Design Details

This week, we catch up with Haraldur Thorleifsson, the founder, CEO, and social media intern at Ueno. In today's conversation, we cover everything from burnout to why designers should be thinking about solving more meaningful problems. We dig into the current and future plans for Ueno, the function of beauty in design, whether Halli wants to be famous, and finding catharsis on Twitter. And as always, we share some cool things like a TV show, a book, and yet-to-be-released physical products. Follow-up: Last week, Marshall incorrectly attributed the micro-LED displays to a 2020 iPhone rumor, when in fact, that rumor was meant for the 2020 Apple Watch A few listener tweets: Hannah Cunningham is focused on pushing through the last 10% David Afolayan's interests are aligned with ours (MX Master 3 and finger drumming) Uhl Albert wants us to weigh in on Android 10 (stay tuned!) Interview with Haraldur Thorleifsson: Halli is a good Twitter person. You should follow him. Halli has joined us twice before: "44: Everything is a beta" "69: Epicurrence Live" For anyone who doesn't know, Ueno is a design agency making work you've likely seen or used before. Ueno Made the Inc 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in America. Haus is a small direct-to-consumer brand that has built a strong emotional design language Video: "Are we the baddies?" Halli has recently changed the tone, transparency, and vulnerability of his personal tweets Old man rant: People change jobs too frequently + Twitter thread resulting in lots of new points of view and learning Bueno is a side project for Ueno that is about helping good people do good things Ueno's new about page is very fun, and includes a great video about the awards photographer. One Cool Thing: Marshall shared Songland, a competition show for songwriters to pitch their work to be recorded by established artists Whoops: It's on NBC, not CBS Here's a playlist on Spotify and Apple Music Brian shared the Kollur, a stool that Ueno has begun making, but hasn't finished... yet Halli shared Educated, a memoir by Tara Westover about her upbringing, coming-of-age, and a journey for knowledge 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 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!

This week, we answer a couple listener questions—which design automation tools we use and how to efficiently look for a job—and rattle off a few things we'd like to see announced at the September Apple Event. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a 64-button mashup and a state-of-the-art mouse. Follow-up: Rafa and Kevin are back from summer vacation with a new episode of Layout! Apple Event Preview: Whoops! Marshall goofed; the Micro LED screen was rumored for the 2020 Apple Watch, not the 2020 iPhone Pro We've known for a while the iPhone 11 Pro would have three cameras It'd be cool to see Apple's Tile equivalent Article: "You've Been Sherlocked" We know we won't see the 16" MacBook Pro at this event, but we're looking forward to it arriving eventually Apple's supposed to be dropping 3D Touch for Haptic Touch on the new iPhones Maybe we'll see Apple's over-the-ear headphones, but probably not You may remember the Apple iPod HiFi from many years ago Listener Questions: Q: Cameron Stark asks, "What is the best way or most efficient way to look for and find job opportunities?" A: Although it's not the most efficient method, we've found the following to be an effective way of finding work: develop your skills, insert yourself into whichever community you'd like to be a part of, make friends, do good work, learn from your peers, and hope you have the right skills in the right place at the right time when one of them knows about a job opening. Q: Nikita Voloboev asks, "Do you use any tools to automate your design process?" Karabiner is "a powerful and stable keyboard customizer for macOS" Alfred "boosts your efficiency with hotkeys, keywords, text expansion and more" A: We like the following tools and plugins: Keyboard Maestro helps you "automate virtually anything" Figma plugins are great, and you can even write your own! Yoink helps you "simplify and improve drag and drop on your Mac and speed up your daily workflow" Artboard Manager "automatically arranges the position of all Artboards in your Sketch document, to snap them to rows & columns" Layer Tools is "a box for random useful sketch commands meant to make work with layers easier" Runner helps you "perform Sketch actions quicker with your keyboard" Symbol Organizer helps you "organize your symbols page alphabetically (including layer list) and into groupings determined by your symbol names" Renamer helps you "select multiple layer(s)/group(s)/artboard(s) and rename all of them with just a single click or a quick shortcut" Rename It helps you "keep your design files organized, batch rename layers and more" Have your own suggestions you'd like to share? Add them to the issue! One Cool Thing: Marshall shared "Burnt Rice" and "Marble Soda" by Shawn Wasabi Watch Acai sightread the Guitar Hero chart for the mashup song "Baby I'm Back", which reminded me that Shawn Wasabi makes good music Midi Fighter 64 is "the best controller for finger drumming" Here's the backstory (video) on Shawn's prototype Midi Fighter 64 Brian mentioned "Madeon - Pop Culture (live mashup)" (video) Brian shared the Logitech MX Master 3 Mouse, "the most advanced Master Series mouse yet – designed for creatives and engineered for coders" Logitech Flow gives you "cross-computer control and file sharing" Logitech MX Keys is "the first ever MX keyboard – designed for creatives and engineered for coders") 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 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! ... Video: "Replication Theory"

In today's episode, Diana Mounter, who manages the design infrastructure at GitHub, helps us dive deep into a listener question about the role and expectations of a design systems manager. And we have a big round of cool things this week, including three books, an album, and a plugin. Follow-up: Keaton Taylor lolled pretty hard at our dumb 311 references. It was all worth it. Thanks for leaving questions for us at the Design Details repo! Interview: Diana Mounter manages the design infrastructure known as Primer at GitHub. You can listen to Diana's previous appearances on Design Details in the following episodes: 74: Itchy Feet (feat. Diana Mounter) 123: Live @ Github (feat. Carolyn Zhang, Heather Phillips, Mo Woods & Diana Mounter) 246: Cats & Design Systems (feat. Diana Mounter & Brent Jackson) agabrans asks, "What is the role of a Design Systems Manager, and what is expected of this individual?" Material Design Apple Human Interface Guidelines Article: The 8-Point Grid by Bryn Jackson One Cool Thing: Diana shared three things: Bitmoji for Slack lets you "bring office chat to life with your own personal emoji" "Reamde" by Neal Stephenson is "the breathtaking tale of a wealthy tech entrepreneur caught in the very real crossfire of his own online fantasy war game" The sign in Jimmy John's reads: "Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe." Dan Brown is known for his fluffy but exciting thriller novels like "The DaVinci Code" "Wallop" (YouTube playlist) is the latest album from !!! Alt-J (or, more accurately, option-j) typed on an Apple keyboard results in the ∆ character "Off the Grid" and "In the Grid" Marshall shared "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell: A Novel" by Neal Stephenson, "a wildly inventive and entertaining science fiction thriller that unfolds in the near future, in parallel worlds" The "Bobiverse" series by Dennis E. Taylor is the story of a programmer who dies suddenly and, after being cryogenically frozen, wakes up as an AI in a vastly changed world "Seveneves" by Neal Stephenson is "an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years" Brian shared "How to Stop Time" by Matt Haig, "a love story across the ages—and for the ages—about a man lost in time, the woman who could save him, and the lifetimes it can take to learn how to live" "2312" by Kim Stanley Robinson is "the story of a future where humanity has populated miraculous new habitats engineered across the solar system--and the one death that triggers a precarious chain of events that could destroy it all" Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are 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!

This week, we answer a few listener questions, including what constitutes a good visual design experience, when to put case studies on your site, and when to battle bureaucracy at the office. And as always, we share some cool things, like a couple interesting YouTube channels, one that reviews visual effects and one that makes gaming documentaries. Follow-up: Video: "311 - Amber" Frosted tips The show Marshall recommended last episode is actually called "Mindhunter", singular, not "Mindhunters," plural It stars Anna Torv (from Fringe), who is definitely not Donna from That 70s Show Check out our new Github Repo for asking and answering listener questions Manny asked us where the side projects segment went Listener Questions: Q: Sam Chang asks, "What are your thoughts on including project case studies on your website? Is it something you do only when you're actively looking for work? Article: "The Case Study Factory" Claudio Guglieri creates some amazing bespoke blog posts for his site A: "If you'd like to show your thought process and/or let potential employers know that you understand the design process, yeah, totally. Or if you'd like to share with others a peek behind the scenes of the production, that's great, too. It's all useful from a documentation and lesson preservation standpoint. But in general, more seasoned designers tend to post fewer cast studies." Q: Lucas Morales asks, "What can we do when fighting bureaucracy ends up taking the majority of our time at work? Should we continue to battle or just leave?" A: "Maybe there's a third path. Given there isn't systemic mistrust throughout your org, you could try making an argument to overcome some of the red tape, framing it with the rationale of a better process, higher revenue, or whatever's most effective to move the stakeholder needle. This is a great chance to show your leadership by fixing a broken thing, and then you can take credit for it at your next performance review. Every obstacle is an opportunity! But ultimately, it depends. If the process is still salvageable, you might want to take the lead on salvaging it. If everything's hopeless, then yeah, maybe leaving is the best idea. If you do leave, though, make sure to mention your reasons for doing so in your exit interview, otherwise your concerns might never reach the right ears." Q: Anonymous asks, "How would you describe a good product experience from a visual design perspective?" A: "Visual design is most valuable when it exists in service to experience design. Strive to create a consistent narrative in the system through visual treatments, the goal being that your users can accurately understand the interface and consistently predict the result of any given action." Check out Github's Issue page to see the green buttons and badges that Marshall's referring to here One Cool Thing: Brian shared "VFX Artists React to MARVEL Bad & Great CGi" by Corridor Crew, a behind-the-scenes channel for Corridor Digital, "a production studio based on the idea of passion projects, hard work, and creativity" Marshall shared "Revealing the Tricks Behind Hitman's Level Design" from Noclip's documentary on Hitman, a peek behind the curtain of the recent game franchise reboot Video: "Designing Mortal Kombat Fatalities with Ed Boon" ... Video: "311 - Down" Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

