Episode 95 - Demand over brilliance

While Development and QA are often assigned with the responsibility to keep software safe from hackers, recent events with Facebook, Twitter, Zoom, and more show it’s designers that aren’t thinking enough of software threats and how to handle them.

Discussing the engaging user interface of Tiktok, its content presentation, and how it was a natural evolution after Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

Exploring the two fundamental questions any designer should start with, and why companies seem to so often miss them - What is the problem you are trying to solve? What is the demand you are fulfilling?

After an initial kick-off with Neeva and its disappointing Digital Bill of Rights (https://neeva.co/digital-bill-of-rights), Guus and Joe turn to the topic of how design jobs are changing. They put fourth that design is a mindset and way of thinking that forms a foundation of a designers toolbox, but as product platforms grow (voice, chat, bots, AR, VR), designers need to specialise their skills and take control of their own destiny. Designers can’t assume because they did mobile UI, they can appropriately handle VR. Instead, they need to invest their own time learning new skills if they hope to take on new types of work and stay relevant in the changing technology landscape.

Guus and Joe look at the https://replika.ai/ application, which creates a digital version of your personality, and discuss how bots build and grow their identity. The end of the conversation begins to tackle the future of design as a discipline, which is continued in episode 94.

As stores, restaurants, and cafes open, Guus and Joe discuss the deplorable state of physical space design we now have to deal with.

Following up on old episodes of Let's Fix Things and The Dark Side of Design, which asked "Does it matter if all my friends are only digital", Guus and Joe continue to explore the topic, now that digital is all we have during lockdown. What do friends, relationships, loneliness, and connection all mean in a digital world.

An extra 5-minute episode around Don Norman and design fundamentals.

Based off an article written almost a decade ago by Don Norman, Guus and Joe discuss how design education has changed in the last 20 years and the current skill gaps with students exiting university and joining the workforce. https://jnd.org/why_design_education_must_change/

For the first time in months Guus and Joe are recording from the argodesign studio in brand new isolation booths. The discussion this week focuses on two elements driven from the COVID-19 situation. Dystopian drawbacks and potential new entrepreneur activities. The former looks at Boston Dynamics robot dogs released in Singapore to watch and remind people to keep a safe distance, the latter looks at new ways individuals are creating jobs through online worlds and video games.