D&T Issue 7

Hey! I have for you D&T Issue 7 here. It’s been an okayish week at the tech news front! (aside of WWDC’20 ofcourse)

I hope you didn’t miss Apple’s WWDC this week. If you did, no worries, you’ll be drowned in the news the moment you search for that word on Google. Here is The Verge’s coverage on the first fully online WWDC’20 highlights. Here is the live blog of the event. Now to some of the promised content.

A recent article (great read, but long) on the parent company Bytedance and how they came about building the behemoth Tik Tok.

Do you hate comic sans? Have you made enough jokes about it? Have you asked why?

Ever wondered a simple light bulb could assist eavesdropping on conversations in real-time. That’s exactly what a team of researchers in Israel have come up with. It operates by measuring fluctuations in the air pressure on the surface of the hanging bulb (in response to sound), which cause the bulb to vibrate very slightly (a millidegree vibration) which then can be processed to recover speech and singing – non-invasively, externally, and in real-time.

Remember those shiny realistic looking buttons? Right. They are back. Well not exactly them, but a close kin. You will be fine if you don’t use Apple products though. Tobias Van Schneider makes a case for why he thinks (as he always advocated towards) that this trend is making a comeback.

Here is something very cool that released recently and wants to redefine the way you communicate over the web: Makespace. Making private rooms in video calls, restricting sounds within those rooms, spatially all cool stuff. Also some real heavy hitters of Design and tech built this.

When Spotify Design makes an announcement, it tends to be a delightful experience. They recently launched their new spotify.design website talking about all the cool people in there. Here is them taking us through their journey towards a redesign of their brand.

Free wallpapers of some of Deiter Rams’ creations. Typically for design nerds, I’d say. But you must have loved how evolved Apple’s product design has always looked. Well you might want to check the legend, Dieter Rams’ work (especially the stuff he did with Braun). And those were way before Apple. In fact, many of Apple’s products have looked like the legendary works of Deiter Rams. Coincidence?

Design reviews, corporate culture, feedback ethics, ideas, making from for creativity, the importance of business in design and the daunting face of the blank screen. A long read but worthwhile if you’d want to know what it feels like being a UX designer, at least from one perspective.

DHH (legendary programmer and co-founder of Basecamp) has been known for his criticism of Apple and its policies. On 15th of June, DHH and Jason Fried (Rework (book)/Remote (book)Basecamp) launched their new email substitute: Hey.com. We spoke about this launch plan in our first issue I think. either way, Appstore rejected it on various ground, mostly around in app payment policies and that has created a major backlash in the tech community. The matter seems to now be resolved but not without having made a good amount of noise. Critics did mention this controversy probably worked very well for Hey.