Making mockups is time-consuming and difficult if you don't have the right tools. Things makes it much easier. All you need to do is select the device, model, and lighting details and you can make your own custom mockups.
|
|
Sitting in meetings all day can get exhausting. Around has made a ton of improvements to the remote meeting experience including more options when creating rooms, audio enhancements using AI, and audio-only rooms. It's a flexible way to meet.
|
|
As someone who has created hundreds if not thousands of icons, I'm excited by this release from Google. With it, you can easily configure the size, density, color, and device type for any icon that you want to download. Easier for design and development.
|
|
Talk About Movies to Save Your Marriage |
Yeah, it's a clickbaity title. The strange thing is, it's also true. A recent study shows that couples who simply talk about romantic movies have a significantly higher likelihood of staying together for the long haul. So much so that it cuts the odds in half. So why is this? People are often a lot smarter than we give them credit for. Ronald Rogge, a psychology professor at the University of Rochester (where the study was conducted) has a hypothesis. We often know how we are performing in any given relationship, and discussing romantic movies or just movies that have romantic relational dynamics will help us has through what we are currently experiencing in our own lives. This is a fascinating discovery, and I wonder if it could map to other parts of our lives. Could a small startup benefit from watching and discussing Silicon Valley together? What about a restaurant staff watching Food Network? This is all theoretical but would be super interesting to test. At the end of the day, this finding is an important reminder. Communication is at the core of any successful relationship, and establishing reference points (in this case through movies) can be a helpful way to spark conversation and introspection that will end up improving a relationship. TL;DR - When in doubt, talk it through.
|
|
Jordan is a design director currently at Work&Co. Their past work includes projects for Nike, Google, and many others. The portfolio site is incredibly simple, just one image that rapidly cycles through a ton of different pieces of work. Sometimes a simple solution can be the most elegant.
|
|
Is Google's UI Encouraging Mistakes? |
I recently read an entertaining (and profanity riddled) article by Mark Dominus, a computer programmer who has written a few highly-regarded books. In this particular post he goes on a brief rant about Google Meet's UI.His beef with the current setup is that two fairly commonly used buttons (mute and show/hide video) show up right alongside the hang up button. I'm more tech savvy than many, but I regularly find myself accidentally hanging up on people. I immediately resonated with his frustration, and loved the simplicity of his solution. For an action that isn't used as often (hang up), put it far away from commonly used actions. He connects this with his frustration with the early design of forms on the early web, where a submit button may live right alongside a rest button. I looked at the comments section on a forum where this article was posted and say a very passionate discussion about how large organizations end up designing by committee, or even worse the organization becomes so large that no one really knows who is responsible for any one feature. For every person criticizing Google, there was someone to defend the design decisions made by large corporations. All this to say, I'm not calling out Google. I use Google Meet almost every day, and all in all it's a great product. That said, I think Mark is onto something. TL;DR - Sometimes people with no design experience give the best critique
|
|
B̶o̶o̶k̶ Podcast of the week |
Technically Speaking – Harrison Wheeler |
Harrison is a Design Manager at LinkedIn. In addition to running a regular cadence of Clubhouse rooms, he has a podcast called Technically Speaking where he talks with a broad range of designers, creatives, and technologists. If you want to learn from design industry leaders, Harrison's podcast is a great place to start. I particularly enjoyed the most recent episode with Kat Vellos where they do a deep dive on fostering connections in an increasingly distributed world. Listen here
|
A Question for the Readers |
I've been writing this newsletter for about half a year now. Eventually, I would like to monetize it. I spend 2-3 hours a week writing this, and early on I spent a lot more time systematizing my process.
So my question for you is, what method of monetization would you prefer? - Ads in the newsletter - Sponsored content in the tools section - A second weekly newsletter that you pay for - Something else
I'm intentionally monetizing this very slowly, because I want to retain your trust. If you have an opinion, respond to this email. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
|
|
|
|