After editing, we have “Margaret, a gorgeous young woman, walked

7 min readDec 5, 2020

What followed was a twenty minute spiel on how my theology was incorrect, my words poorly-chosen and my message lost in din of my doctrinal deficiency. Fortunately, my well-meaning sister-in-Christ was gracious enough to correct my false teaching and extend the hand of forgiveness.
“Pastor Dan!” It was one of the ladies from church. “I’m glad I caught you. I am calling you because the Lord has put it on my heart to let you know that I disagreed with your sermon on Sunday. I’ve been praying about it, and I just had to tell you,” explained the voice on the other end.
Originally composed and written (in English) by Taehyung for his mixtape, the acoustic pop ballad is one of the outstanding tracks to have come out of the South Korean boy group’s repertoire, as cited by fans and critics alike. But there’s much more to be said about Taehyung’s Blue & Grey as it triggers and evokes countless reactions and understandings of and beyond varying degrees.

Can something from the pop music market achieve qualities of sublimity? Very much so, and Blue & Grey isn’t the first, but it’s one of the notable few today, many thanks to songwriter Kim Taehyung’s depth and details.

I write about religion, spirituality and Christianity a lot. Almost without exception, every time I post something, some Christian is offended by my apparently poor doctrine, or the way I interpret the Bible slightly differently to them. Some of them see it as their Christian responsibility to correct me and will send me very long responses explaining how wrong I am. Sometimes the responses are even longer than my blog posts.

The UX Collective donates US$1 for each article published in our platform. This story contributed to Bay Area Black Designers: a professional development community for Black people who are digital designers and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area. By joining together in community, members share inspiration, connection, peer mentorship, professional development, resources, feedback, support, and resilience. Silence against systemic racism is not an option. Build the design community you believe in.

Something I realized when I was starting out, and something I often notice in junior designers, is that iteration doesn’t come naturally. Or rather, it seems to be done on a single artboard. I know, because I did it as well. It seems intuitive enough at the start — you make micro adjustments to your design until you think you’ve landed somewhere. The problem is: every single change affects every other element in your design. And so if you literally can’t see what changes you’ve made, it’s impossible to judge your decisions.

“You’re only young! You are still learning!” She said — dripping with condescension. Then, satisfied that she had made good on the Lord’s instructions, faithfully administering loving Christian discipline, she wrapped up the call, leaving me thoroughly crestfallen and dismayed.

There are one hundred and twenty-five invaluable principles, concepts, and practices in Universal Principles of Design, and these four have really only scratched the surface. But hopefully, they can help guide you the next time you’re approaching a design problem and in your search for the best practices that have been proven over time.

I feel honored that people invest so much of their time responding to me! To be fair, many of these people are well-meaning and polite, but a few are downright nasty. Like this email I received from a reader just last week:

I wish I could tell you this kind of Christian behavior was an anomaly — a glaring exception to the rule — but I can’t. Sadly, Christians do a lot of things, “in the name of love,” that aren’t really all that loving.

The thing is, usually when people try to correct my doctrine, its over something reasonably inconsequential to the fundamentals of Christianity. For example, I get a lot of ‘hate-dressed-up-as-love’ from hardcore Evangelicals for being pro-LGBTIQ, whereas I don’t think Jesus is going to exclude me from Heaven on account of my advocating for a minority group that Christians have typically treated appallingly.

I’ve been accused of being ‘soft on sin,’ which I am totally okay with. They said the same thing about Jesus. I’ve been criticized for the version of the Bible that I use even though I can’t imagine Jesus standing at the pearly gates saying, “Sorry Son! You can’t come into Heaven because you didn’t use the King James Version of the Bible.” I’ve been called a false prophet, a Pharisee and a lunatic — all by lovely Christian people who disagreed with my doctrine.But when you iterate — when you create multiple, separate versions of your concept — you can step back, observe what you’ve explored, and find out what’s working and what isn’t.Add another step to the flow. Test it. Remove a category in the information architecture. Test it. And so on. This cycle continues until the problems reveal themselves and the solutions that you explored become viable options that make the most sense.

If you want to disagree with me about a matter of opinion, then fine. Let’s talk, but let’s do it lovingly and respectfully. I’m sure we can find common ground. These days I don’t get inflamed with righteous indignation anymore, because I realized something quite profound. From a theological perspective, the person I was ten years ago would be appalled at the person I am today. I have become a heretic in the eyes of my past self! Therefore, I recognize that everyone is on a journey, just as I am, and so I allow others the grace to disagree with me. Besides, if God really is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the universe, then he doesn’t need the likes of me to defend Him.And “where there were lots of people” can be condensed to one word: “crowded.” After removing 11 words, we have a strong sentence, a sentence with fewer words, and a sentence that provides a better picture for our readers.“In design, iteration allows complex structures to be created by progressively exploring, testing, and tuning the design. The emergence of ordered complexity results from an accumulation of knowledge and experience that is then applied to the design.” (Lidwell et al., 2003)

In UX, iteration is crucial in eliminating difficult or illogical interactions people make when using our products. Ultimately, we want the product to help the person using it achieve their goals in the simplest and easiest way possible. And we do this by exploring, testing, and tuning our designs. When you explore a wider set of possibilities, you’ll then be able to find something that isn’t extreme and functions well in relation to the boundaries you’ve discovered.Something that’s always stuck with me from Chris Do is to utilize extremes in your iterations. Go too big, and go too small — then you’ll be able to find what size makes sense. Go too bright, and go too dark, then you’ll find which contrast will work.I still keep my other laptop for professional stuff since the environment is set up to work the type of work I do, and I would hate if a new laptop system mess it up for me. If you trying to replace your current professional laptop, don’t do it. It is too early for that and the 16 option size is not yet available.

After editing, we have “Margaret, a gorgeous young woman, walked

Written by Helal Hafiz

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