constantly to optimise the product for even greater user experience.
After the user-centric design process
While using Heidi Helper for some time already you don’t even notice it anymore. All the learning material you’ve provided to Heidi has made the AI assistant better and better each day. You feel confident when dealing with invoices because you know you don’t have to take care of everything by yourself.
The greatest thing is the liberating feeling when you can focus on the most important and challenging work and let the AI assistant take care of the more trivial but time-consuming tasks. While Heidi Helper browses through tens of email attachments in order to find missing invoice details, you’re able to combine information from several sources with unforeseen pace. Also, now you have time for that extra cup of coffee.
Taking a rational and analytical approach in strategic decision-making often lacks customer input. Adding a human-centric design approach to the equation enables the identification of new opportunities that both reflect customer needs and support strategic goals.
In our daily tasks we use both hemispheres of our brain in equal measure: the logical, analytical and rational left hemisphere, and the creative, imaginative and intuitive right hemisphere. In the same sense, when making business decisions, both perspectives should be considered equally important: the rational/analytical business-approach and empathic/innovative design-approach.
With business design you can bridge the gap between these two perspectives by studying the requirements of both the user and the business. In a nutshell, business design brings the needs of customers and users into strategic decision making.
Business design combines two perspectives: the rational/analytical business-approach and the innovative/creative design-approach.
The business approach stands on defining the company’s strategy consisting of the target markets and customer segments, the technologies used to produce a service, the ecosystem needed to provide a service and the earnings logic to keep the business up and running. This approach relies on hard facts and figures based on what is already known and an estimation of where the world is going.
…. and digging for desires…
When it comes to making business decisions, the design approach adds a softer side to the equation. The design perspective takes into consideration the emotions and needs of potential users. Rather than using objective data, knowledge is created from user insight and subjective opinions from user research. Where the business approach is focused on market segments and economic logic, the design approach is more focused on real people and their behavior.
….leads to creating new
Business design empowers the creation of services that reflect user needs but are also feasible from a business perspective. The purpose is to enrich a company’s strategy by bringing the customer’s voice and empathy into business decisions. It is used for creating business ideas that have an identified group of potential customers and verified demand.
Business design can be used to solve several challenges, such as modeling and developing internal processes, identifying areas for development in the current business, identifying new business opportunities or defining business models for new services.
Whether your need is to renew your current business or create something completely novel, adding the design approach to your process pays off.
Software development shouldn’t be an isolated island with little outside contact. However, communication between a development team and external stakeholders isn’t always easy, especially if their sole shared moments happen during sprint rituals. When themes such as transparency or communication come up in retrospectives, a team should consider incorporating new ways of knowledge sharing. One such way is mob programming.
Our development team was at a crossroads of sorts. With some new members and the departure of others, we felt the need to synchronize, since our customer has multiple products of varying maturity and technology stacks. At the same time, their own developers had begun to work more closely with us, so overall there was some confusion over how to get the most out of our team. It was in one retrospective, where communication and visibility were discussed, that a developer suggested mob programming as a possible solution. Despite none of us having tried the method before, we decided to give it a spin in the next sprint.
Mob programming extends the principles of pair programming to an entire team. In a mob session, attendees work simultaneously on the same problem, using only one computer. While the implementations of mob programming vary, at its simplest there are only three different roles: the driver, the navigator and the mobber. The driver is doing all the coding, but they should not make independent decisions. They listen to the guidance of the navigator, who in turn discusses with the mobbers. The navigator should give as detailed instructions as necessary, considering the background of the driver, while the mobbers follow the progress via big displays. All work happens in timed cycles, with the roles rotating in between. In our case, this meant that a product owner found themselves writing code, and a UX-designer pushed changes to a remote repository.
We started with our scrum master as a facilitator. He took care of the practicalities and made sure the team was committed to trying out the new method. We set up a development environment in a conference room and started working towards our goal. It was a slow start, but little by little, code started to appear. Whenever we hit an impasse, we took a breather and made sure we were heading in the right direction. At the end of the day, we had laid promising groundwork for a new feature. Satisfied with the results, we booked time for another mob session in our next sprint planning.
In the long run, the effects of mob programming have exceeded our expectations. In addition to getting actual work done, the whole team has become closer. Everyone despite their level of expertise has learned new things about our architecture, best practices, handy IDE shortcuts and more. The sessions have been so well received, that we began doing them regularly. The whole team, the customer included, is invited. While on paper it may seem wasteful to frequently assign multiple people to work on one item, mob programming can induce widespread benefits:
- Instant communication between team members, since no time is spent waiting for answers or sending emails back and forth. Communicating face-to-face reinforces good teamwork practices and the mentality of giving and receiving help. Kindness and respect will be on the rise.
- Improved decision making. The possibility to discuss problems and pitfalls together reduces overall reluctance to make decisions. This collaboration increases the individuals’ commitment to the results.
- Reduced waste, especially if the product owner is included in the sessions. The team can get instant feedback on their progress, discarding unwanted additions.
- Improved code quality. Having more than one set of eyes reviewing the code reduces technical debt. Best practices easily spread across the team, and even previously unidentified technical debt can be recognized.
- Reduced context switching, since the whole team becomes familiar with the feature being worked on. Mob programming can also shine a light on dependencies between different parts of the software, increasing overall familiarity of the architecture.
Ultimately, mob programming is a tool I can recommend to any team, whether they’re facing issues or not. When starting out, decide the topics beforehand and get everyone up to speed with the goals. This increases commitment reduces anxiety and maximizes your time available for the actual work. Once your session is underway, make sure that people remain in their roles. Experienced developers might be tempted to drive ignoring or predicting the navigator’s instructions, a pattern that should be prevented. Once your team’s confidence grows, you can start tweaking the parameters such as the roles or timing to better suit your needs. You can also try applying this method outside programming, for example in UI-design or user story creation. Have fun firing up your own mob!
This is a large topic and so needs a large introduction.
Essentially, I’m trying to explore what, as designers, we can do to save the planet. We should all know the consequences of climate change by now but to remind you, here are a few headlines from this year:
- The North pole will be ice free in 10 years.
- Soon, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean.
- Our children probably won’t see any living coral.
- 30% of the world cities will be affected by drought.
Pretty grim for sure, and I wish this was the media exaggerating as usual. Unfortunately, there is no sugar coating these facts. I have experienced the changes in the ocean and coral first hand. I have been to places twice over two years, only to find that every piece of coral has bleached and fish disappeared. There are very important yet simple steps that anyone can take to have a positive impact on the environment. Some of these are:
- Don’t buy things unless you need them. More on minimalism here.
- Cut out meat from your diet, or at least reduce it. This is probably the biggest one. Take a look.
- Cycle instead of driving a car.
- Go for a smaller living space. Some are even considering The Tiny House Movement.
