Design Details

This week, we deep dive into tips and strategies for building a better settings experience in your product. In The Sidebar, we discuss the efficacy of paginating onboarding screens.Golden Ratio Patrons:Float Float has been a lifeline for teams working remotely in 2020. It lets you keep track of who's working on what and plan your team's time, from anywhere! Float gives you an accurate view of your team's availability and capacity., allowing you to set custom work days and hours and schedule a status to let your team know where you're working from. Learn more at float.com/designdetails.Hover Hover has over 300 domain name extensions to choose from when building your brand online. No matter what area of the creative space you are in, there’s a domain name waiting for it - from .DESIGN, .ART to .INK, .PHOTO and so much more. Get 10% off your first purchase when you sign up at hover.com/designdetails.Sponsors:This week we're supported by Webflow! Webflow gives designers the power of code in a visual interface, allowing them to directly build whatever they have in mind without engineers.Webflow is perfect for prototyping and user testing. It allows you to embed interactive details like hover animations, responsive layout changes, and anything else that the real product might have.Webflow lets you create standards-compliant HTML, CSS, and JS with familiar, visual tools. Because of this, you can give your developers something more than static mocks: start building fully responsive, interactive websites. You can even use real data and structured content, providing for more accurate user research sessions and more realistic flows.When you’re done prototyping, Webflow writes clean, production-ready code for you. Hand it off to a developer for implementation — or just publish straight to your custom domain.Learn more at http://wfl.io/designdetails for 10% off annual plans on any new account. Latest VIP Patrons:Walter KimaroRayBizarreThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we talk about the efficacy of paginated onboarding screens, and suggest alternative onboarding patterns that we've learned about through experience.Follow up:Brian is testing Marshall's work journaling strategy. One week in, so far so good! Marshall also put together a sample outline for anyone curious about seeing how this might work in practice.Main Topic:This week's listener question comes from Priscilla Then, who asks: What's the difference between "Settings", "Configuration", and "System" (would it be appropriate to have all 3)?How should "Settings" be used?Should Settings be displayed visually "apart" from the rest of the first-level navigation options, like how Shopify does it (putting all things in the left sidebar from the top, but the settings at the bottom)?What do you think of companies that have multiple, tiered settings (like Zoom)? Do you think that they executed it well?Cool Things:Brian shared Poolside.fm, a magical website that now has an accompanying iOS app. You should download it right now and experience it in all its beauty.Marshall re-shared Copilot, a fantastic app that will change the way you use money. The team has been making a ton of improvements in the past few months, including better recurring transactions support, rules-based transaction categorization, budget rollover, and new account types.Use Marshall's code B7NG7A when you're signing up for some bonuses all around!Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesGoodbye!

This week, we dive into the details of having effective user research sessions, sharing tips and strategies to get more value out of customer conversations. In The Sidebar, Marshall explains his work journaling process to capture better day-to-day notes.Golden Ratio Patrons:FloatFloat gives you the most accurate view of your team's availability and work schedule. You can set custom work hours, add public holidays and time off, and schedule a status to let your team know where you’re working fromーthe home office (dining table), or the lake house! Learn more at float.com/designdetails.HoverYou’re a designer. That means you need a portfolio. That means you need a website. And if you don’t have a website, today’s the day: Hover is the best way to register a domain for your portfolio site. Get 10% off your first purchase when you sign up at hover.com/designdetails.Sponsors:This week we're supported by Webflow! Webflow gives designers the power of code in a visual interface, allowing them to directly build whatever they have in mind without engineers.Webflow’s rich interactions and animations toolset allows you to bring your designs to life with advanced features like parallax scrolling, mouse/cursor-based motion triggers, custom keyframe and After Effects-based animations. You can transform element sizes, styling, and position based on scroll progress over a specific element or the entire page. This allows you to bring expressive animations to your sites that build as users move down the page. You can even create multi-step, timeline based animations that’s as easy to set up as PowerPoint or Keynote, but of course with clean, generated working code. Webflow even integrates with After Effects and Lottie, so that you don’t need to write super complex javascript to accomplish beautiful animations.Learn more at http://wfl.io/designdetails for 10% off annual plans on any new account. Latest VIP Patrons:Hannah CunninghamPatrick MorganMonica HoweRamil AzucenaChloe XieUgo CiredduThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we we talk about work journaling, a process that Marshall follows to keep track of everything happening day to day. We share tips for creating your own work journal and what tools are useful for this process.Follow up:Kelli Novotny on Twitter: “Wanted to pass on something we do as a product team that helps us prioritize our days. We set 3-5 priorities each day, usually, we plan them the night before - send out in our slack channel and at days end we report in on how we did (ie: 2/3 for today. Tomorrow will be x, y, and z.) I cannot tell you how much this has helped focus our time and also has taught us to break down tasks into digestible, achievable bits! Highly recommend it.”Brian uses Geekbot at GitHub to hold asynchronous team standups on Slack.Main Topic:Joseph Cooper asks: Forgive me if you have already done an episode like this (all though from memory I can't remember one). I thought of this question in response to Episode 362 "What do designers do all day?" and noticed neither of you really touched on the research side of product design!Anyway... I've moved into a new company recently and have luckily had the opportunity to have a lot more customer interaction than in previous companies and I'm loving it. After chatting to several other designers though it made me realise that a lot of other designers and teams tend to really under look the value this can add to building a product. I would love to hear more about in your day jobs you incorporate user feedback, testing and research into building your products. Is this something you do? When do you do it? How often do you do it? etc. I'd also love to know more about how you structure these sessions and ask the right questions to make sure you're extracting the most value possible out of them!Cool Things:Brian shared Public, a new investing app that makes the stock market more social.Marshall shared Recursive Sans and Mono, a variable typeface from Google. The landing page with interactive examples is fantastic, you should check it out.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesI'm meeeellltttinnnggg!

This week, we try to answer one very simple question: what do designers even do all day? In The Sidebar, we discuss when and where to use system defaults versus creating a custom UI.Golden Ratio Patrons:Keep track of who's working on what and plan your team's time, from anywhere! Get an accurate view of your team's availability and capacity, set custom work days and hours, schedule a status to let your team know where you're working from, and so much more. Learn more at float.com/designdetails.Sponsors:This week we're supported by Webflow! Webflow gives designers the power of code in a visual interface, allowing them to directly build whatever they have in mind without engineers. Webflow’s whole thesis is that designers are used to learning complex visual software like Photoshop, Sketch, Figma, etc., but none of those tools actually output production code. From creative agencies like IDEO and Ramotion to design-led startups like Lattice and Petal — Webflow gives designers the power to build whatever they have in mind. Learn more at http://wfl.io/designdetails for 10% off annual plans on any new account. Latest VIP Patrons:🦗🦗🦗The Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we talk the tradeoffs of using system defaults in your designs. Are defaults boring? Practical? It depends?Follow up:Learn more about Addison's diseaseThe poll results speak loud and clear: Marshall was wrong! Main Topic:Luke Seeley asks: What do full time designers actually do all day?Cool Things:Brian shared Cocoon, an app for small group messaging that is just wonderful.Marshall shared Rage Against the Machine, some music to accompany those of you who are raging...against the machine.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesGwodbye!

This week, we weigh the pros and cons of working on a product that you love to use every day. Is it really so bad to be your own power user? In The Sidebar, we discuss steps to take when exploring vague problem areas.Golden Ratio Patrons:Float is a resource management software for planning your team’s time across multiple projects. Companies like Buzzfeed and MetaLab both use Float to plan and track hundreds of projects more effectively. You can learn more about how they use Float at https://www.float.com/who-uses-float or learn more at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!Jayden TranJordan JenningsBrandon HiteDrew RosierTal CohenThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we talk about how to begin exploring broad-space problem areas. How do you A/B test when the problem is too vague? What is the value of intuition and past experience? This, plus more!Tweets:Sanketh shared a work in progress website collecting all of our Cool Things from past episodes - check it out!Main Topic:What are the pros and cons of working on a product you love?ProsIt's fun and easy to get excited about the work.You can feel like a user and encounter user problems.It's easier to find bugs and inconsistencies.Becoming a power user happens naturally over time.It's often easier to stay at a company due to higher quality “work time” - there is potential for a higher quality of life overall. Work doesn’t feel like work, it’s play!It becomes highly motivating to solve your own problems, or the problems of people you work with each day.ConsIt can be easier to lose sight of problem areas, confusing flows, new user experience issues, and positioning/branding problems.Power users can memorize and get used to awkward flows that would otherwise suck - it’s hard to identify and fix these.It can make you stop liking the thing itself - it blends work and pleasure so that there’s less of a clear boundary.Navel gazing: it's harder to see opportunities for order-of-magnitude improvements or innovations. It can be hard to kill the things you love using.Potentially: slower skill development.Potentially: easier to feel "trapped" - the golden handcuffs keep you at the place for longer than you would have otherwise stayed.Cool Things:Brian shared The Last Dance on Netflix, a 10 episode documentary about the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan's epic career. Even for non-sports people, like us, this is inspiring.Marshall shared Robert Parker, a musician creating really wonderful 80's-synth, perfect for putting on in the background while working.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesBahhh byye!

This week, we answer two listener questions – bonus question in The Sidebar! In the first, we discuss text contrast, accessibility, and winning arguments. In the second, we work out what it means to measure success in interface design.Golden Ratio Patrons:We’re supported by Float.com, a resource scheduling tool that is visual, flexible, fast, and reliable. In the last two months, they’ve launched integrations with the top four project management tools: Jira, Asana, Teamwork, and Trello. The integration features a sidebar that imports your tasks or issues into Float, so you can drag and drop them onto your team member's schedules. Learn more at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!Ashley HopkinsAndy WeirCrystal EllisHana FeriancovaChelsea BishopNick HumphreysThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we answer a bonus listener question about how to argue with the CEO about design decisions. We talk about text hierarchy, contrast, accessibility, and how to win arguments.Tweets:Vinsg says it's painful to listen to other podcasts after having our show notes and chapters - we're so happy you notice and appreciate these!Ying Yao says, regarding last week's episode, "To me, creating a single source of truth library of components and patterns frees designers to exercise their creativity in tackling interesting product challenges."Listener Question:Elliott Roche asks: "How to get quantitative measurements for user interfaces" - the body of the question provides more details.Quantitative vs. QualitativeLearn more about perceived latency.Learn more about React Suspense.Learn more about Lighthouse and measuring best practices.Web Vitals are the new measurements for building great user experiences on the web.Cool Things:Brian shared that Tesla is offering touch-free test drives. If you are bored at home, and want to experience the fun of an electric call, go in for a test drive! It was a blast and the people were not pushy at all to see if we were even interested in buying. Marshall shared Survive the Hunt, a YouTube series by FailRace, in which teams play virtual tag inside of Grand Theft Auto V. Rules and regulations apply, tensions run high, and you'll have a blast watching.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesGoodbye!

This week, we discuss a listener question about the tension between design systems and creativity. Do design systems destroy creativity, or simply get the boring parts of our work out of the way? In The Sidebar, we discuss the challenges in sharing North Star design visions across teams.Golden Ratio Patrons:Did you know that teams in more than 150 countries around the world use Float for the resource planning? Float is the #1 rated resource management software on G2. Learn more at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!Thomas EckertSören GröbkeSveta GoldsteinJuliana SFarfama HargaayaChristopher WoodsideDanni HuJatinSanket PathakTin KadoicChristopher DrakefordAgneseDavid Luft Jeremie Michaels LimMatt HarneyThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we discuss the process of creating and distributing North Star vision work across teams and organizations.Follow up:It's now possible to disable wallpaper tinting in macOS dark mode (in the latest Big Sur beta). To do this go to System Preferences → General → Allow Wallpaper Tinting in WindowsLast week's episode was edited using Descript, a pretty awesome audio editing tool.Pawel Sysiak pointed out that the method for getting the Patreon audio stream into your podcast player isn't super obvious. But it's possible! If you are currently listening to episodes on Patreon, ya goofed - go to patreon.com/designdetails and follow the instructions to get the special audio link imported into your favorite podcast player.Listener Question:Katarina Blind asks: I know that especially for bigger companies with several people working on a project, it can really help to create one unified UI. But I’m curious about whether they can impact creativity. If the design elements are already established, it seems like that takes away quite a bit of the design process. There’s a lot of talk about pixel-pushing and getting the typography, color, alignment, etc. just right. So if that’s taken care of by a design system it appears as if what’s left to design is the combination of elements..._Cool Things:Brian shared Palm Springs, a new movie on Hulu that's kind of a like a new modern day Groundhog's Day.Marshall shared I'll Be Gone in the Dark, a six-part documentary series based on a book investigating the Golden State Killer.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesBye!

This week, we caught up with Bobby Goodlatte and Josh Williams, two designers-turned-investors who recently announced Form Capital, an early-stage venture fund. In this episode we talk about the path to starting a fund, whether founders should live in the Bay Area, and share advice to designers who are interested in starting their own company someday.Golden Ratio Patrons:Float is a resource management tool for planning your team’s time across multiple projects. Built by creatives, for creatives, Float makes resource planning simple — like it should be! Learn more at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!AxeRaiderSwapnil KosarabeVuokko AroConor O'HollarenAdam DipperAdam MilesJack BrindRaymond BessemerEmily KaneElliott RocheMattRobert OrfThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we ask bonus questions at the end of the interview:What is the most under-rated skill for founders?What is the most over-rated skill for founders?Follow up:Marshall has recently crossed 100 episodes and two years of co-hosting this podcast! Boy, oh boy, how time flies - thank you Marshall, it's been a fun two years!Interview:Bobby Goodlatte on Twitter, and his email is bobby at formcapital.com.Josh Williams on Twitter, and his email is jw at formcapital.com.Josh appeared on episode 200 of Design Details.Form Capital is Bobby and JW's new early stage venture fund.Pauh Graham's essays have a wealth of startup advice.Cool Things:Brian shared Timecrimes, a low-budget, internally-consistent time travel movie.Marshall shared the Scott Pilgrim Table Read on YouTube.Josh snuck in two recommendations this week:The AWB OneSky Telescope.The Segway Ninebot Electric GoKart.Bobby shared the 2021 Ford Bronco.The UI is buck-wild.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesBye!

