Thomas Walichiewicz

(⌘ -) × 2

I swear I’m going to wear out that key combination from using it on every product/site these days to make it passably readable.

When you shipped, did you read it on a real screen—or did the mock‑ups and metrics say ‘good enough’?

If Apple’s gearing up for another Snow Leopard moment (macOS Tahoe?), I’d love to see it go beyond under-the-hood refinements and embrace a real paradigm shift — one centered on productivity, window management, and collaboration. It’s time to reexamine the windowed, compartmentalized model we’ve relied on for decades and ask where software interaction is truly headed next.

I see a ton of nothingburger articles about AI and design every day, so I figured I’d throw my two cents into the void.

Lately, I’ve been deep in the weeds building enterprise systems to automate complicated, laborious, mission-critical work:

• AI/ML tooling pipelines
• Product instance generators
• Standardized installers across 60+ enterprise tools

(Sexy stuff, I know.)

At their core, each of these projects solved a human-level problem: eliminate waste and free people from repetitive tasks so they can focus on decisions that actually matter.

In that same spirit, I turned the lens on myself—and put together real-life release notes for the latest version of me:

Boy, the generated work on Sora sure has gotten… horny.

There’s a familiar rush that comes from opening Figma right away. You drop in some frames, start sketching flows, and before long, the canvas is full of ideas. It feels like momentum. Like progress. Like designing. But if you watched my process, you’d mostly see Post-Its, notebooks, and long moments of quiet thinking. I spend a surprising amount of time just trying to understand what life really looks like for the people I’m designing for. I review my assumptions, draw rough ideas by hand, and then go back—again and again—until something clicks.

This slower front-end of the process is the reason projects I lead tend to ship on time and get built right. It’s why users often tell us, “This is so much better.” It’s how we move the metrics that actually matter. The truth is, design isn’t about moving fast or making things look cool. It’s not about trends, or gimmicks, or the next shiny idea. Good design is about certainty—certainty that you’re solving the right problem, that you understand the user’s world, and that what you’re building will have a meaningful impact.

Here’s a rough idea of my self-limiter, The Figma Gut-Check:

1. Can I describe the user’s world so clearly they’d say, “That’s me”?
   → If not, I haven’t earned the right to design for them.
2. Can I write the problem in a single sentence, without buzzwords?
   → If not, I don’t understand it deeply enough.
3. Can I explain how this work connects to product or business goals?
   → If not, it’s just surface-level polish.
4. Can I tell the story of how this design helps—without showing a screen?
   → If not, the pixels won’t land.

If I can’t answer these with clarity, I’m not ready to start pixel pushing.

It’s easy to look like you’re moving fast when you rush into Figma, but more often than not, that speed masks confusion. Slowing down—taking time to think, to understand, to align—creates a foundation for speed later. You make sharper decisions because they’re rooted in clarity. You stay close to your user’s evolving experience. And in that closeness, insights surface more naturally, more often. That’s the secret: good design doesn’t move fast. It moves with purpose. And it always starts with clarity.

Strategy, UX, UI, prototyping, maybe even shipping code. The role sounds like a dream, but most teams don’t know how to actually use it.

I’ve often been brought on because I work this way— across product strategy, cross-product systems, AI tooling, and UX design. The job is about seeing the big picture, stitching together product intent, and making sure the execution supports it end to end.

But here’s what I’ve learned:
Full-stack doesn’t mean “do everything.”
It means “connect everything.”

Too often, companies hire this kind of designer… then unintentionally limit their impact. They get stuck in handoff loops, vague ownership zones, or left out of key product decisions entirely.

If you’re hiring for a designer who can go end-to-end, here’s what actually sets them up for success:
• Involve them early in framing the problem, not just shaping the UI
• Give them access to context, not just tasks
• Trust them to lead cross-functionally, not just design individually
• Let them define what done looks like, not just what pretty looks like

When done well, this role becomes a force multiplier. Not just for speed but for clarity, alignment, and momentum. The orgs that recognize that (and build the structure to support it) will attract and retain a different caliber of designer.

The best new game of 2025 is Sora. I find myself constantly coming back to try and create some weird idea or remix some of the fun stuff in the Explore feed.

