Design Details

This week, we caught up with Yitong Zhang to talk about what it's like to navigate the visa process in the US. We dig into the details of different work visas, the constraints they impose on designers, and what is changing in the current processes. This, plus bonus questions and cool things as always!Golden Ratio Patrons:Float is a resource management software for planning your team’s time across multiple projects. Float saves your team time, so you can get back to doing what you love! Learn more about how teams in more than 150 countries around the world use Float for the resource planning at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!HugoSimon ErikssonSungpil SeoMax RudbergJoseAda ZThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we ask Yitong some bonus questions at the end of the interview:What is the most under-rated skill for designers?What is the most over-rated skill for designers?Do you find that your success thus far is mostly the result of luck or hard work?Interview with Yitong Zhang:Yitong on TwitterCreator of the Autoflow Figma plugin and goodweb.design, a beautiful landing page gallery.Trump Suspends Visas Allowing Hundreds of Thousands of Foreigners to Work in the U.S.Trump Freezes Green Cards, Many Work Visas Until End Of YearH-1B VisaInformation about employment visasInformation about Green Cards and Permanent Residence in the USThe lump of labour fallay "is the misconception that there is a fixed amount of work—a lump of labour—to be done within an economy which can be distributed to create more or fewer jobs."Notes from Yitong21:18 It's only easy to change jobs as an H-1B holder if you are transferring to a company that already does H-1Bs and you're doing the same job. For example, if you're an engineer transitioning into design, that would be difficult.21:46 You can only change jobs in the while in the green card queue if your job is not changing by more than a certain amount. This is especially difficult for people in the 10 year queue because it's not really possible to have same job for that long. So what you have to do is to re-prove to the government that your new job is not gonna take an American's opportunity (which is a year long process).23:10 To be more specific, in most scenarios you get 60 days to find a new job. 33:05 & 20:20 Employment-based green cards require extensive proof that an immigrant's presence will not compete with American jobs, while visas require some proof, but less of it.36:10 I think this points system only exists in Canada for permanent residencies aka Canadian green cards. Work visas Canada are even more straight forward.Cool Things:Brian shared Joey Banks' iOS 14 UI Kit for Figma.Marshall shared Hamilton (original cast performance) is now streaming on Disney+ - learn more. Not a bad way to spend $7.Yitong shared two essays about emotions that are both worth a read:How not to be sadBeing AloneDesign Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at designdetailsfm@gmail.com🙌 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 iTunesBye!

This week, we go deep down the WWDC rabbit hole to dissect the latest design details coming from Apple HQ. We also share our spicy takes on the new macOS icons in this week's sidebar.Golden Ratio Patrons:The world’s top creative teams use Float to plan their projects and schedule their team’s time, all in one place. Schedule tasks with an easy drag-and-drop interface, make changes on the fly with a variety of editing tools, and stay up to date on the go using the mobile app. Learn more at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!Nika ZhangRobin RundkvistThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we share our hot takes on the latest macOS Big Sur icons, digging into the visual style, what this means for the platform, and what parts we expect to change before the final release.Follow-up:Steffen Kotschi shared ibm.com/able, a great accessibility toolkit from IBM.Tweets:Jasmine Jones enjoyed the latest episode with Maurice Cherry. We are always open to guest recommendations.Ahmed noticed the off-by-one podcast episode counts in Apple Podcasts. It kills us, too.PS: Use Pocket CastsWWDC 2020:If you missed it, the WWDC 2020 website has everything you need to catch up.iOS 14iPadOS 14watchOS 7macOS 11 Big SurMKBHD's interview with Craig Federighi is great - and they kind of answer the minimal-Siri UI question. We're not totally satisfied.This Apple Newton demo from 1993 was 27 years ahead of its time.iOS 14 revealed that TikTok was reading the pasteboard every 3 secondsNow is the time to learn SwiftUICool Things:Brian shared Uicard, a pocket-friendly wireframing ruler. It's a kickstarter for now, but just passed their goal - if you want one, get in on that early-bird deal!Marshall shared all the WWDC session talks he recommends ya'll to watch:DesignDesign for iPadAdapt the new look of macOSDesign with iOS pickers, menus, and actionsDesign for the iPadOS pointerMake your app visually accessibleDesign great widgetsSF Symbols 2The details of UI typographyDevelopmentPlatforms State of the UnionWhat’s New in SwiftIntroduction to SwiftUIWhat’s New in SwiftUIStacks, Grids, and Outlines in SwiftUIApp accessibility for Switch ControlData Essentials in SwiftUIAdvances in UICollectionViewAdd custom views and modifiers to the Xcode LibraryWidget Code-alongDesign Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at designdetailsfm@gmail.com🙌 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/GOODBYE