This week, we talk about the recently-unveiled GPT-3 AI tool and the implications of AI for design. In The Sidebar, we discuss HUD design in video games, nerding out on diegesis, skeuomorphism, and more.Golden Ratio Patrons:Float is an easy to use resource management tool for planning your projects and scheduling your team's time. Access your schedule from anywhere with a mobile app for on the go. Float makes resource management fast, visual and simple. Learn more at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!Brian ChristRafael PereiraAmy ZhenPawel SzymankiewiczMia SureshThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we discuss the evolution and impact of the HUD UI in video games. We dive into diegesis, skeuomorphism, and more.Follow up:Vicki Tan is working on the podcasts surface at Spotify and is looking for feedback.Vicki was previously on Design Details, too!Listener Question:Fabio Giolito states: How not to talk about GPT-3? Hot takes only.What is GPT-3?Learn more about OpenAIJordan Singer is making some wild tools with GPT-3.Cool Things:Brian shared Roam Research, a note-taking tool for networked thought. It's a bit more complex than your average note-taking tool, but it's wildly powerful.For more resources about note-taking and building a digital garden/second brain, check out this digital-gardeners repo by Maggie Appleton.Marshall shared his new role at YouTube, working on the Design Systems team defining the future evolution of YouTube's design language.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesGood bye.

This week, we caught up with Cemre Güngör to talk about transitioning from design to product management, the tension between the roles of PD and PM, why products fail, and so much more. In The Sidebar, we discuss the most over- and under-rated skills for PMs.Golden Ratio Patrons:More than 3,000 of the world's top design teams, including BuzzFeed, Ogilvy, MetaLab and Hulu use Float to plan their projects and schedule their team’s time. Float is the most accurate tool for planning your project resources and scheduling your team's time. Learn more at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!Zack AronsonEzra EverhartBob WassermannRuben Alexander DreymannHarley ThomasSebastian WintherJan HaalandQin BianYUJING CUINicholas DauchotEmilyThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we ask Cemre some bonus questions at the end of the interview:What is the most under-rated skill for product managers?What is the most over-rated skill for product managers?Do you find that your success thus far is mostly the result of luck or hard work?Interview:This week we caught up with Cemre Güngör, a product designer turned product manager, currently working on AR and Camera at Instagram. Last week we answered a listener question: Should I be a Product Manager?Cemre co-founded Branch, which was acquired by Facebook in 2014.Designers at FB that were mentioned:Mike MatasJoey FlynnMac TylerBrandon WalkinCracking the PM InterviewAdam Mosseri is the Head of Instagram.Henri Liriani is a designer-turned PM working on Messenger.Facebook Lite is amazingly successful in emerging markets.Facebook Paper lives on with a handful of screen recordings that Brian took in 2016.GK3 is a designer at Instagram, and has previously appeared on Design Details: 15: Her Left Me ft. Jeremy Goldberg and George Kedenburg23: Brains are Stupid ft. Christophe Tauziet, Jeremy Goldberg, and George KedenburgMills Baker has also appeared on Design Details, 206: Aspirational Open Mindedness ft. Mills BakerDesigner DudsShreyas Doshi is a fantastic product thinker with great tweets.Cool Things:Brian shared Hamilton (again), now streaming on Disney+. If you've been sitting on the sidelines, sit no more - this is a masterpiece.Marshall shared the Mac Candle No. 2 by Twelve South, in case you need an Apple-inspired candle.Cemre shared Waking Up, a guide to understanding the mind – in app form – by Sam Harris.Related reading: Waking Up, the book, Making Sense, and Lying.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesByeee!

This week, we attempt to answer the age-old question every designer will someday face: should I be a product manager? In this week's Sidebar, we share our first impressions of macOS Big Sur, covering our favorite changes and what we hope to see updated before public release. Golden Ratio Patrons:Are you still using spreadsheets to plan your projects? Float is a resource management software built for creative teams. Add your team’s roles, departments and work hours, schedule time-off, public holidays and remote work days, so you always have the truest view of your team's availability. Learn more at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!HannahTristan ScagliaKelli NovotnyNiko LazarisEric StahlAdam HoChipThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we dig into our first impressions of macOS Big Sur. We dissect our favorite parts, and the things we hope will change by the time things go public.Follow up:Hugo Tunius did a deep dive into how the new iOS 14 pasteboard alert works behind the scenes.Keep tweeting at Yitong if you enjoyed last week's episode!Listener Question:Rachee Jacobs asks: I am a product designer and I work with very talented designers on my team. I constantly find myself trying very hard to push myself up into higher level product discussions and decisions with the product managers since I feel it is part of my job to not just get product requirements handed down and design then, but to be part of the definition. But it seems like no one else on the design team really cares as much and are happy to get very specific requirements and flows.So I wonder, is it just my company who doesn’t value product designers role or is it the state of the industry? Would I be happier as a product manager?Cool Things:Brian shared Folklore.org, shoutout to Gabriel Valdivia for the recommendation! Folklore "is a web site devoted to collective historical storytelling. It captures and presents sets of related stories that describe interesting events from multiple perspectives, allowing groups of people to recount their shared history in the form of interlinked anecdotes."This story about round rects is a good one.Marshall shared Cult Favorite, a high-quality source of pantry essentials, created by our friends Bryn Jackson and Sarah Marie. Buy the first batch, we promise it's good!Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesBye bye!

This week, we caught up with Yitong Zhang to talk about what it's like to navigate the visa process in the US. We dig into the details of different work visas, the constraints they impose on designers, and what is changing in the current processes. This, plus bonus questions and cool things as always!Golden Ratio Patrons:Float is a resource management software for planning your team’s time across multiple projects. Float saves your team time, so you can get back to doing what you love! Learn more about how teams in more than 150 countries around the world use Float for the resource planning at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!HugoSimon ErikssonSungpil SeoMax RudbergJoseAda ZThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we ask Yitong some bonus questions at the end of the interview:What is the most under-rated skill for designers?What is the most over-rated skill for designers?Do you find that your success thus far is mostly the result of luck or hard work?Interview with Yitong Zhang:Yitong on TwitterCreator of the Autoflow Figma plugin and goodweb.design, a beautiful landing page gallery.Trump Suspends Visas Allowing Hundreds of Thousands of Foreigners to Work in the U.S.Trump Freezes Green Cards, Many Work Visas Until End Of YearH-1B VisaInformation about employment visasInformation about Green Cards and Permanent Residence in the USThe lump of labour fallay "is the misconception that there is a fixed amount of work—a lump of labour—to be done within an economy which can be distributed to create more or fewer jobs."Notes from Yitong21:18 It's only easy to change jobs as an H-1B holder if you are transferring to a company that already does H-1Bs and you're doing the same job. For example, if you're an engineer transitioning into design, that would be difficult.21:46 You can only change jobs in the while in the green card queue if your job is not changing by more than a certain amount. This is especially difficult for people in the 10 year queue because it's not really possible to have same job for that long. So what you have to do is to re-prove to the government that your new job is not gonna take an American's opportunity (which is a year long process).23:10 To be more specific, in most scenarios you get 60 days to find a new job. 33:05 & 20:20 Employment-based green cards require extensive proof that an immigrant's presence will not compete with American jobs, while visas require some proof, but less of it.36:10 I think this points system only exists in Canada for permanent residencies aka Canadian green cards. Work visas Canada are even more straight forward.Cool Things:Brian shared Joey Banks' iOS 14 UI Kit for Figma.Marshall shared Hamilton (original cast performance) is now streaming on Disney+ - learn more. Not a bad way to spend $7.Yitong shared two essays about emotions that are both worth a read:How not to be sadBeing AloneDesign Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesBye!

This week, we go deep down the WWDC rabbit hole to dissect the latest design details coming from Apple HQ. We also share our spicy takes on the new macOS icons in this week's sidebar.Golden Ratio Patrons:The world’s top creative teams use Float to plan their projects and schedule their team’s time, all in one place. Schedule tasks with an easy drag-and-drop interface, make changes on the fly with a variety of editing tools, and stay up to date on the go using the mobile app. Learn more at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!Nika ZhangRobin RundkvistThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we share our hot takes on the latest macOS Big Sur icons, digging into the visual style, what this means for the platform, and what parts we expect to change before the final release.Follow-up:Steffen Kotschi shared ibm.com/able, a great accessibility toolkit from IBM.Tweets:Jasmine Jones enjoyed the latest episode with Maurice Cherry. We are always open to guest recommendations.Ahmed noticed the off-by-one podcast episode counts in Apple Podcasts. It kills us, too.PS: Use Pocket CastsWWDC 2020:If you missed it, the WWDC 2020 website has everything you need to catch up.iOS 14iPadOS 14watchOS 7macOS 11 Big SurMKBHD's interview with Craig Federighi is great - and they kind of answer the minimal-Siri UI question. We're not totally satisfied.This Apple Newton demo from 1993 was 27 years ahead of its time.iOS 14 revealed that TikTok was reading the pasteboard every 3 secondsNow is the time to learn SwiftUICool Things:Brian shared Uicard, a pocket-friendly wireframing ruler. It's a kickstarter for now, but just passed their goal - if you want one, get in on that early-bird deal!Marshall shared all the WWDC session talks he recommends ya'll to watch:DesignDesign for iPadAdapt the new look of macOSDesign with iOS pickers, menus, and actionsDesign for the iPadOS pointerMake your app visually accessibleDesign great widgetsSF Symbols 2The details of UI typographyDevelopmentPlatforms State of the UnionWhat’s New in SwiftIntroduction to SwiftUIWhat’s New in SwiftUIStacks, Grids, and Outlines in SwiftUIApp accessibility for Switch ControlData Essentials in SwiftUIAdvances in UICollectionViewAdd custom views and modifiers to the Xcode LibraryWidget Code-alongDesign Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes/GOODBYE

This week, we caught up with Maurice Cherry to talk about design podcasting, building an agency from scratch, and the current state of diversity in design. Maurice is a designer, podcaster, creative strategist, agency founder, writer, speaker, and much more.Golden Ratio Patrons:Float is an easy to use resource management tool for planning your projects and scheduling your team's time. Get a high-level view of who’s working on what, so you can plan your team’s time based on their real availability. Learn more at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!jo⁺Harish ShivaramanNayeli PerezPingThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we ask Maurice some bonus questions at the end of the interview:What is the most under-rated skill for designers?What is the most over-rated skill for designers?Do you find that your success thus far is mostly the result of luck or hard work? Follow-up:Manny asked if we've seen the accessibility settings for The Last of Us Part 2. Marshall has, and these settings are truly incredible. Watch this video of Steve Saylor's accessibility impressions.Interview:Maurice Cherry is a designer, podcaster, creative strategist, agency founder, writer, speaker, and so much more. He most recently worked as a Senior Creative Strategist at Glitch. Follow Maurice on Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. Links from the interview:Revision Path is a podcast interviewing black designers and technologists. It is in the freaking Smithsonian!Maurice's projects include:Black Weblog Awards28 Days of the WebThe Year of TeaRecognizeWatch Where Are the Black DesignersAn Antiracist Reading ListUmbra MagazineCreative Reaction LabProject OsmosisThe Inneract Project helps underrepresented youth to explore and learn about design, created by Muarice Woods.Maurice was on Design Details: 13: Eating Horse (feat. Maurice Woods) and 123: Live @ Github (feat. Carolyn Zhang, Heather Phillips, Mo Woods & Diana Mounter)On the Grid is now retired, but was good.Black art and design podcasts:Layers of Design PodcastStudio Noize PodcastUnderRepresented PodcastUnruled PodcastTwo Black NerdsCool Things:Brian shared the Hidden Brain Podcast.Listen to The Air We Breathe and Playing Favorites as a good jumping-off point.Shoutout to Gabriel Valdivia for the rec! Marshall shared The Last of us Part 2, played by Christopher Odd. Watch the playlist to immerse yourself, Marshall-style.Maurice shared two things for you this week:Bayside High and Drunk, a podcast that reviews Saved by the Bell while high and drunk.butter.atl is a savvy and creative Instagram that is using the platform to creatively showcase what Atlanta is all about. The creator, Brandon Butler was also on Revision Path Episode 7Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesBYEEE!

This week, we share some accessibility gut checks that designers should think through before moving into high fidelity mocks. We also talk about industrial design and video game hardware in this week's Sidebar, plus we share our cool things as always!Golden Ratio Patrons:More than 3,000 of the world's top design teams, including BuzzFeed, Ogilvy, MetaLab and Hulu use Float to plan their projects and schedule their team’s time. Float is the most accurate tool for planning your project resources and scheduling your team's time. Learn more at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!Shefali NetkeDarwin WittlaoTzuJason WuChristian LundeThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we talk about video game console design, how controllers have changed, the evolution of gameplay sensors, and our hot takes on which console we are likely to buy.Follow-up:Ola Drachal shared some shameful early work! There's a full Medium post with all the pixels - thank you for sharing.Jacob Collier can make some pop music, too.Rowan Adams shared Complicit by Default that provides useful context about what's happening in the world. It's not enough to be "not racist" any more.Learn more about JuneteenthMore resources on what to read and where to donate to support Black causes. Listener Question:Matt B. Cool asks: "What are some not as obvious accessibility wins we can look for early on as we move into high fi prototyping? Going beyond checking for good color contrast, font-size, touchable space etc."Know the platformHuman Interface Guidelines on AccessibilityMaterial Design's Accessibility docsMDN web accessibility docsSpace and motionMedia typesUI shapeWords are hardLearn more about BidirectionalityCool Things:Brian shared Children of Time, a fun (but long) world-building sci-fi story. Marshall also read this, and we both love it. The sequel, Children of Ruin is on deck.Marshall shared an interview with the Dwarf Fortress creator with a very fun bug hunting story.Kruggsmash is a video creator who creates adventures within Dwarf Fortress' infinite worlds.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesBYEEE!

