Design Details

This week, we recall our most recent “wow” moments with the products in our lives. What are yours? In The Sidebar, we talk about different loading state strategies and their impact on the user experience.

Plume empowers a billion smart devices in homes and small businesses through a suite of adaptive WiFi, AI security, and parental control. They're hiring product designers to build the future of smart home services. They're hiring product designers with 2-5 years of experience shipping products — learn more at designdetails.fm/plume. Oh, and they just raised a $270m series E, so now's the time!

• Max Georgopoulos
• Christina Jacobs
• Merrisa Tang
• Liam Sheppard
• Michael Goliver
• Sam Ryan

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.

This week, we recall our most recent “wow” moments with the products in our lives. What are yours?

• Raffaele Vitale asks on Twitter: what was your last and truly memorable “wow" moment you had with a digital or physical product?
• Play uses a wild drawer system to let you actually design apps on your phone. It’s very smooth.
• Hands on with iOS Live Text.
• Unlock your phone with Apple Watch when wearing a mask.
• Tonal’s dynamic weight mode is very cool.
• NFTs are weird. If you’re interested, start with this post: How to set up a crypto wallet to buy NFTs by Pablo Stanley. OpenSea is where most NFTs are being sold.

• Brian shared replicate.ai/explore, a playground of machine learning programs that you can run in the browser. Check out toonify and age simulator.
• Marshall shared Survivor Season 41, but drop the 4. A whole new era!

• 📻 We are @designdetailsfm
  • 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
  • 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
•  
  • 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
• ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
• ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes.

Byeee!

This week, we talk about design mentorship: what does an effective mentor do, how to find a mentor, how to avoid giving bad career advice, and more. In The Sidebar, we talk about obsessing over the pixels, wasting time on unimportant details, and how to tell the difference between polish and procrastination.

Plume empowers a billion smart devices in homes and small businesses through a suite of adaptive WiFi, AI security, and parental control. They're hiring product designers to build the future of smart home services. They're hiring product designers with 2-5 years of experience shipping products — learn more at designdetails.fm/plume. Oh, and they just raised a $270m series E, so now's the time!

• Bilal
• AJ Patshkowski
• Ben C
• First Name, pause, Last Name
• Sam Hermes
• Sid Kshetrapal
• Nachiket Nanoty
• Hoyin

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.

• Manny asks on Twitter: Curious, how much time do you guys usually spend on side projects a day/week? Whenever I work on side projects, I always feel guilty of not spending time with my other half, friends and pets because we haven’t seen each other for a whole day usually
  • Probably...10-20 hours per week, on a good week? Huge caveat: we don’t have kids.
• Siddharth agreed with Marshall about when to ship: sure you can ship fast and often (i try) and you’ll quickly learn what you didnt know w/ feedback 10/10. but there are some things that only click ✨ when you’re chasing that last 5%, someone else can’t do that click for you

This week, we talk about design mentorship: what does an effective mentor do, how to find a mentor, how to avoid giving bad career advice, and more.

• Brian shared Amplosion and Achoo from Christian Selig (the creator of the Apollo Reddit app, which we love). These are using the new Safari extension APIs that are new in iOS 15! Amplosion automatically redirects away from AMP pages on Google, and Achoo lets you inspect the HTML of a page on your phone.
• Marshall shared 14 by Peter Clines, the next entry in Marshall’s Book Club. More recommendations from Peter Clines: The Fold and Paradox Bound.

• 📻 We are @designdetailsfm
  • 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
  • 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
•  
  • 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
• ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
• ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes.

Byeee!

This week, we talk about how we combat perfectionism in our side projects, the value of shipping, and why sharing a project too early can backfire. In the Sidebar, we recap Apple’s September event with our hot takes and spicy opinions.

Plume empowers a billion smart devices in homes and small businesses through a suite of adaptive WiFi, AI security, and parental control. They're hiring product designers to build the future of smart home services. They're hiring product designers with 2-5 years of experience shipping products — learn more at designdetails.fm/plume. Oh, and they just raised a $270m series E, so now's the time!

• Kyle
• Skyler Schain
• Elena Newbrough
• Dominique Horner
• Colin Chapin
• Keiron Boswell
• Eva Ratcliffe
• Mike Waclo
• Aleksey Nikitin
• Cliff Warren
• Edward Gyngell
• Stevie Rodger
• Sarah Catherine Smith

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.

This week, we talk about how we combat perfectionism in our side projects, the value of shipping, and why sharing a project too early can backfire.

Would love to know your thoughts on tackling progress over perfection especially in the product design world.