This week, we caught up with Maurice Cherry to talk about design podcasting, building an agency from scratch, and the current state of diversity in design. Maurice is a designer, podcaster, creative strategist, agency founder, writer, speaker, and much more.Golden Ratio Patrons:Float is an easy to use resource management tool for planning your projects and scheduling your team's time. Get a high-level view of who’s working on what, so you can plan your team’s time based on their real availability. Learn more at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!jo⁺Harish ShivaramanNayeli PerezPingThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we ask Maurice some bonus questions at the end of the interview:What is the most under-rated skill for designers?What is the most over-rated skill for designers?Do you find that your success thus far is mostly the result of luck or hard work? Follow-up:Manny asked if we've seen the accessibility settings for The Last of Us Part 2. Marshall has, and these settings are truly incredible. Watch this video of Steve Saylor's accessibility impressions.Interview:Maurice Cherry is a designer, podcaster, creative strategist, agency founder, writer, speaker, and so much more. He most recently worked as a Senior Creative Strategist at Glitch. Follow Maurice on Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. Links from the interview:Revision Path is a podcast interviewing black designers and technologists. It is in the freaking Smithsonian!Maurice's projects include:Black Weblog Awards28 Days of the WebThe Year of TeaRecognizeWatch Where Are the Black DesignersAn Antiracist Reading ListUmbra MagazineCreative Reaction LabProject OsmosisThe Inneract Project helps underrepresented youth to explore and learn about design, created by Muarice Woods.Maurice was on Design Details: 13: Eating Horse (feat. Maurice Woods) and 123: Live @ Github (feat. Carolyn Zhang, Heather Phillips, Mo Woods & Diana Mounter)On the Grid is now retired, but was good.Black art and design podcasts:Layers of Design PodcastStudio Noize PodcastUnderRepresented PodcastUnruled PodcastTwo Black NerdsCool Things:Brian shared the Hidden Brain Podcast.Listen to The Air We Breathe and Playing Favorites as a good jumping-off point.Shoutout to Gabriel Valdivia for the rec! Marshall shared The Last of us Part 2, played by Christopher Odd. Watch the playlist to immerse yourself, Marshall-style.Maurice shared two things for you this week:Bayside High and Drunk, a podcast that reviews Saved by the Bell while high and drunk.butter.atl is a savvy and creative Instagram that is using the platform to creatively showcase what Atlanta is all about. The creator, Brandon Butler was also on Revision Path Episode 7Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at designdetailsfm@gmail.com🙌 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 iTunesBYEEE!