This week, we talk about weaponizing hashtags, co-opting social media movements, and solving hard problems in product design. Spoiler: hard problems are hard. This, plus The Sidebar, some follow up, and cool things as always.Golden Ratio Patrons:Visualize who’s working on what and when, and drag and drop to assign tasks in a click. With Float you can plan your projects and schedule your team’s time with confidence. Learn more at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!Douglas HillGabe de la MoraJames JacksonCassidy CheangCameron DeardorffJessica TongBailey JenningsKrisOla DrachalNate Kehdactra-ChongMathias KlugeBenMaggie ManvilleAndy NgoMatt CoolThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we talk about weaponizing hashtags, co-opting social media movements, and solving hard problems in product design.Follow-up:Keep donating:Black Lives MatterNAACP Legal Defense and Educational FundEqual Justice InitiativeWe the ProtestersReclaim the BlockGeorge Floyd Memorial FundCampaign ZeroStand Against Racial InjusticeMinnesota Freedom FundKeep reading:An Antiracist Reading ListWhat Martin Luther King Jr. Would Have SaidTrevor Noah on George Floyd and the Protests + part 2How to Make This Moment the Turning Point for Real ChangeA thread on design historyCross-cultural DesignMismatch - How Inclusion Shapes DesignAlgorithms of OppressionHow to be AntiracistSo You Want to Talk About RaceTeaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of FreedomThe Culture MapBlack Designers: Missing in ActionIndustry Talk:Trump was fact checkedFYI: mail-in ballots are not particularly prone to fraud.Twitter Finally Fact-Checked Trump. It’s a Bit of a MessThis reminded us of the Streisand EffectThe Illusory Truth Effect is "the tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure."Richard Gere and the Gerbil"A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes" - get the facts on this quote. Spoiler: "At this time, there is no substantive support for assigning the saying to Mark Twain or Winston Churchill.'Hindsight Bias "refers to the common tendency for people to perceive events that have already occurred as having been more predictable than they actually were before the events took place."Is Facebook Spying on You?Cool Things:Brian shared Revision Path, a weekly podcast interviewing black creators. If you need more podcasts for your ears, check it out!Marshall shared Jacob Collier, a musical genius with some truly unbelievable talents. Dig in, friends.Video: Modulating from E to G Half SharpDesign Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesStay safe, see you next week, goodbye!

This week, we can't record a podcast talking about pixels and software design. The world is hurting, and the best thing we can do right now is direct people to the resources and organizations that are able to have the most impact in black communities. Please consider reading, learning, introspecting, and donating this week.Support:Black Lives MatterNAACP Legal Defense and Educational FundEqual Justice InitiativeWe the ProtestersReclaim the BlockGeorge Floyd Memorial FundCampaign ZeroStand Against Racial InjusticeMinnesota Freedom FundRead:An Antiracist Reading ListWhat Martin Luther King Jr. Would Have SaidTrevor Noah on George Floyd and the Protests + part 2How to Make This Moment the Turning Point for Real ChangeA thread on design historyCross-cultural DesignMismatch - How Inclusion Shapes DesignAlgorithms of OppressionHow to be AntiracistSo You Want to Talk About RaceTeaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of FreedomThe Culture MapBlack Designers: Missing in ActionStay safe, everyone 🖤

This week, we share some tips for getting unstuck when working on complicated design problems. We also share our home screen organization philosophies in The Sidebar, catch up on Tweets, and share our cool things as always.Golden Ratio Patrons:Float saves your team time, so you can get back to doing what you love! The world’s top creative teams use Float to plan their projects and schedule their team’s time, all in one place. Learn more at float.com/designdetails.Latest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!Stacy HTim DysonLudens Tam TranJohn MeguerianJasmine JonesPaul TruongCaro LukinsGareth FieldArick ConleyThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, Marshall and Brian explain their philosophy for home screen app organization. We nerd out on structuring columns, rows, and home screen peace-of-mind.Follow-up:Ali Angco wants a Designer Bingo card. We've started an outline, this could be fun.Joe Willmott shared some early work, the very beautiful and glorious omglaswerpewpew.com.Bailey Jennings asked if we could get full show notes in Spotify's podcast player. Sadly: no. Spotify, step it up!Kate Niendorf started to pick up some of Marshall's audio panning 👂Tweets:Rowan Adams shared a story of asking a Design Details question in a design interview, and the candidate was the original question asker. This is buck wild, ya'll.Andy Ingram gave us a shout out for speaking normally – we try!Listener Question:Jessica Perelman asks: "What are some strategies that less experienced designers can use to get unstuck when working on complex problems?"Things to watch out for:Are the right stakeholders in the meeting?Is the meeting focused too much on generation and not enough on constraints?Tips to try:Change fidelityEmbrace constraintsRevisit with the team right after the meetingFind the best parts of discarded brainstorm outcomesDo your homework, start the brainstorm with a strong opinion (weekly held)Cool Things:Brian shared his latest weekend tinker project, a personal Hacker News client that is more readable, supports dark mode, and is blazing fast.Marshall shared a video from Ten Hundred with a very cool illustration technique: the doodle grid. The whole video is worth a watch, for the art, music, and technique!Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesBYEEE!

This week, we talk about how to overcome skill gaps. What should you do if you are bad at visual design? What if you can't make icons? Should you play into strengths or develop upon your weaknesses? We explore these topics, and more! Golden Ratio Patrons:Are you still using spreadsheets to plan your projects? Float is a resource management software built for creative teams. Add your team’s roles, departments and work hours, schedule time-off, public holidays and remote work days, so you always have the truest view of your team's availability. Learn more at float.com/designdetails.Latest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!SabineYi HeMo CupsNicole TallonShelley HuangOmidLiz ChenThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar we discuss digital gardening, personal knowledge management, and learning in public.Follow-up:Divya Tak added another point of wastage in low quality software: wastage through over-processing.Yuyang Luo shared their first app design that shows how safe your local area is.Jordan Koschei shared his college startup / side project, Shadoodle. See the pixels.We turned last week's episode into a blog post: Quality Software.Marshall has been tinkering with our audio balance – so far, nobody has noticed...until now?Tweets:Vincent van der Meulen built a very neat recommendation engine on top of the Design Details website – this is so cool!Listener Question:Fabio Giolito wanted us to talk about something we said on a recent episode, "I'm not a great graphic designer."Design is a visual medium but there's a misconception that all designers should be good at making pretty things (marketing pages, illustrations, icons, logos…)I love systems and flows, solving problems and designing interfaces. When I try to make a marketing page or logo I feel frustrated and impostor syndrome kicks in.I guess I'm not comfortable with the subjectiveness of visual stuff. You know when something is bad, but the gray area of taste and trends is way too big. While in UX there are more rules and logic involved.Cool Things:Brian shared We Are the Weather, a book by Jonathan Safran Foer about climate change, the food industry, and our role in the world.Jonathan did a great interview on Armchair Expert where they also discuss this book.Marshall shared Notion, a wildly-flexible and powerful tool for writing and organizing information. This week they expanded the limits of their free plan, so it's a good time to give it a try!Joey Banks wrote about his personal Notion setup.David Hoang also outlined his method to use Notion as a workspace.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesBYEEE!

This week, we discuss the characteristics of high quality software. We do our best to organize and outline things to pay attention to that will help you ship better software. This, plus a Sidebar discussing how to handle negative feedback from customers, and cool things as always! Golden Ratio Patrons:More than 3,000 of the world's top design teams, including BuzzFeed, MetaLab and Hulu use Float to plan their projects and schedule their team’s time. Learn more about how to help your team plan better at float.com/designdetails.Latest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels – we crossed 200 this week!Anne ChangKelsy Michael GagnebinFabio GiolitoKer NingDavid PehrsonJames LyonsWill HsuDavida PittsJustyna PapiernikYO ChiyunJörn ZanderNathan GrossThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar we discuss four strategies for handling negative feedback from your customers.Follow-up:Ying Yao dug through the archives to share an early project from 2014: a crowdsourced app to help students rate the best classroom seat based on WiFi connectivity, outlet access, and visibility. Nice!Connelly Rader recommended Tom Vanderbilt's book, You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice after hearing our discussion on taste.Jon Yablonski has written a book! It's called Laws of UX, named after his fantastic website by the same name. Marshall and I both have our copies, and you should pick one up, too!Tweets:Hilary agrees: Brain prototypes > wireframes, 99% of the time.Will Hsu isn't a podcast person, but for some reason Design Details stuck. Welcome to the clan!Listener Question:Kevin Gutowski dropped a question bomb on us this week, digging into the deep and subjective subject: what are the qualities of great design?The Qualities of Great Design is a good video from the 2018 WWDC on this topic that we watched before recording.Corridor Crew made a great vide reacting to bad and great CGi where they point out the details that us mere mortals won't notice, but have an impact on the final product./r/notmyjob is one of those anti-design details subreddits, and worthy of a skim.Computers are like a bicycle for our minds.The Aesthetic-Usability Effect tells us that "users are more tolerant of minor usability issues when they find an interface visually appealing."Postel's Law tells us to "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send."We tweeted a poll asking what comes to mind when you hear the phrase "quality software." Your answers were great, and thematically centered around: Fast, predictable, reliable, consistent, performant, well-crafted, delightful, hospitable, familiar, and thoughtful.Defining what exactly makes software high quality is hard, but we know it when we see it.Cool Things:Brian shared Listening Together, a side project from the folks at Spotify the illuminates when two people in the world start playing the same song at the same time. Serendipity!Marshall shared Songland Season 2, his Tuesday evening good-feels after recording the podcast. It's available on NBC/Hulu, if you want to watch along.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesSO LONG!