I know Marshall doesn't want to publish anything which isn't perfect to his eyes but the issue is that I'm not as nearly as good as Marshall 😭, so it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on overcoming this.

Whenever I work on my portfolio or a case study, I can't help but get stuck or held up on details to make it perfect. Although I try to focus on the progress and ignore the perfection part, the OCD makes me so frustrated to the point I eventually go back and fix those issues and end up delaying what I wanted to finish further.

• Brian shared Cometeer, the best dang coffee you’ll ever have. Click the link to save $25.
• Marshall shared Infinite by Jeremy Robinson, which has a new sequel out for any sci-fi fans among you!

• 📻 We are @designdetailsfm
  • 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
  • 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
•  
  • 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
• ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
• ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes.

Byeee!

This week, we follow up on last week’s conversation about designing at agencies, hiring contractors, Yelp’s app icons, and Bock’s Constant. In the Sidebar, we talk about designing with your mind’s eye and how learning to brain-prototype will help fast-track your growth as a designer.

• Darion
• Xinran Wang
• Ólafur Sverrir Kjartansson
• Adam Collier
• Genghis Mendoza
• Moj
• Andrei Slobtsov
• Chase Simmons
• Justin Baughn
• Derek Shirk
• Misael Abreu

If you’re in New York, come meet up at Makeshift.

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.

This week, we follow up on last week’s conversation about designing at agencies, hiring contractors, Yelp’s app icons, and Bock’s Constant.

• Brian Leach followed up and talked about how in-house designers might experience creative atrophy.
• Raffaele asked when a product company should hire an external agency.
• Genghis Mendoza sent over some advantages to working at an agency:
  1. Build your strategic business skill set, working with strategists, engagement managers and clients, you develop new views of what your designs do to impact the client's business.
  2. Build your soft skills (consultant muscle): being able to articulate your designs, learning to work with a variety of different stakeholders. broaden your audience, from c-level to non-product people.
  3. Exercise your design rigor, strengthen your process, or become nimble and adjust your process depending on the engagement.
  4. Improve research skills as you develop patterns to learn quickly and delve into new verticals, markets and problems.
  5. Facilitation skills improve: practice techniques and you build up your playbook of strategies, to diverge, bring people to consensus, and all the things you need to make clients a part of the design thinking process.
  6. Breadth of verticals, developing a wider lens to learn more patterns from different industries, learning new problems and solving for them.
  7. Since you are in a strategic mindset most of the time, you're always searching for possibilities, trends, and begin to develop a futurist mindset, as you are designing for the art of the possible. I think this is a skill set you can also learn in-house, but as a consultant the path is more attuned to lend to this behavior. Using the RPG metaphor, this is the specialization in the skills tree.
• Uhl Albert noticed that Yelp’s app icons on Android are better, dropping the Yelp label from the icon itself.
• Derek Shirk asked about “Bach’s contant” — easy typo to hear. We call it “Bock’s Constant” aka Marshall’s Law of UX: “People don’t fucking read.”
  • See: Laws of UX

• Brian shared Hearthstone Battlegrounds, a fun variant of Hearthstone’s card game mechanics that levels the playing field and has infinite variability. It’s really fun!
• Marshall shared The Fold by Peter Cline, a fun sci-fi read with a buck-wild ending.

• 📻 We are @designdetailsfm
  • 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
  • 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
•  
  • 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
• ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
• ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes.

Byeee!

This week, we compare agency vs. in-house design work, dissect the tradeoffs, and share interview tips for anyone moving from an agency to a product company. In The Sidebar, we share our favorite Keynote tips and tricks and our top strategy for telling a more clear story in a deck.

• Baronfig makes tools for thinkers: guided journals, simple notebooks, writing instruments, bags, desk organizers, travel accessories, and more. Their products are beautiful, functional, and simple — we use them and love them. Use the promo code DESIGNDETAILS21 to get 20% off your purchase of $50 or more.

• Raiseaplant
• Andrew Frank
• Olowu Abayomi
• David East
• Paige Mariucci
• Alfredo Contreras
• Andrew
• Miguel Salvador

Plume empowers a billion smart devices in homes and small businesses through a suite of adaptive WiFi, AI security, and parental control. They're hiring product designers to build the future of smart home services. They're hiring product designers with 2-5 years of experience shipping products — learn more at designdetails.fm/plume. Oh, and they just raised a $270m series E, so now's the time!

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.

This week, we compare agency vs. in-house design work, dissect the tradeoffs, and share interview tips for anyone moving from an agency to a product company.