This week, we share some accessibility gut checks that designers should think through before moving into high fidelity mocks. We also talk about industrial design and video game hardware in this week's Sidebar, plus we share our cool things as always!Golden Ratio Patrons:More than 3,000 of the world's top design teams, including BuzzFeed, Ogilvy, MetaLab and Hulu use Float to plan their projects and schedule their team’s time. Float is the most accurate tool for planning your project resources and scheduling your team's time. Learn more at float.com/designdetailsLatest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!Shefali NetkeDarwin WittlaoTzuJason WuChristian LundeThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, we talk about video game console design, how controllers have changed, the evolution of gameplay sensors, and our hot takes on which console we are likely to buy.Follow-up:Ola Drachal shared some shameful early work! There's a full Medium post with all the pixels - thank you for sharing.Jacob Collier can make some pop music, too.Rowan Adams shared Complicit by Default that provides useful context about what's happening in the world. It's not enough to be "not racist" any more.Learn more about JuneteenthMore resources on what to read and where to donate to support Black causes. Listener Question:Matt B. Cool asks: "What are some not as obvious accessibility wins we can look for early on as we move into high fi prototyping? Going beyond checking for good color contrast, font-size, touchable space etc."Know the platformHuman Interface Guidelines on AccessibilityMaterial Design's Accessibility docsMDN web accessibility docsSpace and motionMedia typesUI shapeWords are hardLearn more about BidirectionalityCool Things:Brian shared Children of Time, a fun (but long) world-building sci-fi story. Marshall also read this, and we both love it. The sequel, Children of Ruin is on deck.Marshall shared an interview with the Dwarf Fortress creator with a very fun bug hunting story.Kruggsmash is a video creator who creates adventures within Dwarf Fortress' infinite worlds.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at designdetailsfm@gmail.com🙌 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 iTunesBYEEE!

This discussion highlights the weaponization of hashtags and the co-opting of social movements. Delving into product design, they confront the challenges of navigating misinformation on social media. The psychological effects of misleading information are explored, showcasing the impact on user interpretation. As a light-hearted interlude, playful banter about a TV show adds a fun twist to the conversation, while emphasizing the importance of community engagement and diverse voices in the design process.

This week, we can't record a podcast talking about pixels and software design. The world is hurting, and the best thing we can do right now is direct people to the resources and organizations that are able to have the most impact in black communities. Please consider reading, learning, introspecting, and donating this week.Support:Black Lives MatterNAACP Legal Defense and Educational FundEqual Justice InitiativeWe the ProtestersReclaim the BlockGeorge Floyd Memorial FundCampaign ZeroStand Against Racial InjusticeMinnesota Freedom FundRead:An Antiracist Reading ListWhat Martin Luther King Jr. Would Have SaidTrevor Noah on George Floyd and the Protests + part 2How to Make This Moment the Turning Point for Real ChangeA thread on design historyCross-cultural DesignMismatch - How Inclusion Shapes DesignAlgorithms of OppressionHow to be AntiracistSo You Want to Talk About RaceTeaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of FreedomThe Culture MapBlack Designers: Missing in ActionStay safe, everyone 🖤

This week, we share some tips for getting unstuck when working on complicated design problems. We also share our home screen organization philosophies in The Sidebar, catch up on Tweets, and share our cool things as always.Golden Ratio Patrons:Float saves your team time, so you can get back to doing what you love! The world’s top creative teams use Float to plan their projects and schedule their team’s time, all in one place. Learn more at float.com/designdetails.Latest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!Stacy HTim DysonLudens Tam TranJohn MeguerianJasmine JonesPaul TruongCaro LukinsGareth FieldArick ConleyThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar, Marshall and Brian explain their philosophy for home screen app organization. We nerd out on structuring columns, rows, and home screen peace-of-mind.Follow-up:Ali Angco wants a Designer Bingo card. We've started an outline, this could be fun.Joe Willmott shared some early work, the very beautiful and glorious omglaswerpewpew.com.Bailey Jennings asked if we could get full show notes in Spotify's podcast player. Sadly: no. Spotify, step it up!Kate Niendorf started to pick up some of Marshall's audio panning 👂Tweets:Rowan Adams shared a story of asking a Design Details question in a design interview, and the candidate was the original question asker. This is buck wild, ya'll.Andy Ingram gave us a shout out for speaking normally – we try!Listener Question:Jessica Perelman asks: "What are some strategies that less experienced designers can use to get unstuck when working on complex problems?"Things to watch out for:Are the right stakeholders in the meeting?Is the meeting focused too much on generation and not enough on constraints?Tips to try:Change fidelityEmbrace constraintsRevisit with the team right after the meetingFind the best parts of discarded brainstorm outcomesDo your homework, start the brainstorm with a strong opinion (weekly held)Cool Things:Brian shared his latest weekend tinker project, a personal Hacker News client that is more readable, supports dark mode, and is blazing fast.Marshall shared a video from Ten Hundred with a very cool illustration technique: the doodle grid. The whole video is worth a watch, for the art, music, and technique!Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at designdetailsfm@gmail.com🙌 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 iTunesBYEEE!