This entire landing page was made from a single paragraph of text. 🤯

No mockups, no wireframes, and no hours of pixel pushing.
Just a ~200-word prompt, and Sora generated everything: layout, visuals, illustration, copy tone, and UX flow.

That is the new baseline.

If you’re a designer, this is now your competition. Not just other designers, but AI models that can deliver polished work instantly, trained on millions of examples and immune to burnout.

But here’s the thing: AI can replicate taste, yet it cannot replicate care. And this is an opportunity to redefine your value.

Much like McDonald’s feeds billions while people still line up for fine dining, craft still matters.

The human touch, the intuition, and the ability to build something that is right for this moment, this context, and this feeling are what make great design irreplaceable.

The designers who stand out now are the ones who:
· Design for how people feel, not just what they do
· Tailor experiences to real, specific human contexts
· Build things that matter, not just things that look good
· Lead with clarity and vision instead of merely generating screens
· Collaborate deeply with stakeholders to solve problems AI can’t fully comprehend

Execution is becoming commoditized. Your value is your judgment, your taste, and your care.

That is your edge. (I’ve seen this firsthand when working with clients who value the strategic thinking behind designs, not just the visual output. 👨‍🎨)

When a voice assistant has high confidence (>95%) in understanding a request, it shouldn’t need to verbally confirm by repeating the entire command. A brief confirmation tone would be more efficient and less intrusive.

In case it isn’t obvious, I’ve finally gotten around to turning my notebook scribbles into proper posts.

AI agents should function like CarPlay – a consistent experience that follows you everywhere, adapting to your context.

Imagine if your personal preferences, history, and working style moved with you across every device and application:

• In Figma, it automatically applies your preferred spacing, color patterns, and component structures based on your past designs
• When you switch to Google Docs, it adjusts your writing to match previous tone and style while suggesting content based on related projects
• During a Zoom call, it retrieves relevant materials from past meetings without you having to search
• In Xcode, it suggests code patterns matching your typical architectural approaches while flagging potential issues based on your historical bugs

Think of it as a dual-screen setup where your AI device acts as that second screen – offering insights, suggestions, and corrections based on your established patterns while adapting to your current context.

This isn’t just about assistant features – it’s about creating true digital continuity:

1. Your design preferences automatically apply in any creative tool
2. Your writing style and communication patterns follow you into any document
3. Your organizational systems adapt to whatever information environment you’re in

The breakthrough comes when you no longer need to maintain separate workflows and preferences for each application. Your digital environment shapes itself around you, rather than you adapting to each environment.

Could this be the next evolution of personal computing – environments that truly know and adapt to us, rather than the other way around?

The progress made with LLMs is impressive, but we’re still facing a fundamental issue: users must rethink how they communicate with AI systems, rather than AI accommodating natural human language.

Yes, we’ve moved beyond the rigid command structures of early voice assistants (“Hey Siri,” “Hey Google,” followed by carefully phrased requests), but the proliferation of prompt engineering guides and entire books on “how to talk to ChatGPT” reveals an uncomfortable truth—we’re still adapting to the machine, not the other way around.

This mirrors the early days of computing when users needed to learn command-line interfaces before graphical UIs made computers accessible to everyone. The true breakthrough in AI interfaces won’t be more powerful models, but systems that adapt to individual communication styles and quirks, meeting users where they are rather than where engineers wish them to be.

Until then, we’re still speaking a second language when talking to AI—just with a more forgiving grammar.

The MAP Framework: A New Direction for Product Development

After years of watching talented teams build disjointed products, I've developed the MAP Framework—a process that fundamentally reorders how we create digital experiences. By placing design Mapping before product Assessment and engineering Production, teams can explore comprehensive solutions before committing to implementation paths. This approach leads to more coherent user experiences, fewer expensive pivots, and products that genuinely resonate with users.

Designers who can’t code are getting left behind. I’ve been leveraging generative tools to rapidly prototype and ship finished components—cutting my implementation time in half while maintaining complete creative control.

Why this matters: Understanding how your designs translate to code makes you a better designer. Period. You spot technical constraints earlier, make smarter decisions about interactions, and speak the language developers respect.

The most valuable designers in 2025 aren’t just creating static mockups—they’re building functional prototypes that demonstrate real behavior and can evolve into production code.

Stop outsourcing your technical understanding. Start utilizing technology to execute your vision directly and precisely.