• Brian Leach asks on Twitter: have you dudes done an episode on in-house design vs agency work? Would love some perspective on different ways to think about that dilemma

• Brian shared Dave on FX/Hulu. Push through S2E3 if it’s not your thing, the rest of the season ends on a high note.
• Marshall shared Y the Last Man, upcoming on Hulu. Based on the trailer, the show looks true to the comics but we’ll have to see when it comes out!

• 📻 We are @designdetailsfm
  • 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
  • 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
•  
  • 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
• ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
• ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes.

Byeee!

This week, we talk about Twitter’s new follow buttons. Are they a mistake? Or a fix for something broken that we’d all become used to? Our opinions on buttons emerge! In The Sidebar, we talk about what to do with time off.

• Baronfig makes tools for thinkers: guided journals, simple notebooks, writing instruments, bags, desk organizers, travel accessories, and more. Their products are beautiful, functional, and simple — we use them and love them. Use the promo code DESIGNDETAILS21 to get 20% off your purchase of $50 or more.

• Macarena
• Eunice Kim
• Jean
• Ivy Mukherjee
• Akhil Lochen
• Jak Stronstad
• Jing Jin
• Agnieszka Kroczek
• Nicky

Plume empowers a billion smart devices in homes and small businesses through a suite of adaptive WiFi, AI security, and parental control. They're hiring product designers to build the future of smart home services. They're hiring product designers with 2-5 years of experience shipping products — learn more at designdetails.fm/plume. Oh, and they just raised a $270m series E, so now's the time!

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.

This week, we talk about Twitter’s new follow buttons. Are they a mistake? Or a fix for something broken that we’d all become used to? Our opinions on buttons emerge!

• @rsms thinks the change is a mistake
• @dannpetty thinks the change is a fix

• Brian shared The White Lotus, a social satire set over the course of a week-long vacation in Hawaii. The tension is real, and it’s good!
• Marshall shared 100 Foot Wave, a six-part miniseries on HBO about the decade-long odyssey of surfing pioneer Garrett McNamara who dreams of conquering a 100 foot wave.

• 📻 We are @designdetailsfm
  • 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
  • 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
•  
  • 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
• ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
• ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes.

Byeee!

This week, we talk about Yelp’s new logo and app icons, Apple’s new child safety initiatives, and the miniature masterpieces of the Olympic pictograms. In the Sidebar, we curate practical negotiation tips, strategies, and concepts to help you through a job change.

• Baronfig makes tools for thinkers: guided journals, simple notebooks, writing instruments, bags, desk organizers, travel accessories, and more. Their products are beautiful, functional, and simple — we use them and love them. Use the promo code DESIGNDETAILS21 to get 20% off your purchase of $50 or more.

• Madeline W
• Zhu Nan
• Martin
• Tim Balzer
• Vanessa Lin
• Luis Yuja
• Michael Wallace
• Jackiel Rothschild

Plume empowers a billion smart devices in homes and small businesses through a suite of adaptive WiFi, AI security, and parental control. They're hiring product designers to build the future of smart home services. They're hiring product designers with 2-5 years of experience shipping products — learn more at designdetails.fm/plume. Oh, and they just raised a $270m series E, so now's the time!

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.

This week, we talk about Yelp’s new logo and app icons, Apple’s new child safety initiatives, and the miniature masterpieces of the Olympic pictograms.

• An inside look at how we refreshed Yelp’s logo and app icons
• Apple’s New ‘Child Safety’ Initiatives, and the Slippery Slope
• Alex Stamos on Apple privacy
• An open letter against Apple’s privacy-invasive content scanning technology
• On Apple’s “Expanded Protections for Children” – a Personal Story
• Calculating outer corner radius for concentric rounded corners
• Olympic Pictograms: Miniature Masterpieces

• Brian shared The Suicide Squad, the new James Gunn remake of the 2016 flop. It was fun! If you’re into R-rated superhero movies, this will be right up your alley.
• Marshall shared Billie Eilish, Happier Than Ever (album link). Don’t stop reminding Marshall that he’s a Billie Eilish hipster!

• 📻 We are @designdetailsfm
  • 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
  • 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
•  
  • 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
• ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
• ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes.

Byeee!

This week, we talk about the new Pixel 6 announcement, how it stacks up against the competition, and what we’re most excited about. In The Sidebar, we share our design regrets: things we shipped that ended up being mistakes in hindsight.

• Baronfig makes tools for thinkers: guided journals, simple notebooks, writing instruments, bags, desk organizers, travel accessories, and more. Their products are beautiful, functional, and simple – we use them and love them. Use the promo code DESIGNDETAILS21 to get 20% off your purchase of $50 or more.