This week, we talk about how to overcome skill gaps. What should you do if you are bad at visual design? What if you can't make icons? Should you play into strengths or develop upon your weaknesses? We explore these topics, and more! Golden Ratio Patrons:Are you still using spreadsheets to plan your projects? Float is a resource management software built for creative teams. Add your team’s roles, departments and work hours, schedule time-off, public holidays and remote work days, so you always have the truest view of your team's availability. Learn more at float.com/designdetails.Latest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels!SabineYi HeMo CupsNicole TallonShelley HuangOmidLiz ChenThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar we discuss digital gardening, personal knowledge management, and learning in public.Follow-up:Divya Tak added another point of wastage in low quality software: wastage through over-processing.Yuyang Luo shared their first app design that shows how safe your local area is.Jordan Koschei shared his college startup / side project, Shadoodle. See the pixels.We turned last week's episode into a blog post: Quality Software.Marshall has been tinkering with our audio balance – so far, nobody has noticed...until now?Tweets:Vincent van der Meulen built a very neat recommendation engine on top of the Design Details website – this is so cool!Listener Question:Fabio Giolito wanted us to talk about something we said on a recent episode, "I'm not a great graphic designer."Design is a visual medium but there's a misconception that all designers should be good at making pretty things (marketing pages, illustrations, icons, logos…)I love systems and flows, solving problems and designing interfaces. When I try to make a marketing page or logo I feel frustrated and impostor syndrome kicks in.I guess I'm not comfortable with the subjectiveness of visual stuff. You know when something is bad, but the gray area of taste and trends is way too big. While in UX there are more rules and logic involved.Cool Things:Brian shared We Are the Weather, a book by Jonathan Safran Foer about climate change, the food industry, and our role in the world.Jonathan did a great interview on Armchair Expert where they also discuss this book.Marshall shared Notion, a wildly-flexible and powerful tool for writing and organizing information. This week they expanded the limits of their free plan, so it's a good time to give it a try!Joey Banks wrote about his personal Notion setup.David Hoang also outlined his method to use Notion as a workspace.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at designdetailsfm@gmail.com🙌 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 iTunesBYEEE!