The list can go on forever, but I advise you to go through a more serious list on the WWF website. (hint: it requires contacting political decision-makers to make larger green decisions.)
The next question is:
What can I do as a designer to prevent, or at least slow down climate change?
There are at least 4 things we can start with.
1. The internet
“While we might not be able to stop using the web, we can change how we build and power it, to make it planet friendly as well as user-friendly.” –Planet Friendly Web Guide
The web is the largest machine ever built in the history of mankind with 4.5 Billion users. The scary part is that it’s less than 50 years old. It’s complex, with many moving components. Simply put, however, more data requires more energy. In fact, in 2019, it will emit around 1 billion tons of CO2, that is more than the entire aviation industry.
The internet does pollute, nevertheless, the whole industry as a whole is conscious and is willing to move into a more positive direction. Yet again, start locally, see if you or your client are using green hosting and have optimised your website to be eco-friendly on EcoGrader.
Usually, cloud solutions are more sustainable than traditional data centres. Keep in mind, not all clouds are vaped-out equal. Google, for example, committed to being 100 per cent renewable-powered. Amazon, on the other hand, has only started to take its first steps in the right direction. Click-Green can give you a good insight into your favourite brands and their greenness.
Since we covered most facts and theories about internet pollution, let’s take initiative by taking a deeper dive into Planet Friendly Web. A great open source knowledge library, equipping you with the knowledge you need to make conscious and informed future decisions.
2. Start small, Start in the office.
Digital design is surprisingly taxing on the environment. Sharpies, post-its, laptops, phones, Ipads, pens and lots of coffee. Luckily, we can offset many of those quite easily. I found this simple spreadsheet to calculate your CO2 emissions.
The largest savings can be made on travel, which unfortunately isn’t as easy as cutting back on paper. Clients still need to be met, and users have to be interviewed. Fortunately, most progressive companies are open to remote work. Tools are developing at a rapid pace that makes collaborative design, research and interviewing remotely almost seamless. At Gofore, we use tools such as InVision, Axure and Abstract to allow for remote and asynchronously reviews and version control.
Finally, I have been conducting experiments holding large workshops using tools such as Mural and Mira. They are not flawless, but great, considering that they are in their infancy stages. You are a UX designer with an analytical mind, so you look at the numbers and see that every action you save on doesn’t actually make a difference. Let’s have a look at a global scale. According to LinkedIn, there are about one million UX designers worldwide, that is excluding service, UI, visual and graphic designer. With ease we can save about 3 million tons of CO2, that is more than closing entire coal-fired power-station. Designers are smart and creative, and our power should definitely not be underestimated. Every small action counts. Saving on paper, less travel and black coffee instead of a latte makes a big difference.
3. Greenify your products
Let’s pay attention to where our products meet the users. We as designers are partly responsible for that. The great news is that most of the users are concerned about the environment and are willing to make a positive change. Although, their motivation gets trumped by daily life, old habits and convenience. What we can do as designers is give means and motivation to pull(not push) their actions into positives ones towards the environments. We can ask some questions to determine if we are on the right track:
- Is this helping or harming the environment? (a simple question that might require extensive research)
- What are we making?
- If what we are making has no sustainable alternative, how can we create the greenest experience with what we have?
Sometimes, solutions are easy and straightforward. When things are physical such as shipping and delivery, we can promote greener delivery options. Holiday booking apps/sites can offer means to offset the users’ carbon footprint etc. Most of what we design on the other hand is intangible and that makes it sustainable design thinking harder. Luckily with a designer’s brain, nothing is impossible
Asking users to go green is tricky. By asking users to go green, you are most likely asking them to sacrifice time, convenience or money. Design With Intent gives a good set of persuasion methods, I don’t agree with all of them as some contain dark patterns. If deemed effective however in actually saving our planet, I would explore “green patterns”. For example, choosing the more environmentally option by default for the user.
4. Size does matter, the smaller the better.
We are seeing banners growing larger, hero images taking the entire screens, video for visual appeal with no other function and more. This is harmful in some ways, starting from the digital divide. We are designing products to be used worldwide. Part of our design duty is to care about the user experience (people) worldwide, users in Bangalore with 0.5mb/s internet speed should have the same experience as the people in Helsinki. As from the planet’s point of view, more data means more fossil fuels. Websites are only increasing in size. From 500kb in 2011 to 4000kb in 2019. The majority of this lies with us, the designers. Modern sites and applications use web fonts, multiple JS libraries, high-resolution images, and videos, maybe adding a better visual experience, but definitely a more data-intensive and thus harmful experience for the planet.
Let’s not rely on internet speeds getting higher and work on making our products more lightweight. Also, research has shown that a faster user experience correlates with better conversions and higher user satisfaction. Take a look at the winners of the 10k Apart competition. They have achieved interactive and excellent designs whilst using 1/300th of the data of an average page.
Great tools for optimising your designs are, PageSpeed, Kraken.io and Performance Budget.
- Raise awareness through design, educate and guide your users on making the right choices.
- Data over everything. Deconstruct data to find what the right solution is, i.e. beware of greenwashing!
- Shift to green hosting and you could save thousands of KGs in CO2. (Again, beware of Greenwashing)
- Starting with ourselves, as people first, and as designers second.
- Optimising design and code across all mediums.
We are experiencing a revolution in design, it’s being discussed in relation to the world’s largest topics such as diversity and inclusion, digital divide and politics. Sustainability should become an inseparable part of that conversation. This blog merely scratches the surface, and I would be grateful to hear your other ideas on how we can sustain this planet for our children.
In digital times, people sometimes forget that the analog world still provides more organic results. Even though devices like the Ipad Pro + Procreate /w Apple Pencil and Wacom Cintiqs are getting closer and closer to analog results – analog still rules. It’s interesting to follow digital attempts on watercolour, oil painting, paint splatter and smudging. They are close to analog but still not quite the same.
Analog vs. digital
When deciding on a workflow that is suitable for you, there are some key points to consider:
* = can be converted to digital rather easily nowadays, like for example with Adobe Capture or Scan + Adobe Illustrator Live Trace
** = Git or a WYSIWYG choice of your selection (note: if you have no idea what is version control, now it’s the best time learn it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_control)
*** = pen, paper, ink, brush, paint, markers, scissors, sponge, water, hands, dripping, tossing, smudging, printmaking, painting, cut-and-paste, ..etc.
**** = Eraser, white opaque colour, redoing, reworking, …etc.
Time equals money – so speed is essential.
The speed of creation is hard to compare. It really depends on the tools you are familiar with (and learn easily).
Consider creating an organic background both in digital and analog. The time spent on analog will always need additional time for digitization. Let’s take a closer look at this interesting topic.