• Martin Totev
• Louihb (pronounced louieeee)
• Fabricio Teixeira
• Alessio Tecleme
• Thuyrannosaurus
• Rob Edwards
• Lio
• Yves Jakob
• Claudio
• Lucky
• Niroshan
• Powers Teh
• Damon Ahola
• Jing Wang
• Stephen Chen
• Joel Laughlin
• Dul Zorigoo

Plume empowers a billion smart devices in homes and small businesses through a suite of adaptive WiFi, AI security, and parental control. They're hiring product designers to build the future of smart home services. They're hiring product designers with 2-5 years of experience shipping products — learn more at designdetails.fm/plume. Oh, and they just raised a $270m series E, so now's the time!

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.

This week, we talk about the new Pixel 6 announcement, how it stacks up against the competition, and what we’re most excited about.

• The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro on The Verge
• MKBHD on the Pixel 6 Tensor Chip
• Jakob’s Law
• Android 12 Beta

• Brian shared Just JavaScript, a new course to help you build a strong foundation of JavaScript mental models.
• Marshall shared Brian David Gilbert, one of the best Youtube creators in the game. Some hits:
  • MY WEIRD ICE CREAMS: a cooking video
  • PEPCORN: a cooking video
  • The Perfect PokéRap
  • Polygon Unraveled series
  • this video got me a job
  • it’s time to get good at darts
  • Just One Day - 2winz² (Official Video)
  • that feeling when you bite into a pickle and it's a little squishier than you expected
  • how to make jorts
  • Earn $20K EVERY MONTH by being your own boss
  • Teaching Jake about the Camcorder, Jan '97

• 📻 We are @designdetailsfm
  • 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
  • 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
•  
  • 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
• ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
• ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes.

Byeee!

This week, we dig into questions like: who should design a team’s visual style guide? And: who should break a tie in subjective aesthetic arguments? In The Sidebar, we share our tips and strategies for succeeding as a new designer in a large organization.

• Max Kaplun
• Dave
• Michael Schultz
• MJ
• Zach Ouderkerken
• Chris Doner
• Michelle Luo
• Anton
• Demetruis
• Nate Ulrich
• Cindy Rhodes
• Tobias Negele
• Ted Chang

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.

This week, we talk about who actually leads UI design within an organization, teasing apart questions like: who should design a team’s visual style guide? Who should break a tie in subjective aesthetic arguments? And more!

itaydre asks on GitHub:

It's been challenging to develop a new design system without an existing visual style guide, so I'm trying to explore more about the work behind designing UI when you're not a sole designer.

I've got a feeling that designing UI is quite hard to do collaboratively, as taste is very much subjective to each and every individual.

• What's your experience when it comes to developing a new style guide?
• Does a single designer lead the process (in terms of the visual direction)?

• Listen to our episode about visual design and craft with Justin Stahl.

• Brian shared Mare of Easttown and Ted Lasso Season 2, two good shows on the opposite end of the “this will make me feel a certain way” gradient.
• Marshall shared Crime Scene Kitchen, a cooking elimination show perfectly designed to scratch every itch in Marshall’s television brain.

• 📻 We are @designdetailsfm
  • 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
  • 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
• • 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
• ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
• ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes.

Byeee!

This week, we talk about the new Microsoft emoji, a cool Android 12 feature, the joy of watching Apple iterate in public, and the new “King of Buttons” aka the Steam Deck. In The Sidebar, we talk about the challenge of having work that is NDA-locked, or never shipped at all.

• Alex
• Dylan
• Raphael Lee
• Karina Kedo
• Justin Stahl

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.

This week, we talk about the new Microsoft emoji, a cool Android 12 feature, the joy of watching Apple iterate in public, and the new “King of Buttons” aka the Steam Deck.

• Windows redesigned their emoji and they’re gorgeous.
• Android 12 will have a great way to handle auto-rotation and now iOS feels broken by comparison.
• The new Safari is taking a few steps back on macOS. The changes have been controversial, and we’re happy to see some of these iterations happening in real time. Betas!
• The Steam Deck is here and holy buttons, Batman, that’s a lot of inputs!

• Brian shared the Hot Ones Season 15 sauces, perfect for you spice-heads that want to embark on the Hot Ones Challenge at home.
• Marshall shared Duolingo, a lovely and delight app that will help you learn a new language. Marshall is learning Japanese, and it’s sticking! Also: this is basically just a showcase of great game design.

• 📻 We are @designdetailsfm
  • 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin
  • 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock
• • 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
• ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
• ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes.

Byeee!