In today's episode we catch up with Skyler Balbus, the Director of Product Design at Postlight. We dig into what it means to build products within the agency model, the decision to move from working in-house to working with clients, and how to build a culture where designers can experiment freely. Skyler also shares her ideas for how to build a strong design culture within an agency, tips for junior designers in the hiring process, and ways to build effective feedback loops within an organization. This, plus our weekly followup, news, and cool things! Follow-up: We're trying a new experiment: ask your questions for us on GitHub by opening a new issue. These issues will allow us to reply directly, keep a public backlog, and let the questions and answers be more readily searchable on Google! You can create a GitHub account for free, in just a few minutes, in case you want to make a fake account for an anonymous question. News: Brian made a Figma plugin, Responsify, to quickly test your designs across multiple device sizes. He also made Dominant Color Toolkit, a plugin to generate a palette from an image to automatically populate your designs. Interview: Today we caught up with Skyler Balbus, the Director of Product Design at Postlight in New York. Skyler shared the process of building the Audubon Society's mobile app, which included deep research that took the team into the field to birdwatch. Postlight's work with Village Voice demonstrated the way designers can build deep ownership in the work, despite not being in-house. Postlight has an interesting side channel, Labs, where the team experiments with small, quirky, and interesting technologies. GIF Battle was the team's first Labs project. Mercury is a tool to extract meaningful content from the chaos of web pages. Fyre Ipsum is lipsum, but from the Fire Festival pitch deck. Tinysheet is a mobile-first spreadsheet. You can find Skyler on Twitter for all the Tweets. One Cool Thing: Skyler shared a video game by Crows Crows Crows, creators of Accounting+ and The Stanley Parable, called The Club. The website's design is 1995 incarnate and is worth checking out. Skyler also snuck in an extra cool thing with Bubsy 3D, a game to explore the art of James Turrell. Marshall shared Mindhunter which recently entered its second season on Netflix. It's a show about the creation of the Behavioral Science Unit at the FBI, which led to the creation and understanding of the term "serial killer." Brian shared a GitHub repository called awesome-mac in which the community has compiled a master list of apps for macOS. Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we look at how a product designer's career advances. We discuss the common themes and growth areas that companies use to measure progression, suggest questions you can ask yourself to assess your progress, read through some of your replies on the subject, and offer up several resources for diving deeper and learning more. And as always, we share a couple cool things, like a typeface designed for UI and an app to budget your money. Follow-up: 🎉 It's Marshall's one-year podiversary 🎉 Brian built a Figma plugin to fetch data Sketch Data Google Sheets Sync Rasmus Andersson was of great help :) Industry Talk: Themes: Difficulty: Complexity, autonomy, scope, and constraints Impact: Project success, sentiment, brand, process Leadership: Mentorship, identifying opportunities and pitfalls, communication skills, maintaining quality, diversity and inclusion Community: Nonreciprocal contributions, elevating culture, hiring Questions to ask yourself regarding these themes: Am I making change for myself, my team, my product, my organization, my company, or the industry as a whole? Am I being reactive or proactive? Am I seeking or being sought? Brian asked what you thought on Twitter, and you responded! Gabe Valdivia heard an apt metaphor regarding career roles and the human body Jessica Harllee shares our thoughts on seniority and range of influence Eric Windmill expects seniority to be accompanied by humility Kristy Tillman shared an article and noted the use of "mature" Maxim pointed us to some of his past tweets on the subject Resources: Buzzfeed: Product Design Roles Basecamp: Titles for Designers Dear Ueno: What’s the difference between a designer, a senior designer, a design lead and a creative director? On Being a Senior Engineer GitLab: Product Designer Progression.fyi Career Architectures for Design Teams What do you think? Let us know! One Cool Thing: Brian shared an article about the Inter typeface by Rasmus Andersson Marshall shared Copilot, a delightful app that "shows you where your money is going and helps you stay on budget" by Andrés Ugarte Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we answer a couple listener questions, including how to get started learning design as a developer and how to reconcile icons on different platforms. In News, we discuss the launch of Figma Plugins, and as always, we share a couple cool things, like gourmet junk food and vaporwave jams. Follow-up: Pro Tip: Listen to Design Details at ~1.25x speed. It's more tolerable, we promise :) Divya Tak is Marshall's kindred internet spirit Jeff Cannata got his start on the Totally Rad Show on Revision 3 Turns out our questions about iOS 13 Beta 4 were premature because—wait for it—it's a damn beta Grouped TableViews on iOS6 vs iOS 12 vs iOS 13 Beta 4 and Beta 5 Screenshots: Safari Modes: Public/Private and Light/Dark Nick Dika told us about Nielsen Norman Group's line of It Depends merch Video: "Vanilla Ice denies ripping off Queen and David Bowie's Under 'Pressure'" News: Introducing Figma Plugins Featured Plugins, built by the Figma community Article: "Smart Distribute, Cloud documents and Sketch for Teams — What’s New in Sketch?" FigPlug by Rasmus Andersson is "a small program for building Figma plugins" Some notable plugins: Unsplash, Autoflow, Stark, Mapsicle, and Google Sheets Sync Listener questions: Q: "What advice do you have for a developer with no design experience getting started with design?" —Dolee Yang A: "Listen to our "Principles of Design" episode, check out Laws of UX and Refactoring UI, then read the Apple HIG and/or the Material Guidelines, paying attention to the thinking behind the systems. When in doubt, fall back to system defaults. But most importantly, get into the mindset of a designer and, as you use products in your daily life, start asking, 'Why did they do it like this?'" Q: "How do you reconcile icon systems between platforms? Do you have different icons for web, iOS, and Android? Or do you try to make them all consistent with a brand icon set?" —Anonymous A: "Actually, both are valid strategies. If you use the default glyphs and styling for icons on each platform, you can have high confidence your users will understand them. If you have a strong brand identity, you can style those glyphs to fit in with your icon set. If you use unique glyphs, consider including labels to make their meaning clear to users who are only familiar with system glyphs." One Cool Thing: Marshall shared "Gourmet Makes", a video series on Bon Appetit's YouTube channel in which a pastry chef attempts to create gourmet versions of junk food Brian shared Poolside.fm, which (according to The Verge) is "a retro digital oasis for your summer" Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we take an early look at the fourth iOS 13 Developer Beta and discuss some of the new features, interactions, and patterns we've noticed. We also answer a few listener questions, including how big a prototype should be, when to expand your skillset, and how to intentionally grow as a designer. And as always, we a share a couple cool things, like a prolific Quora answerer and a novel series discovered through an online class. Followup "It Depends." merch might actually happen, so... Marshall suggested a slight change to the keyboard shortcuts for Truncat Michael Knepprath shared an alternative to Bartender called Vanilla, which lets you "hide menu bar icons on your Mac" Listener questions Q: "Do designers ever make prototypes of entire apps, or is the process more about chunking out the main areas and adding as the product develops?" A: "Once your app structure becomes sufficiently complex, building everything into one prototype becomes less and less tenable. We prefer to focus each of our prototypes on one user journey. Even the most on-rails prototype can be an incredibly useful tool in user research studies." For bigger stuff, we like Framer X, which "offers tools to design scroll, link and page interactions" For smaller stuff, we like Principle, which "makes it easy to design animated and interactive user interfaces" Q: "Is it better to be focused on one thing or multiple skills to have a better chance of promotion?" A: "A T-shaped (or maybe π-shaped) generalist is usually a good choice, but in our experience, you can be successful regardless of which path you choose." Brian was referring to Miley Cyrus as Ashley O (video) in "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too", the third episode of Black Mirror Season 5 Q: "How do you guys get intentional about your growth as designers, and how are you able to measure that growth?" A: "Get uncomfortable and try new things! Our best and fastest growth has come from tackling challenges outside our wheelhouses. It's almost always scary, but in the end, the satisfaction of growth outweighs the fear of the unknown." iOS 13 Beta Review: Intel is credited with pioneering the Tick-Tock Model, which Apple later adopted for its hardware and recently software releases iOS 13 Preview iPadOS 13 Preview watchOS 6 Preview Video: "WWDC 2019 Keynote — Apple" One Cool Thing: Brian shared Janus Dongye-Qimeng, a prolific answerer of China-related questions on Quora "How is China able to provide enough food to feed its population of over 1 billion people?" "Why has China developed so much faster than India?" "If China has so much money to invest in other countries, why don't they develop the poor parts of China?" Marshall shared Masterclass, "online classes taught by the world's greatest minds," which led to David Baldacci's five-part Memory Man series Hyperthymesia is "a condition that leads people to be able to remember an abnormally large number of their life experiences in vivid detail" Synesthesia is "a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway" Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