Options for digitizing
Scanner + Trace in Adobe Illustrator (Desktop) – The Oldie
The internet is full of articles about this, read this for example https://www.lifewire.com/use-image-trace-in-adobe-illustrator-cc-2017-4125254
Basically, you scan your image and then trace it to vector (or use it as a raster version). Depending on the scanned original + your live trace skills you might end up with great results.
In the end, you will have a vector version. Some images are virtually impossible to vectorize. Line drawings are easy, for example, comics.
Adobe Capture (Mobile App) – Easy Vectorized Results
Okay, this is what I love. I literally do.
Adobe Capture is not a well-known app. It’s a free app by Adobe that allows you to digitize assets to Adobe Creative Cloud and then use them instantly on synced devices – WHOAAAH!
Adobe Capture has the following sections:
- Materials – Easy creation of 3D materials etc, based on image/photo
- Type – Recognise a typeface based on an image/photo
- Shapes – Scan any raster shape into a vector from an image/photo – Wait, REALLY?!!!!
- Colours – Take an image of anything and create a colour scheme – Huh!?
- Patterns – Create a pattern from an image/photo, similar to a kaleidoscope
- Brushes – Custom brushes from an image/photo
Instead of writing an extensive tutorial on the app, check this video by Adobe:
For a free app, it truly delivers something extraordinary. I use this app weekly with comic creation and similar tasks. Just take a photo in the analog world and use it instantly on digital as a vector – this is as good as it gets.
Examples & Conclusions
There ain’t exactly one do-it-all workflow for creating visual designs and drawings. A true master needs to understand the context and the end result. Each end-media has its own limitations that need to be taken into account when planning a workflow.
Example 1: Praise IRL Label – digital + analog
When I was working on the Gofore Praise IRL label, I ended up mixing raster and vector graphics. (Gofore Praise IRL is one of our own Gofore beers)
I have done print designs in the past, so I knew that I could make a raster graphics background by tossing paints in the analog world on a paper and scan the result. I just needed to be sure that the scanned end-result would have enough resolution (at least 300 DPI for the printed label). I post-processed the background in Photoshop and then placed it to an Adobe InDesign document, which was all vector on the other hand. TLDR: In the end result you cannot notice that the background image is not vector as well. It just looks all good, if you have enough DPI.
Example 2: Craig Thompson’s workflow for comics
Craig Thompson is a famous do-it-all comic artist, who has released awesome graphic novels such as Habibi and autobiographical love-story called Blankets. A direct excerpt from his blog says:
[ I ] settled on a compromise common among comics pros – I pencil the pages digitally [ using a Cintiq ], then print out blue lines and ink on actual paper.
The advantage of digital penciling is I can see a chapter all at once (top right photo), cut&paste, zoom in close, edit on the fly, and work standing up (top left photo, avec Momo). But digital inking still looks too slick to me — I prefer the flawed & tangible qualities of fussy sable brushes on paper. Foot in both worlds!
This kind of unique combination comes from the perfect understanding of his own medium and workflow.
To achieve the best results, you will need to:
- Understand your medium and it’s nuances
- Understand the optimal workflow for you (time spent, skillset,…)
- Understand the differences in vector/raster outputs
- Understand your audience (what kind of looks do they like)
- Benchmark other artists
In the first part of the blog series, we described the challenge of combining service design and secure design with agile methods. In this blog post, we will describe a process model for tackling this issue. This model combines the envisioning phase with the agile development phase and ensures that secure design and service design are deployed with the development.
Start with the problem, not with the solution!
At Gofore, we use the service design approach to understand the service or products core purpose. An example of a core purpose can be, for example, Instagram stating that their product is meant to “Capture and Share the World’s Moments”.
The objective of service design is to design a holistic, user-friendly service experience by answering the needs of customers and the competencies and capabilities of service providers. By using design thinking methods and tools it defines the optimal customer experience for the service to be designed. Service design aims to make the service creating actions visible to all parties involved and find empathy and understanding of the users of the service.
The objective of secure design is to ensure that the security and privacy aspects of the service or product delivered, and the associated user experience, have been investigated together with the business and stakeholders from the inception of the project. The challenge is how to ensure secure design, like service design, gets built in?
Utilising a design-thinking mindset, we conceive the core purpose with a “Double Diamond” method. This diamond model of creativity combines divergent thinking and convergent thinking phases to discover as many ideas as possible, and then distil them down to the best solution. Using the Double Diamond, this process is repeated, once to confirm the problem setting (to find out “Why” we’re doing something), and once to ideate the solution (to find out “What” we’re doing). The user environment, user tasks and associated user behaviours are explored, elucidated, visualised and synced with the service provider’s business and strategic goals. This is done using various service design processes and tools, for example by applying participatory user- and stakeholder-oriented design methods from the very inception of the project.
Service design yields the design drivers for the service to be implemented. At the same time, the security- and privacy-relevance of these design drivers should be scrutinised; for example, what is contained within the user data? Does the service ingest personal data? What data regulation must be complied with? What are the business and user assets requiring protection, and how? Thus, service design and secure design should be done simultaneously.
Continuing with service design envisioning, the user epics are ideated, and corresponding requirements are extrapolated. Concurrently, the security and privacy aspects of epics should be identified and documented. When the corresponding service features are concepted and their stories are derived, the corresponding security and privacy user stories should be derived and linked. For example, if the concept is a web application, then the web application’s feature stories should be linked to the associated security and privacy stories where relevant.
Why should you envision first?
By finding the core purpose of the service to be designed, the envisioning phase delivers not only the customer value being aimed for but also the guidance for prioritising the backlog and validating the design (metrics and test cases). It also acts as a valuable resource for defining the service roadmap and business strategy by answering the question: what user features are most important to implement first?
As mentioned earlier, service design and secure design are mutually beneficial and complementary activities. Requirements arising out of service design are likely to have associated secure design and privacy requirements that can be further deduced by assessing the threats and risks to the design. By ensuring that both service and secure design perspectives are purposefully envisioned, a more user-centric and a more robust foundation will be ideated and architectured into the implementation phase of the project. This mitigates the risk of service design and secure design deficiencies that cause further expense, wasted effort and rework arising during the production phase. Notably, this complementary design characteristic also fosters the sharing of design, security and privacy awareness across these historically siloed disciplines.
From envisioning to production
When the backlog of service concept epics, feature stories and linked corresponding security and privacy stories are considered primed for agile implementation, then the initial sprint grooming and planning can commence.
How to ensure continuous design in agile processes?
To ensure a complementary user-centred and security- and privacy-oriented approach throughout the development phase we require both the secure design and service design advocates to participate throughout the implementation. We also require team members and a product owner who understand the benefits of building service design and secure design into the implementation. This is crucial because there is a natural tendency for developers to focus on visible deliverable features; after all, that’s what the customers and business stakeholders want to see; visible signs of progress.