It’s gotten to be that working on this site is almost more fun than writing the actual posts.

Writing on my MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar has made me realize there might be an ideal fusion: a keyboard/trackpad that retains its speed, efficiency, and ergonomic benefits while also offering the intuitive, direct control of a touchscreen. Imagine merging the familiar feel of a keyboard with a secondary touch display—similar to the concepts behind the Nintendo DS or the iPhone’s all-touch interface—so that your fingers can immediately manipulate the UI as naturally as if you were handling physical controls.

Redesigning the blog has really reinvogorated my design to write and flesh out the write-ups in the project section.

Welcome to the new blog! 🎉
After way too long, I’ve gotten around to releasing this MVP of the redesigned portfolio site. Some stuff is still broken, and there is an entirely separate desktop version that is still under construction. I’m excited to reveal some of the redesigned project write-ups, but I didn’t want to delay the larger release any longer.

What's new:

• Separate mobile and desktop versions
• Simplified to a monopage design
• Sexy new color scheme
• Handling for post-types (links, projects, etc.)
• Project write-ups have been redesigned
• Added some sound effects
• Lots of small quality-of-life improvements

Nothing reassures me about my insurance provider quite like a headline that screams ‘phishing attempt’ (including a cheerful :D).

Truly, a masterclass in corporate communication.

All I want is to be able to pin previous conversations in the ChatGPT web-app. My current solution of WRITE THE KEYWORDS IN CAPS does the trick for now, but…

Costco: Amazon v2?

Costco has long been the king of bulk buying and private-label loyalty. Its warehouses, stocked with pallets of everything from giant bags of coffee beans to surprisingly great Kirkland-brand dress shirts, have earned it an incredibly loyal membership base. But in the age of e-commerce, does Costco have what it takes to evolve into something like an Amazon competitor?

GitHub, if you could just go ahead and add an indication of what the system is doing here after I click “Index” that would be greaaat.

Happy Halloween! 🎃
Digging through my photos I found some old drawings, enjoy!

Got to love the random iOS beta bugs.

It’s puzzling that Apple hasn’t introduced a Books app for Apple TV. Our TVs have become the modern hearth, so why not recreate the experience of reading around the fireplace?

Imagine an Apple TV Books app that brings audiobooks to the big screen, turning stories into shared experiences. Families could gather to listen together, with synchronized visuals enhancing the narrative—perfect for kids’ books and interactive tales.

Even better, incorporating voice-to-text would let you enjoy any book audibly, leaving dynamic bookmarks so you can pick up right where you left off. It could also be a game-changer for education, making group discussions and interactive lessons more engaging.

Bringing Books to Apple TV could merge technology with tradition, creating a modern storytelling circle around our digital hearth.

Reminder: an MVP is supposed to show potential, not look like a warning label. Set the bar a bit higher.

Apple’s current approach to fullscreen apps often leaves users with a fragmented experience, especially when new windows are involved. It’s almost like that ‘forgetting why I entered the room’ effect—each time you’re forced to switch between spaces, it disrupts your focus and makes it harder to stay on task.

A more cohesive approach would be for the OS to support functionality that keeps new windows within the same fullscreen space. For instance, imagine an option to open new windows in a side panel, modal, or integrated split view within the existing fullscreen environment. The specifics aren’t as important as the need for a smoother, more intuitive way to manage windows in fullscreen mode. A redesigned experience like this would allow for better task continuity and a more productive workflow overall.

It’s been 17 years since the Apple TV was introduced and the way you control the Music app with the remote still barely makes sense.

Let’s talk about laggy UI, one of my new favorite pet peeves. You go to click, but a surprise pop-in makes you miss the target due to poor implementation. Now you’re facing a loading screen while the system processes, freezing all interaction. And just when you think you’re in the clear—you realize you have to undo the mistake and endure all those loading delays again.

Assuming, of course, you don’t get so frustrated that you repeat the entire ordeal thanks to that maddening interface.

Shout-out to the Tesla design team for once again proving they can make some of the ugliest cars on the road. It’s almost impressive how consistently they nail it.

The Apple Music iOS app should really have a landscape mode for when you want the speaks unobstructed, and the visual should look like a tiny boombox. Thank you.

