iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Apparently when you listen to star wars music on Spotify, the play bar turns into a lightsaber?!

Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

How we've started doing weekly meetings in our #ScienceUX volunteer lab: Presenting new designs to each other in a virtual scientific conference hall. Come join the discord if you want to help improve science with better design! discord.gg/rNjNv2Ss

ScienceUX weekly lab meeting showing off a simulation of crowd movements at a scientific conference

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

Play a little game and choose the right icon for each role in science. Play our CRediT Roles icon game/survey, and help make scientific authorship clearer and more accessible! creditsurvey.sciux.org #OpenScience #ScienceUX

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

PSA: Last week, Affinity Studio (major Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop alternative) went completely 'free forever'. Pro design software, now accessible to all PhD students. May start recommending this in my workshops. www.affinity.studio/graphic-desi...

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Love to see this @elife.bsky.social article using short titles for the thumbnail card and also a takeaway-title for the full article. This helps you skim & decide on thumbnails faster, and learn from the article itself sooner (if people only read the title, make the title a lesson). #scienceUX

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

Got to work with 120 Early Career Researchers on poster + presentation design at NSF EPSCoR. Nearly exploded Google Docs with 120 simultaneous people playing presentation slide & poster design games. After 5 years, still my favorite group! #ScienceUX #betterposter

Screenshot of Mike Morrison guiding a workshop on presentation slide design, where someone's designed a presentation slide with a big gene sequence or DNA illustration in the middle.

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Haha go for it. Now a brutal hypothetical for you: Pretend the CDC has papers under review at Stacks, and they've asked to retract them as per recent mandates. What do you do? WHAT do you do? (no pressure, just for fun, and hope you get the Speed reference)

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

APCs costing science $Billions. Would love to be able to track average APC cost, so we can see *hopefully* progress in reducing that number through efficiency. This study curated an APC dataset, but it may take regulation to force transparency by publishers? arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

A short animated gif in a scientific article adds so much understanding and engagement. Look forward to more of this with Curvenote journals.

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Still science in 2024: "Our figure 2 shows this result clearly. Please scroll down 30 PAGES to see it..." PS with @curvenote.com journals, inline figures can go full-width, and any reference to a figure shows it in a hover popup.

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Apparently there's a coffee price index that helps explain why my favorite bag of coffee is like 20% more expensive this month? Not comforting that it also predicts further increases for 2025.

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Newspapers looked like walls-of-text (like scientific articles and posters are today), but then evolved a central hero area and clearer visual hierarchy. ...from a course on Typography design

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

What's your favorite alternative to the traditional 'blob of text' abstract paragraph? Here's a unique design that heavily prioritizes Methods.

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

How would you feel about having an AI peer review as a tool just for yourself to use before submitting to a journal? e.g., Coursera can AI-grade your assignments now. I've actually enjoyed this feature as a pre-human check.

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Select some text in a scientific article, and get related points from OTHER papers in that papers' citation network. It made scientists in the test study feel more curious! Cool #scienceUX prototype from: buff.ly/3UFRRmJ

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

LEGO quadrant chart!! This whole article is just pure design geek goodness.

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Relatedly, did not realize Biden tried to create a "DARPA for Advanced Healthcare Research"! I mean, I'd like to see an agency like that at least ATTEMPT to create medpods or something.

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

The readability of scientific articles went down over time. Should we thank "sounding important for the journal" for this trend? Or deeper niche-specialization? 📄Source: buff.ly/4hj40HI

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

Never seen that Bingo Table file organization before! Super cool!

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Is there a good reason that scientific levels of evidence need to be counterintuitive, where we need an arrow explaining that Level 1 is higher than Level 5? Which number is higher: 1 or 5? Which level of a building is higher: floor 1 or floor 5?

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

🚨Announcing new #OpenHardware project to measure traffic patterns in scientific poster sessions (w/anonymous & IRB-safe data). The single most powerful thing we can do to improve poster sessions is create better measures. Details & how you can test/contribute: https:/

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 04/11/2024

Old academic publishers: Here's a blurry low-res figure. Click to be able to actually read it. Curvenote journals: Here's an animated, high-resolution figure. Click to play with the data and watch the graph update live. It really is 1995 vs 2024 out here in the journal space. Change is coming!

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 28/10/2024

"Many poster makers think that observers can read 107 complete scientific articles during the coffee breaks." — Reader & Head, *1989* Scientific posters have been broken for 35 years.

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 28/10/2024

"Many poster makers think that observers can read 107 complete scientific articles during the coffee breaks." — Reader & Head, *1989* Scientific posters have been broken for 35 years.

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 24/10/2024

Journal of Actually Well-Written Science lists 3 reasons why scientific articles are painful to read: 1. Topics are hyper-specialized 2. Content is technical and iterative, not life-changing. 3. Style: Long, run-on paragraphs. Overly-dry formal tone, paragraph junk, etc.

Journal of actually well-written science home page

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 21/10/2024

The power of good design in science communication: A well-designed visual abstract made papers feel more rigorous, interesting, and understandable. buff.ly/3BOCcuo Here, they removed "chart junk", which is my new fav word.