This week, we discuss what it means to have and develop taste. From software to fashion, styles change, trends come and go, so what does it mean to be tasteful? In The Sidebar, we discuss the hacker mindset and building for an audience of one. This, plus cool things like a handy iPhone app and a killer new VR game! Golden Ratio Patrons: Float is an easy to use resource management tool for planning your projects and scheduling your team's time. Built by creatives, for creatives, Float makes resource planning simple. Learn more at float.com/designdetails. Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels – we crossed 200 this week! Divya Tak Ugochukwu Ifezue Sara Zhang Joey Banks Nejat Seçkin Oral Kyler Phillips Jaimin Desai Sophia Pang Q ESC Steve Clark Suzy Cui Simon Taranto The Sidebar: The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe for just $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails. In this week's Sidebar we discuss the hacker mentality, and building things for an audience of one. Follow-up: Sam Bazalo wrote a case study about removing usability frustrations in Tradify: "A mini case study detailing my mission to make Tradify a better product by identifying and fixing high touch moments of frustration." Divya Tak agrees that putting opinions on a scale of how much you care can help to quickly resolve disagreements. Followup-pup from Karl, last week's question asker: "Thanks for answering my question boys! @brian_lovin’s final point was super helpful because it perfectly represents the situation I think I’m in. Startup land with minimal resource. I have a habit of fighting every fight so I better run down some of those hills fast..." Jacob Lindström shared his early blog, very late-2000's – thanks for sharing! Tweets: Jared Lodwick shared a nice photo of his Design Details tee shirt, getting retired after four years of weekly wear. Listener Question: Tiffany Yu says: "Hey there! Wanted to thank you for this podcast. It's been super helpful. I also wanted to share that doing a talk on developing taste would be great." With that in mind, let's talk about developing taste! Soft-close drawers are a wonderful upgrade. Things is good software. Cool Things: Brian shared Beat Saber and Half-Life Alyx, two incredible VR games that are redefining his impressions of what is possible in VR. If you have a headset, these are must-plays. Marshall is waiting until his Valve Index to arrive before diving in. Rafa, of Layout fame, is fearless in VR, apparently. Marshall shared RoboKiller, a handy iOS app to block spam calls and filter your spammy text messages. It's a few bucks a month, but worth the peace of mind. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we try to figure out the right time to give up on a fight when collaborating with stakeholders who have different opinions and priorities. We also cover a lot of feedback this week, discuss new design resources in The Sidebar, and share our cool things of the week. Golden Ratio Patrons: We're looking for partners to work with. If your team is hiring, launching a new product, or wants us to get the word out about a new initiative, please get in touch! Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels! Udoka Chima Achal Srinivasan Priyanka Kodikal Sean Kennedy Lucas Morales Sam Bazalo Luciano Infanti Pavel Fomchenkov The Sidebar: The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe for just $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! https://patreon.com/designdetails. In this week's Sidebar we share a neat CSS library and a pro tip for customizing your personal websites. Follow-up: Some of ya'll finally shared your shameful early work - thank you! We love it. Patrick Marx shared some relatively new work from 2014. Katarina Blind shared an early stage mock for a "pirate Uber" to request a ride from her brother. Smart. Zain Khoja shared his first Medium case study. Keaton Taylor shared a live URL for some early work and, boy oh boy, is it fun. Lucas Morales also shared a live URL for some earlier work, complete with a splash page! Kevin Bennett agreed with our thoughts on paper prototypes - there's a time and a place, and for this type of work, it's exceedingly rare. Keaton Taylor also agreed with our thoughts on the overvalue placed on pixel perfection and originality - glad to hear it resonated! Listener Question: Karl asks: Sometimes, and we’ve all been there, you know what you’re doing is right. Let’s say, fighting for a darker blue to pass accessibility requirements or visualising data in a simplified graphic rather than a complex multi-dimensional graph, to appeal to a wider audience. You’ve presented this with justification and examples or clear guideline recommendations (say a design system) but it’s ignored. How do you guys generally know when to back down and stop fighting for what you know to be right based your design experience, and bow to the Product Manager/Owner’s opinion even if it’s not steeped in fact? Cap Watkins' Sliding Scale of Giving a Fuck is a wonderful framework for picking battles. Cool Things: Brian shared a very fun 12-minute "single cut" action sequence from the latest Netflix movie, Extraction. You can read more about how this scene was created here. This reminded Marshall of the [crazy mirror sequence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD0_5HFMPIg from Contact. Marshall shared his ongoing journey to beat the Juul addiction. Quarantine as a forcing function for positive habit development - win! Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we introduce a new supporter-only show segment, The Sidebar. Each week we'll be sharing a story, pro-tip, shortcut, or design-related cool thing. Supporters on Patreon will hear the first story today! We also discuss the most over and undervalued design skills, including feedback from folks on Twitter. And, of course, we share our cool finds of the week! Golden Ratio Patrons: We're looking for partners to work with. If your team is hiring, launching a new product, or wants us to get the word out about a new initiative, please get in touch! Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels! Ritu Maghera Jacob Lindström Dave Epstein Dan Omar Hassan Marco Lars Anttila The Sidebar: We've been behind on Bonusland, and it's been a challenge for us to catch up. Additionally, we felt like bonus episodes were too infrequent and not compelling enough as a Patreon reward. This week we're starting a new experiment to make the patron rewards much better. It's a new segment of every episode called The Sidebar. In The Sidebar we will be sharing a story, pro-tip, shortcut, or design-related tidbit. In today's Sidebar, we talk about Marshall's 8-year anniversary at Google, and what it means to play the long game. Read more about how we ended up here + the inspiration by way of Michael Knepprath. Follow-up: Elvin was the only listener who shared screenshots of early work with us - and it was good work! Second call to action: send us your early portfolio work that you're ashamed of! Listener Question: Paweł Sysiak asks a hat-trick listener question: "What are the most valuable (and overlooked) skills for the entry-level designer and senior designer? The flip side of this question is also interesting. What skills are overvalued for junior and senior designers?" The Mom Test is a great primer on how to ask better research questions. We asked Twitter for ideas, too: T says: "Most valuable for entry: Taste, attention to details, ready to listen, motivation. Senior: ready to learn, adapt, question past experience and delegate" Nathan Lindhal says: "Learning to communicate with stakeholders, peers, etc is an extremely valuable skill. But it would be unfair to expect this from entry level position. But knowing the fundamentals (can this person do the work) and a commitment to improvement are underrated." Ollie hit us with a thread: - "I think foundational design skills like typography hierarchy are underrated, whilst beautiful portfolios are overrated." - "I think it would be unfair to expect such strong communication skills from all entry-level designers, I think it is perhaps the most valuable skill." - "Communication as a skill can be a 'buzz word-y' so i'll specify. I think an entry-level designer that can join a team and comfortably question the status quo and speak out when they are unsure is a highly valuable trait." - "In my (limited) experience it takes the weight off of their supporting mid/senior designers. It's also an important component to entry-level designers learning on the job." Emma Gilbert says: "Most valuable: resourcefulness. There are unknowns at some point of every project. If a person can find momentum on their own by seeking out and not waiting for answers, that’s someone I want to work with." Jordan Koschei says: "The ability to communicate clearly verbally, through writing, and through visuals. And the ability to understand and translate between design, engineering, and business concerns. The best designers have some product management DNA too!" Cool Things: Brian shared The Matrix, one of those rare films that holds the fuck up. If you have somehow not seen this, now is the time. What a ride! Can't Get Enough of Keanu is a wonderful and fun podcast to accompany your watching experience. Marshall shared the return of Apple's Build Your Collection promo, featuring awesome films at steep discounts. If you're a movie-buyer, now's the time to strike! Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we dig into the dregs of our portfolios to critique some of earliest design work. We try to look for indicators of taste and fundamentals, but ultimately have a good laugh about our early mocks. We'd love to see your early work too, so share it with us on Twitter this week! Golden Ratio Patrons: We're looking for partners to work with. If your team is hiring, launching a new product, or wants us to get the word out about a new initiative, please get in touch! Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels! Gediminas Saulis Joshua Overbye Catherine Gui Andrew Cianci Hao Le Nathan Dorney Luigi Chelli Azmy Hanifa Follow-up: ipadmenu.study is a neat case study about how to add a universal menu to iPad applications. Icons abound! Jacob Lindström recommends Cross-Cultural Design from A Book Apart. Pawel Sysiak said thanks for answering two questions, and to that we say: thank you for asking good questions! Tweets: Michael Knepprath wants to see our files. Unfortunately we can't share our real-world files, but we'll try to think of something we could do... Eric Chen is back in the past listening to episode 264. Luckily a designer is never late, they arrive exactly when they intend to. Sharing our shame: Last week Brian tweeted his earliest web design work, found in the dregs of pixel hell. We learn that Brian had no taste, eyes, or sense of spacing in his early years. Ouch. Marshall digs into his portfolio on Dribbble, almost 10 years old now! And we don't hate everything here, it's clear that there was taste and an eye for the fundamentals. Look at these switches! We still think there's something promising about this attachments idea. /r/ATBGE should provide you with some good laughs. Brian's Dribbble started 5 years after the screenshots in the tweet, so they are marginally better. Cool Things: Brian shared Dave, a show created by Lil Dicky. Think: Curb Your Enthusiasm meets a 20-something rapper. Marshall shared Hue Lighststrips, which when combined with motion detectors, can provide a great night-time user experience. And in general, they look awesome. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes Otherwise, bye!

This week, we talk about counterintuitive user experiences that designers regularly design for in our day to day work. Let us know what we missed! As always, we catch up on feedback, tweets, and share our cool things of the week: a blog post explaining how to polish an interface, and a YouTube series about first-time reactions. Golden Ratio Patrons: We're looking for partners to work with. If your team is hiring, launching a new product, or wants us to get the word out about a new initiative, please get in touch! Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels! Rodrigo Antonio DeLima Arkadiusz Bartnik Hello Hill Steffie Elvin Hu Daniel Mark McEwan Follow-up: Samuel Bernhardt shared some more Figma file organization tips – thank you! Tweets: Thijs Bremeesch thinks our podcast is GOLD. We like gooooold. Elvin says we're contributing to ongoing sanity – glad we can help a tiny bit! Ben Dunn is a new fan from New Zealand - welcome to the pod! Katarina Blind says last week's episode made her day. Katarina also bumped us up to $1.28 on the Patreon – you're the best! News: Apple accidentally leaked AirTags, hopefully coming soon! Listener Question: Paweł Sysiak asks: "Could you list some examples of common mistakes when creating experiences? What are some UX mistakes that are counter-intuitive and prevalent?" Stateful icons Two choices on leaf pages Primary actions placed in a navigation bar, which are harder to reach Samsung's One UI is doing an interesting job of moving actions closer to the bottom of the screen. The HIG recommends placing destructive actions far away from a person's fingers. People don't read full screen interstitials The introduction of change is as important as the change itself Typographic hierarchy overrides structural hierarchy You will read this first Buttons are better than gestures Gabriel Valdivia's tweet shows a great example. Iconography and colors aren't universal Watch Wired's video: Airport Expert Creates the Ideal Layout for LaGuardia Airport Data visualization colors should vary by brightness, not hue Read: 5 tips on designing colorblind-friendly visualizations Uncharted 4 developers explain why they added accessibility options to the game Throwback: Red vs. Blue Cool Things: Brian shared Cleaning up form UI, a blog post by @nikitonsky which describes step by step how to polish an interface using grids, spacing, typographic hierarchy, and color. Marshall shared Holden Hardman's YouTube series, My Friend Watches. In this series of video, Holden introduces a friend to new movies and captures the reactions for the internet to enjoy. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes WASH YA HANDS!

This week, we share our tips and tricks for staying organized in Figma, simplifying the engineering handoff, and not getting bogged down in pages hell. This, plus some follow up, cool things, and a little social distancing check-in. Sponsor: Fathom Analytics – we love it, we use it, we can't recommend it enough. Fathom is a privacy-first analytics tool that provides all the right information about traffic to your websites. Some of our favorite features: Fathom doesn't use cookies, which means you can skip the GDPR notice The data it collects is simple and straightforward, meaning that it can load your analytics dashboard incredibly quickly and gets you straight to the most important information Fathom is a small two-person team that charges money for the service. Your data is not sold or leveraged in another way. Simple, straightforward pricing makes the world go 'round. And so much more. Learn more at designdetails.fm/fathom and if you sign up using that URL you will save $20 off your first invoice! Golden Ratio Patrons: We're looking for partners to work with. If your team is hiring, launching a new product, or wants us to get the word out about a new initiative, please get in touch! Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels! Roberto Beitia Gavrilo Le Franck Paul Hanaoka Adam Brace Terry Bernadino Piero Katarina Blind Follow-up: Marshall is still enjoying The Good Place and the slight twist near the end of Season 1. Intrigued? Tweets: Nathan Lindahl wonders if there are broader applications to the iPadOS cursor, thinking about Fitt's law. Marshall agrees! Lena Sesardic built HippoKite to help automate the process of logging your accomplishments and challenges each week. Listener Question: Dennis Cortés asks: "Without Abstract, how can I pass off a file to a developer and be able to work on the next iteration of something in that same file? I've run into issues where I'll give a developer a link to a file but by the time it gets on their plate we may have worked on an iteration that is out of scope for that sprint...Any ideas or experience here on how you manage your files in terms of versioning and iteration you can share that works for PMs, developers, designers, etc?" Figma has versioning built in You can name specific versions For manual versioning, create a new page Consider having a line between final, working, and exploratory When dealing with a design system, you may want to duplicate to a different file to preserve component states Tom Lowry from Figma made a handy plugin to add status annotations to frames. Cool Things: Brian shared Westworld Season 3, along with a companion YouTube channel, Alt Shift X. So far, we're digging S3! Marshall shared Hand Mirror, a small utility app made by our pal Rafael Conde. It's a macOS app that lives in your menu bar which gives you a quick view from your computer's webcam. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes BUUHHHYYYY!

This week, we dissect the newest iPad Pro and its new adaptive cursor, speculating on the future of cursor-touch hybrid interactions. Marshall also shares early feedback on a new prototyping tool and we find escapism in our cool things. Sponsor: Fathom Analytics – we love it, we use it, we can't recommend it enough. Fathom is a privacy-first analytics tool that provides all the right information about traffic to your websites. Some of our favorite features: Fathom doesn't use cookies, which means you can skip the GDPR notice The data it collects is simple and straightforward, meaning that it can load your analytics dashboard incredibly quickly and gets you straight to the most important information Fathom is a small two-person team that charges money for the service. Your data is not sold or leveraged in another way. Simple, straightforward pricing makes the world go 'round. And so much more. Learn more at designdetails.fm/fathom and if you sign up using that URL you will save $20 off your first invoice! Golden Ratio Patrons: We're looking for partners to work with. If your team is hiring, launching a new product, or wants us to get the word out about a new initiative, please get in touch! Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels! Chris Royer Follow-up: Marshall got into the Play beta. It's promising, so far! Tweets: James Brookes has been tweeting little micro-summaries of the last few episodes - thank you! New Products: A new iPad Pro is out, and it has cursor support! The adaptive cursor is beautiful, here's a video showcasing some of the neat details. Craig recorded a lovely video showing off the cursor, too. Ryan Morrison made a web prototype to demo the cursor interaction with a mouse. The new Magic Keyboard looks fantastic, but very expensive. We've previously asked ourselves if AR is a gimmick. Cool Things: Brian shared Devs, a new thriller series on Hulu. "A young software engineer, Lily Chan, investigates the secret development division of her employer, a cutting-edge tech company based in Silicon Valley, which she believes is behind the murder of her boyfriend." Shoutout to @gabrielvaldivia for the recommendation. Marshall shared The Good Place, a "comedy about what makes a good person." Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes BYEE!

This week, we catch up with Meg Lewis, a designer, coach, writer, speaker, business-owner, podcaster, and all-around fun human being. We talk about building passive income streams, how to give advice, having strong opinions, and facing public criticism – among many other things. And as always, we share our cool things of the week included a very timely hygiene product, new mobile apps, and a YouTube playlist. Sponsor: Fathom Analytics – we love it, we use it, we can't recommend it enough. Fathom is a privacy-first analytics tool that provides all the right information about traffic to your websites. Some of our favorite features: Fathom doesn't use cookies, which means you can skip the GDPR notice The data it collects is simple and straightforward, meaning that it can load your analytics dashboard incredibly quickly and gets you straight to the most important information Fathom is a small two-person team that charges money for the service. Your data is not sold or leveraged in another way. Simple, straightforward pricing makes the world go 'round. And so much more. Learn more at designdetails.fm/fathom and if you sign up using that URL you will save $20 off your first invoice! Golden Ratio Patrons: We're looking for partners to work with. If your team is hiring, launching a new product, or wants us to get the word out about a new initiative, please get in touch! Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels! Kristian Hjelle He Hexi Rachel Murawski Rafly Nurfallah Tanveer Singh Mahendra Follow-up: We have a Gmail account – [email protected]. We won't check this email that much, but we're now going to start exploring cross-posting our episodes to YouTube. Check out our channel and subscribe, if that's your thing. We're also reviving our Instagram profile – give us a follow and we'll start sharing more! Interview: Today we caught up with Meg Lewis, a writer, designer, podcaster, business-owner, comedian, and so much more. Seriously, Meg is prolific. We catch up on how we're faring working from home during the corona virus pandemic and share tips for newly-remote workers. Loom is a useful app to share your screen with a little extra personality. We talk about managing many projects, building a stream of passive income, the tradeoffs of building an audience, the merits of giving advice, and much more. Meg now hosts Overtime by Dribbble, where she's been able to explore the idea of having strong opinions. Follow Meg on Twitter, Instagram, and Dribbble. Meg's other projects are Ghostly Ferns, Full Time You, Sit There & Do Nothing, The Overtime Podcast by Dribbble, Fool Proof. She also speaks and writes. Cool Things: Meg shared her bidet attachment from Tushy and their delightful t-shirts about buttholes. Brian shared the new GitHub mobile apps for Android and iOS. Download 'em! Marshall shared War Stories, a YouTube playlist where developers tell stories of creating some of the most popular video games of all time. Specifically, How Slay the Spire's Original Interface Almost Killed the Game. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes SO LONG!

