Sean Brookes

💥 Two years after Tim Horton’s settled a class action in Canada for sharing location data through its use of the Radar SDK in its app… 💥…And two years after Greenley vs. Kochava claimed the Kochava SDK intercepts consumers’ location data when using mobile apps 💥…Bender vs. Twilio claims the Segment SDK collects personal information in a similar fashion. Are class action plaintiffs taking up the cause of SDK liability? Or are these flukes? In Bender vs. Twilio, Noah Bender downloaded and used the Calm meditation app on his cell phone. He later claimed the Segment SDK intercepted sensitive communications between himself and Calm. Segment is designed for developers to collect data , including search terms, search results, keystrokes, button presses, page views, and consumers’ names and email addresses. Bender is suing Twilio for violating America's Wiretap Act, the California Wiretap Act, and California's Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA). This may be the Calm before the storm for class actions. Bender's complaint alleges over 11,000 app developers have integrated Segment into apps for shopping, productivity, gaming, and mental health. With Boltive, companies find litigation risks in their iOS and Android apps before plaintiffs do #privacycompliance #dataprotection #dataprivacy

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A hard requirement when developing a kiosk's user interface is a "Reduced Height" or "Wheelchair" Mode". Interactive elements have be reachable, so they can't be lower than 40cm or higher than 120cm from the floor in Canada.

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Chain-of-thought can't be parallelized. Now that models "think" much longer before answering, we will see more apps shifting to asynchronous and batch processing. Instead of real-time chat, it will be more like sending an email to an agent and receiving a response minutes or even hours later. It's the eternal speed vs quality tradeoff.

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With the advancement of AI technology, UX/UI tools are undergoing significant transformation. These tools not only assist in testing and evaluation but also extend to design thinking, prototype development, and product planning. This article comprehensively examines the AI-driven UX tool ecosystem from a practical perspective.

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When I joined Thinkific's Performance team, our mission was clear: improve endpoint latency to enhance the experience for our creators. Diving into industry research, I looked for companies with a tech stack similar to ours and found a talk by Simon Hørup Eskildsen at Shopify (https://lnkd.in/gJcB5WBm) that was pure gold. In it, he shared a five-year roadmap on how Shopify tackled performance and scaling challenges—a roadmap that became invaluable to us. Using the best practices and open-source tools Simon’s team developed, we made impactful improvements to our platform’s performance. It’s a great reminder that learning from those who’ve faced similar challenges is one of the best ways to grow as an engineer. Since then, Simon has launched his own company and built turbopuffer (https://turbopuffer.com/), a vector database for the AI space. If you're working with AI and need a vector database, I highly recommend checking it out. You won't find a cheaper or faster option at scale. If you're a technical leader or Staff+ engineer interested in exchanging ideas, please connect with me! I'd love to chat about our experiences. https://lnkd.in/gKT7unhC

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Conferences, conferences everywhere! March through June was packed, so many things were happening in our BC space... I ended up flying to 6 different events in this period. Three events from the Days of Knowledge tour, Directions North America, DynamicsMinds, and finally BC TechDays. Before I ease into the summer, I want to write a recap of the fun parts of these events, and a quick introduction, in case you don’t know any of them. It really is hard to make up my mind which one people should “look out for”. I think all of them. But since I know not everyone can go to every event, I’ve included my view of who’s the best fit for what event. And now, time to enjoy summer! ☀️🏖️🌊 #BusinessCentral #Conference #Dynamics365 https://lnkd.in/g4qg-3dd