For these reasons, a continuous service and secure design concepting flow should run alongside the actual sprint process ensuring their aligned iteration according to the agile iteration model whereby you plan, develop, evaluate and iterate the design continuously based on user studies and usability testing.
Figure 2. Development
As depicted in Figure 2, the service design and secure design activities continue throughout the development phase to keep the process agile and iterative. The deliverables from the concepting and prototyping work are continuously designed just one or two sprints ahead of implementation. The implemented design is then, in turn, evaluated by usability testing and acceptance testing according to the metrics established in the envisioning phase. If according to the testing, there is a need to change the design, it goes back to the drawing board as design iterations. This ensures a continuous evolution of the service design and secure design epics and features while keeping the service’s core purpose linked to the iterative development and evaluation of the service.
In this way the objective and purpose of the service being developed are nurtured along; prioritising the backlog is easier when the guiding requirements for it have been properly established and are maintained alongside the daily implementation work. Also, by using this model, the concepts delivered using service design and secure design can be re-evaluated at any time. For example, if while doing usability testing, we discover that users’ needs have changed from what the initial envisioning phase suggested, service design will scrutinise and update the core purpose and help steer development into a more user-oriented service experience. Or if some feature or component changes, secure design will scrutinise potential security and privacy impacts and protect accordingly.
Recap: to be truly agile, plan (a bit) first!
Figure 3. Holistic envisioning and development of service design and secure design
At Gofore we encourage our customers to ask for a pre-planning or study/envisioning phase before the actual agile production of the service starts. This delivers preliminary requirements for the service experience, its security and privacy considerations, and guidelines for metrics and evaluation. Envisioning also simplifies the estimation of the scale and scope of the project to be done. With our Envision/Develop process model, we can tackle the service design and secure design requirements while maintaining an agile process wherein the design concept can be iterated at any point during its production.
Service Design Network: What is Service Design?
Design Council UK: The Design Process: What is the Double Diamond? https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/design-process-what-double-diamond
Minna Puisto: People don´t want service design, they want their problems solved!
Craig Bachman: The Agile Experience Strategist
Valerie Carr: LEAN and Service Design | Understanding the differences.
Gofore blog, Niall O’Donoghue: Secure design is a mindset and way of working
Gofore blog, Jyrki Anttila:Hands-onn UX-Design in Lean Projects with Limited Resources
Gofore blog: Combining Service Design and Secure Design in Agile Software Projects: Part,1 the Challenge
Imagine building a house in the following fashion: you start building the house from one room, for example from the bedroom. You start erecting the room walls, decide its dimensions, interior design, and furnishing. Perhaps while building the bedroom you consider other rooms as well; you have preliminary ideas for the kitchen, the lounge, the bathroom, and so on. What’s missing?
What is missing is the fundamental architecture and functionality of the overall house; what type of residence is it intended to be? A loft, a cottage, a mansion, something else? What type of foundation needs to support it? What materials should constitute its roof and exterior walls? Who are the intended residents?
The challenge with agile methods regarding service design and secure design
Building a software product or service using the agile philosophy encourages implementing features quickly, with an expectation and pressure to deliver visible progress to stakeholders. Often, agile projects tend to sprint from the start – and keep sprinting – without enough attention as to what should be the appropriate starting point for the whole project. Jumping straight into the agile process is like building a house without its fundamental blueprint.
In many agile process models, the user-centric approach and service design philosophy are not written explicitly in the model. This omits the whole process of defining the service’s purpose in a user-centric way, or it is too vaguely described to be of actual use for the day-to-day production work. On the other hand, the lean start-up methodology isn’t well suited to large-scale organisations or complex service ecosystems.
Likewise, in many agile process models, secure design is not written explicitly in the model. Secure design involves design considerations for ensuring that the security and privacy aspects of the delivered service or product, and the associated user experience, have been taken into consideration from the beginning. A secure design aims to be self-protective and trustworthy.
Still, with even the leanest service creation, some kind of discretion and direction is required to elucidate the preliminary problem statement for the design. We like to call this phase envisioning. The bigger the picture, the more upfront study and understanding is required of users’ needs and their context of use.
If the envisioning phase is not done properly (and keeping the users in mind), the result may be a service creation process that is very agile and productive in letter but not in spirit; a process that actually fails to deliver any real value to the organization or its customers and users, and with security and privacy design deficiencies. If guidelines for prioritising the backlog are unclear, rapid arbitrary changes of focus and, changes to which feature preferences to implement may occur. Managing the service roadmap becomes unwieldy. The aimed for customer value may be hazy or not based on actual user needs with the consequence that the metrics for evaluating the service may deliver less accurate results. User stories may not be based on actual user needs at all, but instead, reflect the organizational perceptions of users and their needs.
This omission or gap from envisioning to production, from the project’s outset, triggers the risk of service design and secure design debt due to envisioning being de-prioritised, delayed, or skipped. As the saying goes; the earlier debts are repaid, the better. Better still, don’t allow debt to build up. It pays to use some time to plan and to avoid this risk before the agile process kicks off!
In the second part of this blog series, we will describe how this envisioning phase is done and its deliverables deployed to the agile development process.
Jari Hietaniemi: The Best Ways to Screw Up An Agile Project:


frequency standard: A stable oscillator used for frequency calibration or reference. (188) Note 1: A frequency standard generates a fundamental frequency with a high degree of accuracy and precision. Harmonics of this fundamental frequency are used to provide reference points. Note 2: Frequency standards in a network or facility are sometimes administratively designated as "primary" or "secondary." The terms "primary" and "secondary," as used in this context, should not be confused with the respective technical meanings of these words in the discipline of precise time and frequency.
This HTML version of FS-1037C was last generated on Fri Aug 23 00:22:38 MDT 1996


Sampling of recent press collected from ISSUU, newspapers, Google News & more.
By Sandra Dibble
The nutrient-rich waters off the town of Bahia de los Angeles in the Gulf of California are known as a home for protected and endangered marine species, including whale sharks, fin whales, California sea lions and five species of sea turtle.
After a six-year campaign, conservationists are celebrating Tuesday's designation by Mexican President Felipe Calderón of the marine region as a naturally protected area, the Bahia de los Angeles Biosphere Reserve.
Encompassing more than 950,000 acres – less than half the size of Yellowstone National Park – the reserve includes the bay of Bahia de los Angeles, the Ballenas and Salsipuedes canals, as well as beaches and coastal wetland areas.
“This is like a gift that we're receiving,” said Fermín Smith, a former fisherman who has championed conservation efforts in the region and operates a small family-operated ecotourism business in the reserve. “But we're just starting; it's just the first step.”
A launching area to the central Sea of Cortes, as the Gulf of California is also known, the town of Bahia de los Angeles has long been prized by the conservation and scientific communities. Its sweeping vistas make it one of the most beautiful spots in this sparsely populated desert region.