This week, we discuss the metagame of product design, thinking out loud about the skills we do in between the craft work that help us to be more effective, have more impact, and grow faster in our careers. As always, we dig into followup, talk about some fleeting news, and share our cool things of the week! Sponsor: Fathom Analytics – we love it, we use it, we can't recommend it enough. Fathom is a privacy-first analytics tool that provides all the right information about traffic to your websites. Some of our favorite features: Fathom doesn't use cookies, which means you can skip the GDPR notice The data it collects is simple and straightforward, meaning that it can load your analytics dashboard incredibly quickly and gets you straight to the most important information Fathom is a small two-person team that charges money for the service. Your data is not sold or leveraged in another way. Simple, straightforward pricing makes the world go 'round. And so much more. Learn more at designdetails.fm/fathom and if you sign up using that URL you will save $20 off your first invoice! Golden Ratio Patrons: We're looking for partners to work with. If your team is hiring, launching a new product, or wants us to get the word out about a new initiative, please get in touch! Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels! Vinnie Matthew Atkinson Adam Fuhrer Mathias Arlund Keaton Taylor Ethan Follow-up: Dennis Cortés rightly pointed out that design school is a great conduit for "learning the basic fundamentals" of design. Brian ended up tweeting about the fact that he hasn't read many "core" books about design. Lots of great replies in there, if you're interested. The Elements of Typography Style The Elements of Graphic Design The Elements of Color Grid Systems in Graphic Design The Mother of all Demos Tweets: Sahil Chaturvedi can't tell our voices apart. We have some tips. Joshua Taylor's new project, Parrot is using Design Details for all their promo artwork. Thank you Josh! Check out parrot.fm. Adam Fuhrer - a new VIP - just discovered the show. Welcome to the fam! Gabriel Valdivia and Marshall shared their passion for Flight of the Conchords. Think About It Renato Dubbs says the show is fantastic and thought provoking - thank you for the kind words! News: Fleets have arrived: short ephemeral tweets that can't be retweeted, liked or replied to. It's Twitter's interpretation of Stories, and we are intrigued. Listener Question: Paweł Sysiak asks: "What are in your opinion “meta skills” and “boring fundamentals” of the product design currently?" In reference to To Get Good, Go After the Metagame. Cool Things: Brian shared Jojo Rabbit, a satire by Taika Waititi. It's about a young boy in Hitler's army who finds out his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their home. Marshall shared Locke and Key, a new drama on Netflix, based on a comic book series of the same name by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez. Related watching: What We Do in the Shadows. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes Auf wiedersehen!

This week, we discuss practical tips to level up your visual interface design skills, including tracing and focusing on a "learning by doing" mindset. And as always, we share our cool finds of the week including a new notes application and a creative TV show. Golden Ratio Patrons: We're looking for partners to work with. If your team is hiring, launching a new product, or wants us to get the word out about a new initiative, please get in touch! Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels! zeneosjun Neesha Chris Northcutt Follow-up: Last week Marshall shared a macOS tip to hide your menu bar. Brian tried it for 2 days but failed to keep it hidden. New Layer just wrapped up a great two-part episode about giving feedback on a design team. Manny says about giving upwards feedback: "Agree with talking to them after the meeting in a more private environment setting, it worked for me multiple times, also they are the people who will assign you work and decide your performance level." Listener Question: An anonymous listener asked: "I have been trying hard to learn UI but every time I sit in front of the screens - there are so many unknowns like what’s the best grey colour to use for disabled elements, how to even use the colours in the right way, what’s the best margin to take, why some interfaces looks so amazing while others don’t...how to do I go about learning these design details in detail?" PSDTuts (now tuts+) was early inspiration for web design, and Brian traced it to learn about visual design. Learning by doing can be helpful for absorbing more information. Tracing is a great way to figure out how someone created an interface that you find visually pleasing. Ira Glass has a great video about taste. Malcolm Gladwell gave a TED talk about choice, happiness, and spaghetti sauce. Don Norman popularized the idea of Norman doors, which when noticed, will make you frustrated for the rest of your life. The more you learn, the more sad you will become. Welcome to our misery. Cool Things: Brian shared Noto, a modern note-taking app with some great design details. It's particularly interesting because it's oriented for bottom navigation and one-handed use. Marshall primarily uses Bear for taking notes. Brian uses iA Writer. Marshall shared LEGO Masters, a new series that puts teams of LEGO builders in a battle to build wild creations. Will Arnett is a riot. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes BUHYYEEE

This week, we discuss strategies for giving better upward feedback to senior designers. We also share our thoughts on how to name your spacing components, list our favorite design podcasts, and as always, share this week's cool things for your eyes and computer. Golden Ratio Patrons: Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Pathrise is an online mentorship program that you land a great UX job. Previous fellows have been placed at Google, IBM, Atlassian and other exciting companies. You can learn more at pathrise.com/details Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels! Guarang Alat Dennis Cortes Grovkillen & TD-er Connelly Rader Follow-up: Elias Julian floated a very compelling idea for new merch... Erik Bro brought up a great question about how to name spacing constants in a design system. Tweets: We were able to read Peter Reaper-Reynolds's new surname out loud for the first time on the web! Manny asked if we'd seen Birds of Prey. No, no we haven't, but maybe will later! Connelly Rader confirms that the best decision of his life is supporting the podcast. Think about that, everyone 🤔 Greg Danford took our advice to see Parasite blind, and still has anxiety. You're very welcome. Phoebe Hogeland asked about that one YouTube channel that fixes movies with one small change. It's Nando v. Movies, and everyone should subscribe. Bhawin J asked what design podcasts we listen to. Here you go: Layout Design Life They recently had a great episode about developer handoff New Layer 99% Invisible News: Brian published a new Figma plugin to populate layers with data from GitHub. Check out the code! Listener Question: kelle-yess asks about giving upward feedback to senior designers, and how to deal with resulting pushback. Good questions abound. A tl;dl of our advice: Consider a matrix of the following The person giving the feedback and receiving the feedback The type of feedback, stage of product, fidelity of feedback, location of feedback The Socratic method is a useful way to approach a conversation with good intent and having the intention to learn along the way. Compromise and pick your battles. Losing in public gives you social capital. Figure out where you rank on the sliding scale of giving a fuck. It's possible that you don't know everything about the situation, or the person you're giving feedback to is shielding you from unnecessary context. Sometimes egos get in the way. But they're worth considering. Giving feedback in private, or in a way that lets your senior save-face, might be a better strategy and strengthen your relationship. Also, sometimes people suck. Peer feedback and manager escalation are valid paths in particularly sticky situations. Cool Things: Brian shared EnChroma, after seeing a tweet from Kurt Varner. EnChroma are glasses that can help people with certain types of color blindness to see colors – pretty incredible! Marshall shared a macOS tip about how to hide your menu bar – and enumerates all of the tradeoffs for doing so. Proceed at your own risk, but let us know if it sticks! Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEE?

This week, we discuss key lines, design tokens, and how to make your designs look consistent across all devices. We also discuss a compelling new design tool, add some listener follow-up to last week's discussion on self reviews, and discuss the pros and cons of using Sign in with Apple. As always, we share our cool things of the week, this time featuring a retroactive cooking show and a delightful way to enjoy movies a second time through. Golden Ratio Patrons: Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Pathrise is an online mentorship program that you land a great UX job. Previous fellows have been placed at Google, IBM, Atlassian and other exciting companies. You can learn more at pathrise.com/details Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels! Elias Peter Reaper-Reynolds Will Vaughan Sean Kushi Robert Weisbecker Dan Wu Chen Li Follow-up: Michael Knepprath left us a new edit on his iTunes review. We love it. Cody Iddings mentioned the importance of being transparent in self reviews. Emma Gilbert reminded us that listing your accomplishments is not the same as bragging! Emma also disagrees about whether or not you can call yourself funny – what's your take? Tweets: Ankur Parihar discovered a usability no-no in Apple's podcasts app for iOS. Lily confirmed our theory that creating a meetup in your area is a great way to meet designers! If you're in SF, check out this meetup for product designers. Long Long, (a VIP), has been listening for a long time. Thank you! News: Play is a new kind of design tool, in beta, that helps you to design iOS apps on your phone. Nuts. Read the Medium post that describes more of the features and principles behind the tool. Listener Question: Sanketh asks "In the recent Design Details episode, you had answered a question about how to make sure a design looks the same on all screen sizes. You mentioned about having a uniform padding from the screen ends. Can you elaborate on this a bit?" What are design tokens? "Design tokens are an agnostic way to store variables such as typography, color, and spacing so that your design system can be shared across platforms like iOS, Android, and regular ol’ websites." Alec Sukoski asks "What are your thoughts on #SigninwithApple? Specifically the fact that users can mask their email address." Developer page for Sign in with Apple How to use Sign in with Apple Cool Things: After watching Knives Out with Marshall, Brian shared the concept of director commentaries. Yes. Rian Johnson creates Theater Commentaries so that you can re-watch a movie in theaters and get his insider notes. Marshall shared Good Eats: Reloaded, a show in which its original creator, Alton Brown, revises and updates old episodes in the series. Alton was also on Hot Ones and holds his own. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEEE! (The Classic)

This week, we discuss the ins-and-outs of writing an effective self review: What should you talk about? How important is it? What does a bad self review look like? As always, we share our cool things of the week, this time including a new provider for Marshall's favorite esport, and a movie that is "cool" or...something. Golden Ratio Patrons: Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Pathrise is an online mentorship program that you land a great UX job. Previous fellows have been placed at Google, IBM, Atlassian and other exciting companies. You can learn more at pathrise.com/details Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels! Loukas Papantoniou Wan Jung Hung Ryan Koble Billy Purdy Michael Fitzgerald Follow-up: We don't hate XD, we just don't know how to use it! Cal Rowston shared a very bad side effect of using the internet: every tiny thing you do has the potential to turn up in a background check. Tweets: Mukul Agarwal asked about how to specify responsiveness during developer handoff. Big Al(ison) uses Design Details to keep company - that makes our day! Samuel Bernhardt expects some juicy followup about the latest Figma Auto Layout updates. Tl;dr: things are better, but not perfect. Sahil Chaturvedi can't stop thinking about how good Parasite is. Us too! Krishan has a theory about why we're seeing more tweets to @designdetailsfm, and it makes a lot of sense 🤔 It might have something to do with what we said in our 2020 resolutions episode. News: Figma Auto Layout added certain constraint support. It's a big win, but still not perfect. Either way, we're happy! Marshall also has a challenge for you! Figma's first conference, Config (aka figCon Copyright© 2020 Marshall Bock) was a lot of fun. If you have a chance to go in the future, we recommend it. Listener Question: Kevin Gutowski asks: "What do you think of self assessments? Do you do them at your current job? How often do you do them? What do they look like? What are some of the questions that you answer? Are they a part of how you can get a raise? What makes a good assessment experience or a bad one? I wanna know the deets so I can compare notes." We talked about performance reviews in episode 279 over one year ago. Brian has also tweeted about self reviews with his framework for writing them. Cool Things: Brian shared 6 Underground, a not-that-great movie that he lasted 20 minutes watching. How far will you make it? Joel Califa + replies felt similar. Marshall shared that Overwatch League is headed to YouTube Gaming! The new season has started, and YouTube's live features allow for DVR-like rewind and pause, making it much easier to keep up with the games. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes BYE BYE, BRIAN

This week, we get deep into the weeds on creating layouts with Sketch's Smart Layout and Figma's Auto Layout, and compare the experience with implementing layouts in CSS and SwiftUI. This is a detailed exploration at the pros and cons of each toolset, and we try to find takeaways that can help us reconcile the wildly different mental models for each. As always, we share our cool things of this week including a content-blocking Safari extension and a novel about a cyberpunk future in which a trailer park girl and her cat decide the fate of humankind. Golden Ratio Patrons: Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Pathrise is an online mentorship program that you land a great UX job. Previous fellows have been placed at Google, IBM, Atlassian and other exciting companies.You can learn more at pathrise.com/details Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels! Kati Presley Jan Früchtl Ying Yao Ruby Chen Kevin Haag Austin Robinson Scott Foltz Elise Alix Danielle Shepherd Mike Jongbloet Joseph Flynn Priscilla Then Follow-up: We reached our Patreon milestone of 128 supporters! This means we're kicking off the process of making Design Details merchandise. We need to figure out what we should make first, but we're leaning towards a torso-covering device of some kind, or perhaps a mug. Ya'll helped us discover a great solitaire app, Solitaere. It's about 95% of what Marshall needs, but still might not be enough to stop Marshall from building his own. Something seems to have happened recently where we suddenly feel inundated with tweets and DMs from everyone – it's so fun! We are reading everything, and will do our best to reply to as much as possible. Tweets: Kayla Brianne mentioned that our intros and followup sections can drag on a bit. We're going to be splitting up our chapters so that Tweets and Followup are discrete chapters. Austin Robinson is baffled at how natural the show sounds, despite how much editing we do. Andrew Mason recommend that we use Descript for future editing – we've both given it a brief try, but will continue exploring if it can make our editing process better. Michael MacLeod also knows what an "um" looks like. Udie Chima agreed about the anxiety that can often come up when last minute changes come in while building a problem. It's not just you! Kevin Haag came in hot as our 128th Patreon supporter. Ruby Chen was 127! Jason Jun was number 100 – a round number for normal people, but not for us! Industry Talk: Sketch and Figma Sketch Smart Layout is powerful and flexible, but comes with tradeoffs of high setup time, and requires the use of symbols to add smart layout. Figma Auto Layout feels underpowered, but is a step in the right direction. The biggest miss is the lack of constraints support, but the flexibility of being able to add auto layout to any frame, not just components, makes it very fast to create lockups. Both tools are relatively new, and have come a long way. We're ultimately happy with the few sets of use cases where Smart Layout and Auto Layout can save a designer a lot of time creating mocks. But we're concerned that both tools are built with entirely different mental models than code, making it challenging to move between design and development. CSS and SwiftUI CSS is ridiculously flexible. This flexibility, unfortunately, means that developers get very few things for free. It takes a lot of built-up knowledge to understand the many ways to wrangle CSS into making something that is visually pleasing, accessible, and fast. SwiftUI is brand new and unfinished, leaving a lot of gaps in the toolset and documentation. That said, the primitives and opinionated defaults are incredibly simple, but allow for the creation of wildly complex application layouts. Ultimately, both SwiftUI and CSS are designed to provide designers and developers with a structured set of primitives that will allow for the creation of complex and dynamic user interfaces. These primitives come with a mental model is is dramatically different from what is given to designers in Figma and Sketch. Cool Things: Marshall shared Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong (who also wrote John Dies at the End), is a book about a girl who lives in a trailer park gets caught up in a whirlwind of trouble when her billionaire relative dies and leaves her with all of the money. Brian shared Better, a content blocker for Safari that works on both Mac and iOS. It's a browser extension that prevents ads and malicious tracking from being active on the websites you visit. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤

This week, we answer two listener questions about designer-developer handoff. We dig into questions like: What does a good developer handoff look like? What information should it contain? What are systems to make the handoff more efficient for everyone involved? As always, we share our cool finds of the week, this time including a return of the 6-second video format and a useful language learning app. Golden Ratio Patrons: Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Flywheel is a delightfully designed managed WordPress hosting platform, thoughtfully built for busy creatives. Streamline your workflow with their slick platform and sweet set of workflow tools perfectly made for designers! Get started at getflywheel.com/designdetails Pathrise is an online mentorship program that you land a great UX job. Previous fellows have been placed at Google, IBM, Atlassian and other exciting companies.You can learn more at pathrise.com/details Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels! Rex Shi Joe Thomas Seth Richardson, with a tweet, too! James Morgan Alisa B Sergio Rovira Geetha Kardahally Follow-up: We are very close to 128 patrons on our Patreon, the milestone needed for us to start making march! Evangeline Ng shared that our last episode on Twitter Tips was useful, and has been surprised at how welcoming the community is. We agree! Craig Van Wiechen tweeted about the Twitter Tips episode, noting the importance of positivity as well. Michael Woodruff is holding our chapter marker naming standards to the highest level. We heard back from Carly Batson, the question asker from episode 330: "I'm still trying to get comfortable with contributing, as I'm more of an observer... but your tips about positivity and consistency were great. Thanks again!" Marshall shared some behind the scenes of just how much work goes into editing this podcast. Spoiler: it's a lot! Listener Questions: Michelle Lamond asks: Could you go over the details of design documentation and developer hand-off? Eric Gendreau asks, similarly: "What are some best practices for handing off interaction design specs to developers?" Our notes on developer handoff: We're both over manual redlining. Instead, we give our teams access to source files (usually Figma), and teach engineers the right ways to measure distances, get variable names, and navigate the file. Educating engineers about the underlying design systems and its core rules (measurement system, color naming patterns, etc.) is a high-leverage use of your time as a designer. Have thorough specs for individual components, covering all of their variants and states. With the individual building blocks implemented properly, composed UIs will be much faster to communicate and build. Don't be afraid to say "I don't know, but I'll find out" when posed with a question from your cross functional peers. Do your best to meet your engineering team halfway: learn the tools, vocabulary, and constraints. Cool Things: Marshall is very excited about Vine 2.0, aka byte. This is the reincarnation of the 6-second looping video mechanic, with a wonderful design and clear interface. Brian has been ramping up on learning Chinese with Hello Chinese, as part of his 2020 goals. The app has been super intuitive, and provides several useful exercise types to make learning easier. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we talk about how to be meaningfully involved with the design community on Twitter. We share tips for finding people to follow, what to tweet about, and we dig into the value of building online connections with other designers. As always, we share our cool things for the week, including some futuristic-yet-spooky technology emerging in China, and a top-notch film production company.Golden Ratio Patrons:Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao)Flywheel is a delightfully designed managed WordPress hosting platform, thoughtfully built for busy creatives. Streamline your workflow with their slick platform and sweet set of workflow tools perfectly made for designers! Get started at getflywheel.com/designdetailsPathrise is an online mentorship program that you land a great UX job. Previous fellows have been placed at Google, IBM, Atlassian and other exciting companies.You can learn more at pathrise.com/detailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!Arjun MaheshAnkur Priyadarshi ChauhanMartin M.Thiago Valadares Noleto DamascenoJuliusGuilherme NogalesCarly BatsonGrace LeeDániel GóréGeorge ThayamkeryShogo TsurudaClaire JardinFollow-up:We are getting close to 128 Patreon supporters, at which point we'll start getting back into the Design Details merch game!Ladies That UX ATL gave us a shoutout as one of their favorite things from 2019 ❤️Michael Woodruff gave us some feedback about chapter markers on the show, inspired by the great organization on the Layout podcast.Manny has a pro-tip for staying on top of your goals: spend that $$$.Adam Carroll is also a huge fan of Mr. Robot. This is the correct opinion.Sam Mason is excited for Design Details crewnecks! So are we 🙃Listener Questions:Carly Batson asks:Hi Marshall & Brian! I love the podcast and finally today after listening to one of the episodes I caved and set up a Twitter. Two questions I’d love for you to answer:How is the best way to get involved with the UX community on Twitter andI’m a remote designer and have a hard time leveraging connections because I don’t have any designers nearby. How can I use social media to connect with other designers?Some of our notes:Reply earnestly and engage in conversations consistentlyDon't automate your tweets – stay authenticStay positive – the negative conversations and hot takes are so fun, but are ultimately counter-productiveUse a consistent and friendly profile photoLearn in public, share openly, ask questionsOrganize a community in your cityJuan Arreguin helped do this with Marshall in ChicagoCool Things:Brian shared a travel update (following up on episode 265, Travel Edition, with tech notes from China:Embedded illuminated crossing signals in south ChinaFace payments for the metroThe Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know ItYour Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’re Not Keeping It SecretAliPay "smile to pay"Marshall shared the filmography of A24, including: Springbreakers, Under the Skin, Amy, A Most Violent Year, Green Room, Ex Machina, The Lobster, Room, Swiss Army Man, The Vvitch, The Disaster Artist, The Florida Project, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Moonlight, A Ghost Story, Killing of a Sacred Deer, It Comes at Night, Mid90s, Eighth Grade, Midsommar, The LighthouseBrian also mentioned Letterboxd, a helpful app to track movies you've seen or maintain a watchlist.Patrick H. Willems is a nice person to start following for good reviews and recommendations.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected]🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected]🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunesBYEEEEE!

This week, we dig into a three-part listener question about the difference between web and product design, collaborating with print designers, and what it takes to become a unicorn in 2020. As always, we share our cool things of the week, like a subreddit that will make you cry and a website that lets you edit its design. Golden Ratio Patrons: Flywheel is a delightfully designed managed WordPress hosting platform, thoughtfully built for busy creatives. Streamline your workflow with their slick platform and sweet set of workflow tools perfectly made for designers! Get started at getflywheel.com/designdetails Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Pathrise is an online mentorship program that you land a great UX job. Previous fellows have been placed at Google, IBM, Atlassian and other exciting companies.You can learn more at pathrise.com/details Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest members! Kevin Gutowski Michael Powers Ollie Taylor Jason Jun Gunnar Gray Damien Menard-Oxman Jonathan Prozzi Patrick Marx Follow-up: We are moving all show production in-house, meaning Marshall and Brian will be mastering, editing, and publishing all episodes going forward. Thank you so much to Drew Luper and Sarah Marie for making us sound smarter than we are for so many years of collaboration! Last week we neglected to mention any 2020 goals for Design Details. Here are a few key goals: Cross 128 patrons on Patreon and make custom merch. Experiment with written posts as a companion to the podcast. Release a monthly Bonusland episode. Continue to move more content and show infrastructure to https://designdetails.fm. Brian announced his plans to learn Chinese in 2020, and some of you recommend the following resources: The Pimsleur Method Hello Chinese Michelle Lu shouted out Inter and Copilot! Brian and Marshall each have an early access code for Copilot! DM us on Twitter, and the first person will get the code. Just a reminder, if you have any questions or feedback for us to discuss in future episodes, open an issue on our Design Details repository! Listener Question: Drew Clements asks: I’ve been working as a designer for a few years. I’ve done some web design projects but never any true product design. Is there a separation between a web and product designer and if so, what are those separations and what would I need to study up on to transition to product design? I work with a team of traditionally print designers and, while they’re good at what they’re trained in, their ideas don’t always transfer to the web very well. What’s the best way to have them drop some of their print antics for web projects? I’m a designer first whose learning to code. How competent do I have to be at each before I become the coveted unicorn? 🦄 Or, should I just pick one and stick to it? Cool Things: Marshall shared /r/happycryingdads, a subreddit sharing wholesome videos of dads happy-crying. Seeing dads cry makes Marshall cry, so this is a goldmine of tear-jerkers. Brian shared cloudflare.design, a neat website that allows you to customize the layout and design, and then publish those changes back to the live website for the rest of the world to see. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes GOODBYEEEEE!

In this first episode of the new decade, we look ahead to 2020 and enumerate some personal and professional goals for the year to come. And as always, we share some cool things (this week, with the help of a listener!), including an IRL magazine, a couple grumpy websites, and the final season of a show. Golden Ratio Patrons: Flywheel is a delightfully designed managed WordPress hosting platform, thoughtfully built for busy creatives. Streamline your workflow with their slick platform and sweet set of workflow tools perfectly made for designers! Get started at getflywheel.com/designdetails Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Pathrise is an online mentorship program that you land a great UX job. Previous fellows have been placed at Google, IBM, Atlassian and other exciting companies.You can learn more at pathrise.com/details Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest members! Simon Madsen Daniel Maniés Sam Chang Julia Purcell Kyle Kochanek Isa Simó Richard Sison Jack Reis Follow-up: Marshall chilled this break, and watched a bunch of shows and read some books: [Watchmen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen_(TV_series) [The Boys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_(2019_TV_series) Mr. Robot [Unbelievable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbelievable_(miniseries) [Alone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alone_(TV_series) Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood [Mission Impossible series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission:Impossible(film_series) Expeditionary Force PocketCasts shipped some great new features, highlighting the deletion of Design Details – oop! The Mishalorian is a vacuum cleaner for design files. Us, too! Paweł Ludwiczak asked about keeping design systems separated by platform. Listener Question: Zack Aronson asks: "Thinking about my 2020:Q1 career goals and not sure where to start. I have 9 years of professional experience as a product designer and currently an IC at Venmo. Any thoughts? Inspiration? Words of wisdom? I thought you gents could help!" Marshall set some goals for this year: Ship an app with SwiftUI Update my personal site Make good progress on my screenplay Get a promotion at work Return to Tokyo Overhaul my wardrobe and shoes Stop biting my nails Work out more Brian also set some goals (and also wrote more details about them, here): Visit new country Learn conversational Chinese Software side project that generates revenue Learn a new programming language - Brian already started with a small personal utility app for bookmarking favorite links! See the thread of the app getting built. Write monthly on the new https://brianlovin.com/overthought Gain 14lbs Cool Things: Cameron Campbell shared Offscreen Magazine, an independent print magazine that examines how we shape technology and how technology shapes us. Brian shared MacOS Design Review and grumpy.website, two mini-series websites cataloging the annoying and buggy parts of modern software design. It's like Little Big Details, but for bad things. grumpy.website is maintained by Nikita, who also blogs about the current state of software design Marshall shared Mr. Robot Season 4: "the ending is fucking perfect." What more could you ask for? Don't do too much research, go in blind, and enjoy. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🎚@Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes HAPPY NEW YEAR!

In this week's episode, we follow up on a bunch of your tweets, and then we get super semantic about naming conventions and component organization. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a vehicle upgrade and a feed reader. Golden Ratio Patrons: Flywheel is a delightfully designed managed WordPress hosting platform, thoughtfully built for busy creatives. Streamline your workflow with their slick platform and sweet set of workflow tools perfectly made for designers! Get started at getflywheel.com/designdetails Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest members! Aaron Heine Chris Martin Greg Wilkinson Lauren Chilcote Lauren Mosenthal Tt_55 Follow-up: Mukul Agarwal sent in a fantastic recommendation for a podcast episode: Rock the Voter from Your Undivided Attention. Danny Haagen asked about the difference between a design system and a design language, we took a stab at answering. Stuart Favretto solved last week's challenge about building a table cell with a dynamic inset bottom separator using Figma's Auto Layout! Greg Wilkinson joins team #FuckShelledPistachios Will Vaughan was surprised that we didn't mention Axure in last week's episode about design tools. We had no idea! But: that typo on the homepage 😬. We also discuss whether design tools should have aspirational marketing pages. We wooed Morgan VanDerLeest back into the fold - welcome back! Friend of the pod Gabriel Valdivia pointed out additional benefits of skeumorphism: it connects your app's UI elements to each other creating a "universe" of rules, logic, and patterns. Agreed! Matteo Gratton pinged us about two tools neither of us have used yet: MINTDATA and Amino. We also note how crazy it is that we're using AI to design ultra-aerodynamic bikes. Michael Knepprath was shocked - SHOCKED! - that the boys are getting Cybertrucks. Or are we...? Find out in Bonusland! Denny brings up the idea of conveyance, and how it's used in video games. Related: Mega Man Classic vs. Mega Man X. Industry Talk: We get deep in the weeds talking about naming conventions and component organization for your design files. Using slashes in names, or nested frames, is a common way to organize hierarchies of components. See Figma's best practices and a video on how to do this in Sketch. Sketch Runner is an indispensable plugin for all you Sketch users out there! Cool Things: Marshall shared an after-market CarPlay setup that has made his commuting experience all the better. Check out the top-rated CarPlay stereos on Wirecutter. Brian shared NetNewsWire, a free and open-source RSS reader for the Mac. Brian also gathered a bunch of self-hosted blogs that you can check out on the Twitters. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🎚@Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes BUH-BYEEEEE!