This new FaceID per app feature in iOS should really be enabled by default for any of the communication apps (Messages, Phone, Email), since they not only provide an opportunity to onboard the user to the feature, those apps are the most damaging if a bad actor got your hands on your device*.

*Obviously this could be different person-to-person, but those three I would estimate everyone wants some control over the means by which we communicate to other people.

Whoever is doing AppleTV+’s show marketing should be replaced. There have now been multiple occasions where the promotion/information about a show in the guide has actively discouraged me from watching it, only for me to find, when giving it a shot randomly, that it’s actually a high-quality show.

They’re doing a disservice to the show’s creators.

One problem, one designer

A single, competent designer is the most effective way to deliver quality products

Okay there are clearly some peaks and valleys in the OpenAI design, because this voice chat experience is pretty nice.

For as amazing as the technology of ChatGPT is, the UX of the actual app is utter dogshit.

Apple’s new Intelligence features claim to need advanced hardware, but do they really? Feels like we’re being nudged into upgrades when our older iPhones might be perfectly capable.

Design is entering a new era—customized, but not bespoke. The one-size-fits-all model of persona and pain point is more antiquated than I think most have realized.

ChatGPTV /ˈchatˌjēpēˈtēˈvē/
noun

1. The practice of watching television while simultaneously using ChatGPT as an on-demand commentary track.
2. A viewing experience where AI provides real-time insights about scenes, artistic choices, and cultural context.
   “I watched The Wire with ChatGPTV and learned so much about Baltimore in the 2000s.”

After all these years, how has the Apple Music team still not figured out a way to make it clear if you’re looking at the Library (local content) versus Apple Music?

Sometimes I honestly wonder what everyone is even doing at a company this large…They barely put out anything, and bugs/design tech persist for decades.

I might be part of an A/B test, but who thought removing star ratings from Amazon’s search results was a good idea? Star ratings are one of the main reasons I use the site. Stupid.

Designers who hide behind rigid processes and endless documentation stifle creativity and churn out uninspired designs that miss the mark.

In the 2010s, many designers lacked the depth needed to excel, relying on frameworks instead of honing their intuition. Now, they’ve climbed the ranks, enforcing ineffective policies that suffocate innovation. They demand more research and documentation, frustrating those with the vision to make real change.

Recent layoffs have weeded out many of these “B players.” Now is the time for the design industry to refocus on genuine growth and mentorship. Experienced designers should be valued for their expertise and encouraged to guide newcomers, fostering intuition and leadership skills. Companies should prioritize continuous learning and balance structured methods with intuitive decision-making.

By embracing mentorship and ongoing growth, we can elevate design quality and move the industry forward. I think it’s time to champion real expertise and prepare the next generation to lead with vision and creativity.

Via Scott Jenson:

Most importantly, in 99% of cars on the road today, I don’t need to RTFM to turn steer, accelerate, brake, use the turn signals, or turn on the damn defroster. That’s why these things are standardized. There are lots of things I will likely need the manual for but not these basics. The v11 design broke this.

Standardization exists for a reason. When basics become complex (due to clearly baseless modifications), user experience suffers.

This doesn’t appear to be fixed in v12, FYI.

New states rolling out Apple Wallet supported drivers licenses makes me think there could be an interesting opportunity to have law enforcement register their phones to temporarily accept drivers licenses and insurance when requested during traffic stops. Could make the whole data transfer experience as painless as using a tap-to-pay kiosk.

If Apple is continuing to expand their iCloud services (things like iCloud Relay, Hide My Email, etc.), I’d love to see a native Calendly competitor built into the Calendar app / service.

Feels like a pretty natural fit since all of their other services are about quality of life improvements to using the internet and connecting with people.

Why is it that within the same app the AppleTV Library view is so much worse than the Show view? If I try to browse the episodes by going through the Library view, the UI is ironically worse for browsing through all the episodes. Meanwhile, if you go from the Search view or happen to see a card for the show from the Home page, it has season categories, additional info, etc.

???

design limbo /dəˈzīn ˈlimbō/
noun

1. The time between meetings when you can’t get any design work done.
2. A state of suspended productivity in which creative work is impossible due to frequent interruptions.
   “I’m stuck in design limbo until my 3 o’clock.”

If Apple doesn’t create an ad campaign out of today’s Crowdstrike mess it would be a real shame.