In today's episode we dig into two listener questions about when to use toggles versus checkboxes, and the current state of accessibility in product design. We also share a big milestone for the podcast, get caught up on some news, and as always, share our cool finds of the week. Followup We've crossed 5 million total downloads on Design Details! Thank you all for listening along with us for all these years 💜 News Friend of the pod Kevin Gutowski created a Sketch plugin, Truncat. Truncat helps you automatically truncate strings! Brian wants this for Figma, too. iOS 13 beta 4 is out, and we're jumping on board. Listener questions Soumya asks: what is the difference between a toggle and a checkbox? Soumya sent along a great Medium post about the key differences and a guidelines document that might help. Hubert asks: "Have you ever felt like our designer’s egos are getting in the way of designing for everyone, and that no matter how hard we try, we as an industry, will never be able to fully adopt accessibility as a core value of product design." Hubert also wrote a piece for the Slack Design blog about accessibility as a design tool Sam Soffes and MDS created Contrast, a small menu bar utility app to quickly check accessibility scores of color pairs. MDS wrote a blog post about designing Contrast. At this year's WWDC, Apple highlighted several major accessibility improvements. The HIG has great typography guidelines and color guidelines. The HIG and Material specs differ slightly on tab bar accessibility. Read more about ARIA, the spec for Accessible Rich Internet Applications. One Cool Thing: Marshall shared a Mac menu bar application, Bartender, a tool to help you customize and manager your Mac's menu bar. Brian shared a new Mac application, Dato, created by Sindre Sorhus. Dato is meant to replace the date and time item in your Mac's menu bar, providing a better interface to see a calendar and timezones. This reminded Marshall of iStat Menus by Marc Edwards. Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we welcome to the show Michie Cao, formerly of Twitter and currently the sole designer at Sisu. Michie tells us all about her experience of working at both a large corporation and a small startup, and she shares some pros and cons of each situation along with some great advice for solo designers. And as always, we end the show with a few cool things, like a pair of music videos, the new coloring for adults, and a podcast about one breathtaking man. Sponsor: >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to abstract.com. Interview Michie Cao is an interaction designer who likes to "design, code, draw, and tinker with things" Sisu is "the world’s most advanced analytics platform" Article: "Twitter.com launches its big redesign with simpler navigation and more features" Peter Bailis is the founder and CEO of Sisu WeWork helps you "discover spaces that inspire your people’s most meaningful and impactful work, whether you’re an established enterprise or a growing startup" Kubernetes is an "open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications" Docker is an "enterprise container platform for high-velocity innovation" The adults in the Charlie Browniverse are all entirely unintelligible (video) Day One Design Club "exists to connect first or solo designers with others like them and to help them grow through sharing of practical wisdom and ideas in a creative, supportive space" Charles Zhu is Sisu's Product and Go-to-Market guy Know Your Meme: "How to Draw an Owl" One Cool Thing: Marshall shared two versions of Lewis Capaldi's beautiful song "Someone You Loved" Laugh to the funny version Cry to the sad version Brian isn't crying, you're crying Michie shared punch needle, the "new coloring for adults" Cross-stitch is kinda similar to punch needle Michie tweeted pictures of her handiwork Brian shared "Can't Get Enough of Keanu," a podcast from Patrick (H) Willems dedicated to exploring the filmography of Keanu Reeves The podcast was formerly about Josh Hartnett and called "We Heart Hartnett" in earlier episodes Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is the story of "two seemingly dumb teens [who] set off on a quest to prepare the ultimate historical presentation with the help of a time machine" Always Be My Maybe is the story of "famous chef Sasha and hometown musician Marcus who, when reunited after 15 years, feel the old sparks of attraction but struggle to adapt to each other's worlds" Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we keep it short and answer a few listener questions, including how to align text to a grid, how to handle an interview at a company that uses dark patterns, and how to account for suboptimal company processes when assembling portfolio work. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a pair of crazy tech gloves and some award-winning coffee paraphernalia. Sponsor: >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to abstract.com. Listener Questions: Q: How do you align text boxes? To the grid? Or to the baseline grid? A: A holistic baseline grid is an admirable aspiration, but it's rarely realistic. Just do your best, and pay attention through implementation for quality assurance. For the most part, we'd suggest you try using atomic-unit-sized leading (multiples of 4pt) and align to the grid or other objects' bounding boxes. That is, unless you have multiple single lines of text, like a list cell with a Label and Detail (such as in Settings), in which case, a baseline alignment is preferred. Check out the Text Elements section of Bryn Jackson's The 8-Point Grid article for some more solid advice Q: How do you think about organizations that use dark patterns when you're interviewing to work for them? A: Maybe just ask? If you're uncomfortable asking directly, you could always abstract the question like, "How much agency does the design team have in influencing legacy patterns?" Back in 2010, Facebook interrupted their account deletion flow with pictures of your friends who "will miss you" Q: Do you think about your portfolio while you have a job? What if your company isn't great at or doesn't have resources for a particular process, like research? A: Recognizing a shortcoming is the first step toward fixing it. Provide leadership where none exists! At the very least, you can use your performance reviews as a way to regularly collect your work. The Mom Test is a book that helps you learn "how to talk to customers and learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you" One Cool Thing: Marshall shared "Imogen Heap: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert", a video in which Imogen performs using a pair of MI·MU Gloves as a gesture-based loop pedal and mixing board Video: "Saturday Night Live: The Shooting AKA Dear Sister" is a parody of a scene from the Season 2 Finale of The OC Article: "Imogen Heap’s musical gloves are finally available to everyone" Video: "Diva Plavalaguna song (The Fifth Element)" Brian shared Fellow, a product company that makes beautiful coffee-related paraphernalia Last episode, Brian shared Trade, a subscription service that helps you "find only the flavors you love from 400+ amazing coffees roasted by the nation’s best" The Stagg EKG Kettle is the award-winning "electric pour-over kettle for coffee lovers" The Atmos Vacuum Canister will "keep your coffee fresher, longer" Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we welcome to the show Stacy La, formerly of Clover Health and currently the product and design lead on the Prevent Epidemics Team at Resolve to Save Lives. Stacy shares with us some of the challenges and triumphs of building a large design team from scratch, and we get into the details of designing for such serious, high-stakes product areas. And as always, we end the show with a few cool things, like a guide to creativity, a channel that answers interesting questions, and a subscription coffee service. Sponsor: >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to abstract.com. Follow-up: Video: Here's proof Marshall isn't completely alone in thinking Apple will make a Tile killer Thanks to macgeekjay for leaving us an iTunes review! You can leave one, too, if you'd like to help us find new listeners :D Paweł Szymankiewicz enjoyed our previous episode about dark patterns That same episode made Divya Tak think of the nice cancellation flow provided by Headspace News: Congratulations to Revision Path for also recently crossing 300 episodes! Also, Hannah Beachler seems pretty awesome, just saying Interview Stacy La is the product and design lead on the Prevent Epidemics team at Resolve to Save Lives, and formerly of Clover Health and Yammer She also tweets sometimes One Cool Thing: Stacy shared Creative Quest, a "unique new guide to creativity from Questlove—inspirations, stories, and lessons on how to live your best creative life" Marshall shared Cheddar, a YouTube channel that "explains, examines, and explores" Brian shared Trade Coffee, the "best coffee subscription in the nation" Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, inspired by a tweet from Daniel Burka, we tackle the thorny but important question of who is ultimately accountable for the implementation of a product's dark patterns. Is Design responsible? Engineering? Leadership? All of the above? In Listener Questions, we answer how to design on an iPad and how to apply an even grid to an odd screen. And as always, we share a couple cool things like some SVG icons and a modded Apple TV remote. Follow-up: Our apologies for butchering the name of Alexis Collado, host of Roots, "a podcast about the stories of Filipino designers" Vincent shared his strange dream of creating a recommendation database for Design Details episodes Press F to pay respects for Herr Lindner, who had been saving Design Details until retirement, but just recently started listening at Episode 1 Listener Questions: Anonymous asks how to design on an iPad Answer: Check out this (hilarious) video of Rafa, co-host of the Layout podcast, running Figma on an iPad using a keyboard and trackpad Kevin Haag asks how to apply the 8pt grid when a device's screen width doesn't fit the grid exactly Answer: Just measure from the screen edges :) Industry Talk: Daniel Burka admonished designers for using dark patterns to obfuscate account deletion A dark pattern is "a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing something" You can read the story behind the Dropbox downgrade illustration near the end of this article: "Illustrating a more human brand (part 1)" Back in 2010, Facebook interrupted the account deletion flow with pictures of your friends who "will miss you" In the Saturday Night Massacre, the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General resigned in protest rather than fire the independent special prosecutor at Nixon's request Article: "What to Know About Obeying an Unlawful Military Order" Video: "Wendy Releases the Chickens" The GDPR's Right to Erasure is also known as the "right to be forgotten" One Cool Thing: Brian shared Cole Bemis's Feather icons, which were used by Gaddafi Rusli to make ICONSVG, which provides "quick customizable SVG icons for your project" Marshall shared his modded Apple TV remote, which features a Tile, two 3M strips, and two drawer bumpers to increase usability (and decrease beauty, but whatever) Video: Here's proof Marshall isn't crazy about Apple making a Tile killer Note: For the record, that video was released two days after we recorded this episode, so yeah Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we answer a few listener questions, including the difference between the philosophies behind the Android and iOS design systems and why we prefer an 8pt grid. In News, Brian gives a quick rundown on Figma's new Plugins Beta. And as always, we share a couple cool things like some isometric dioramas and a modular key and wallet system. Sponsor: >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to abstract.com. Follow-up: Many heartfelt thanks to long-time listener Jeff Parsons for the kind words and feedback Design Picnic is a Thai podcast that "combines fresh and diverse inspiration from experienced designers all over the world" We talk about "the boring stuff, the frustrating things" in Episode 297: Day-to-Day Design Struggles Alexis Collado makes Roots, "a podcast about the stories of Filipino designers" Supratim Chakraborty marathoned 28 episodes in 2 weeks O_o Image: The Toyota Supra's spoiler was the St. Louis Gateway Arch of spoilers SUPRA Footwear is an America shoe brand founded in California Pro Tip: Design Details is most tolerable when listened to at 1.2-1.3x speed Race Swisher left us a very kind iTunes review You too can leave a review for the show right here News: The Figma Plugins Beta lets you extend the app by using their API Listener Questions Sahil Chaturvedi asks what an "IC" is An individual contributor is "someone who contributes individually and who does not manage a team" "Closer to the metal" Anonymous asks about the 8pt vs. 10pt grid Former co-host Bryn Jackson wrote a great rundown called The 8-Point Grid Kelly Smith asks about the difference between iOS and Android Material Design Guidelines Apple Human Interface Guidelines iOS Materials Scrim is another term for a transparent overlay, typically used to separate a foreground layer from a background layer A Device-Independent Pixel (or dp) is "a physical unit of measurement based on a coordinate system held by a computer and represents an abstraction of a pixel for use by an application that an underlying system then converts to physical pixels" The Dark Mode section of the HIG sadly doesn't provide any actual colors Video: "What's New in iOS Design" dives deep on colors and materials WWDC is Apple's annual Worldwide Developer Conference We talked about Google I/O back in Episode 296 One Cool Thing: Brian shared some amazing isometric dioramas from Roman Klčo, Guillaume Kurkdjian, and Jarlan Perez Marshall shared Ferris, a Kickstarter campaign for "a modular key and wallet system" Distil Union also makes the Wally Micro, MagLock Sunglasses, and many more quality products Video Review: MODULAR Everyday Carry (EDC)?! - Distil Union Ferris System - First Look Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week we reflect on 300 episodes of Design Details. We recount the origin story, answering listener questions as we go about how we've managed to maintain the schedule for so long, the high and low points, and future plans for the podcast. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a new music discovery app and Marshall's favorite book of all time. Sponsor: >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to abstract.com. Follow-up: Brian watched Survivor - and liked it! Jeff Probst, vampire? Survivor, Edge of Extinction is the most recent game mechanic in the Survivor-verse. Brian and Gabriel Valdivia went to see The Late Show - good times were had. WWDC Hot Takes: Brian is most excited for Project Catalyst, the real name for last year's Marzipan announcement. The new Mac Pro is silly. The price of the Pro Display XDR is even sillier. Marshall is excited for too many things: New semantic colors that handle dark mode automatically. iOS 13 will block spam calls automatically iOS 13 gets a native swipe keyboard, years after Gboard's implementation. SwiftUI is a new declarative way to build iOS applications. It is very exciting, indeed. Reflecting on 300 episodes of Design Details Design Details was originally a blog. The post for Facebook Paper became popular and led to many more posts in the following months. Bryn Jackson and Brian co-hosted Design Details for 256 episodes. The full Design Details archive is available for all to hear! We have recommended starting episodes and you can search for the "Best-of" compilation episodes. Early episodes, like Episode 3 with Wilson Miner were critical for setting the tone of the show. Sarah Marie, and recently Drew Luper, have been editing and producing every episode of Design Details. The show wouldn't be possible without them, and their work is the reason our audio sounds so good. Thank you Sarah and Drew! Aaron Miller and Joshua Shao asked how we keep the show going every week, and what it takes to pull off the weekly release schedule. Eileen Wong asked if there were ever times we wanted to give up, or what the low points were of recording Design Details. Tom Moor asked if any life-changing connections were made through the show. Tea Chang's episode was great example of changing how Marshall thought about interviewing guests. Episode 23 with Christophe Tauziet helped Brian get his foot in the door at Facebook. Leo asked if we are planning on bringing back old guests to follow up on their progress as designers. We like the idea of doing followup interviews similar to Vanity Fair's interview with Billie Eilish recorded one year apart. Hari asked what episodes we would recommend a new listener start with. Here are our top ten episodes (by download count): 143: Design Systems: So Hot Right Now ft. Karri Saarinen 197: Chillaphobia ft. Rachel Been 271: Principles of Design 169: Invisible Unicorns ft. Maykel Loomans 178: Best of 2016 (Part 1) 163: Guardrails ft. Ben Wilkins 111: Claim to Flame ft. Vicki Tan 166: Ambient Struggles ft. May-Li Khoe & Andy Matuschak 168: Auto Goats ft. Koen Bok and Jorn van Dijk Whitespace Friends ft. Lori Kaplan Design Picnic is a new design podcast specifically for Thai designers One Cool Thing: Brian shared Spotify Stations, a new standalone app from Spotify to help curate new radio playlists. We muse whether this is simply a faster surface to explore new UI and interaction patterns that might someday make their way back to the main app. Marshall shared Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, a cyberpunk-genre book which takes place in a dystopian future was published in 1992. Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we answer a listener question about the balance of being both a manager and an individual contributor, which leads to some more existential conversation about sharing what we think we know and the fear of being wrong loudly in public. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a Marvel movie pitch and an addictive reality show (and Marshall shares the rough skeleton of his screenplay idea). Sponsor: >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to abstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan. Follow-up: Kevin Gutowski is building a plugin on top of Abstract's API that allows your coworkers to view and download all the assets in a master Marc Edwards makes Skala Preview, which allows you to view your mocks with simulated colorblindness Listener Question: Q wants to know how to effectively balance being a manager and an individual contributor Flow state is "the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity" The Dunning-Kruger Effect is "a cognitive bias in which people mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is" Audio: "Talk less, smile more" references a recurring line from the broadway musical Hamilton One Cool Thing: Brian shared "Nando Pitches Ant-Man and The Wasp 2," a video by YouTube creator Nando v Movies pitching the third installment in the Ant-Man series Correction: Nando's first original content pitch was for Suicide Squad 2 Marshall shared his screenplay idea Video: Time Travel in Fiction Rundown does a great job of explaining the different ways time travel can be portrayed Video: Ex Machina Opening Scene is a reference for winning a ticket to the mystery alpha Video: Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - Pure Imagination is a reference for the Omni campus tour Video: Jurassic Park - Mr. DNA Sequence is a reference for the time travel mechanics exposition Tom Holland is today's Michael J. Fox Marshall also shared Survivor, an addicting, always-evolving competition that commands each player to outwit, outplay, and outlast Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we answer a listener question about designing a design curriculum and another about where the line is between a visual redesign and an experience redesign. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a playlist of experts and an action film series. Sponsor: >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) This week's episode is brought to you by Dribbble Hang Time NYC With more than 25 talks, workshops, and intimate conversations to choose from, Dribbble's Hang Time design conference is your chance to join hundreds of designers in NYC for a day of inspiration, learning, and career growth. Dribbble has lined up presentations by some of the best and brightest in the industry, and attendees can expect a wide variety of talks and workshops, each in an intimate, limited-seat setting for a meaningful conference experience. Save $100 off your ticket by using the code DESIGNDETAILS through Friday, May 31, 2019. And follow us @designdetailsfm to find out more about getting a fully paid ticket. Follow-up: Jason Jun was comforted and depressed by our shared struggles Jason Rutterford found our northstar conversation helpful Sanketh wants a collated directory of our cool things (Stay tuned!) Listener Questions: What's the line between visual redesign and experience redesign? We talked about the Figma UI Refresh on episode 291: Figma's UI Redesign and Public Critique If you had only 12 weeks to teach design, what would you teach? You tell us! What would you teach? One Cool Thing: Marshall shared "Experts," a video playlist of experts reviewing portrayals of their expertise Brian shared John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum from a series about guns, punches, and cars Video: "Patrick Explains THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (and Why It's Great)" Video: Keanu at the gun range Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we take a break from talking about high-level design problems and dive into the specific struggles we find ourselves running into lately, including pushing through the last ten percent, maintaining multiple realities, gaining stakeholder buy-in, and designing around moving targets. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a science-fiction page-turner and a thought-provoking video series. Sponsor: >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) This week's episode is brought to you by Dribbble Hang Time NYC With more than 25 talks, workshops, and intimate conversations to choose from, Dribbble's Hang Time design conference is your chance to join hundreds of designers in NYC for a day of inspiration, learning, and career growth. Dribbble has lined up presentations by some of the best and brightest in the industry, and attendees can expect a wide variety of talks and workshops, each in an intimate, limited-seat setting for a meaningful conference experience. Save $100 off your ticket by using the code DESIGNDETAILS through Friday, May 31, 2019. And follow us @designdetailsfm to find out more about getting a fully paid ticket. Follow-up: The Book of Mormon is a hilariously irreverent Broadway musical from the creators of South Park Here are the full lyrics for the Design Details rap: Designers in tech, you can spot em from afar They all wear the same clothes, and don't drive cars They all go on hikes, most ride bikes And if you hit the dating apps, they look alike They talk about some big ideas, and use language Like "design is a tool we'll all use to save the planet" Then they go back to their desk (standing) Tweak a couple pixels, cause their job is so demanding Text a designer? The message is blue Meet a designer? They probably got a beard, too See a designer? They're usually white I'm talking pale-ass motherfucker, blindingly bright They often have the best intentions, but the truth is They're just another cog in a machine that is ruthless Cause if you give a guy a KPI They're gonna push retention till society dies We're all different, we think different All of us uniquely happen to think different Skeuomorphism is dead, I'm insisting It's all about that flat design now, listen On Design Details Brian and Marshall yell Industry Talk: It's tedious to push through the last 10% of a project The heat death of the universe is "an idea of an ultimate fate of the universe in which the universe has evolved to a state of no thermodynamic free energy and therefore can no longer sustain processes that increase entropy" Video [GoT Spoilers!]: "Not today" is what we say to the God of Rough Edges GIF: Shame Maintaining multiple realities in one's head can be difficult MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product, or "a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and provide feedback for future product development" Ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag is an idiom meant to describe anything that is overfull or a situation that is undesirable Playlist: "Framer Feature Announcements" do a great job of creating excitement around prototyping features Gaining stakeholder buy-in and design for others' surfaces can be tricky with a lot of stakeholders and in-progress roadmaps Design-by-committee is "a disparaging term for a project that has many designers involved but no unifying plan or vision" Headcanon is "an interpretation of a fictional universe accepted by an individual fan, but not necessarily found within or supported by the official canon" Forcing functions are "any task, activity or event that forces you to take action and produce a result" One Cool Thing: Brian shared Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, "a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human" Marshall shared the Spectrum series by Jubilee, a playlist of videos "revealing the spectrum of beliefs within a specific group" Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week we dig into the latest and greatest announcements from this year's Google I/O. We talk through our top highlights like new privacy controls, Android Q improvements, and a solid new budget Pixel phone. And as always, we share our cool finds of the week, like a behind-the-scenes feature film on the creation of God of War, and a news application to help you read and understand what's happening in the world. Sponsor: >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to abstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan. Music: This week Gabriel Valdivia teamed up with Brian Schulman and Kasey Valdivia to produce their own take on our theme song. Stick around to the episode to hear the full Design Details Rap 😂Soundcloud. Gabe also recently released his own album, Blankets, which you can listen to on Spotify. If you have your own interpretation of our theme song, send it to us on Twitter by direct message, we'd love to hear it! Follow-up: We recently recorded an episode about if AR is a gimmick. You can listen to that here. Marshall did some deep digging into the internet to learn more about the history of AR and its complicated relationship with hockey. Read more about the glowing hockey puck's horrible failure. We continue to explore new album art designs - thank you for the feedback! This week Josh Shao sent in a custom font he's been working on for us to try Michael Knepprath doesn't have the emotional bandwidth to watch us change the art - we'll figure out something that feels right! Mind Apivessa and Marisa Chentakul have launched a podcast called Design Picnic, a show about user experience and product design focusing on Thai designers across industries. If you're a Thai listener, or interested in a Thai perspective on product design, be sure to check out Design Picnic! Event recap: Google I/O happened this week with lots of interesting products and themes for us to dig into. Check out all the event details or just catch the highlights. Maps and YouTube are getting incognito mode It's becoming more common to have physical switches on microphones and cameras to protect against hacking. Google Takeout helps you download and remove the data that Google stores about you. Android Q is getting dark mode, among other neat features like live captions. Live captions still have a ways to go, but are impressive nonetheless. The Material Design spec has been updated with full details about how to properly implement a dark theme. The Google Nest Hub Max has some cool new features, like holding your hand up to the screen to pause any playing audio. The Pixel 3a is a budget Pixel device, but with actually decent specs and a solid camera. Check out MKBHD's review for more details. One Cool Thing: Marshall shared a full length feature about the creation of the God of War video game series, Raising Kratos. Additionally, you can now watch the entire storyline of God of War as told through in-game cinematics. Grab yourself six hours and jump on in. Brian shared Sift, an app that makes it easier to consume the news, dig into source materials, and interact with memorable graphs and charts about relevant social issues. Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we discuss the usefulness of public design critiques, given Brian's eventful week of tweeting stuff. Then we dive deep on the new Facebook redesign, especially the details of the desktop version. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a financial app and a sneaker channel. Sponsor: >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to abstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan. Follow-up: Portal 2 infers your Y-axis preference by asking you to look at the ceiling and floor We shared a first draft of new cover art for the podcast Chrish Dunne offered some good feedback on the cover art, and we're taking it Jonathan Fisher added some visuals to the "bye" from last episode We thought Tea Chang was a great guest, and so did you :) Another thing Jonathan sent in is a haunting piano rendition of our theme song Scriptnotes is a podcast that ends each show with a listener-submitted rendition of their theme song Each episode of If I Were You from Jake and Amir starts with listener-made content Industry Talk: Facebook announced a bunch of stuff at this year's F8 Developer Conference Brian tweeted that he had a lot of questions Turns out, he actually had a lot of questions Brian tweeted about a Kickstarter bug that ultimately wasn't their fault The Brave browser runs on Chromium Three open questions: Where do we draw the line between having an opinion and being a bad participant? Is it useful to ask rhetorical questions in a public setting? Is it unfair to publicly call out a design team over something that could be improved? Refactoring UI put together a list of design tips with examples for before and after Can't Unsee is a fun design comparison quiz We say wrench, but maybe you say spanner Brian tweeted about a usability issue in Figma, and they fixed it App Redesign: Video: "New Facebook Redesign" Article: "Defining the Problem of Elevator Waiting Times" "Lickable" Video: "It's not a wheel, it's a carousel" Video: "Building the New facebook.com with React, GraphQL and Relay" and skip to 28:00 for the bit about the redesign One Cool Thing: Brian shared Rollie, "a simpler way to check your spending and balances" Rollie uses Plaid, "the easiest way for users to connect their bank accounts to an app" Marshall shared Seth Fowler, a YouTuber with an industrial design background who makes videos about sneakers full-time In his "If I Designed" series, Seth renders reimaginings of classic shoes Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we welcome Tea Chang, a UX Designer working on League of Legends at Riot Games, to talk about designing user experiences for gamers. At the end of the show, Tea sticks around for a long, spoiler-filled discussion of Avengers: Endgame. In Follow-up, we read and respond to your feedback regarding the cover art concept from last week. And as always, we share a few cool things, like a video series about movies, some state-specific branding, and a little indie film about superheroes. Spoilers spoilers spoilers. Spoilers. Sponsor: >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to abstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan. Follow-up: Last week, we tweeted out a first draft of the new cover art Video: "The Foundations - Build Me Up Buttercup" Brett Yanoski likes the mask idea but thinks the execution needs work Ryan Morrison and Luca Orio gave us their seals of approval Alex Binder likes the graphic Ds Chrish Dunne would prefer a better logotype and more abstract Ds Follow us on Twitter and stay tuned for more versions of the cover art Mskellybrooks left us a very nice iTunes review You can leave one for us, too :) Interview: Check out Tea Chang on Twitter and at her personal site League of Legends is a wildly popular multiplayer online battle arena game from Riot Games Video: "Playtesting - How to Get Good Feedback on Your Game - Extra Credits" Literally unplayable is "an expression—often sarcastic—indicating that a video game is so badly broken that it prevents a player from progressing or enjoying the experience" Vivi Rosenstein's stance on assigning blame for suboptimal design has matured over the years Banner blindness is "a phenomenon in web usability where visitors to a website consciously or unconsciously ignore banner-like information" Article: "Get ready to see more ads on Google’s traffic app Waze" Adobe XD is "the fastest way to design, prototype, and share any user experience" Video: "The Magic of Making Sound" is a great peek into foley, an art which, when done well, goes unnoticed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild forces you to use a wide range of weapons by making them both easy to find and quick to break Video game design is "the process of designing the content and rules of a video game in the pre-production stage" Article: "'Mortal Kombat 11' Requires More Than $6,000 to 100%, According to Early Estimates" We talked about the interface and game design of Apex Legends on episode 283: Deadly American Idol In the gorgeous game Gris, "light puzzles, platforming sequences, and optional skill-based challenges reveal themselves as more of Gris’s world becomes accessible" Video: "Portal 2 Intro", in which a tutorial is hidden behind a funny, story-driven calibration test One Cool Thing: Brian shared Patrick H. Willems, a YouTuber who makes videos about movies Check out the Patrick Explains series, especially the one about The Fast and the Furious Gabriel Valdivia introduced Brian to the channel Tea shared the team page for Mayor Pete Buttigieg, which has some really nice branding for each US state Shepard Fairey is famous for his Obama Hope poster (and the Obey clothing brand) Marshall shared Avengers: Endgame and discussed it with Tea and Brian in a segment called... Endgame Discussion: !!! SPOILERS !!! Video: "Every Avengers: Endgame Easter Egg", in which 209 easter eggs are enumerated Video: "Rocky Training" is the prototypical montage sequence showing a protagonist's improvement over time The Dark Night of the Soul is "a moment, usually at the end of the second act of a three-act story, where all seems lost and the protagonist must confront 'a collapse of perceived meaning'" r/inthesoulstone !!! SPOILERS !!! Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin and [email protected] Marshall is @marshallbock @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we bring back the Fight Me segment with a debate on the usefulness of augmented reality in apps. Is it a gimmick or not? In Follow-up, we debut a proposal for our new cover art, and we shout out Linzi Berry's latest blog post. And as always, we share a couple cool things like an addictive game and a bizarre novel. Cover photo by Niantic via The Verge Follow-up: If you missed last week's episode with Linzi Berry, give it a listen Erik Bro shared the episode with his fellow designers at Reddit Here's the new cover art proposal, in case you don't see it in your podcast player of choice The current cover art is by Ryan Morrison Email us with your cover art ideas at [email protected] Article: "A system built on parity: How to treat all of your users equally" by Linzi Berry, Kathy Ma, and Sam Soffes Read it on the newly redesigned site for DesignSystems.com from Figma Fight Me: Article: "How Does the Magic Yellow First-Down Line Work?" Site: Pokémon Go lets you "catch Pokémon in the real world" Photo: Old Man Yells at Cloud is a Simpsons reference and Marshall sometimes Photo: Old car radios have these big, spring-loaded buttons that move a physical needle App: Wanna Kicks lets you "try on and shop footwear in AR" Site: Apple - Augmented Reality for iOS is Apple's case for augmented reality App: WordLens (now a feature within Google Translate) lets you "see the world in your language" Video: "Hearthstone Animated Short: Hearth and Home" is pure joy One Cool Thing: Brian shared Factory Town, an early access simulation game that lets you "build, automate, and optimize your own village on procedurally-generated 3D terrain" It's a lot like Factorio, "a game in which you build and maintain factories" Article: "Engineering with Redstone in Minecraft" Marshall shared John Dies at the End, a novel that deftly balances Lovecraftian horror with shameless potty humor The movie version is currently available to stream on Hulu Marshall also read Children of Time, which was kinda meh 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we welcome to the show Linzi Berry, a manager on Lyft's design system. Linzi enlightens us on how to implement, maintain, enforce, evangelize, and roll out a design system, and we discuss her super informative design blog, Tap to Dismiss. In Follow-up, we debate some Episode 300 suggestions, revisit the Figma UI refresh, and shout out a quality-of-life improvement in Sketch 54. And as always, we (all three of us!) share some cool things, including a historic photo, a video to help understand that photo, and an update on the Bobiverse. Sponsor: >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to abstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan. Follow-up: Jonathan Fisher sent us some great ideas for Episode 300, including having Bryn back on the show Send your Ep 300 ideas to us @designdetailsfm Jason Csizmadi wishes we had talked more about the Figma UI Refresh Sketch 54 has some nice quality-of-life improvements Chris Doner wants some details about tactical usage of a design system SMASH CUT TO: Interview: Linzi Berry (site) is a design manager on the Lyft Design System She worked at Odopod on stuff for SpaceX, Tesla, Fitbit, and Audemars Piguet Watch brands pop up in rap songs a lot thanks to Jay-Z and Beyoncé WalkSF is "your advocate for safe streets for all" Better Market Street is a collaboration "initiating a number of improvements to test ways to improve Market Street" Michael Wang, formerly at Lyft, is a designer at Northstar Peak2Peak is "the ultimate urban walking adventure" Walk to Work Day is SF's "annual celebration of our walking city – and of everyone who walks" Brown Bag Meetings are " informal meetings that occur in the workplace generally around lunchtime" Colorbox is a tool created by Kevyn Arnott Tap to Dismiss is Linzi's Medium blog that "sweats the details so you don't have to" Divider Lines are deceptively hard Sam Soffes coined the term "Choice Chip Bag" Linda Dong is a design manager at Lyft, too One Cool Thing: Linzi shared the first photo ever taken of a black hole Marshall shared "How to Understand the Image of a Black Hole", a video by Veratasium Brian shared For We Are Many, Book 2 of the Bobiverse Trilogy by Dennis E. Taylor 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we discuss Figma's UI redesign, the public response to it, and how to effectively communicate negative feedback to both companies and colleagues. In Follow-up, Brian has an update on a previous Cool Thing, we read some listener feedback (all positive, phew!), and Marshall shares his choice of AirPower replacement. And as always, we share a couple cool things, like a fellow designer's website and a new music album. Sponsor: >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to abstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan. Follow-up: Pssst! What should we do for Episode 300? Let us know! Brian is reading We Are Legion (We Are Bob), the first book in the Bobiverse trilogy and Marshall's Cool Thing suggestion from last episode Chris Doner likes how Artboard Manager reorders artboards in the Layer List to reflect their positions on the Canvas Cameron Campbell thinks we should have a Patreon to support 3-hour episodes O_o Brian tweeted a poll asking how much money one would need in order to stop working for the rest of one's life Marshall purchased the SliceCharge 2 to fill the AirPower-shaped hole in his heart Hard Cider Labs also makes the BassCanon attachment for Ear/AirPods Tool Review: Figma Blog: "We refreshed Figma's UI: An inside look at our process" by Rasmus Andersson Microsoft Office's Ribbon UI is being redesigned Spectrum v3's redesign received a lot of feedback There was a Spectrum discussion of the Figma redesign Shit sandwich (shĭt sănd′wĭch) n. - a method of softening negative feedback by prepending and appending positive feedback Just ask EA about negative customer feedback People mocked the "Wii" and "iPad" monikers for a little while until no one cared anymore One Cool Thing: Brian shared the personal website for his Ryan Morrison (not Marshall's Ryan Morrison) Marshall shared Billie Eilish's new album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? Reprise (rĭ-prēz′) n. - a repetition of a phrase or verse; a return to an original theme Lil Dicky - Molly feat. Brendon Urie 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we answer listener questions, including how to transition from engineering to product design, how to wrap up before moving to a new company, and what we think of apps that allow you to change the launch icon. In Follow-up, we read some listener feedback about last episode, and Marshall fills in a couple details on his file organization tips. In News, we lament the untimely death of AirPower (rip rip). And as always, we share a couple cool things like a sci-fi movie and a sci-fi book trilogy. Sponsor: >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to abstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan. Follow-up: We had some good feedback from our last episode about design file hygiene: Cal Rowston noticed a few gems among all the babbling Tim Bendt could listen to layer organization tips forever (which is a totally normal thing btw) Katherine's heart was warmed by Marshall's obsessive compulsions Ryan Hayen wants to start a layer organization OCD support group Anthony Collurafici pointed us to a Medium article by Andy Detskas that explains how to organize your artboards with serialization Marshall adds a couple details to his file organization tips: Layer Tools has a couple especially useful renaming actions: "Find and Replace..." and "Prepend/Append to Selected Layer Names..." In addition to "thinking in divs," try to order the layers and groups in your Layer List just as they appear in the mock, from top-left to bottom-right Keyboard Maestro is a super-powered macro utility for Mac ICYMI, here's the Sketch file for Marshall's unsolicited NYT Crossword app redesign that he shared last episode as an example of maniacal file organizational News: AirPower has been cancelled: Video: Phil Schiller announces the AirPower charging mat Article: Apple cancels AirPower wireless charger Article: "Apple's Phil Schiller explains why the white iPhone 4 took so long" AirPower is pictured on the new AirPods packaging Video: "The Death of Airpower: Explained!" Listener Questions: >> If you'd like to ask us a question, we're @designdetailsfm on Twitter, or email us: [email protected] or [email protected] Sofia F asks what we think about apps like Streaks that offer different launch icons We love it! Here are some other apps we use that do this: Bear is "a beautiful, flexible writing app for crafting notes and prose" Tweetbot is "a Twitter client with personality" Pocket Casts is "the world's most powerful podcast platform" Apollo is "a beautiful Reddit app built for power and speed" David Lanham is an illustrator with an endearing style Anonymous asks what we think about transitioning from Engineering to Product Design Do some side projects or case studies to beef up your portfolio and gain some experience Sit with your fellow product designers and offer to help wherever needed Anonymous asks about transitioning to a new company Leave your active projects in good shape, either finishing them yourself or handing them off to an informed successor If you've already gotten an offer, they're probably gonna be cool with you wrapping up your active projects before transitioning One Cool Thing: Brian shared Prospect, a sci-fi movie about "a teenage girl and her father who travel to a remote alien moon, aiming to strike it rich" Pedro Pascal Sophie Thatcher Andre Royo The Wire is a show about the Baltimore drug scene, seen through the eyes of drug dealers and law enforcement Marshall shared We Are Legion (We Are Bob), the first book in a sci-fi trilogy about a software engineer who unwittingly becomes an AI and humanity's last hope for survival Ready Player One has a similar tone but tries a little too hard 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, Marshall offers a few simple tips for tidying up your source files, and we answer a listener question about when to move on from a company. In News, we shout out a new resource from the maker of Laws of UX. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a browser for neoworkers and an article about the Omnibox. Follow-up: Last week, Marshall recommended the Philips Sonicare DiamondClean 9500 Electric Toothbrush Brian doesn't think it's worth the money, unless you're into Mercedes-Benz, apparently News: Humane by Design is "a resource that provides guidance for designing ethically humane digital products through patterns focused on user well-being" It's made by Jon Yablonski, who you might remember as the maker of Laws of UX referenced in 271: Principles of Design Listener Question: Anonymous has been at a startup for years and doesn't know where it's going. They ask, "Should I stay and fight the good fight? Or should I go to a bigger company and make more money?" Loss Aversion and the Sunk Cost Fallacy on Wikipedia Kristy Tillman is the Head of Global Experience Design at Slack Do you have a question you'd like to hear us answer on the show? Email us at [email protected] Industry Talk: A few simple rules: Rename and structure your layers as you create them If you find yourself duplicating an element frequently, make it a symbol Use "Bounds" layers to define a group's area, then snap groups together like Lego Sketch Plugins: Layer Tools Automate Artboard Manager Symbol Organizer Runner Here the Sketch Cloud source file for Marshall's unsolicited redesign of the New York Times Crossword app on iOS Importing the file into Figma resulted in some unexpected insanity, but hopefully you can see through the mistranslations and grok the structure. Sorry :( One Cool Thing: Brian shared NOVA, a web browser "designed for the way we interact with the web today, made for the neoworkers" (whatever those are) Moom is a simple Mac utility that "makes window management as easy as clicking a mouse button" Nova's app icon isn't nearly as bold as its marketing page Marshall shared Unboxing Chrome, a Medium article by Hannah Lee about the monumental task of redesigning Chrome's Omnibox 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 Email us at [email protected] Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we answer a listener question about articulating design rationale during presentations. We also shared some exciting news from the Sketch team and recapped feedback from last week's episode where we pulled back the curtain on Design Details. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a fancy toothbrush and a web app to make your own generative art. Sponsor: This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to abstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan. >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) Follow-up: Last week we pulled back the curtain on Design Details and asked for your feedback. You replied! Some key takeaways: Our titles need to be more straightforward and clear. We need to bring back interviews, at a non-regular frequency, to balance our opinions and provide new insight . We should try new ways of engaging with designers outside of the podcast - thank you to Kevin Gutowksi for the notes! Our Twitter poll about the proper pronunciation of "favicon" had a lot of votes, and some interesting results. News: Sketch announced a $20m fundraising round to help them build new collaboration tools and a web version coming in 2019. In the past we've interviewed Chris Downer and Pieter Omvlee from the Sketch team - listen to those to learn more about Sketch and how they thought about fundraising at the time. Our good friends on the Layout podcast also discussed the Sketch news on this week's episode. Listener Questions: Silvia asks: "I'd love to get advice on how to present my design rationale to others, and ways I can improve rationale overall. I find that I do have reasons for the design choices I made but when presenting I can't seem to put into words." Jobs to be done is a useful framework for understanding critical user journeys and validating rationale. One Cool Thing: Marshall shared the Philips Sonicare DiamondClean 9500, a toothbrush that can do everything except take out your trash. Brian shared Tinkersynth, a web app created by Josh Comeau that lets you playfully create generative art. 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we pull back the curtain on Design Details itself and share how we think about iterating toward a better podcast. In Follow-up, we hear back about our Spectre critique from last episode, and we discover listeners do listen until the end. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a fancy toilet seat and a design interview FAQ. Sponsor: This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to abstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan. >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) Follow-up: Sebastiaan de With replied to our Spectre review There's a favicon (and Apple icon) on spectre.cam now Grace Lee enjoyed the stinger from last episode Jak McCormack always listens to the end One Cool Thing: Marshall shared the Toto s550e Washlet, a bidet seat that makes life worth living Brian shared Design Interviewing: Ask Me Anything, some advice on design interviews from Kurt Varner based on his time as a hiring manager at Dropbox 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we kindly critique the design details of Spectre, a new app from the folks behind Halide. In Follow-up, we discuss knowing when to shut up in a negotiation, and in Industry Talk, we debate when it's okay to break the rules of affordances. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a new home and some wild music videos. Sponsor: This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to goabstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan. >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) Follow-up: Mahmoud Bachir says "Something I've heard in regards to salary negotiation is to state your number concisely, then stop talking." Pssst! Sometimes, it pays to listen until after the outro music (43:39) Industry Talk: affordance - n. the quality or property of an object that defines its possible uses or makes clear how it can or should be used The Design of Everyday Things uses Norman doors (video) as an example of a good affordance Reddit: Faucet at a restaurant Here's a link to the Twitter composer modal "More wood, fewer arrows" Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - Chilled Monkey Brains App Launch: Sebastiaan de With and Ben Sandofsky, the duo behind Halide, have released Spectre, an AI-powered shutter for your iPhone, letting you create amazing long exposures Spectre (2015) Spectre's launch icon resembles both an "S" and a camera lens, and it echoes the app interface One Cool Thing: Brian shared that he found a place to call his own in NYC \o/ Marshall shared the work of Billie Eilish, a singer-songwriter and maker of amazingly bizarre music videos Recommended: you should see me in a crown, when the party's over, bury a friend, hostage 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we discuss spoken accents, answer a listener question about salary negotiations, and Marshall dives deep into the design of Apex Legends. And as always, we share a couple cool things, like a hip hop musical and a way to bring joy back to your Twitter timeline. Intro: Jak McCormack wants us to attempt English accents. No thank you, Jak 😜 "That's bait" Follow-up: Anton Osipov shared a helpful visual for using a unit-based vertical baseline. Zain Khoja shared studentswho.design, a podcast bridging the gap between students and the design industry - by students, for students. Listener Questions: An anonymous listener asks: "I’m about to change jobs and soon I’ll have initial call with someone from one of the companies I could potentially work for. I don’t want to invest too much of my time in multiple calls and meetings with them before being sure the offer meets my expectations, especially in terms of salary. But I also don’t want to be considered as one of those guys who care only about money. So my question is: what’s the right moment to talk about this? Should that be something to talk about during the very first call? Or maybe later? For context: it was the company who reached out to me whether I’d be interested in the role." HBR wrote about what people want from their jobs. Explain Like I'm Five: Marshall goes deep into the world of Apex Legends. Charlie Deets explains the magic of communication in Apex Legends Battle Royale, based on the novel by Koushun Takami, is a film from 2000 in which the Japanese government captures a class of ninth-grade students and forces them to kill each other under the revolutionary "Battle Royale" act PUBG, Fortnite, and Call of Duty: Blackout are popular games in the battle royale genre Respawn Entertainment is the company behind Apex Legends, who are well known for the Titanfall series Watch Apex Legends to get a better feel for how the game works One Cool Thing: Marshall shared Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording), an album from the musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda Brian shared Tokimeki Unfollow by Julius Tarng, a tool to help you bring joy back to your Twitter timeline, based on Marie Kondo's KonMari method 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we answer more listener questions, including what software the industry uses, how to get involved in open-source projects, and how to curate a large portfolio. In News, we compare our scores on a design-based spot-the-difference quiz. And as always, we share a couple cool things, like another Netflix Original and some awesome designer directories. Intro: Wampas are a species of powerful, furred bipeds that dwell in the snowy wastes of the ice world Hoth Tauntauns are a species of snow lizard found roaming the windswept snow plains of Hoth Wampum is a traditional shell bead of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of American Indians Sponsor: This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to goabstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan. >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) News: Cant Unsee is a fun design quiz by Alex Kotliarskyi Brian got a 6980, and Marshall got a 7330. Tell us what you got! Listener Questions: untitl0d asks: "What software does the industry actually use for UI and web design? My BA course is teaching us Wordpress and XD in first year. They don’t even have Sketch on the Macs, and this is a dedicated Arts college. It just feels off." Some mainstays: Sketch, Figma, Framer X, Invision, Principle, ProtoPie, and Flinto Note: Adobe XD is free, actually Chris Doner asks, "How can designers get involved in open-source projects?" The story of stone soup Anonymous asks, "How do I curate a large project on my portfolio. There’s a lot of designs between our web app and native apps. Should I summarize the product and try to fit it into one case study? Or Should I select primary components and break them down into separate case studies?" Here's Brian's list of Product Design Portfolios One Cool Thing: Marshall shared The Umbrella Academy, a show (and comic series) about the reuniting of seven super-powered siblings Brian shared Blacks Who Design, Women Who Design, and Latinxs Who Design, three directories of accomplished designers in the industry 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we answer a couple listener questions, including how to reliably align text to a baseline grid, and how to use data to learn from the features you ship. In News, Marshall extols the virtues of a little feature in the recently-released Sketch 53 update. And as always, we share a couple cool things, like a mind-bending Netflix show and an accessibility-focused pull request. Sponsor: This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to goabstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan. >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) Follow-up: For last week's One Cool Thing, Marshall shared LG's 65-inch Rollable 4K OLED TV (video), and go figure, it actually DOES resize to 21:9 (video). Whoops! Mea culpa is a very fancy Latin phrase meaning "my fault" Ramon Gilabert suggested a couple secure ways of time-tracking and network control Timing is "the best automatic Mac time tracker for productive professionals and freelancers" Little Snitch "makes your Internet connections visible and puts you back in control" News: Sketch 53 is available now Sketch Blog: "Better overrides, a brand new Fill Popover and faster prototyping in Sketch 53" Listener Questions: Andreas v.d. Griendt asks "How do you work with developers to get your 8pt grid designs implemented? This is easy for placing a button. But if you actually would align text to a 4pt baseline, this is very challenging. Easy to do in Sketch, but super difficult for developers to implement/understand. For web this would be even more difficult than for native. But dynamic font sizing can be a challenge as well with this approach. What is helpful to do? How do you balance enforcing this?" Kevin Gutowski asks "Data is, of course, very important. How do you actually learn from the features that you ship? What hard metrics / soft metrics are recorded? How are they being recorded and by whom?" One Cool Thing: Marshall shared Russian Doll, a Netflix Original co-created by and starring Natasha Lyonne Brian shared a pull request by Jaochim that makes Security Checklist more accessible 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we look to Twitter for answers to the eternal question: "How do I find time to design despite tons of meetings, context shifting, and an open office layout?" In News, we detail some exciting ideas in an iOS 13 design concept. And as always, we share a couple cool things, like a spiritual successor to MySpace and a rollable television. Sponsor: This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to goabstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan. >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) News: iOS 13 Concept by Apple_iDesigner Lock Screen Home Screen Dark Mode Redesigned Apps Other Features Multi-Users on iPad Industry Talk: Lil Chen tweeted a great question: "What's your secret to finding time to design amongst tons of meetings, context shifting, and open office layouts?" Marshall just goes home and works some more Brian uses RescueTime, a way to "find your ideal work-life balance" Barbara suggests scheduling a "meeting" with a colleague Sara recommends nixing all meetings scheduled over your blocked time Jackie says to send an email stating your intentions and when you'll be available Mattie reminds us that no one checks the ceilings Wesley likes to use his headphones as a Do Not Disturb sign One Cool Thing: Brian shared Jarred Sumner's post "Why Isn't the Internet More Fun and Weird" Codeblog is bringing glitter back to the web MDX is Markdown for the component era Marshall shared LG's 65-inch Rollable 4K OLED TV (video), which has a display that coils up into a box Note: Sooooo, the screen actually DOES resize to 21:9. Whoops! 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEE!