In this week's episode, we discuss the state of our industry's current design tools—especially in comparison to the tools available to other disciplines—and we speculate about what those tools could look like in the years to come. In News, we compare notes on Figma's newly released Auto Layout feature. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a flashcard app and a peek behind the park. Golden Ratio Patrons: Flywheel is a delightfully designed managed WordPress hosting platform, thoughtfully built for busy creatives. Streamline your workflow with their slick platform and sweet set of workflow tools perfectly made for designers! Get started at getflywheel.com/designdetails Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest members! Filipa Amado George Tsolpakis Luke Seeley Paweł Sysiak Cal Rowston Callum Cussen David Afolayan News: Sketch previewed some of their plans for features in 2020, including many already present in Figma When Sketch announced Smart Layout, Figma assured users that their own Auto Layout would be coming soon Industry Talk: Mike Rundle lamented the state of our UI tools compared to the tools of other design professions Kelly Sutton replied that our tools aren't part of the critical path to finished software Framer X touts itself as "the best tool for interactive design" Webflow allows you to "build better business websites, faster. Without coding." React Podcast - "75: Sunil Pai on The Future of UI Frameworks" One Cool Thing: Brian shared Mouseless, is a flashcard-style app for keyboard shortcuts that helps you "unleash your keyboard’s superpower" Marshall shared The Imagineering Story on Disney+, a "journey behind the curtains... to discover what it takes to create and build Disney theme parks around the world" General Magic is a documentary about "the untold tale of how a great vision and epic failure changed the world" Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🎚@Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes BUH-BYEEEEE!

In this week's episode, we go to our patrons for a couple listener questions: one about adapting to shifting roles as a company rapidly grows, and one about the balance between creativity and meeting business needs. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a Star Wars series and privacy-based analytics. Golden Ratio Patrons: Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Flywheel is a delightfully designed managed WordPress hosting platform, thoughtfully built for busy creatives. Streamline your workflow with their slick platform and sweet set of workflow tools perfectly made for designers! Get started at getflywheel.com/designdetails Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest members! Amy Geddes Amy G (?) Tt_55 Breno Baldrati Follow-up: Last episode, we talked about skeuomorphism Haptics have been a thing in video games for decades In iOS 13, page sheets are the new default modal presentation And we got some tweets: Joshua Taylor saved a bunch of highlights from our episode on Social Proof using his podcast-clipping product Parrot Sahil Chaturvedi is stealing Marshall's "Slow flow vs Pro flow" idea, and that's totally okay :) Listener Questions: We asked our patrons if they had any questions for us, and we got a few: Will Newton asks, "Can you talk about the ways in which the role of a product designer can change at a rapidly growing company, and some strategies for navigating those changes?" Michael Knepprath asks, "At large companies, are designers and subject matter experts typically different people? Does it depend on the project? How does one effectively work with a subject matter expert and glean the info needed to create a good design for a domain that one wasn’t previously familiar with?" And Kevin Bennett adds, "How do designers and design leads have to be more aware and sympathetic to the business needs when in a larger organisation? And do people stop that from effecting their creativity?" Facebook Paper was "a standalone mobile app created by Facebook, only for iOS, that intended to serve as a phone-based equivalent of a newspaper or magazine" Mike Matas is "a user interface designer and icon artist," currently working on Lobe.ai Brian documented the design details of Paper on the original Design Details blog One Cool Thing: Marshall shared The Mandalorian, a new series on Disney+ that follows "the travails of a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy, far from the authority of the New Republic" Nando v Movies is one of our favorite YouTubers and a frequent reference on the show Brian shared Fathom (affiliate link that saves you $10), a "simple and private website analytics platform that lets you focus on what's important: your business" Security Checklist is "an open-source checklist of resources designed to improve your online privacy and security" Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🎚@Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes BUH-BYEEEEE!

In this week's episode, we riff on a listener question about the influence of the physical world on digital interfaces, and we end up covering everything from video game controllers to sliders and shiny buttons. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a fun dramedy and another sci-fi novel. Golden Ratio Patrons: Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Flywheel is a delightfully designed managed WordPress hosting platform, thoughtfully built for busy creatives. Streamline your workflow with their slick platform and sweet set of workflow tools perfectly made for designers! Get started at getflywheel.com/designdetails Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest members! William Goi Tobias Treppmann Richard Ed Johnson-Williams Jacqueline Nguyen Charlie Van Meter Shaun Whitworth Ali Salem Follow-up: Matt wondered about user-controlled counts on social sites Hide Likes Everywhere lets you "hide likes and other vanity metrics for a more authentic online experience" Michael Knepprath agrees that games have more battle-tested onboarding Tiffany Tseng took notes on our social proof discussion (!) Bradley L. Hurlburt replied with a Stanford paper on “How Community Feedback Shapes User Behavior” A warm welcome to new listener Grant Howarth! Patrick Marx enjoyed the episode on Onboarding Design Kevin Bennett got "stuck" in that episode, too (in a good way) Aaron Miller liked hearing from Meg and Ryan on illustration News: The stuff we were excited about this week was decidedly design-tangential, so we'll talk about the following topics in the next episode of Bonusland: Tesla Cybertruck 16" MacBook Pro iPhone Battery Case Join us on Patreon to get access to all episodes of Bonusland! Listener Question: nosam7 asks, "What, if any, design choices have you been able to incorporate into a digital platform, that you learned from interacting with something IRL?" Hollow Knight is an "adventure through a forgotten kingdom of insects and heroes" Video: "The Director AI of Left 4 Dead | AI and Games" Episode 322: Designing App Onboarding Experiences Video: "What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn't Play Games" Article: "History of the Video Game Controller" Video: "What Breath Of The Wild Is Like For Someone Who Doesn't Play Games" The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild presents the player with button prompts that show the relative position to other buttons Image: "Press X" is a sad but true thing Material's Floating Action Button "represents the primary action of a screen" A skeuomorph is "an ornament or design on an object copied from a form of the object when made from another material or by other techniques" According to Wikipedia, radio buttons "were named after the physical buttons used on older radios to select preset stations" Video: "Photoshop Tutorial: Create a Glossy Button" Material's Motion Principles "help orient users by showing how elements are related to one another" Image: Maps in early versions of iOS employed a page flip and grey linen background for the in-app settings Video: "Expanding the Sensory Experience with Core Haptics" Instagram Threads is "a new camera-first messaging app that helps you stay connected to your close friends" Cue is "your social calendar" One Cool Thing: Brian shared Peanut Butter Falcon, a dramedy starring Shia Leboeuf about an unlikely duo on an adventure Image: I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE Video: "Shia LaBeouf Sheds a Tear While Eating Spicy Wings | Hot Ones" Even Stevens Holes Marshall shared Expeditionary Force: Columbus Day, an irreverent sci-fi novel about humans getting caught up in an interstellar war between alien hamsters and alien lizards The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the quintessential irreverent sci-fi novel The Bobiverse Trilogy is a great series and a recurring reference on the show Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🎚@Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes GOBBLE GOBBLEEEEE!

In this week's episode we dive into the murky waters of designing social proof in social networks. From upvotes to view counts, reputation to badges, there are a wide array of tools and patterns at a designer's disposal to communicate quality and popularity. But these patterns each have their own drawbacks, tradeoffs, and vectors for abuse. We dig into these, and more. Plus, as always, we share our cool finds for the week, this time featuring a Figma plugin and a beautiful indie video game. Golden Ratio Patrons: Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Flywheel is a delightfully designed managed WordPress hosting platform, thoughtfully built for busy creatives. Streamline your workflow with their slick platform and sweet set of workflow tools perfectly made for designers! Get started at getflywheel.com/designdetails Follow-up: New supporters! Thank you to everyone who has joined our Patreon this week: Timothy Pui-Fai Li 明勳 李 Meena Balasubramaniam Darren Soulsby Sahil Chaturvedi Will Ronald Huynh Kryston Schwarze Coard Miller Michael Goliver Kevin Bennett Ya'll also tweeted sweet nothings at us: Paweł Szymankiewicz says "This type of @designdetailsfm episode is my favorite one" about episode 322. Nathan Lindahl says "Definitely recommend @designdetailsfm. More focused on product/career than brand/creativity… but for sure insightful conversations." Manny says "Thank you guys for answering my question again. And Jesus Christ, there are so much I need to take note for!!! It's like dark mode episode all over again. In a very good way 😍" after we dug into onboarding design in episode 322. Adam Carroll says "Really enjoyed this episode" - thanks Adam! Sahil Chaturvedi says "@designdetailsfm FINALLY I'm a Patreon supporter! Thanks for all the great content and genuinely useful information! Always just feels like I'm chatting with a couple buddies about design" - and we say: Thank you so much for your support! Friend of the pod, Michael Knepprath says "@designdetailsfm the tier change feels very good imo - simple and welcoming" - super glad to hear! And last but not least, Mingshun Li says "Just become a patron of @designdetailsfm! The show was my mentor when I was the only designer at my first two jobs. Great to contribute a little bit to the show!" - thank you for supporting the show, it means a lot! Additionally, last week Brian was able to share what he's been working on for the past few months: GitHub for mobile! Rafa and Kevin over at Layout also discussed the app on their most recent episode. Industry talk: This week we dive into the murky waters of designing for social proof: the inputs, signifiers, and patterns that help people determine what is "popular" online. Instagram is experimenting with hiding like counts which may have implications for influencer marketing. Facebook tried to capture more emotional nuance when they added reactions to the like button. In 2015, Twitter killed favorites in favor of likes. On our episode with Pablo Stanley, we discussed the potentially harmful impact of having a handful of things you create go viral. Stack Overflow has a robust reputation system that aims to provide an accurate representation of any given's persons contributions to the community. Quora uses Credentials to communicate the experiences and achievements of any given writer on the platform. Basecamp uses a feature called Boosts to help people provide higher fidelity feedback than a like button can offer. Brian misspoke and called this feature "kudos." One Cool Thing: Brian shared the Vectary Figma Plugin which helps you apply your designs to 3-dimensional product mockups. Its very cool. Marshall shared Hollow Knight, a beautiful and outstanding indie game that everyone should play. It's very challenging, but offers a simple onboarding experience which helps people ramp up as they go. Brian and Marshall got a kick out of watching a reaction to a Hollow Knight speed run world record. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🎚@Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes Aloha!

This week, we dive deep into the perils and triumphs of designing an onboarding experience for mobile. Strap in for a big brain dump as we discuss everything from App Store screenshots to sign-in methods to device permissions to user education. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a privacy-minded daily read and a post-post-apocalyptic streaming series. Sponsor: Flatiron School: Learn UX/UI design in 24 weeks and discover our global community on campus or online and go back to school with Flatiron School! Change careers with confidence with 1:1 support from our dedicated Career Coaches and a money back guarantee. Complete details at flatironschool.com/terms. See you in class! Golden Microphone Patrons: Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Flywheel is a delightfully designed managed WordPress hosting platform, thoughtfully built for busy creatives. Streamline your workflow with their slick platform and sweet set of workflow tools perfectly made for designers! Get started at getflywheel.com/designdetails Follow-up: Shoutouts and much appreciation to our newest patrons! Roy Stanfield Eden Wulf Joan Disho Damian Bilski We released the first episode of Bonusland, our extra content just for subscribers! For the inaugural Bonusland, we review Airpods Pro, Apple's latest new-fangled ear speakers And we're simplifying our Patreon tiers; basically, you get access to all of our perks for just a buck (or more) a month! We got some nice replies about our last two episodes on illustration with Pablo and with Meg and Ryan Alisa Bacon documented a rite of passage for all(?) designers Joshua Taylor appreciated gaining some perspective and empathy for illustrators Joan Disho enjoys the podcast, even though he's not a designer Justin Rands found our last episode to be a goldmine for those interested in illustration in product teams Brian plans to go through all of our past episodes that have crazy titles and rename them to be a bit more obvious and searchable. For you :) Listener Question: Q: Mannnny asks, "What's the best onboarding experience?" A: "Before you even get to onboarding, you should think about your marketing site and your App/Play Store video and screenshots, because that's how a lot of users will first learn about your app. For the video, pack the first few seconds with a good hook, and make sure it works without sound, since these videos are muted by default. Once the user is in your app, consider the barrier to entry that any sign-in flow will present; using Oauth or a phone number is a great way to streamline sign-in, but you may want to allow users to play around in a signed-out state until they try to do something that actually requires signing in. Please don't ask for device permissions without priming the user for which permissions you'll need to access, why you need to access them, and what the user needs to do to enable them. Once you're ready to do some real user education, the easy (and probably wrong) thing to do is to have a paginated series of feature explanations, but you should never expect anyone to read those. No one reads. Instead, we prefer onboarding experiences that either 1) abstract the interface in a way that allows users to learn without the risk of experimenting on their own data, or 2) use their own interface to teach you how to use the interface. So meta. The most important thing to remember is that you only get one shot at a first impression, so make sure you're putting in the work to make that first run experience as grokkable as possible." Here are some examples: Todoist utilizes app previews that that span multiple screenshots Reddit prompts you for permissions immediately, but you can still use the app signed out Clear Todos (despite having a paginated onboarding flow) starts users with a sample list full of tasks that describe all the gestures in the app Mailbox used abstraction and task-completion to educate users without the risk of experimenting on their own data Notion provides users with a pre-populated document that itself shows user how to start documenting Descript includes a sample podcast project that, using a podcast format and its own interface, walks users through how to navigate and edit the sample project Superhuman has a white glove service where a human on the phone personally walks you through how to use the app User Onboard is an outstanding resource for thoroughly detailed analyses of onboarding flows in many different apps and services One Cool Thing: Brian shared Tonic, an article-reading app that provides "a selection of personalized reads every day" without grabbing all of your personal info Note: Apparently, "non-US and Android support is coming" Friend-of-the-pod Gabriel Valdivia is Head of Design at Canopy, the company that make

This week, we're joined by Meg Robichaud and Ryan Putnam—incredible illustrators working at Lyft and Messenger, respectively—to follow up on a topic from last week's episode. Meg and Ryan share some of their experiences working as illustrators on product teams, and they shed a little light on how free resources can sometimes have a negative impact on illustration as a valued discipline. And as always, we share some cool things like a collection of essays, some creepy VHS tapes, a couple radio plays, a new Netflix series, and another design podcast. Sponsor: Flatiron School: Learn UX/UI design in 24 weeks and discover our global community on campus or online and go back to school with Flatiron School! Change careers with confidence with 1:1 support from our dedicated Career Coaches and a money back guarantee. Complete details at flatironschool.com/terms. See you in class! Golden Microphone Patron: Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Follow-up: Michael Knepprath pointed out that Don Norman has updated his views on the role of aesthetics in design Interview: Meg Robichaud is an illustrator at Lyft, and Ryan Putnam is Art Director on the Brand team at Messenger Incidentally, they are not in fact Meg Ryan Pablo Stanley announced Open Doodles and got Design Twitter talking Bootstrap is "an open source toolkit for developing with HTML, CSS, and JS" Stripe is "the best software platform for running an internet business" One Cool Thing: Meg shared Trick Mirror: Reflections, an "enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives" Ryan shared scary VHS covers like Ghoulies and House Marshall shared two radio play podcasts: The Edge of Sleep is about "a night watchman [who] is terrified to discover that everyone in the world who went to sleep the previous night has died" Blackout is about "a small-town New Hampshire radio DJ who fights to protect his family and community after the power grid goes down nationwide, upending modern civilization" (and it reminds Marshall a bit of The Mist) Brian shared two halvsies: Living with Yourself is about a guy "burned out on life who undergoes a strange procedure at a strip mall spa -- and wakes to find he's been replaced by a better version of himself" Design Life is "a podcast about design and side projects for motivated creators" "170: Jumping from junior to senior designer" Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🎚@Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes AU REVOIR!