The dating app premium model (think HingeX, Tinder Gold, etc) is so lazy— it’s just about not hamstringing the experience by removing the profiles you would be actually interested in / removing the like restrictions to maintain daily/weekly/monthly usage numbers

Seems like the best thing they could offer would be a way to connect you with a dating coach who reviews your profile, helps you work on your conversation skills, etc. You could even flag that to potential dates so they know that this user is taking it more seriously.

Gaming on macOS Sequels

Apple’s strategy to bridge the gap by porting iOS games to macOS isn’t just clever; it’s a smart way to boost the perceived value of Macs. From a customer’s perspective, the main difference between platforms is how you interact with them. Younger generations are already comfortable doing "serious" work on mobile devices, while older generations still view computers as essential for such tasks.

I’d love to see what an Apple Card Titanium credit card would be like. Apple’s take on the ultra exclusive “black card” market. I’d sign up for something like that in a heartbeat if it included lots of travel perks / concierge that’s actually good / etc.

Hard skills become a little irrelevant in the world of GPTs.

• Turn off a bunch of extraneous DoorDash notifications
• Playing around the app
• DoorDash shows a modal suggesting that I might miss relevant updates
• Go back to notification settings
• All of them have been turned back on

Bunch of bullshit

The Apple Music “station from source” feature is pretty good, but what I’d really like to see is an option to “refine”. Sometimes defining the exact vibe of station you want takes more than just one data source.

Figma Config announced some new features today:

• UI3, a redesigned Figma
• Figma AI (Make Design, Make Prototype, Visual Search, Replace Content, Rename Layers)
• Figma Slides
• and some other stuff

Watching the CEO use Figma was peak “How do you do, fellow designers”

The iPhone Mirroring feature:

• Is great for that-one-app-that-is-only-on-mobile
• Introduces a new paradigm for showing / hiding the window controls, could use a little affordance but pretty slick
• Sort of makes me wonder why even show the home screen at all? You could probably get away with integrating the hardware to be recognized as native to the Mac and the apps alongside the native ones

Apple Maps should consider integrating an editor tool that empowers approved community members to update points of interest (POIs) and correct errors directly. Mapping services like OpenStreetMap already support this functionality, resulting in remarkable detail and accuracy contributed by community members.

The iOS 18 color customization could use some work.

Interesting how Apple redesigned the Settings app in iOS 18:

• Explainers at the header of all the major sections
• First party apps are now equally discoverable to Third party apps, since they’re all in the new “Apps” subcategory
• The seem to be developing a language where the background (blue versus grey background) of some of the sections seems to pertain to their controls

AI generated art fills that perfect niche of “stuff I used to throw together for fun in photoshop based off some stupid idea”

What a fun little guitar toy. 🎸

It looks like you’re writing a blog post.

Would you like help?

• So Microsoft re-announced Clippy after a 20-year hiatus
• It now has a voice and is called Copilot+ (Plus?)
• Makes for a nifty prerecorded demo
• Will be curious if they’ve learned from their mistakes

1. Yes, it really does work as well as those demo videos show.
2. It turns out all those recent smart assistant devices could just be an app! (Not to mention it has access to all the useful features a smartphone already has.)
3. It seems the stage is set for this to replace Siri. With first-party support for app and service integration, you have an opportunity for a very compelling new interaction paradigm.

I know I’m late to the commentary party, but who the hell at Apple saw that iPad crush ad and thought, “Yep, good to go”?

Super tone deaf, and the idea itself was totally salvageable if they had been a little more creative with the imagery.

Not to mention this exact idea has been done before.

Although the Oreo Dipper 9000 may seem like a silly use of GPT image generators, in product design, particularly during the initial stages, the utility of these tools cannot be overstated. They rapidly create preliminary visualizations of your concepts, enabling faster and more effective communication of your ideas. This tool also helps identify gaps in your thought process, as it fills in details you may not have considered, prompting a reevaluation of your approach.

Via The Register:

The advisor said that “it is a known issue in the Cybertruck that when you do a screen reset, instead of resetting in the standard two minutes, it takes five hours.”

I will never tire of hearing about this appliance-on-wheels’s woes.

The irony is not lost on The Atlantic, I suppose.