This week, we discuss the characteristics of high quality software. We do our best to organize and outline things to pay attention to that will help you ship better software. This, plus a Sidebar discussing how to handle negative feedback from customers, and cool things as always! Golden Ratio Patrons:More than 3,000 of the world's top design teams, including BuzzFeed, MetaLab and Hulu use Float to plan their projects and schedule their team’s time. Learn more about how to help your team plan better at float.com/designdetails.Latest VIP Patrons:Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels – we crossed 200 this week!Anne ChangKelsy Michael GagnebinFabio GiolitoKer NingDavid PehrsonJames LyonsWill HsuDavida PittsJustyna PapiernikYO ChiyunJörn ZanderNathan GrossThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.In this week's Sidebar we discuss four strategies for handling negative feedback from your customers.Follow-up:Ying Yao dug through the archives to share an early project from 2014: a crowdsourced app to help students rate the best classroom seat based on WiFi connectivity, outlet access, and visibility. Nice!Connelly Rader recommended Tom Vanderbilt's book, You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice after hearing our discussion on taste.Jon Yablonski has written a book! It's called Laws of UX, named after his fantastic website by the same name. Marshall and I both have our copies, and you should pick one up, too!Tweets:Hilary agrees: Brain prototypes > wireframes, 99% of the time.Will Hsu isn't a podcast person, but for some reason Design Details stuck. Welcome to the clan!Listener Question:Kevin Gutowski dropped a question bomb on us this week, digging into the deep and subjective subject: what are the qualities of great design?The Qualities of Great Design is a good video from the 2018 WWDC on this topic that we watched before recording.Corridor Crew made a great vide reacting to bad and great CGi where they point out the details that us mere mortals won't notice, but have an impact on the final product./r/notmyjob is one of those anti-design details subreddits, and worthy of a skim.Computers are like a bicycle for our minds.The Aesthetic-Usability Effect tells us that "users are more tolerant of minor usability issues when they find an interface visually appealing."Postel's Law tells us to "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send."We tweeted a poll asking what comes to mind when you hear the phrase "quality software." Your answers were great, and thematically centered around: Fast, predictable, reliable, consistent, performant, well-crafted, delightful, hospitable, familiar, and thoughtful.Defining what exactly makes software high quality is hard, but we know it when we see it.Cool Things:Brian shared Listening Together, a side project from the folks at Spotify the illuminates when two people in the world start playing the same song at the same time. Serendipity!Marshall shared Songland Season 2, his Tuesday evening good-feels after recording the podcast. It's available on NBC/Hulu, if you want to watch along.Design Details on the Web:📻 We are @designdetailsfm🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at designdetailsfm@gmail.com🙌 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 iTunesSO LONG!

This week, we discuss what it means to have and develop taste. From software to fashion, styles change, trends come and go, so what does it mean to be tasteful? In The Sidebar, we discuss the hacker mindset and building for an audience of one. This, plus cool things like a handy iPhone app and a killer new VR game! Golden Ratio Patrons: Float is an easy to use resource management tool for planning your projects and scheduling your team's time. Built by creatives, for creatives, Float makes resource planning simple. Learn more at float.com/designdetails. Latest VIP Patrons: Huge shoutouts to our latest Very Important Pixels – we crossed 200 this week! Divya Tak Ugochukwu Ifezue Sara Zhang Joey Banks Nejat Seçkin Oral Kyler Phillips Jaimin Desai Sophia Pang Q ESC Steve Clark Suzy Cui Simon Taranto The Sidebar: The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe for just $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails. In this week's Sidebar we discuss the hacker mentality, and building things for an audience of one. Follow-up: Sam Bazalo wrote a case study about removing usability frustrations in Tradify: "A mini case study detailing my mission to make Tradify a better product by identifying and fixing high touch moments of frustration." Divya Tak agrees that putting opinions on a scale of how much you care can help to quickly resolve disagreements. Followup-pup from Karl, last week's question asker: "Thanks for answering my question boys! @brian_lovin’s final point was super helpful because it perfectly represents the situation I think I’m in. Startup land with minimal resource. I have a habit of fighting every fight so I better run down some of those hills fast..." Jacob Lindström shared his early blog, very late-2000's – thanks for sharing! Tweets: Jared Lodwick shared a nice photo of his Design Details tee shirt, getting retired after four years of weekly wear. Listener Question: Tiffany Yu says: "Hey there! Wanted to thank you for this podcast. It's been super helpful. I also wanted to share that doing a talk on developing taste would be great." With that in mind, let's talk about developing taste! Soft-close drawers are a wonderful upgrade. Things is good software. Cool Things: Brian shared Beat Saber and Half-Life Alyx, two incredible VR games that are redefining his impressions of what is possible in VR. If you have a headset, these are must-plays. Marshall is waiting until his Valve Index to arrive before diving in. Rafa, of Layout fame, is fearless in VR, apparently. Marshall shared RoboKiller, a handy iOS app to block spam calls and filter your spammy text messages. It's a few bucks a month, but worth the peace of mind. Design Details on the Web: 📻 We are @designdetailsfm 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock 📬 Don't have Twitter? Email us at designdetailsfm@gmail.com 🙌 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 BYEEEEE!