WELCOME
Being Designerly 101 has curated content to boost your creative mindset. This issue has designerly content about AI, app abstinence, design nerdisms, Steve Jobs' empathy, government design system, favorite car brands visualization, state of user research report, food kiosks go silly, and an icon IQ test.
FEATURE
Top 5 AI Innovations at IFA 2024 That Redefine User Experience
After 5 days at IFA, the world's largest consumer and electronics show, here are 5 products Yanko Design saw that make proper use of Artificial Intelligence in ways that are meaningful to users, and authentic to the term “AI”.
yankodesign.com
CURIOSITY
How Much Is Your Favorite Free App Worth to You?
How much would someone have to pay you to stop using Facebook for a month: $5? $10? $100? That’s the question Erik Brynjolfsson and his fellow researchers posed to nearly 40,000 Facebook users from 13 countries. It turned out that less than one-fifth would stay away in exchange for five bucks, while more than three-fourths would abstain for $100.
What about you?
stanford.edu
OBSERVATION
10 Signs You Might Be a Design Nerd
Design is more than just work; it’s a way of life. If you’ve ever found yourself critiquing a poorly aligned menu at a restaurant or dreaming about Pantone swatches, you might just be a design nerd. Here’s a list of 10 telltale signs that prove you’ve fallen headfirst into the colorful, grid-lined rabbit hole of design obsession.
weandthecolor.com
EMPATHY
Pixar's Co-Founder Explains How Steve Jobs's Biggest Success Came From Learning This 1 Important Skill
Pixar's co-founder Ed Catmull worked for Jobs for over 20 years. He said Jobs' empathy was something not typically shown in movies or media. but Jobs changed over the years to be empathetic to his people. He also described Jobs ability to put himself in the place of his customers. It allowed him to understand how decisions affect the way people use and enjoy the products his companies designed and built.
inc.com
VISUAL
The US Digital Service ten years later: how the agency cuts through web design bureaucracy
The U.S. Digital Service (USDS) was tasked “to deliver better government services to the American people through technology and design.” In 2015, the two teams collaborated to build the US Web Design System (USWDS)—a style guide and collection of user interface components and design patterns to ensure a consistent user experience across government websites. With 160 websites down and thousands to go, USDS doesn’t let perfection become the enemy of better public services.
fastcompany.com
America’s Favorite Car Brands, by Generation
Brand preferences often differ between generations, but does this hold true when it comes to cars? VisualCapitalist visualized data from Insurify to reveal America’s favorite car brands, by generation. The color of each brand corresponds to its nationality (American, Japanese, etc). Insurify analyzed car ownership rates across each generation based on 4.5 million customer applications between 2023 and 2024.
visualcapitalist.com
Meghan Markle's logo rejection presents a golden design opportunity
Meghan Markle's latest logo trademark application for her lifestyle business American Riviera Orchard has been rejected by the USPTO, shortly after the rejection of a trademark on the name itself.
The bones of the logo are beautiful, there's no doubt, but it needs to be simpler to truly make an impact, especially from a distance. This rejection could give the design team a chance to rethink and unclutter slightly.
creativebloq.com
UX
From hidden menus to silly gifs, fast food kiosks are getting a fun rebrand
Shaquille O’Neal’s fast casual chain, Big Chicken, is launching a new branding experience at its in-store kiosks that features a sneaky gif of Shaq who guides you, the user, to three combo meals that aren’t available on the official menu. The custom-made interactive, called “The O’Neal Family Secret Menu,” includes the option to order a chicken sandwich the way Shaq likes it, as well as other fun cameos of the former pro basketball player sprinkled throughout the main menu (like a gif of Shaq doing the chicken dance over the tenders section). That's one way to encourage people to use kiosks instead of ordering at the counter (like In n Out's secret menu)
fastcompany.com
The State of User Research
Scroll through User Interview's sixth annual report on the state of user research to find out what they learned when they unpacked this year’s survey data from 759 researchers and UX professionals across the world.
userinterviews.com
Icon IQ: Test Your Digital Icon Knowledge with a Quiz
Are the icons in your designs working hard or hardly working? Effective icons help our designs achieve a host of benefits that optimize usability, such as enhanced clarity, increased findability, and greater visual appeal. Bad icons, however, drag down UIs by creating confusion and clutter.
Test your icon knowledge with a 10-question quiz! Discover key insights from NN/g's book, "Digital Icons That Work."
nngroup.com