Looks like the reviews are coming out for the Humane Ai Pin, and the on-hand projection is as terrible as I would have expected when it was first announced.

I wonder if in all their design ideation they considered this Captain Disillusion video from seven years ago explaining exactly why this would be such a terrible idea?

It would be nice if the Crossfade feature in Apple Music worked when you manually change songs as well rather than just abruptly starting and stopping the music.

That’d also be an elegant solution to implement some AI-powered stem blending for that authentic DJ experience.

There’s an inexplicable satisfaction that comes with filling the pages of a design notebook and adding it to the stack of predecessors.

While I may never find the time to thoroughly read through each page, these notebooks serve as tangible reminders of the daily dedication poured into design work. In a world where digital products often fade into the ether, there’s a comforting permanence in holding something physical.

Figma please just make it so I can organize my Pages like every file structure system since the 90’s.

A small web pet peeve: email fields that try to auto correct names to be capitalized.

Every work email I’ve ever had is my name lowercase, and the autocorrect is way too aggressive in trying to capitalize, which then makes the validation fail if the website is strict about upper and lower case letters.

via CarsDirect:

Some people may wonder what the big deal is. Normal cars need to be washed and cleaned regularly. But, what makes the Cybertruck more unique than other vehicles on the road is that its body doesn’t have a clear coat. That means that any corrosive substances that come in contact with the body have to be cleaned immediately or they’ll heavily damage the stainless steel body.

Sounds like fun.

Maybe it’s coming in a future iteration of the Apple Vision Pro, but it’s strange that they stuck to the app paradigm for a device that seems to suggest it’d be a great persistent head-up display assistant:

• Always knows what you’re looking at, could reasonably overlay relevant information
• Speaking to Siri could automatically process whatever you’re looking at
• As we’ve seen from some of the early demos, window-based interfaces make sense for laptops / desktops because they’re stationary, that paradigm falls apart if people are moving too much (though having multiple apps placed in 3d space is an okay in-between solution)

So I saw this when I was signing into YouTube:

This has to be one of the most bizarre things to put on a such a prominent page: no link to a blog post about the redesign? No way to preview it yet? What the fuck is the point of this message?

At the very least fix your flex implementation:

I wonder if Apple has considered taking an approach to getting games on the platform similar to their strategy for getting AppleTV+ originals. Seems like a good way to harbor more developers and growing their gaming catalog.

We’re still in the early day of use cases for this thing, but paying $3500 for a very fancy / convenient monitor doesn’t seem like such a silly investment if you look at what the potentially of that actually is.

I’m obviously going to be biased for my own industry when I think of the most immediate applications, but I’m really curious what new interaction patterns can be created when working with creative tools. (A comparable example from mobile interfaces were things like shake to undo, overscrolling the top to trigger a refresh, pinch gestures, etc.)

Can definitely see Apple Vision Pro normalizing VR (as it previously had with other products). Went to see what the interest was like at my local store– huge crowds, and trying to schedule a demo showed that next available date as “unavailable”.

This would be a pretty solid redesign of the Magic Mouse if they add the multi-touch and optical sensor to this thing.

I noticed Apple Maps has been inaccurately directed me on a longer route home due to a one-way street misidentification. Discovered the error while driving, reported it, and it was recently fixed, saving 5 minutes every time I head that way.

It does make me wonder about how widespread errors are in Apple Maps data. I wonder if there would be a benefit in supporting user contributions to address such issues efficiently. Maybe some sort of opt-in feature for Maps capturing detailed data to enhance routing and updates?

Microsoft design team strikes again:

Finally got full interactivity working on the home page. Entirely coded using ChatGPT, figure that. 🤖

Why is the button to view a Stack in the Finder (making the content more easily searchable, sortable, scannable, etc.) the last item in the grid?

If it were the first item, at least then the user could easily decide between the stack view or the Finder view, but as the last item you’re always forced to scroll through the entire list (in some cases, a VERY long list).

Hell, even better? Put it as a floating object fixed to top of the panel.

I’m starting to think there are enough posts on this blog that I should implement some filtering at the head of the page.

Why the hell doesn’t the Apple TV Music app have a visualizer?