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Incentivizing Long-Term Thinking: A Shared Vision Building something sustainable isn’t just about doing the right thing—it’s about aligning the team around a shared long-term vision. Offering grants, rewards, or recognition to teams that prioritize scalability and sustainability can go a long way toward shifting the focus from short-term gains to long-lasting impact. When everyone on the team is motivated by a common goal of creating something that can endure, it leads to more cohesive and effective collaboration. Scalability: Built by the Whole Team from the Start Scalability isn’t a problem to be tackled later—it’s a priority from day one. Every team member, from developers to project managers, should be asking: how will this project handle more users, more data, and more integrations down the road? When scalability is baked into the project from the beginning, teams can avoid hitting roadblocks and ensure they’re building something that can adapt and grow with ease. Success Stories: Inspiration for the Team Teamwork is driven by shared victories, and nothing motivates like a good success story. When developers see how focusing on strong infrastructure has helped other projects thrive, it can inspire them to follow the same path. Celebrating these wins and learning from successful projects builds a culture of long-term thinking and shows teams that efficiency and collaboration lead to lasting success. User-Centric Design: A Teamwide Responsibility While it’s easy to think that user experience is only a concern for the design team, the truth is that it’s everyone’s responsibility. From ensuring secure, stable systems to thinking through how the platform will grow with its users, a positive user experience comes from every corner of the team. When users are happy, they stick around—and that’s what helps a project build longevity. Regulatory Support: A Framework for Team Efficiency Regulatory frameworks offer a guiding hand to help teams work more efficiently and ensure they’re building something sustainable. Organizations like ACME WERX (acmewerx.com) are creating industry standards that provide a clear path for teams to follow, ensuring security and scalability. Governments and regulatory bodies can further support this by offering incentives, grants, and certifications for projects that meet these criteria, helping to ensure that teams are set up for long-term success. The key to sustainable development in blockchain and NFTs isn’t just about who has the best idea—it’s about how well the team works together, how efficiently they can execute their vision, and whether they are building something that can scale and evolve. By focusing on education, collaboration, scalability, and user-centric design, teams can create projects that don’t just succeed in the short term but are built to last.

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User interfaces are a hack that shouldn't exist. And soon, they probably won't in many places. AI will change everything about how we interact with computers and information, and spoiler alert, it's not going to involve many visual interfaces. We're in the middle of a complete redefinition of how we interact with technology.

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Vasion 2024 Fall Launch is HERE! I couldn't be more proud of all of the work done to make this fall launch possible. At Vasion we are passionate about working with our customers to create and deliver real value that solves their problems and leads to better outcomes for their businesses and customers. We're bringing you new features that span across print and process automation. From seamless guest printing with Web Print to optimizing document processes with our Output Automation Console, our new products are here to eliminate all the headaches from your IT department! #VasionFallLaunch24 Learn more here! https://shorturl.at/ApZsH Here’s some additional more information about our core offerings: 🖨️ Print Automation Vasion’s cloud-native centrally managed direct IP printing removes legacy systems: simplifying IT, cutting costs, fortifying security, and enabling scalable, low-maintenance print automation and AI efficiencies. 📤 Output Automation Centralize and scale critical print and document administration by automating the delivery from any system to any destination—whether physical printers, digital archives, or external systems. 📄 Document Automation Create, process, and manage important documents. Intelligently capture data from paper documents with OCR and scanning capabilities to store, search, extract, and move data through automated workflows. 🔄 Process Automation Automate advanced business processes that drive efficiencies and lower costs. Leverage Vasion’s no-code platform to build forms, digital signatures, and workflows, harnessing data across teams.

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🚀 Day 4/10 of University of Waterloo's MDEI Design Sprint ✅ Today marked significant progress in our journey to transform CIBC's app by integrating user-centric gamification strategies for self-servicing: ✅ Strategic Meeting with Lennart Nacke: With only 1 day allocated for testing tomorrow, we optimized our research strategy and validated our gamification assumptions with UX and gamification expert, Lennart. His insights were instrumental as we refined our approach; focusing on user needs and clarifying our messaging around gamification.* ✅ Mid-Fi Prototype Development: We've developed a robust mid-fi prototype featuring over 10 screens, aiming to enhance user engagement through gamification - designed to make digital banking more intuitive and rewarding. I tested the flows and updated interactions as needed to ensure a smooth experience for users during testing. ✅ Usability Testing Plan: I setup our testing on two critical scenarios, enrolling and learning. While we could test for many more, I think it's important to understand that not everything's a priority! 🛠 Tools of the Trade: To save time on the tedious task of building out a Google Form, I leveraged OpenAI to convert our testing plan in Word into a script. I then ran the script to create a form in seconds that will help us to track results - saving us valuable time for more important tasks like focusing on the questions and design. *Key learning: Don't know? Ask! ⏭ Next Steps: Prototype testing, data analysis, and preparing for stakeholder check-ins with our CIBC mentors Lyndon Pan and Himanshi Sharma. 🙌 Stay tuned as Andre De Jesus, Elijah Robert, Megan Dufton, Mukul T., Samaia Aidroos and I continue to innovate and refine our approach to digital banking! #DesignSprint #DigitalBanking #UserExperience #Gamification #ProductManagement #ProductDesign #CareerGrowth