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 08/10/2024

Anybody using CS Studio Phoebus (Experimental Physics software)? Help share your design workflow struggles/tips with this scienceUX community member here? www.reddit.com/r/ScienceUX/comments…

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 27/09/2024

Proof that scientific writing was once human. Thanks @neuralreckoning #UXWriting

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 23/09/2024

A hard lesson for anybody working in science communication: Scientists especially don't like things that feel too simple. Here's how I work around this bias in posters, and a link to the research behind it: ▶️https://youtu.be/9RnQjmihuR0 #scienceUX

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 22/09/2024

.@ISMPP conference asks submitters to describe learning objectives for their session using Bloom's Taxonomy. 🥰 Really love seeing that little bit of #EdPsych evidence-based practice.

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 20/09/2024

How students skim scientific papers: Freshman find the Results section too dense, but seniors can handle it. Probably also has implications for those new to the field/topic! From: "I’m probably just gonna skim..." buff.ly/3zgoTSX

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 13/09/2024

I'm starting my own scientific journal with @Curvenote Journals! ScienceUX.org will have 🔬research ⬇️#opensource tools 👨‍🏫teaching materials ...for making science easier for scientists to do via better design. Video intro ▶️ buff.ly/4dkZ3ex

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 13/09/2024

I'm starting my own scientific journal with Curvenote Journals! ScienceUX.org will have 🔬original research ⬇️open source tools 👨‍🏫teaching materials All related to making science easier to produce and consume for scientists. More here: buff.ly/4dkZ3ex

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 20/08/2024

They usually do take up more floor space! (But not as much as the tri-fold STEM fairs haha). Here's a landscape session. I'm not sure about crowdedness feel? To me that would make them feel less crowded because you need extra space, so people have more room to breath?

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 11/07/2024

@SciPyConf standing solidly in the future this year — publishing all their conference abstracts in @MystMarkdown and all their posters #betterposter-style. ✨ THATS HOW YOU CONFERENCE. 😆💖

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 28/06/2024

Did you change your mind after the meta analysis came out? Lots of scientists updated their beliefs accurately, but still lots of holdouts (in the circle).

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 28/06/2024

Getting evidence is only step 1. Step 2-9000 is fighting for adoption. #MetaScience talk by John Protzko @OSFramework is speaking to my soul. youtu.be/g2qdBSNWOP8?si=GDDAcP7i7NU…

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 28/06/2024

"Scientists will follow the evidence, even if it challenges their beliefs" is something I really, really wish was true. Getting evidence is only step 1. Step 2-9000 is fighting for adoption. This #MetaScience talk by John Protzko is speaking to my soul. www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2qd...

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 20/05/2024

Happy Update: Over 300 designers joined the r/ScienceUX reddit last week. Now have a mix of scientists & designers!! 🎉 You can now get pro-designer feedback on your posters, slides, lab software --- whatever! www.reddit.com/r/ScienceUX

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 07/05/2024

New reddit community for ScienceUX is active! www.reddit.com/r/ScienceUX Follow/join the effort to improve the design of scientific articles, posters, talks, search engines, lab tools --- anything!

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 01/05/2024

Learn how to make your presentations, posters, and articles easier for human beings to process! My talk on Cognitive Load in science communication is now up on YouTube. ▶️ youtu.be/Pmr_DeM815w

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 22/04/2024

Catch up on the quest to dramatically improve scientific posters in this presentation. ▶️ youtu.be/QU8HMU8A3ns First 2 minutes summarizes everything Covers: 🧪study findings 💡best practices for scientific conferences

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 11/04/2024

Less is more in your presentation slides, illustrated in an eye tracking study. Shown only one bullet point, students consistently read the whole bullet. Shown lots of bullet points, students skimmed and inconsistently read. 1 min video summary: youtube.com/shorts/z--JA...

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 18/03/2024

Scientists deserve better design for their tools. Here are a few examples of bad #UX that slows down science. Science friends: Any other examples you'd suggest? Design friends: HELP US YouTube: youtube.com/shorts/wPVJVllH5Rg

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 25/02/2024

What do yall think about ad-supported science websites, like this banner ad on Cell?

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 21/02/2024

Science UX tip for these wonderful new AI search engines: Google doesn’t require you to log-in before searching, and neither should science search engines. 🧪 I understand wanting a login wall to collect emails. But not before the primary interaction please! Really punishes frequent use.🙏

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 02/02/2024

The movement to improve scientific posters hits a new stride! 🚀 After posters with bigger conclusions, bigger figures, & less text were rated more accessible, Cochrane deployed a new poster template... ...and found that accessible design also may boost engagement too. 🤩 Article buff.ly/42krDZo

Graph of poster features rated for engagement. Large conclusions and figures good, lots of text bad

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Mike Morrison @mikemorrison.bsky.social · 18/01/2024

Converting one of my preprints over to @MystMarkdown. It already looks better than any preprint typesetting I've ever seen! 🤩

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