This week, we review a listener side project called Steady Habit, an iPhone app made by Sandor Gyuris. And as always, we share a couple cool things like painful mouth plastic and some future geographical plans. Sponsor: This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to goabstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan. >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) Side Project Review: Steady Habit is a simple way to create impactful routines, brought to you by Sandor Gyuris Learn more at steady-habit.com and @SteadyHabitApp For posterity, we've preserved the App Store screenshots and product website as they appeared at the time of recording 33:11 - Note: Marshall means "Apple Watch" when he says "iPhone" here. This is becoming a pattern. One Cool Thing: Marshall shared Invisalign, an expensive way to make your teeth hurt Brian shared his plans to move to NYC! Video: "New York City?!?!" Video: TLC - Waterfalls 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes TTFN!

This week, we discuss your tweets on how to git gud (and stay gud) at visual design. And as always, we share a couple Cool Things, including a hilarious pop culture reviewer. Sponsors: This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract and Readymag Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to goabstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan. Readymag is a design tool in your browser that lets you draw up any web publication and publish it online without a single line of code. Use it for free as long as you want, with a library of 1500+ free fonts, advanced animation, and unlimited projects or upgrade to one of the paid plans to enjoy advanced features like custom domains and uploading custom fonts. The first 50 users to apply the promo code DESIGNDETAILS will get 40% off their first payment. >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) Industry Talk: Video: "That's kind of a big question" from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Check out 271: Principles of Design for some specific examples of good foundational design rules Guillermo Rauche, David Klein, and Mike Rundle all suggest copying to learn May-Li Khoe suggests shadowing a stronger designer PSDTuts is now Envato Tuts+ Material Design and the Apple HIG are wonderful learning resources and good languages to be fluent in The Illusion of Life is the bible for Disney animation Joel Kalifa shared some great advice from Ira Glass One Cool Thing: Marshall shared Jenny Nicholson, a YouTuber who reviews pop culture things. She's very, very funny. Brian shared drugs. Don't do drugs. 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes TTFN!