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When I spoke to Christian (Chris) Bach at the CMS Connect Conference in Montreal this past August, we dug into the unfolding roadmap of #composable architectures. Netlify – the company he helped found with Mathias Biilmann Christensen – has been at the forefront of shaping that journey, and it continues to pioneer the evolution. That was made abundantly clear at the #NetlifyCompose2024 event last week. There were some notable announcements, but one of the coolest new offerings unveiled by the modern #webdevelopment platform is its #AI-Assisted Publishing. It effectively streamlines the tedious, multi-tool juggling act of converting #content drafts from tools like Google Docs into web-ready pages, and even offers some slick audience #personalization capabilities. When combined with its built-in visual editing capabilities, it's clear that the platform is continuing to evolve its value to developers and content creators – particularly as more choice and automation enter the competitive field. The company also introduced what it calls Async Workloads, which empowers developers to construct durable, event-driven workflows seamlessly (and serverlessly) on any Netlify site. It also revealed an expanded library of in-app integrations via its Netlify Extensions ecosystem, which complemented partner announcements at the event. On CMS Critic, we cover all three of these innovations and why they matter. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/eKwjT364

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Hey LinkedIn Network! I am about 30 days from inVivo testing of my live product... What I need, as I navigate SaaS (XaaS) & Introduce my new Programming Language to the WORLD!.. is a cloud-3rd party to house my encrypted data that has definitive separation between Canadian and US data storage (State regulatory as well - if applicable). Someone who can do both would be pretty valuable! ▶️ Who are your favorite providers for cloud storage? ▶️ Are you a Global Start? ▶️ Have you made mistakes in this area you can warn me against! There are some (not an endorsement) regulations coming through - despite CDN/US Nafta agreements - So stay vigilant Data Connoisseurs! & let me know in the comments below! #Startup #BuildingInPublic #30DaysToLaunch #PreSeed #PreLaunch #DataChampion

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🎉 Excited to Share Shopify’s Observability Journey! 🎉 For the past 3 years, our team at Shopify has been building Shopify Observe—a custom observability platform designed to handle the massive scale and complexity of our infrastructure. Recently, we hosted a mini conference to dive deep into the work we've done and share insights on the unique challenges we've tackled. Here’s a look at what we covered: 🎤 Why We Built Observe - Elijah McPherson on why Shopify moved from vendor solutions to a custom observability setup, exploring the features that make "Shopify Observe" unique. (https://lnkd.in/gMVCzNxB) 🎤 Shopify Observe product overview - Erin Noe-Payne gives a comprehensive look at Observe’s key capabilities that support Shopify’s observability needs. (https://lnkd.in/gTh-qP9Z) 🎤 Planet-Scale Metrics Ingestion - Samuel Dufel & Andre Branchizio on strategies behind intelligent target assignment for seamless metrics ingestion at a global scale. (https://lnkd.in/gEgyTrc6) 🎤 Logging Ingestion Pipeline - Daniel de Oliveira Filho on how Vector, ClickHouse, and a custom Logging API power Shopify's scalable and secure logging pipeline. (https://lnkd.in/gGimCeQY) 🎤 Long-Term Metrics Storage - Filip Petkovski on building a distributed query engine with unbounded retention using Google Cloud Storage, Thanos, and Parquet. (https://lnkd.in/g2bHPxpP) 🎤Scaling Metrics Infrastructure Dynamically to Meet Demand - Sharad Gaur on scaling metrics ingestion dynamically to optimize resource allocation and performance. (https://lnkd.in/ge7cCb8C) 🎤 Network Monitoring with eBPF, Vector and ClickHouse - Matt Franklin & Sebastian Rabenhorst on Shopify’s network monitoring solution, built with eBPF, Vector, and ClickHouse to manage millions of events per second. (https://lnkd.in/gCZwmeWH) 🎤 OpenTelemetry at Shopify - Francis Bogsanyi & Robert Laurin share insights on OpenTelemetry’s role, challenges, and future at Shopify. (https://lnkd.in/gzndCZx8) 🎤 Profiling Massive Ruby Apps - Dale Hamel on Shopify’s profiling practices for Ruby, exploring tools, methodologies, and key performance insights. (https://lnkd.in/g_S6JpYt) Couldn’t be prouder of the team for all the work they’ve put into making this platform a reality. Check out the talks to see what we’re building and why we’re excited about the future of observability at Shopify! 👉 Watch the full playlist here: https://lnkd.in/gtEv5Afn