Some thoughts after reading this great blog post from Columbia’s Stats blog:

Where we are today, Large Language Models (LLMs) have become skilled at mimicking human intuition— taking into consideration all of the individual’s (well, the LLM’s scraping of the internet, in this case) experiences and perceptions and providing heuristic responses to prompts.

What’s really exiting is as we move out of the nascent phase of LLM AI we can now attempt to recreate the higher level of human cognition: reasoning. The question now is which LLM AI product will be the one to realize that a large investment in bringing in psychologists will help them reach that goal first?

Whoever approved this as a solution should be fired, but I think MURAL is basically a Microsoft property by now meaning they’ll probably be promoted instead.

Though really, why does MURAL even exist when you can just use FigJam?

“Hey what symbol should we use to show a track is popular?”

“How about the universally accepted symbol for ‘New’ in a list view?”

“Perfect. And what should the user interaction be when you hover over it?”

“I dunno, how about the Favorite functionality?”

“Sounds good to me! Ship it!”

What the fuck

It’s even more offensive considering they already use “🔥 Trending” in the Maps app to show when a POI is being frequently viewed.

Considering how good iOS’s image-to-text processing is (especially compared to competitors), Apple Maps should be able to convert menus into standardized POI metadata.

• For those that require assistive devices to read a menu, they could just load the restaurant POI
• Keeps users who are interested in delivery in the Apple Maps app longer, since they don’t need to jump immediately to DoorDash to check the menu if a restaurant looks good
  • Eventually you should be able to order (via applet) directly from the Apple Maps POI card
• Assuming it’s easy for a restaurant owner to upload the menu, it incentivizes businesses to engage with / update Apple Maps content

“You know when you…”, the start to many a good design metaphor.

It’s always sobering to accidentally leave an adblocker off and visit a couple websites. They really are trying to cram ads into any available whitespace.

Updated the home page with a fun new simulation 🙂

Addendum: I thought about this a bit more, and while I still agree with my original sentiments, I figured I’d expand my thinking slightly. But, yes, I think the event was 100% “this could have been an email” territory.

The iPhone and Apple Watch incremental updates absolutely should have been a Newsroom press release.
Sending out announcements and building up expectations only to not deliver to those expectations erodes the positive sentiment people have generated towards Apple announcement events. If you do that too many times, nobody will take them seriously anymore.

The carbon neutral achievements are impressive, but they would have been better utilized in an ad campaign.
Average consumers don’t watch these keynotes. Sure, they get trickle-down information of what Apple released eventually, but you know what people do pay attention to? Apple ads. They have a very distinct style and are (almost) always effective at communicating the benefits of Apple product releases. If anything, having an ad campaign that Apple have revamped the materials of most of their accessories is compelling to get people into stores simple to see (and more importantly) touch the new materials.

Today’s Apple event might have been the first time I didn’t actively watch or follow the updates. When I went back to check what had been announced, I saw that there was nothing of particular significance. This felt like such a non-event that it made me genuinely wonder what these teams have been doing for an entire year.

Perhaps the iPhone is soon reaching the same point MacBook Pros did a few years ago, where a complete overhaul saved the line from being the joke had it become.

Finally got around to finishing the code for my portfolio page. It’s live now, and I’ll be adding projects there in the coming weeks.

Design pattern libraries could really super-charge their utility if they were used to propagate component-specific features across all the channels that component appears in.

Example: if you ensure that every video throughout your app is loaded in a common video component, any quality of life improvements or new features would be consistent everywhere.

Nothing accelerates burnout faster than bad management. Think you’re passionate about the craft of design? See how long that lasts in a toxic design culture.

These are obviously very difficult things to scale though. A small startup has a much easier time of maintaining a culture of trust and respect for the process than a large multi-org corporation.

Even some basic filtering of the Favorites in Apple Maps would make a world of difference for searching

Notification toxicity is always a clear sign of non-designers trying to eke out some congratulatory metrics at the cost of brand perception and user experience.

The example that always comes to mind are DoorDash notifications. You would want to leave them on for what you can consider useful information (order status, delivery driver messages), but by doing so you get uninvited marketing spam piped directly to you.

Over-meeting days are pretty much shit for design productivity. What makes it particularly frustrating is that there isn’t automatically additional time given to complete the actual designs. This is why designers often end up having to resort to the simplest solution: they simply haven’t had enough time to properly process the problem and try an adequate number of solutions.