This week, we discuss performance reviews and promotions, including how to prepare, what to spotlight, and when to self-nominate (along with a few tips and tricks). In News, we talk about Chloe Condon's recent ordeal and how technology affects truth—heavy, sorry—and we look at Twitter's latest threaded replies experiment. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a movie conspiracy theory and a legendary brainstorm transcript. Sponsor This week's episode is brought to you by Readymag Readymag is a design tool in your browser that lets you draw up any web publication and publish it online without a single line of code. Use it for free as long as you want, with a library of 1500+ free fonts, advanced animation, and unlimited projects or upgrade to one of the paid plans to enjoy advanced features like custom domains and uploading custom fonts. The first 50 users to apply the promo code DESIGNDETAILS will get 40% off their first payment. Get started over at readymag.com >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) Claudio Guglieri and Anton Repponen have dope sites on Readymag Follow-up Michael Knepprath suggested that Brian make a checklist site (securitycheckli.st) out of his security advice from last episode, so he did Feel free to open a pull request on Brian's repo if you have resources to add News Here's the thread for Chloe Condon's bizarre accusation ordeal Video: "You Won’t Believe What Obama Says In This Video!" Article: "A first look at Twitter’s new beta app and its bid to remain ‘valuable and relevant’" The obligatory RIGBY (video) caveat Urban Dictionary: "subtweet" One Cool Thing: Brian shared "Why SNOWPIERCER is a sequel to WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY", a movie conspiracy theory video that's eerily convincing Marshall shared "RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: Story Conference Transcript", an inside look into the conception of the first Indiana Jones film 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes TTFN!

In this first episode of 2019, Brian explains online security to Marshall as though he is a five-year-old, covering everything from DNSs to VPNs. In Follow-up, we read a few listener tweets, and as always, we share a couple Cool Things, including a misused city simulator and a social network for movie buffs. Sponsor Readymag is a design tool in your browser that lets you draw up any web publication and publish it online without a single line of code. Use it for free as long as you want, with a library of 1500+ free fonts, advanced animation, and unlimited projects or upgrade to one of the paid plans to enjoy advanced features like custom domains and uploading custom fonts. The first 50 users to apply the promo code DESIGNDETAILS will get 40% off their first payment. Get started over at readymag.com >> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email [email protected] or [email protected] to get started :) Follow-up Design Details - 1: "How Nerdy of an Answer Do You Want? (feat. Sam Soffes)" was released exactly four years before the day we recorded this episode (!) Claudio Guglieri used Readymag for the blog posts we mentioned in 273: "Bespoke, Artisanal, Single-Batch Blog Post" Listener Tweets: Ravi Aujla hopes we'll keep talking about UX in games Chrish Dunne alerted us to a hidden shortcut in Terminal Federico Zanetello showed off his Home app inspired by our smart home episode Explain Like I'm Five The tweet that started it all 1Password Watchtower helps you find passwords you need to change Lastpass is a good password manager, too Article: "Password Autofill in iOS 12 now works with 1Password, Dashlane, and LastPass" Wikipedia: Multi-factor authentication Article: "The SIM Hijackers" Podcast: Reply All - 97: "What Kind of Idiot Gets Phished?" Google 2-Step Verification Article: "Gmail for iOS now receives 2-Step Verification Prompts, new default over Google app" Article: "Data of 143 million Americans exposed in hack of credit reporting agency Equifax" Encrypt your Mac backups by going to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > File Vault 1.1.1.1 is a faster, more private DNS by Cloudflare iVPN is the VPN service Brian uses Encrypt.me comes as part of the eero Plus package Webcam covers on Amazon (not an affiliate link) To see all the apps that have access to your camera, go to Settings > Privacy > Camera for switches Adblock blocks ads Brave is a privacy-focused browser built on Chromium Duck Duck Go is a privacy-focused search engine Firefox Multi-Account Containers is an extension that walls off sites Article: The Wired Guide to Digital Security Article: "Introducing CYBER: A Hacking Podcast by Motherboard" Podcast: Reply All - 97: "What Kind of Idiot Gets Phished?" (again) One Cool Thing: Marshall shared Pres, a YouTube creator who makes beautifully realistic cities in Cities: Skylines Video: "Crazy Ira and the Douche" Article: "How Cities: Skylines took a great big slice of SimCity" Article: "Steam users have already declared the winner in the great coaster sim war" Video Playlists: New Windsor and Calavera Beach A few more great detailer channels: Silvarett, Fluxtrance, Strictoaster, two dollars twenty, and the Bob Ross of city sims, ImperialJedi Brian shared Letterboxd, a social network for film lovers Kevin Clark's tweet clued Brian in on the service Watchlist by Keegan Jones lets you save movies to watch later Stinger: Video: "Tigger TTFN" 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEEEE!

In this final episode of 2018, we speak with Zack Onisko, CEO of Dribbble, about our speculation regarding signup walls and the future of the platform. In News, we dissect Dark Mode triggering methods. And as always, we share a couple cool things, including a personalized music recap and a YouTube channel that rewrites superhero movies. Follow-up Michael Knepprath asks: "What challenges have you faced due to there being multiple people and a dog that can all trigger your devices?" Video: "Seinfeld Transitions Compilation" More shortcuts: On the iOS homescreen, 3D Touch a folder to see all apps with notification badges in that folder On the iOS homescreen, drag down to enter Spotlight and easily search apps (or anything else) Luca Orio mentioned: On macOS, press Cmd+Shift+4 then Space to screenshot specific windows, including their shadow on a transparent background Silas Sao mentioned: On the iOS homescreen, when dragging an app in "Wiggle Mode," tap other apps to rearrange more than one at a time News Things introduces "Dark Mode for iOS" Interview Zack Onisko is the CEO of Dribbble and was nice enough to join us to answer some of the questions we posed in episode "274: Well... It's Free ¯\(ツ)/¯" Note: It's important to "RIGBY" properly when critiquing One Cool Thing: Marshall shared Nando v Movies, a YouTube channel that analyses and rewrites superhero movies via subtle suggestions Video Playlist: "The Justice League Rewrite" Brian shared Spotify Wrapped 2018, the service's annual recap of your music listening habits 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes GOODBYEEEEEEE!