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As a developer living in #Canada, a country with two official languages—English and French—I often find myself navigating the complexities of building multilingual applications. Localization isn't just a feature; it’s a necessity for ensuring that our applications resonate with users from diverse backgrounds. ASP.NET Core .NET 8 provide all I need to effectively implement localization in my APIs. Here’s a quick overview of my approach: Resource Files: I leverage .resx resource files to store localized strings. This allows me to easily manage translations for different languages while keeping my code clean. Request Localization Middleware: By configuring the RequestLocalizationOptions, I can seamlessly handle requests in different languages based on user preferences. This means our APIs can dynamically respond in the user's preferred language, enhancing user experience. String Localizers: Utilizing IStringLocalizer and IStringLocalizerFactory, I can retrieve localized strings directly in my controllers, making it straightforward to serve the right message to the right audience. By implementing these strategies, I’m able to create APIs that not only function well but also communicate effectively with users in their language of choice. What strategies do you use for localization in your applications? #Localization #ASPNETCore #DotNet8 #Multilingual #SoftwareDevelopment #Inclusion #UserExperience

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Better, faster, more creative design work while building tighter relationships between delivery and design? That’s the promise behind the practice of #DesignOps, a formal approach to building processes that integrate design teams into product development. (More here: https://lnkd.in/gPZju3qP) The 2024 #DesignOpsSummit program that Rosenfeld Media has put together promises to help design teams define optimal processes that remove fragility and build resilience, while measuring the value of investing in process. It centers on three themes:  1. Impact: Learn how to optimize DesignOps impact within your organization. 2. Resilience: Discover strategies to build resilient design teams. 3. Innovation: Explore cutting-edge methodologies and tools to drive innovation. I’m attending the online conference from Sept 23-25 to learn how UX teams can protect the environments that allow their creativity to thrive, while still delivering timely, high quality work needed to keep Agile teams running. You can see the program and register here: https://lnkd.in/gDtX7ppC

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In addition to my talk at Write the Docs, I created the sketchnotes, which are posted here: https://lnkd.in/g5Jmej-v

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"A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it's not that good." -Martin LeBlanc This quote is an oldie but goodie. It's a reminder that simplicity and clarity are key in design. Whether we're creating a product, service, or experience, our goal should be to make it easy to understand and use. If users need help understanding it, we've missed the mark. ✌ #UserExperienceDesign #UX #UserInterfaceDesign #UI #ProductDesign #Design #CustomerExperience

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In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, Tony Buffum, VP of HR Client Strategy at Upwork, explores how freelance talent and generative AI are reshaping workforce strategies and helping companies remain agile and competitive. Tony shares insights on: 🔑 The shift from talent acquisition to talent access 🤖 How generative AI is transforming hiring 🚀 Why freelance marketplaces like Upwork are key to finding high-quality talent fast Don’t miss this valuable conversation about the future of work: http://spr.ly/6049U4WOz

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Last month, I co-hosted and moderated the Vancouver Tech Ecosystem Roundtable with Careers In Technology and Innovation, Lighthouse Labs, Tech2Step & Vancouver.dev. Instead of creating our own agenda, we asked the community through a survey what they wanted to hear. Then, I had the privilege of moderating the panel with Chris Neumann, Joshua Nilson & Tanis Jorge. After the event, we compared our notes and compiled a report. Today, we’re releasing our findings. Here are the recommendations we learned to make Vancouver a world-class tech ecosystem: 1️⃣ Leverage Vancouver’s Geographic Advantage. 2️⃣ Prioritize the Growth of Local Tech Enterprises. 3️⃣ Advocate for Pro-Business Policies. 4️⃣ Focus on Creating Substantial Projects. 5️⃣ Promote Local Success Stories. If you’re interested in learning more, the full report is available at: https://lnkd.in/gF6p5pdA

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