June  19,  2023

Apple Maps results and DoorDash results combined
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
June  12,  2023

Enshittification

(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,

June  6,  2023

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!

May  26,  2023

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!

May  26,  2023

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.

May  5,  2023

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.

May  5,  2023

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.

Coming soon
May  3,  2023

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.

April  29,  2023

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. ⌚️

April  28,  2023

Verified is to Twitter as are to

How long until there is a Twitter cosmetic store?

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