This week, we answer three listener questions: one about hidden shortcuts, one about the line between designer and developer, and one about the necessity of a design degree. And as always, we share a couple cool things, like a trailer a few people have seen and a channel that make videos about speedrun progressions. Listener Questions Race Swisher says: "You guys should talk about hidden shortcuts that can be super confusing for users." Article: "This iOS 12 Keyboard Trick for Non-3D Touch iPhone Users is Going Viral" iOS: In the keyboard, 3D Touch anywhere on the keys to move your cursor freely Gboard for iOS has a phenomenal swipe-typing feature, in addition to many other nice little time-savers In the keyboard, drag from the 123 button to a key in the alternate keyboard, then release to return to the ABC keyboard In the keyboard, long-press on keys for additional character options In the iPad keyboard, drag the Dismiss Keyboard button to split and reposition the keys In the keyboard, double-space for a period followed by a space On the home screen, 3D Touch app icons for quick actions (in supported apps) On iPhone X, swipe down on the Home Indicator to trigger Reachability (Settings > General > Accessibility > Reachability On) In Tweetbot, two-finger swipe vertically to switch between Day/Night mode In Google Maps, double-tap-and-drag vertically to zoom In Spotify, swipe horizontally to go to the previous/next track In Spotify, tap the Search tab a second time to bring up the keyboard and focus the Search field In Spotify, long-press the Search tab to start a voice search In Tweetbot, long-press-and-drag to reassign the last two tabs In Safari, type in the address bar and scroll down the autocomplete suggestions to Find in Page In Safari, long-press on the Refresh button to Request Desktop Site In Safari, long-press on the Tabs icon to create a New Tab or Close All Tabs In Control Center, 3D Touch-and-drag on certain platters for pre-defined options (Timer, Flashlight, Camera) In Messages, 3D Touch on avatars in the list for quick actions (Call, FaceTime, Pay, Contact Details) macOS: [Mojave] At any time, press Cmd+Shift+5 for more detailed screenshot options At any time, press Cmd+Opt+Shift+3 or 4 to send the screenshot to your clipboard At any time, press Cmd+Space for Spotlight In a text field, press Cmd+Ctrl+Space for the Emoji picker, and type to search by emoji name At any time, press Cmd+Tab to switch to your most recent app, or continue holding Cmd and press Tab again to move forward or ~ (or Shift+Tab) to move backward through the list In applications with multiple windows, press Cmd+~ or Cmd+Shift+~ to navigate between windows In Chrome, press Cmd+Opt+Left or Right (or Cmd+Shift+[ or ]) to navigate between open tabs (or Cmd+1 through 0 to jump straight to one of your first ten tabs) In a text field, press Cmd+[ or ] to adjust the indentation Colin Lees asks: "What kind of design-related education do you (or your peers) tend to have? Is there a case for designers with no formal education at all?" Our answer: Having a college degree, regardless of focus, can be a signal to employers that you're more likely to be a responsible, knowledgeable person, but it's not necessary to get a job, as long as you can show that you know your shit. And getting a degree in HCI or Interaction Design is a great way to gain knowledge and get a head-start on good processes, but again, it's unnecessary, as long as you've learned those same lessons on your own. Sam Chang asks: "Something that's been on my mind lately is the overlap between a designer and a developer. I've noticed, for example, that Brian has taken on more of a developer role at Spectrum, and so I'm curious to hear if Brian sees himself as more of a designer or a developer, or maybe just a builder?" Our answer: Should designers code? Ultimately, having an understanding of what your developers do every day will help you to be a better designer, and vice versa. So learning how to write code, especially in the same language your colleagues use, can help build empathy and a better understanding of what happens after your mocks are finalized. As the line between "designer" and "developer" continues to blur, maybe the term "builder" is a nice middle ground. One Cool Thing: Marshall shared Summoning Salt, a YouTube channel that makes videos about the progression of world record speedruns for some classic games Some good ones: Super Mario Bros. - World 4-2, Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda, and Portal Brian shared "Marvel Studios' Avengers - Official Trailer, the trailer for the latest film in the Avengers series Jeff Cannata's "Unsullied" philosophy encourages one to avoid trailers (and spoilers in general) in order to more fully enjoy one's movie-going experience Video: "Marvel Studios' Avengers: Infinity War Official Trailer" did a good job of not givin

This week, Marshall explains his smart home setup to Brian in great detail. In News, Brian reveals an exciting development with Spectrum. And as always, we share a couple cool things, including an Advent calendar for programming puzzles and a thing everybody already knows about. Sponsor: This week's episode was brought to you by DuckDuckGo DuckDuckGo helps you take back your privacy with their private search engine, mobile apps, and browser extensions. And right now they're hiring remote positions for Senior Product Designers! Make the internet a safer place, designing new products at DuckDuckGo. Follow-up: Samsung One UI's floating keyboard is a feature in need of a use case Tonal is a home gym that mounts on your wall News: Spectrum is joining Github! Explain Like I'm Five ELI5 Marshall wrote up a hefty Google doc that includes links and descriptions for all this smart home stuff, so check it out for details on pretty much everything mentioned in the episode Note: That Homekit bug seems to only affect shades, but it dims lights just fine, fwiw One Cool Thing: Brian shared Advent of Code, an Advent calendar of small programming puzzles HackerTyper makes it look like ur a 1337 h4XX0r. Just smash the keyboard indiscriminately. Marshall shared Audible, which is a thing you definitely already know about Neuromancer kinda started the whole cyberpunk thing Snow Crash is Marshall's favorite work of fiction 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEEEE!

This week, we discuss sign-in walls and the design patterns behind offering free-ish content on the Internet. In News, we praise Samsung's new One UI for its strict adherence to Fitts' Law. And as always, we share a couple cool things, including a video game competition and a major update to a podcast app. Sponsor: This week's episode was brought to you by DuckDuckGo DuckDuckGo helps you take back your privacy with their private search engine, mobile apps, and browser extensions. And right now they're hiring remote positions for Senior Product Designers! Make the internet a safer place, designing new products at DuckDuckGo. Follow-up: Green Bean Casserole makes Thanksgiving Thanksgiving, as far as Marshall's concerned Our sincere apologies to Kevin Gutowski for the public shaming last episode. He replied with a link to the plugin pretty much immediately. Get Kevin's Toggle Layers plugin if you want to set a different shortcut for Show/Hide ## Layers in Sketch News: Samsung One UI is designed to help you focus Fitts' Law says that the closer and bigger a target is, the easier it is to hit The top two-fifths of the screen is just the app name in system apps like Notes, Settings, and Messages Video: "Samsung One UI walkthrough: Coming to Galaxy X" Mojave puts a light stroke around windows in Dark mode Video: "WWDC 2018: Introducing Dark Mode" — Seek to 7:34 for a rundown on the thought process behind the window strokes and shadows in Mojave Point/Counterpoint: Dribbble has a sign-in wall, and we're not sure how we feel about that One Cool Thing: Marshall shared "The Classic Tetris World Championships Explained" by aGameScout, a breakdown of the professional Tetris competition Video Playlist: "Classic Tetris World Championships 2018" Brian shared Pocket Casts, a popular podcast app that's been nicely overhauled in v7.0 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEEEE!

This week, we talk about the uncanny sameness of the web and debate uniqueness in site design. In News, we discuss the pros and cons of sharing your early, in-progress work with non-designer colleagues. And as always, we share a couple cool things, including an immersive gaming experience and a new feature proposal for React. Self-sponsor: This week's episode was brought to you by the Spec Job Board If you're a designer or a developer, or if you're looking to hire one, check out the Job Board on Spec.fm. With listings at $100/month, it's super affordable to find your next hire through Spec. Follow-up: The Dunning-Kruger Effect features "Mount Stupid and the Valley of Despair," not "Stupid Mountain and the Valley of Doubt." Pretty close, though. Video: Apple October Event 2018 (1:10:00) - A very precarious grip method on the new iPad The new Smart Keyboard for iPad, when in tablet mode, doesn't feel so great with the keys on the back Kevin Gutowski might have a workaround for the Cmd-H issue in the future. Stay tuned :) Video: "DOZENS!" Article: "New Chrome Feature Prevents Those Didn’t-Mean-To-Quit Blues" Jakob's Law News: Josh Hemsley tweeted a screenshot of collaborating with non-designers in Figma Morgan Knutson had a thoughtful response 17:06 - Note: Marshall says "parallel." He meant "serial." Article: "Why Do All Websites Look the Same?" Article: "Skeuomorphic Design — A controversial UX approach that is making a comeback" Claudio Guglieri has a very nice personal site We found Claudio's lost blog posts! Article: "Why Game Accessibility Matters" Graceful degradation versus progressive enhancement One Cool Thing: Marshall shared Red Dead Redemption 2 Video: "11 Of The Most Amazing Details In Red Dead Redemption 2" "Red Dead Redemption 2's 80 Second Rule" Morality in Mass Effect provides the extremes of Paragon and Renegade Brian shared React Hooks 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEEEE!

This week, we debate the use of the term "junior" and look back on Stupid Mountain from the Valley of Doubt. In News, we discuss the announcements from the latest Apple event, including the new iPad Pro product page. And in Cool Things, Brian shares a thorough article on Apple's Maps improvements, and Marshall rants about keyboard shortcuts. Follow-up: The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. Here's a graph of the effect, featuring Stupid Mountain (aka Mt. Stupid) and the Valley of Doubt (aka Valley of Despair) Event Recap: Watch the full Apple Event or a 9-minute edited version Check out the new products: iPad Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, and Apple Pencil You should play with the iPad Pro product page on your phone in landscape orientation to know what we're talking about for most of this segment Sycophant, n. - a self-seeking, servile flatterer; fawning parasite r/fellowkids Article: "Apple's new MacBook Air and 2018 MacBook Pros disconnect the microphone when you close the lid to stop hackers from eavesdropping on your conversations" Video for Marshall's reference to "diamond-cut chamfers" Article: "Apple Launches Special Event Page for October Event With Dynamic Set of Apple Logos" One Cool Thing: Brian shared "Apple's New Maps" by Justin O'Beirne Marshall shared Keyboard Maestro, a productivity booster for Mac Article: "⌘ + Q: I didn’t mean to do that" 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEEEE!

This week, we dive deep on several design principles that will help you make better decisions when creating interfaces and interactions. In Follow-up, we discuss the etiquette of responding to recruiter emails, and in News, we cover Twitter's latest exploration into presence and status. And as always, we share a couple cool things, including an innovative basketball shoe and an updated personal site. Self-sponsor: This week's episode was brought to you by the Spec Job Board If you're a designer or a developer, or if you're looking to hire one, check out the Job Board on Spec.fm. With listings at $100/month, it's super affordable to find your next hire through Spec. Follow-up: Here's Morgan Knutson’s tweetstorm again, for reference News: MG Seigler tweeted: "As redundant as it may sound at first, I love the Twitter “status” idea. A throwback to OG Twitter too! (Still don’t love the idea of presence though.)" Article: "Twitter tests new profile features, including presence indicators and ‘ice breakers’" Site: Spec.fm now has a "global player" that continues playing as you browse Listener Question: Dmitry Veremchuk (@d_ver on Twitter) asks: "Is there a limit to number of the side projects one takes on? Because personally, I am interested in animation, video editing, illustration, programming, photography, and many more things. Starting projects in all of these fields would be daunting and of a low quality." Discussion: Site: Jon Yablonski collected these Laws of UX Fitts' Law: "The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target." Article: Luke Wroblewski wrote "Designing for Large Screen Smartphones" Material Design: Floating Action Button FABs in Material Design 2.0 can be centered for better reachability Action sheets in Apple's Human Interface Guidelines Jakob's Law: "Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know." Loren Brichter introduced pull-to-refresh in Tweetie Video: "Loren Brichter on Tweetie" Apple uses scroll-jacking on their Mojave site Bock's Law: "Most people don't have the newest shit." Note: The "grandparent phone" Marshall was thinking of is called Jitterbug Wenni's Principle: "Don't move tap targets." The Doherty Threshold: "Productivity soars when a computer and its users interact at a pace (<400ms) that ensures that neither has to wait on the other." Article: "Improved Perceived Performance with Skeleton Screens" Hick's Law: "The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices." Video: "The paradox of choice | Barry Schwartz" Book: "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman "Faster Horses" is a quote by Henry Ford Miller's Law: "The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory." Gestalt Grouping Law of Common Region: "Elements tend to be perceived into groups if they are sharing an area with a clearly defined boundary." Law of Proximity: "Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend to be grouped together." Law of Similarity: "The human eye tends to perceive similar elements in a design as a complete picture, shape, or group, even if those elements are separated." Image: iOS Settings GIF: Emergency Alert System Image: Don't Dead Open Inside r/dontdeadopeninside Affordance: "the qualities or properties of an object that define its possible uses or make clear how it can or should be used" Book: "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman Article: "Norman Doors: Don’t Know Whether to Push or Pull? Blame Design." Video: "It's not you. Bad doors are everywhere." Article: "Affordances and Signifiers in Mobile Interface Design" GIF: Apple Music's Now Playing sheet Image: Confusing segmented controller (Which one is selected?) Did we miss your favorite law, rule, or principle? Do have one of your own principles? Let us know on Twitter :) or Spectrum One Cool Thing: Marshall shared the new Air Jordan XXXIII Note: Marshall mistakenly called it the "Flight System," but it's really called "Fast-Fit". Way off. Brian shared his updated personal site Design Details Blog The Internet Archive Project 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes Stinger: Master P - Make 'em Say Ugh (Ft. Fiend, Silkk The Shocker, Mia X & Mystikal) BYEEEEEEE!