But overfishing has made it increasingly difficult for residents to support themselves. As development pressures have been mounting around the Gulf of California, proponents say the reserve will help ensure that the growth of low-impact tourism can be a key to the region's future.
“We believe that Bahia de los Angeles can be something different,” said Ernesto Enkerlin, director of Mexico's National Commission for Protected Areas. “This is the beginning of the real thing, which is ensuring that conservation benefits local communities.”
The effort to win the special designation dates to 2001 with a proposal by Pronatura Noroeste, a regional arm of Mexico's oldest and largest environmental organization.
“We couldn't just cross our arms and wait for more fisheries to collapse and more marine resources to disappear,” said Gustavo Danemann, director of the marine conservation and sustainable fishing programs for Pronatura Noroeste.
With the designation official, the next step is coming up with a management plan that guides activities in the area, including fishing and tourism. Under the rules of a biosphere reserve, the community of 600 year-round residents must be consulted before any actions are taken.
The effort to win the designation started in Bahia de los Angeles with the persuasion of local residents to support the proposal. Outside backing for the the effort came from scientists, environmental groups and funders from both sides of the border, including two key supporters in San Diego: Wildcoast and the International Community Foundation.
Keep reading here
FREE IN-STORE EVENT: Local author Wallace J. Nichols will share his very special book, Dear Wild... continue
Hatchling Release. Photo courtesy of Loggerhead Marinelife Center Loggerhead... continue
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This plant grows in meadows, open woodlands, along roadsides or in any well drained areas; it even grows to mid elevations, throughout BC.
It is spread by runners, which can be separated from the parent plant to form new plants.
Strawberry leaf tea provides a refreshing drink that is rich in vitamin C and minerals. For centuries, it has been used as a safe (though not necessarily effective) remedy for everything from insanity to tuberculosis. (Kershaw)
A related species, wood strawberry, Fragaria vesca, has flowers slightly higher than the leaves, and cone shaped fruits.
Habitat Information: Wild strawberries grow in open, well drained places in lowland to subalpine zones. These plants can be found in fields and meadows, in disturbed areas, and in open forest. The woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca) frequently hybridizes with wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana), making some plants difficult to distinguish to species.
Garden Uses: The common cultivated strawberry that is grown commercially and in gardens is considered a mix of both the wild strawberry, F. virginiana, and the west coast F. chiloensis. Introduced in France, and its lineage carried on by American horticulturists, it has been cultivated more than any other fruit of temperate zones. (Alberta Plant Watch)
Insect Relationships: The following study by Michigan State University detailed insects that are attracted to this plant ""Attracts the following pollinators: Medium numbers of Chalcidoidea. Small numbers of Salticidae, Braconidae, Empididae, Ichnuemonidae and Cynipoidea. Pests Attracted: Medium numbers of leafhoppers. Small numbers of thrips, froghoppers, weevils, aphids and root maggot flies. Bees attracted: Low numbers (less than 1 bee per meter square in a 30 second sample) of bees including sweat bees and small carpenter bees. (Michigan State University).
Traditional Edible, Medicinal Uses: Fruit, raw or cooked is sweet and highly flavourful. Leaves are a great tea subtitute. The whole plant is rich in vitamin C, and has been used to regulate menses. Tea has been used as a nerve tonic, a diuretic, to treat diarrhoea, irregular menses, gonorrhoea, stomach and lung ailments. A poultice has been made from the powdered dry leaves to treat open sores. Fruits have been used to clean teeth. (Plants for a Future)
Green Roof: This drought hardy plant has been grown in soil levels 5 inches and up with good results. (Evergreen)
CanPlant assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in the contents of the database. While most entries are accurate, errors may occur. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of the information and we are not responsible for any errors in the information or for any adverse effects relating to the use of the plants or the information. If you notice a problem with the information, please let us know by sending an email so we can correct it.


Household chemicals may be making Americans fat
Question: I've heard that, above and beyond our bad eating and lifestyle habits, some chemicals in everyday products are contributing to the obesity problem. Can you explain?
— Concerned in CT
Obesity is a huge problem in the U.S. and other industrialized countries. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity rates have doubled for American adults and tripled for kids and teenagers aged six through 19 since 1980. Today, 31 percent of American adults and 15 percent of youngsters are classified as overweight.
Exposure to certain chemicals collectively known as "obesogens" may be contributing to the growing obesity epidemic, because exposure has been shown to interfere with the way we metabolize fat. Culprits include some pharmaceuticals, including antidepressants, as well as nicotine, many household cleaning products and air fresheners.
The rise in obesity and related health problems like diabetes is usually attributed to an abundance of high-calorie food coupled with the trend toward a more sedentary lifestyle, but there is more to the story. A growing number of researchers believe that certain chemicals collectively known as "obesogens" may be a contributing factor to the growing obesity epidemic. Exposure to these chemicals has been shown to interfere with the way we metabolize fat, leading to obesity despite otherwise normal diet and exercise.
Bruce Blumberg, a biology professor at the University of California at Irvine, first coined the term "obesogen" in 2006 after discovering that certain tin-based compounds known as organotins predisposed lab mice to weight gain. In the intervening years, hundreds of research studies have found similar connections between weight gain in humans and exposure to organotins as well as several other common chemicals found in everyday consumer products, agricultural pesticides and even some drinking water.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences reports that as many as 20 synthetic chemicals — from the BPA in plastic food storage containers and the lining of cans to phthalates used in the manufacture of non-stick coatings to the parabens in many personal care products — have been shown to cause weight gain in humans, mostly from exposure in utero or as infants. These early effects can last a lifetime, permanently altering one's metabolic "set points" for gaining weight. "If you have more fat cells and propensity to make more fat cells, and if you eat the typical high-carbohydrate, high-fat diet we eat [in the U.S.], you probably will get fat," Blumberg tells the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
Adult exposure to obesogens has also been shown to trigger weight gain and other endocrine issues while exacerbating the effects of earlier exposure.
Adult exposure to obesogens has also been shown to trigger weight gain and other endocrine issues while exacerbating the effects of earlier exposure. Certain pharmaceuticals (including some of the most commonly prescribed antidepressants) have been found to be particularly egregious in this regard. Meanwhile, nicotine, air fresheners and many household cleaning products also contain obesogens. Also, soybeans (consumed by both humans and the livestock we eat) contain a naturally occurring obesogen.
There may not be much we can do about the damage already done, but avoiding obesogens, whether from natural or synthetic, might be the best thing we can do to prevent making our obesity, hypertension, diabetes and other health problems that much worse. Says Blumberg: "Eat organic, filter water, minimize plastic in your life…If there's no benefit and some degree of risk, why expose yourself and your family?"
Of course, avoiding obesogens alone won't keep people from getting fat. Eating a nutritious diet and getting regular exercise are as important as ever to keep one's weight and overall health in check.