This is exactly what I think of when people advocate for third-party App Stores on iOS. Instead of one consistent, straightforward purchasing experience, we get these shells that always require some additional bullshit to use.

The immediacy of DoorDash + Apple Maps results.

Some fun details:

• Star in the top corner to quickly add / remove a favorite
• If the restaurant closes soon, the directions icon is shown with an alert to tell the user they need to leave soon
• “Top Rated Nearby” is a smart category that checks the most common attributes the user filters against
• There is a small shadow / gradient to show that the list continues off the right edge of the screen

enshittification /enˈSHitəfiˈkāSH(ə)n/
verb

1. To enshittify.
2. The process by which a social media platform’s content and engagement is overwhelmed by its toxicity (either internally or externally focused).
3. How a platform dies.

Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, …

Is it even worth mentioning anything else when the Apple Vision Pro was announced today?

It really seems Apple did their homework on this one, especially as I read the more informed opinions online.

And as a designer, it’s super fun to have a new method by which you can solve problems!

So Microsoft released Fluent 2…

I’ll defer to this comment on Hacker News that sums it up nicely:

It’s too bad that Microsoft as an organization doesn’t care about good design. I don’t look at Satya Nadella and think of a man who has taste. And Microsoft doesn’t have a Chief Design Officer, as far as I know.

Instead, Microsoft has VPs. So there’s no one person at the helm saying, “This is the vision and where we’re heading.”

As a result, I suspect there are actual good designers at Microsoft trying to start movements from within, and those have bubbled up to what we see today as the progression of Microsoft’s design through Fluent from Metro and prior.

But because there’s no one at the helm, these efforts will always be isolated.

There will never be anyone saying, “Let’s carry these efforts across products and down to the UI.” “Let’s deprecate and discontinue all of these fragmented UI frameworks. Moving forward, Microsoft will only create UI using Fluent UI.”

Worse yet, even if someone tried, Microsoft has tried and failed again and again and again so why would you bother? It’s clear Microsoft’s UIs are shifting sand compared to Apple’s platforms or even Linux desktops!

As anyone who has worked in tech knows, Minimum Viable Product (MVP) solutions are the popular approach for launching new products. But after a decade of worth in in the industry, I think that releasing products in an MVP state to your customers is generally a mistake.

No customer wants to feel like they’re paying to use something incomplete. And releasing products in an unfinished, lacking state is problematic not only to your customers but the perception of your company as a whole.

You can really only make your first impression once, and you will be fighting an uphill battle to prove the value of your product the moment after you release it.

via Variety:

As of Sunday, after 26 days of release, the animated video game adaptation, from Universal, Illumination and Nintendo, has grossed $490 million in North America and $532 million internationallly. It’s only the fifth movie of pandemic times to join the $1 billion club, following “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Jurassic World Dominion” and “Avatar: The Way of Water.”

It is always remarkable reading through the reviews of films like this: super mid reviews, talk of plot holes, etc., yet they still manage to draw crowds in.

This disconnect between online noise and reality has really stopped being surprising at this point. You can see the same thing happen with major yearly releases of video games (Madden, FIFA, Call of Duty), where the reviewers will point out how the game is more of the same, does nothing special, isn’t worth the money, and yet those are always the top grossing games every year.

Design Systems: Expectations & Realities

Have you ever wondered what it takes to build a successful design system library? In 2019, I embarked on this journey and created my own library. Now, I'm excited to share the insights I've gained after working on this project, as well as others. In this post, I'll cover the myths and realities of design systems, and how they can be implemented successfully in your own organization.

Just a small shout-out to News Minimalist, for giving me what I actually want out of a news aggregator: simple summaries of what happened today with the ability to see more.

Apple products have a remarkable tendency to survive the drops that seem like they would break them, only to completely shatter on a very minor looking fall. ⌚️

Finally updated my portfolio’s blog.

Hopefully that means fewer excuses for not writing.

via Jorge Arango:

Skillful action demands that you master the particulars. You can only do that if you pay attention to feedback.[…]

So you design with feedback. But you also design for feedback.

Shed the negative associations. Embrace feedback for what it is: core to skillful action and good design.

A nice reminder on a rainy morning.

Was playin’ around with the idea of how live activities might be used for live sports.