This week, we discuss the tradeoffs of sensor-laden home devices and the future of personalized advertising. We also follow up on Morgan's tweetstorm with a chat about "dream jobs" and navigating workplace politics. In cool things, Brian shares a workout tracking app and Marshall is bullish on shoes. Self-sponsor: This week's episode was brought to you by the Spec Job Board If you're a designer or a developer, or if you're looking to hire one, check out the Job Board on Spec.fm. With listings at $100/month, it's super affordable to find your next hire through Spec. Follow-up: Thanks to @tomato_glue and @divya_tak for tweeting the nice tweets :) Charlie Deets is just one man Here's Morgan Knutson’s tweetstorm for reference Video: "With great power comes great responsibility" Video: “Be water, my friend” News: Site: Facebook's Portal is a smart hands-free calling device Article: "Facebook Portal’s claims to protect user privacy are falling apart" Discussion: Image: Mark Zuckerberg with a taped up laptop Article: "Alexa Wants to Know How You’re Feeling Today" Article: "Spotify can tell if you’re sad. Here’s why that should scare you." Video: "Minority Report Mall Scene" shows the future of personalized advertising Video: "HYPER-REALITY" shows the future of advertising when it's just fucking everywhere Video: "Minority Report Eye Surgery Scene" (NSFL) Site: Apple Homepod doesn't have a camera fwiw One Cool Thing: Brian shared Fitbod, a personalized workout tracking app for iOS Site: Tonal is a wall-mounted home gym Article: "GymKit is the best thing to happen to treadmills in a long time" Marshall shared StockX, a stock market for shoes and other gear Site: OXO POP containers are great for organizing your pantry You can even buy the Nike Air Mag from that scene in Back to the Future II (for like $10,000 USD) Video: "Shoes the Full Version" (NSFW) 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEEEE!

This week, we discuss Morgan Knutson's tweetstorm regarding his time working on the sunsetting Google+, and we extract some nuggets of wisdom worth exploring, especially negotiating one's starting compensation at a new job. Then we share a couple cool things, including another little Mac productivity utility and a beautifully useful camera app for iOS. Follow-up: Check out the Spec.fm Job Board if you're looking to hire or get hired VSCO is hiring a senior product designer Game Maker’s Toolkit's latest entry in his Designing for Disability series is about "Making Games Better for Players with Motor Disabilities" Time Travel (introduced in watchOS 2) was removed in watchOS 5 Thanks, UXOrigami! And you too can leave us an iTunes review :) News: "Google is shutting down Google+ for consumers following security lapse" Morgan Knutson aired some "dirty laundry" in a tweetstorm about his experiences working on Google+ Discussion: Buffer has a transparent salary system Tyler Galpin was kind enough to point out that it's now illegal in California for employers to ask applicants about their prior salary Patrick McKenzie wrote "Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued" One Cool Thing: "RIGBY" Note: For future reference, "It's Not New, But It Is Cool" will be shortened to "INNBIIC" Marshall shared Yoink, a drag-and-drop utility for Mac Fitt's Law says that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the ratio between the distance to the target and the width of the target Brian shared Halide, an iOS camera app developed by Sebastiaan de With and Ben Sandofski "What Does It Mean When Apple "Sherlocks" an App?" 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 Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEEEE!

This week, we discuss user preferences and whether a lot is too much. In News, we talk about Sketch's new site, recap the Figma contest fallout, and conduct a requiem for Path. And as always, we share a couple cool things, including a wireless mesh network and tchotchkes in plastic bubbles. Sponsors: This week's episode was brought to you in part by ProtoPie: ProtoPie is a tool that makes prototyping as easy as pie, and they have a special offer for Design Details listeners. Use the code DESIGNDETAILS by October 30, 2018 to get a 17-free day trial and a 30% discount. This week's episode was also brought to you in part by Asana: Asana is growing, and they’re looking to hire 6 new product designers and design managers via a few days of interviews in Chicago and Austin. Find out more by clicking on the links at the top of https://asana.design. Follow-up: Photo: Podcasting is serious bizznizz We got some new iTunes Reviews from some wonderfully kind folks! Feel free to leave your own :) We tweeted out a couple polls on last episode's vehicles News: "Dark Mode, Data, a brand new look and more in Sketch 52" "The new website is really nice." —NiceboyTM "Introducing: Figma’s first API Challenge" "We made a mistake with our API Challenge, and we’re sorry" Path Blog: "The Last Goodbye" Path's (+) button animation on YouTube Here's a video review from back then, which shows the timeline, scrollbar clock, and reactions Point/Counterpoint: Shadow of the Tomb Raider on YouTube Gaming (plug lol) Doom difficulty spectrum Tomb Raider difficulty spectrum Spectrum (plug lol) Apollo app has a lot of customization options God of War difficulty spectrum Spider-Man difficulty spectrum "You're holding it wrong" Vintage Burger King Commercial - Have it Your Way - 1974 on YouTube Backstreet Boys - I Want It That Way on YouTube "You've been sherlocked" "Sketch sherlocked Midnight with 52." —Marshall f.lux One Cool Thing: Marshall shared eero Brian shared gashapon "Life's a journey, not a destination" —Steven Tyler Steins;Gate Fidget Cube Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm @Brian_Lovin and @MarshallBock are the talky boys @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes Tell me BYEEEEEEE!

This week, we look at a few different concepts of what a car could be if you didn't need to drive it. In News, we discuss the new Mailchimp redesign and shout out Design+Code for Framer X. And we share a couple Cool Things, including a few Google app features that are great for travelers and some fancy lights that go behind your television. Sponsors: This week's episode was brought to you in part by ProtoPie: ProtoPie is a tool that makes prototyping as easy as pie, and they have a special offer for Design Details listeners. Use the code DESIGNDETAILS by October 30, 2018 to get a 17-free day trial and a 30% discount. This week's episode was also brought to you in part by Asana: Asana is growing, and they’re looking to hire 6 new product designers and design managers via a few days of interviews in Chicago and Austin. Find out more by clicking on the links at the top of https://asana.design. Follow-up: "Seven days" We talked about Sketch 52 Beta on the previous episode Kyle Mitchell tweeted that he appreciates our show notes Note: If you're reading this, Marshall says hi :) You can search Spec.fm for anything mentioned in the show notes of an episode, such as, say, I dunno, maybe "Tactile Paving" News: "Mailchimp Has a New Look" "Evolving the Dropbox brand" "RIGBY" [NSFW Language] Mailchimp landing page Postmark landing page Mailchimp Yellow: #FFE01B Postmark Yellow: #FFDE00 Three Thumbs Up illustration Stair Leg illustration Bruno Serdo's Online Gallery Mushrooms illustration Magnifying Glass Guy illustration QWOP and Getting Over It are both made by Bennett Foddy Meng To of Design+Code has a new course for Framer X Device Review: "Volvo's 360c Concept Has Softened My Cynicism About Autonomous Cars" "Concept Vs Reality: 15 Concept Cars Way More Sick Than The Versions We Got" Marshall's first car looked something like this. He was very popular. "The 360c: 360º Safety" video Stephanie Engle talked about the driver-pedestrian contract on Design Details Episode 251: Hip-Hop & Horses (feat. Steph Engle) "Jaguar is adding artificial motor sounds to its all-electric I-Pace" "Nio Eve: Our vision for an autonomous car of the future" Lexus 2054 from Minority Report "The Mercedes-Benz F 015 Luxury in Motion" Three very serious white people doing business Check out @designdetailsfm to weigh in on the poll One Cool Thing: Brian shared Google Translate and Google Maps' offline feature Babel fish is a Hitchhiker's Guide reference Marshall shared Dreamscreen Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm @Brian_Lovin and @MarshallBock are the talky boys @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes BYEEEEEEE!

This week, we debate the line between constructive and malevolent criticism, discuss some sunsetting news, and briefly preview the new Sketch beta. And as always, we share a couple cool things, including a Reddit app alternative and a logistical nightmare. Follow-up: "Guidance on the Use of Tactile Paving Surfaces" Here's a great rundown on the experience of eating at Ichiran Ramen (now with two locations in NYC!) Respect to @chrisd008 for beating us at the Helvarial Quiz "Stay warm out there, Tauntaun" 1-star 5-star "Richard is a nice guy, but y'know" (NSFW Language) The Infograph watch face Infograph face with Digital Clock sub-dial 23:37 - Marshall says "phone" here, but he meant "watch." His apologies. He blames jetlag. News: "Inbox is signing off: find your favorite features in the new Gmail" "Gaming gets a new home on YouTube" ColorBox by Lyft Design Tool Review: Download Sketch 52 Beta Sketch 52 Beta release notes Here's a screenshot of the Properties panel in dark mode 33:13 - Marshall says "page titles" here, but he meant "artboard titles." Again, jetlag. Here's that example of snapping Marshall mentioned Midnight is a pre-Mojave dark mode plugin One Cool Thing: Marshall shared a Reddit app for iOS called Apollo Daniel Hooper makes Principle Leave feature requests and bug reports at r/apolloapp Brian shared the Terracotta Army "No one man should have all that power" Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin Marshall is @marshallbock Sarah is @sarahberus Drew is @luperdev Join the conversation on Spectrum Leave us a review on iTunes This week's episode was also brought to you in part by ProtoPie: ProtoPie is a tool that makes prototyping as easy as pie, and they have a special offer for Design Details listeners. Use the code DESIGNDETAILS by October 30, 2018 to get a 17-free day trial and a 30% discount. This week's episode was brought to you in part by Asana: Asana is growing, and they’re looking to hire 6 new product designers and design managers via a few days of interviews in Chicago and Austin. Find out more by clicking on the links at the top of https://asana.design.

This week, we're both trotting the globe, so we discuss some interesting accessibility features we've encountered during our travels. And Apple had a event announcing new iPhones and a new Watch, so (of course) we talk about that stuff. Follow-up: Brian owes Marshall a Coca-Cola for losing a bet made at the very end of the previous episode Event Recap: Apple launched new iPhones and a new Apple Watch in their latest event Apple's event invite had Marshall thinking it was a reference to the coil in the AirPower wireless charging mat "Apple’s AirPower wireless charging mat reportedly plagued by overheating issues" John Gruber's shares his "Thoughts and Observations on Apple’s iPhone XS/XR and Series 4 Apple Watch Introductory Event" Steve Jobs on the Apple product matrix LifeCall (not Life Alert) commercial: "I've fallen, and I can't get up!" Apple's new GiveBack program Travelogue: Note: After doing a little research, it's clear the story Marshall told about the origin of "The Land of the Morning Calm" is actually apocryphal. Well, shit. Percival Lowell, a businessman and scientist, is credited with coining the phrase The Forbidden City Tactile Paving Here's a 108-page design document on the proper installation of tactile paving The percentage of visually impaired people in Japan was 1.3% in 2007 Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto talks about solving multiple problems with a single solution Here's a great video by Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit on multipurpose design solutions in the game Downwell Crossing signals Here's a (warning: very shaky) video showing these pedestrian crossing signals Seven-segment display Here's a video of the crossing sounds, sometimes accompanied by bird chirps "China's Obsession with QR Codes" Alien Tommy Lee Jones Japanese Commercials "Meiwaku and Gaijin: Politeness and Group-Mentality in Japan" Note: It's actually pronounced may'-wah-koo Design Details on the Web: We are @designdetailsfm Brian is @brian_lovin Marshall is @marshallbock Sarah is @sarahberus Drew is @luperdev Join the conversation on Spectrum Leave us a review on iTunes This week's episode was brought to you in part by Asana: Asana is growing, and they’re looking to hire 6 new product designers and design managers via a few days of interviews in Chicago and Austin. Find out more by clicking on the links at the top of https://asana.design. This week's episode was also brought to you in part by InVision Studio: InVision Studio is the world’s most powerful screen design tool that brings together design, prototyping, animation, and collaboration all in one place. Check it out and get started for free at https://www.invisionapp.com/studio.