EarthTalk is written and edited by Doug Moss & Roddy Scheer and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com) Send quesitons to: firstname.lastname@example.org.


Government grants and federal assistance programs essentially provide “free money” that will help you pay for basic necessities such as utilities, housing, education or disaster cleanup. There are dozens of government programs available to help you make ends meet during difficult times. Examples include federal financial aid for college, rural home repair grants, energy assistance programs and more.
Grants are not the same as loans, and therefore do not need to be repaid. However, not everyone can get a grant or receive assistance from the government. In most cases, grants are need-based and recipients will need to meet a variety of eligibility criteria. The requirements for getting a grant will vary based on the grant, but in most cases, an applicant’s income, family composition, age and citizenship will be important factors to consider. Below, learn about a few of the most helpful grants and assistance programs available from the government.
Discover Federal Financial Aid for Students
One of the most common government grants is financial aid for students who want to seek higher education. There are several different types of grants for students, and while the eligibility requirements vary, grants are usually given to applicants who are:
- Low-income or have a financial need.
- U.S. citizens and eligible non-citizens.
- Enrolling in a degree or certificate program that qualifies.
- Able to meet academic standards while enrolled in school.
The government also provides student loans, which, unlike grants, must be repaid. However, you should always check and see which grants you are eligible for first before accepting loans that results in student debt. Whether you plan on applying for grants, loans or both, you will need to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). FAFSA must be submitted before the academic deadline determined by your school.
Learn About Individuals and Households Program (IHP)
Following a natural disaster, you may be eligible for IHP in order to make repairs to damaged property or pay for a temporary housing solution. IHP is only available after the president has declared a natural disaster and has authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to step in and provide assistance. Therefore, when IHP is made available, you will need to submit an application through FEMA.
The eligibility criteria for IHP grants are a little different than they are for other government programs. While this is still a need-based grant, your income, age and family composition usually will not play a role in determining whether you qualify for assistance. Instead, you will be eligible only if the following conditions apply:
- You are a U.S. citizen or qualified non-citizen.
- Your primary residence has sustained damage from the natural disaster and is located within the disaster zone declared by the president.
- As a result of the disaster, you are unable to live in your primary residence.
- Your residence is not insured or does not have adequate insurance coverage for the natural disaster that occurred.
Find Out Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)
Heating and cooling your home can be extremely costly. If you are unable to afford your bills, you may qualify for LIHEAP in order to avoid getting a shut-off notice from your utility provider. With some restrictions, LIHEAP can also be used to help “weatherize” your home, which can include adding insulation or making other improvements that make your home more energy-efficient.
Applications for this program must be submitted through local LIHEAP offices. The exact requirements for LIHEAP vary by state and county, but overall this is an income-based program. In most cases, you can automatically qualify if you are already receiving assistance from one of the following programs:
- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps.
- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
- Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
- The Housing Choice Voucher Program, also known as Section 8.
Discover Rural Housing Repair and Rehabilitation Grants (Section 504)
If you live in a designated rural area and have at least one senior citizen in your household, you may qualify for a Section 504 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Your eligibility will also be based on your citizenship, income and your housing needs. Applications for this program are accepted through local USDA offices.
Section 504 grants allow you to receive up to $7,500, which can be used to make repairs and renovations that remove health and safety hazards in your home or make a home more accessible for disabled household members. Therefore, your eligibility is also based on the status of your home and the nature of the repairs or renovations you need.
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Rent To Own
If you cannot afford to purchase a home at this time, it may be worth your while to consider the option of renting-to-own a property
Govt Programs for Citizens in Need
There are many government sponsored programs that provide assistance to individuals in need. Find the program right for you.
Section 8 Eligibility
Being approved for Section 8 depends on many factors & required meeting the required qualifications. View all requirements here.


The little-known history of the most American holiday…this essay was originally published on Thanksgiving Day, 1999.
I turned to my trusty assistant…Beirne White…this morning.
"Beirne," I said gravely, "tell me about Thanksgiving in Mississippi."
Beirne proceeded to tell me about a Mississippi bluesman named "Son" House, who lived to be 102 by doing what bluesmen tended to do…chasing bad luck, bad liquor and bad women.
"What has that to do with Thanksgiving?"
"Nothing," he replied…whereupon he drew on the resources generously provided by Britannica.com, formerly of Chicago, lately of cyber space, to get me the research I requested.
Beirne hails from Mississippi. And while Mississippians will sit down with the rest of the nation…and tuck into their turkeys with equal relish…perhaps only substituting Bourbon Pecan pie for the sweet potato or pumpkin pie enjoyed in Maryland…it was not always so.
Somewhere deep in the most primitive part of his medulla oblongata, the part of the brain where race memories are stored, Beirne resists Thanksgiving. It is, after all, a Yankee holiday.
Thanksgiving in France: Commemorating the Northern Victory
In the middle of the war between the states, both sides would proclaim days of "thanksgiving," following the progress of the war as we now follow the progress of the stock market. After each of the first and second battles of Bull Run – which sent the Yankees fleeing back to Washington – the Confederates proclaimed days of thanksgiving. But it was Lincoln’s day that stuck. Declared after the battle of Gettysburg – the last great Napoleonic charge of military history – Thanksgiving was set for the third Thursday in the month of November, commemorating the Northern victory.
Beirne doesn’t say so…but this fact must stick in his craw.
It doesn’t help that the original celebration took place in Massachussetts. And that it was hosted by a dour bunch of Puritans, who probably wouldn’t have been able to enjoy a good dinner if their lives depended on it. But they certainly had a lot to be thankful for. As the Wall Street Journal reminds us annually, they nearly exterminated themselves in typical Yankee fashion – by wanting to boss each other around.
They had arrived in Massachusetts by accident and bad seamanship, intending to settle in the more hospitable climate of Virginia, which had been colonized more than 10 years before. Once in Massachussetts they proceeded to set up a such a miserable community that surely most of them, had they lived, would have longed to return to England. The Soviets could have learned from their example and spared themselves 70 years of misery. Only after the "witch burners and infant damners" abandoned their communal form of organization, and allowed people to work for themselves, did the colony have a prayer of survival.
But victors write the history books. And now this precarious celebration by a feeble group of religious zealots has turned into the most American holiday.
After Appomattox, the South was helpless. Its natural leaders, the plantation aristocrats, were either dead, bankrupted and/or discredited. Many of them went to Northern cities, like New York or Baltimore, where, Mencken tells us, they "arrived with no baggage save good manners and empty bellies." They enriched the North. But back home, they were sorely missed. "First the carpetbaggers," says Mencken, "ravaged the land…and then it fell into the hands of the native white trash…" Scars of war can take a long time to heal. But 130 years later, the South is the most economically and culturally robust part of the nation.