This week, the prolific Pablo Stanley joins us to talk about his path following a wide range of interests (including but not limited to architecture, music, fashion, comics, illustration, and design), and he shares his thoughts about the controversy surrounding his Open Doodles project and Design Twitter's reaction to it. And as always, we share some cool things, like a new video game, a creative portfolio site, and a tearjerking doctor show. Sponsor: Flatiron School: Learn UX/UI design in 24 weeks and discover our global community on campus or online and go back to school with Flatiron School! Change careers with confidence with 1:1 support from our dedicated Career Coaches and a money back guarantee. Complete details at flatironschool.com/terms. See you in class! Golden Microphone Patron: Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Follow-up: Shoutout to our newest patrons! Stephen Hathaway Oscar Lozano Struan Robertson On Brian's recommendation, Marshall saw Parasite, a "pitch-black modern fairytale" Writer/director Joon-ho Bong also wrote and directed Snowpiercer, Interview: Pablo Stanley is a designer at Invision working on Studio, "the world’s most powerful screen design tool" Carbon Health is "a modern, tech-enabled healthcare company transforming the primary care and urgent care experience" Diseño Cha Cha Chá is a Spanish-language podcast of "conversations with Latinos who work in the technology industry" Stanley Colors is Pablo's collection of "comics and stuff" Buttsss is "a collection of beautiful, round butt illustrations" Video: "How-To: Throw Clay" Map: Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico The Kaoss Pad KP3+ is "a real-time effects processor/sampler with instant control over cutting-edge effects" The Design Team is "a comic series that follows the story of Petunia, a Junior Designer that just moved to SF to join a startup. The comic pokes fun at the tech world, and the quirky design culture in the middle of it." Tobias Von Schneider is "an award-winning designer born in Germany, raised in Austria and currently living in New York" Imposter Syndrome is "a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a 'fraud.'" "Life and Donuts" is a short comic about death and living Article: "Teen suicide rates spiked after debut of Netflix show '13 Reasons Why,' study says" Open Doodles is "a set of free illustrations that embraces the idea of Open Design. You can copy, edit, remix, share, or redraw these images for any purpose without restriction under copyright or database law." 9-slice scaling (aka 9-slicing) is "a 2D image resizing technique to proportionally scale an image by splitting it in a grid of nine parts" Pablo announced Open Doodles and got Design Twitter talking One Cool Thing: Brian shared Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the latest installment from Infinity Ward in the first-person military shooter series Video: "No Russian" (WARNING: Violent and Disturbing and Definitely NSFW) Press F to Pay Respects is "an action prompt featured in a quick time event from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Many players mocked the funeral cutscene for its forced element of interactivity that seemed out-of-place at a memorial service." Pablo shared Bruno Simon's Portfolio, the result of "months of hard but fun work" Marshall shared The Good Doctor, a TV show about "a young surgeon with autism and savant syndrome [who] uses his extraordinary gifts to save lives and challenge skepticism" Video: "Real Doctor Reacts to THE GOOD DOCTOR" Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🎚@Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes ¡ADIOSSSSSS! (Marshall's two years of high school Spanish have paid off)

In today's episode we sat down with Jonathon Colman, a Senior Design Manager at Intercom, to talk about all things content. We dig into Jonathon's background and path into design, the role of content in user experience design, how content strategy and product design should work together, the future of AI and machine learning in content strategy, and so much more. That, plus our cool things of the week, as always! Sponsor: Flatiron School: Learn UX/UI design in 24 weeks and discover our global community on campus or online and go back to school with Flatiron School! Change careers with confidence with 1:1 support from our dedicated Career Coaches and a money back guarantee. Complete details at flatironschool.com/terms. See you in class! Golden Microphone Patron: Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Follow-up: Shoutout to our newest patrons! Valentine Ubaldo Michael Knepprath webOS is the mobile operating system developed by Palm. Hobo Johnson is all about that authentically, low-budget production. Interview: Today we caught up with Jonathon Colman, a Senior Design Manager at Intercom. If you were designing in the 90's, you too may be familiar with Kai's Power Tools. Dances with Wolves, the summer blockbuster of 1990 featuring Kevin Costner. Jonathon gave a keynote presentation at Webstock 2017 titled "Wicked Ambiguity and User Experience" in which he dives deep into the topic of wicked problems. Jared Spool is a writer, researcher, speaker, and expert on usability. Samantha Starmer is an experience design and strategy executive leading teams at companies like Capital One, Ralph Lauren, and more. Double Diamond product development explains a process of divergent and convergent thinking. Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows offers insights for solving problems at scale. John Saito shares thoughts about the role of writing in experience design with the Intercom blog. Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think is a foundational user experience design book. One Cool Thing: Marshall shared Cue, a social calendar app designed by Michael Boswell. Brian shared Parasite, a new film directed by Bong Joon Ho. Recommendation: go see it before seeing the trailer or reading any details - it's worth it! Jonathon shared Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez, who also appeared on an episode of 99% Invisible to discuss the same topic. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🎚@Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes In the immortal words of Johnny Utah: ¡Vaya con dios!

In this week's episode, we answer a listener question about why product teams aren't comprised of more "unicorns," and we discuss a Twitter thread that questions whether being a hands-off design leader makes you less of a designer. And as always, we share a couple cool things, including a strangely amazing band and an ultimate guide. Golden Microphone Patron: Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao) Follow-up: Shoutout to our newest patrons! Bob Weisbecker Bradford Ulrich Danny Haagen James Lyons Jing Zhang Melinda Yang Paul Dippold Ryan Parag Mike Hickman Listener Uhl Albert shared this video of PalmOS doing most of the gesture stuff iOS does now This reminded Marshall of the "General Magic" documentary Instagram launched their Dark Mode just to embarrass us Listener Questions: Brandon Weiss asks, "Why are product teams comprised of people who have to work cross-functionally but aren't cross-functional themselves?" A: The quick answer is "unicorns" like that are pretty rare, hence the moniker. The structure and size of a company might determine what roles are needed when that company hires, so while cross-functional employees are super valuable in startups, they aren't necessarily preferable in larger organizations. Ultimately, you'll probably get the best return on your time investment by learning enough about each of your cross-functional partners' duties that you can speak their language, even if you can't do their job. In a Twitter thread unrelated to this podcast, Lily Dart asks design leaders, "Do you get given a hard time for not being 'hands-on' anymore? Does it make you less of a designer?" A: First off, no one should give you a hard time for being hands-off. That's just mean and unprofessional. Secondly, Being a Head or Chief or Manager doesn't make you less of a designer, it just makes you something different than the traditional definition of "designer." But that's okay! Your background as a designer helps you do your new role better, and while you should keep your finger on the pulse of the wider design world, no one expects you to sweat about pixels, and actually, that probably wouldn't be the most valuable use of your time. So ultimately, designers whose careers evolve to a leadership position are better off for having been a designer, for sure, but once the role changes, so too should the label. One Cool Thing: Marshall shared Hobo Johnson's new album, "The Fall of Hobo Johnson" We recommend you get acquainted via this video: "Hobo Johnson and The Lovemakers: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert", a gig they got after submitting a viral audition video to NPR If you're still in, Marshall likes these songs off the new album: Uglykid, Subaru CrossTrek XV, You & The Cockroach, Happiness Brian shared "iOS Shortcuts: The Ultimate Guide for Resources, Examples, Libraries, Triggers, and More" Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🎚@Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes Peace out, nerdssssss! (brought to you by patron Karl Koch)

In this week's episode, we dive deep into the murky depths of Dark Mode, discussing everything from OLED smearing and halation to tinting and elevation. Plus we read the results of the Twitter poll in which we asked you about your preferred dark background color. And as always, we share a some cool things like a crazy creative talk, a painting app for iPad, and a ridiculous illustrator. Golden Microphone Patron: Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. Follow-up: You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao Shoutout to our newest patrons! Alec Sukoski Derek Graham John Wood (Day One Patron!) Justin Allen Lisa Pesok Manuel Solera Sam Bernhardt Brian updated designdetails.fm, and it's very nice. You should check it out :) Thanks to listener and patron Derek Graham for the kind and helpful email :) Keaton Taylor was also born too early for Pokemon and Spongebob Sahil loves the move to being listener-supported Listener Question: Brandon Moore asks, "How do you feel guys feel about using a true black color (#000) for dark mode?" Article: "Designing a Dark Theme for OLED iPhones" Note: Since recording, Instagram has updated their app with a dark mode! We asked what you thought in a poll on Twitter, and you let us know :) One Cool Thing: Brian shared "Choosing Idea Vessels for Your Creations," a talk by Alex Cornell at the awwwards conference Alex was featured back on episode 181: 5,000 Tickets Gets The Gum Marshall cheated and shared three things: Vexx, a ridiculous illustrator on YouTube who mostly uses markers and colored pencils but occasionally does large murals Inktober, a drawing challenge in which "artists all over the world do one ink drawing a day the entire month" Procreate for iPad, which "gives you the power to create beautiful sketches, inspiring paintings, and stunning illustrations wherever you are" Paper, whose "perfectly-tuned tools make it easy to sketch, type, paint, draw — wherever your thoughts take you" Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🎚@Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

In this week's episode, we dive deep on Android 10's new gestural navigation and how it compares to iOS, finally get around to talking a bit about the September Apple Event, and answer a listener question about what it means to be more proactive. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a new reality TV and some ever-comfy t-shirts. Follow-up: FoR LeSs tHaN ThE pRiCe oF aN ArTiSaNaL pOuR-OvEr aT sAiNt fRaNk'S, you can support us on Patreon! Shoutouts to our Day One Patrons: Abhishek Warokar Adam Carroll Andrew Crandall Aurora Pleguezuelo Brandon Weiss Claudio Vallejo Cameron Campbell Christian Ruiz Karl Koch Doris Saturday Effy Zhang Essa Saulat Jeff Parsons Joseph Brueggen Kris Puckett Kyle Mitchell MannnnnnyX Max Stoiber Sam Mason We made our very first patron-only post Brian finally got his Logitech MX Keys keyboard, and it's not perfect, but it's not bad "Sixty percent of the time, it works every time" (clip) Listener Questions: Anonymous asks, "What does it mean to be more proactive?" Apple Event Review: The Apple Watch Series 5 has a variable display refresh rate, which raises interesting questions for designers Apple is still listing features using the big word cloud, but they're also using a nicely illustrated feature grid now, too Apple TV+ is coming (for just $4.99/mo!), and See looks kinda interesting Apple's new iPhone naming scheme reminds Marshall of the logic of the old professional/consumer matrix Android 10 Gestures: Uhl Albert asked why we hadn't talked about Android 10 yet Android's new gesture navigation is very similar to iOS (video) "There are dozens of us. Dozens!" (clip) One Cool Thing: Marshall shared Season 39 of Survivor, the latest edition of the long-running reality series Brian shared Ugmonk, especially their super comfortable Essential Tees We're working to get you 10% OFF your orders at Ugmonk by becoming a patron at the 8-Point Grid level or higher! Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and [email protected] 🎚@Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are 💰 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

In this week's episode, we discuss the next evolution of Design Details towards becoming a fully listener-supported podcast. We share some background on the decision, our goals, and what's in it for you dear listener, if you are able to support this podcast. All this, plus follow up, a bit of news, and our weekly cool things as always. Follow-up: We'll be digging into the Apple event + Android 10 later - we extra promise. News: Brian found a buck-wild product launch video for a product called Descript. The video reminded Marshall of Adam Lisagor from Sandwich Video. Adam replied in the comments. The video appears to have been made by Claude Zeins and Benjamin Lebeau. Overdub reminded us of Ctrl Shift Face, a crazy YouTube channel that deep fakes videos. Listener Question Followup: From our conversation in episode 313 about effective ways of finding a job, we received a follow-up comment about the value of cold applications. Nikita Voloboev followed up on their question from the same episode about design process automation with a repo for their macOS setup: it is very, very thorough. Becoming a listener-supported podcast: We've been lucky to be able to work with so many amazing sponsors on Design Details in the past five years. Sarah Marie and Drew Luper produce and edit our show - they make us sound infinitely better every week. Design Details is a part of the Spec Network, a podcast network for designers and developers. We're moving to a lister-supported model, powered by Patreon. If you've enjoyed this show, found value, or entertainment, we would be eternally grateful for your support. You can check out the available tiers and rewards of support on our Patreon. I'm Bane, yes, that's my name. After our costs are covered, 10% of everything you pledge will be passed through to charities which help underrepresented minorities to learn about design (like Girls Who Code). One Cool Thing: Brian shared Allegory, a beta note taking app recommended by Ryan Nystrom. The app has some neat interactions, visuals, and gestures that designers might enjoy poking at. Marshall hyped the upcoming Overwatch League Grand Finals. Marshall mains Lucio, for anyone curious. Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :) Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!