Design Details

By Brian Lovin, Marshall BockTechnology Arts Design

Design Details episodes

July 10, 2019304: Interviewing the Interviewer
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!
32 min
July 03, 2019303: Building Design Teams (feat. Stacy La)
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!
1 hr 3 min
June 26, 2019302: Designing Dark Patterns
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!
57 min
June 19, 2019301: Android vs. iOS
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!
1 hr 5 min
June 12, 2019300: Looking Back on 300 Episodes
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!
1 hr 23 min
June 05, 2019299: Balancing Management and IC Work
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!
1 hr
May 29, 2019298: Designing a Design Curriculum
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!
45 min
May 22, 2019297: Day-to-Day Design Struggles
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!
57 min
May 15, 2019296: Google I/O
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!
1 hr 3 min
May 08, 2019295: Public Critique and The Facebook Redesign
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!
1 hr 13 min