Thanksgiving in France: A Unified, National Myth
Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday in 1931. Through the Depression, and then WWII, Thanksgiving grew in importance. In a country where roots meant almost nothing, where people were ready to pick up and move at the drop of a hat, where there were huge differences in what people thought and how they lived, Thanksgiving served to provide a unified, national myth…most popularly expressed in Norman Rockwell’s Thanksgiving cover for the Saturday Evening Post.
Roots mean more in Mississippi than they do in California. "No man is himself," said Faulkner, Mississippi’s most celebrated alcoholic, "he is the sum of his past." Unlike so many other American writers of the 20th century, Faulkner stayed home. The forward to the "encyclopedia of southern culture" has a passage from Faulkner, saying: "Tell about the South. What’s it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all."
Even in Faulkner’s Mississippi…Thanksgiving is now part of everyone. Where Beirne goes…it goes, too. And so, all over the world, Americans, gathering in small groups, like pilgrims on distant shores, celebrate the holiday (if not on the actual day…perhaps the weekend following…as we will do.) This can require a little ingenuity. Americans in France have to search for the ingredients. Pumpkins are hard to pronounce – citrouilles – and hard to find. Cranberry sauce is unknown.
Art Buchwald has translated the Thanksgiving story for the French, deftly turning Captain Miles Standish into Le Capitaine Kilometre Deboutish. But no one has refashioned American Thanksgiving recipes for the metric measuring cups here in France. My wife, Elizabeth, descendant of the Puritan fathers…former resident of New York…a Yankee – in other words – will do her best.
And we will be thankful.
November 27, 2003
Bill Bonner is the founder and editor of The Daily Reckoning. He is also the author, with Addison Wiggin, of the NY Times and international best-seller: "Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving The Soft Depression of The 21st Century" (John Wiley & Sons).
What can go wrong? What can go right?
Successful investing, it has been said, means balancing risk against reward.
Today, most investors load up the reward end of the scale with the hope of rising asset prices forever…and see no risk to put on the other side. By contrast, here at the Daily Reckoning, we have no trouble finding heavy risks…and big rewards too, but only by selling what the lumps are buying.
For the benefit of new readers and those that weren’t paying attention a year ago, ‘lumps’ is an affectionate diminutive for ‘lumpeninvestoriat’ – our psuedo-intellectual way of describing the great seething mass of ‘investors’ who have no business in the stock market, bond market, currency markets…and, in fact, shouldn’t even be allowed into Wal-Mart without a financial advisor.
Buffett, Grantham, Soros, Rogers, Templeton – all the people who seem to know what they are doing have warned the lumps to watch out. But, bless their hearts, they pay no attention.
The headlines continue to provide good news. Durable orders are up 3.3%. New unemployment claims are near a 3-year low. The economy is said to be expanding at its fastest pace in 20 years.
Business in the Midwest is hot. Housing in California is hot – the LA paper reports a new record in sales of $1 million – plus houses.
The lumps may not realize it, but they pay a terrible price for those headlines. The federal deficit is swelling towards $1 trillion. Consumers, too, are so confident that they see no need to restrain themselves. In India, we recently discovered, consumer debt is ballooning…but is still less than 10% of income. In America, the equivalent figure is over 100% – and rising quickly. Overall, American debt is already 3 times the size of the U.S. economy…and growing 6 to 8 times faster.
Not for nothing has debt often been compared to liquor. The first drink, especially on an empty stomach, produces a pleasant sensation. But the alcohol loses its punch with each dose. Finally, it has no visible effect at all.
The risk is that we are getting pretty far along in the credit cycle…and that, like pouring shots of whiskey down the throat of a drunken man, new debt will produce little beneficial effect. We might also wonder where the extra juice will come from. Another tax cut? Another round of rate cuts? More spending on the War Against Terror?
Still, the lumps seem to see no danger – neither to the dollar, nor to bonds, nor to stocks, nor to real estate prices, nor to their personal balance sheet. (Judging by the overwhelming amount of reader mail we’ve been receiving – they’re quite confident their eyesight checks out okay!)
Incredibly, the biggest lumps seem to be foreign central bankers, particularly those in Asia. As Eric points out below, it is only thanks to them that Americans continue to spend so much. Without their buying of U.S. Treasury bonds, the federal deficit couldn’t have been financed…interest rates wouldn’t be so low…houses wouldn’t be refinanced…and the consumer buying binge wouldn’t be happening…and the assets they now value dearly – houses, U.S. Treasuries, stocks – wouldn’t be worth nearly as much as they are now. But that is the sublime nature of lumps; they are unable to see the risk they pose to themselves.
Bankers, generally, seem to come into this world with ‘chump’ or ‘mooch’ or ‘lump’ tattooed on their derrières. They seem destined to buy things they shouldn’t, at prices that are too high, at the worst possible time. The Bank of England, for example, sold its gold at almost the very bottom of the market – and announced the sale in advance to give prices a chance to adjust, downward, to the news! Bankers seem to have a special knack for getting in on something just before it blows up. (Lisa Hess, writing in Forbes, explains why lumpy Asian bankers are buying Treasuries at just the wrong time…more below)…
Meanwhile, the smart money is getting out of town at the fastest pace we’ve ever seen. Colleague Dan Ferris sends details:
"On page C3 of Monday’s Wall Street Journal, it says that, in the month of October, insiders sold $59 dollars worth of stock for every $1 they bought. Generally, the article says, a level of $20 or more is bearish. And it’s been over $20 for six straight months."
But God bless the lumps. They’re allowing the insiders to get out of stocks at 30 times earnings. They are the turkeys of the investment world…but what would Thanksgiving be without them?
And now, over to Eric Fry, with more news.
Eric Fry, writing from New York City…
– America’s stock market investors might want to replace their traditional turkey dinners this Thanksgiving with something more appropriate…like filet mignon with white truffles. This year’s booming stock market rally warrants a Thanksgiving meal grander than mere turkey. On the other hand, the buoyant stock market and resurgent economy are sure to make this year’s roast turkeys and mashed potatoes taste like filet mignon with white truffles. 8.2% GDP growth can transform even the driest bites of overcooked foul into delectable morsels of haute cuisine….And the giblets can seem like foie gras when the Nasdaq sits on 45% year-to-date gains.
– Yesterday, the Nasdaq tacked onto its winnings by gaining 10 points to 1,953, while the Dow added 16 points to 9,780. But the gold market hosted the day’s most dramatic trading action. The February gold contract soared as high as $402 an ounce, before retreating to $398.00 at the end of the trading session – a hefty gain of $5.60 on the day.
– Government bonds and the dollar both fell. The 10-year Treasury note slipped half a point, pushing its yield to 4.25% from 4.19% Tuesday. The dollar dropped nearly 1% to $1.189 per euro.
– Evidence of economic recovery seems to issue continuously from the bureaus of officialdom. The Commerce Department said demand for U.S.-made durable goods in October rose at the fastest rate in more than a year, while the Labor Department said the weekly number of new claims for unemployment insurance fell to 351,000, the lowest number since early 2001.
– We Americans can be thankful, therefore, that Alan Greenspan and the other wise men at the Federal Reserve managed to produce an economic recovery from the ashes of recession…And we should also extend a heartfelt thanks to our dear friends, Fannie and Freddie. Thanks to Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s unrestrained appetitive for funding mortgages, we Americans can crack open our nest eggs whenever we want and consume the contents immediately. Without the help of Fannie or Freddie, we would not be able to pull the equity out of our houses and spend the proceeds on new cars, dream vacations and self-help books.
– Of course, life in the 50 states is not all fun and games and Britney-Madonna kisses…Toasting our good fortune with a bottle of fine French champagne will cost about 20% more than it did last year. That’s because the dollar is tumbling.
– As a result, the rising stock market that we are all so thrilled about is delivering much less wealth than advertised. It’s true that the S&P500 has rallied about 15% since last Thanksgiving, but it’s also true that the dollar has tumbled about 20% against the euro over the same time frame. Net-net, the dollar’s losses have more than erased the S&P’s gain since this time last year…We have more dollars in our pockets, but the dollars don’t buy as much as they used to.
– The tumbling greenback has boosted the cost of all our favorite imports, while simultaneously reducing the purchasing power of the savings we work so hard to accumulate…But things could be worse.
– We should be thankful that the dollar’s value has not fallen even more than it has, says Paul Kasriel, Director of Economic Research at Northern Trust, and we should direct our thanks toward the eastern sky.
– "You recall the story of how Native Americans who lived near the Plymouth colony came to be invited to the first Thanksgiving feast, don’t you?" Kasriel asks. "The Pilgrims were paying the Native Americans a debt of gratitude for helping them survive their first year in the New Land. In other words, the Pilgrims got by with a lot of help from their new-found friends.
"Similarly, this Thanksgiving, we are getting by with a lot of help from our new-found friends – not Native Americans, but native Chinese and native Japanese…If it were not for the fact that foreign central banks have become the buyers of last resort for dollar-denominated assets, the greenback would have fallen even more in value versus other currencies than it has, U.S. prices for goods and services would be higher than they are, and U.S. long-term interest rates would be higher than they are…
– "So, just as the original Plymouth Pilgrims gave their thanks to their ‘foreign’ friends, the Native Americans, for their help in producing a bountiful first harvest, we should give thanks to our foreign friends, central banks, for financing at very favorable terms the importation of a bountiful foreign-produced ‘harvest.’"
– Amen to that!
Bill Bonner, back in Paris…
*** While the rest of the financial media is enjoying its holiday, we are at work as usual, here at the Daily Reckoning headquarters in Paris…
*** Here, Lisa Hess, writing in Forbes, explains why it is the wrong time to buy treasuries. In brief, Asian central bankers are fools, buying investments from knaves.
"One huge reason is government economic stimulation, a calculated political strategy by the Bush Administration that will breed long-term problems. The current White House, one of the greatest political marketing machines of all time, is always ‘on message’ and always united in its overarching objective: getting reelected next fall. And sure enough, the three engines of economic stimulus are today all clearly ‘on message.’
"Fiscal, monetary and foreign exchange policies are now fired up to energize the economy, create jobs or, at the very least, generate enough inflation so there’s the illusion of prosperity by next November. I’m not here to debate George W. Bush’s reelection. My point is simply that after November 2004 bondholders are on their own.
"Fiscal policy is about as stimulative as the electorate can stand it to be. Staring at what Wall Street estimates to be a $500 billion to $600 billion deficit for next year, depending upon how the war in Iraq is accounted for, you can be pretty sure that some of that spending will find its way into better job creation. Tax cuts are helping, too – both the lower rates and the child care credit. The result is continued robust consumer spending.
"Monetary policy has also done wonders in stimulating the consumer by providing cheap capital for everything from homes to boats. Vehemently focused on preventing deflation, the Federal Reserve, Bush’s silent partner, is making the classic central banking mistake of fighting the last war. In this case, the last war took place in the 1930s…
"Then there’s the weak dollar, which has helped support U.S. exports at the expense of making imports here more expensive, a recipe for inflation. Good news for Boeing (for a while, anyway), bad news for Wal-Mart shoppers. So this all amounts to a tax cut for U.S. manufacturers, although certainly the reverse for consumers. It gets worse. Foreign investors, upon whom the U.S. depends to paper over its trade deficit, may well decide in coming months to shun low-paying Treasury bonds, driving down their prices…
"The steepness of the yield curve is enticing speculators and leveraged investors to borrow short and lend long, comforted by the knowledge that the Fed is holding down short rates. Banks are taking in deposits and buying mortgage-backed securities. Investors do the same thing when they buy bonds on margin.
"Bad moves. You don’t want to own bonds at a time when the government deliberately debases its currency and fosters inflation."
*** "Be right, sit tight," says our old friend Bob Bishop. Gold has risen 50% since its bottom in 2001. Many gold stocks have doubled. Don’t be surprised by a correction in the gold market. In fact, we would be delighted; we would buy more at lower prices. But don’t try to time the market, says Bishop. Just get in position. This is going to be a long bull market. You just want to get in and stay in for the long haul.
**** On paper at least, Americans are about even, we figure. Stocks and houses are up this year. But as Eric points out, the dollar is down. Since January of ’02 the dollar has lost 25% of its value against the euro. It hurts here in Paris…but most Americans have barely noticed. Yet, in terms of what they can buy on the global market, their spending power is down.
They also continued to borrow themselves into a hole. The value of all assets in America is probably around $50 trillion, according to Warren Buffett. So, a half-trillion dollar trade deficit is equivalent to "losing" 1% of the nation’s wealth to foreigners.
*** Trouble is, there is paper wealth and there is real wealth. A house that has gone up in price is really no more valuable than it was at a lower price. It gives the owner the same ‘return’…in terms of living space. But a rising price encourages him to believe he can ‘take out’ a little of the equity and enjoy it. What he is really doing is giving up a piece of his home – leaving him actually poorer than he was before.


Local students drew posters to help spread awareness about pollution prevention.
You can help chose the winner for the Dunes Center’s Explore the Coast Poster Contest.
Guadalupe 5th graders learned about coastal ecosystems and explored California coastlines this semester. At the end of their program, the students learned about stormwater pollution prevention and created posters to create awareness on the subject.
According to the Dunes Center, the winning piece of artwork will be included with a flyer about pollution prevention that will be distributed to all Guadalupe residents with their June water bill.
All the finalists will be compiled into an exhibit at the Dunes Center this summer.
You can vote for your favorite poster, here.