WELCOME
As we begin 2025, Being Designerly 109 has curated content to boost your creative mindset. This issue has designerly content about 2025 predictions, 2024 failures, a creativity challenge, curiosity styles and searches, awe walks, critical thinking about AI, and visualizations of good news in 2024 and 2025 predictions.
Happy New Year!
FEATURE
Greg Isenberg (on X): 2025 AI predictions
It's that time of year - when people make predictions about different topics. Here are Greg Isenberg's 27 predictions about AI in 2025 - quite a bit about AI agents, products and engineering.
x.com
Revisiting the 3 Biggest Hardware Flops of 2024: Apple Vision Pro, Rabbit R1, Humane Ai Pin
The hyped-up Rabbit R1, Humane Ai Pin, and Apple Vision Pro have continued receiving updates since their lackluster launches. How are things progressing? One writer tried them again to find out.
wired.com
CREATIVITY
Your Defector Pals Attempt 'The Artist's Way'
Is one of your new year's resolution to be more creative? If so, consider joining some Defector staffers who are going to follow The Artist’s Way together. The Artist’s Way is a book written by Julia Cameron that outlines a 12-week self-guided course in creativity. Doing this with others beats doing it solo, so join them starting Jan 6.
defector.com
CURIOSITY
Wikipedia Searches Reveal Differing Styles of Curiosity
People use Wikipedia to satisfy their curiosity, with different search patterns and styles of inquiry, resulting in three different styles of human inquisitiveness: the “busybody,” the “hunter” and the “dancer.” Which one are you?
scientificamerican.com
Google's Year in Search 2024: The Breakout searches of the year
From record-breaking Olympians and the global resurgence of country music, to the rise of an irresistibly charming baby hippo, 2024 was a year full of surprises no one saw coming. Google looks back at 2024 through the lens of “Breakout searches” — terms that saw a whopping +5,000% increase in search interest this year.
withgoogle.com
OBSERVATION
Scientists Asked People To Do 1 Thing Differently While Taking A Walk. The Results Were Astounding.
Dacher Keltner, who served as the scientific adviser behind Pixar’s “Inside Out,” said finding awe and wonder on a walk (or anywhere else) can be as simple as pausing and noticing the world around us — from something as seemingly small as a newly blossomed flower to something as big as a sunset stretched across the entire sky. Use your designerly skills of observation!
huffpost.com
CRITICAL THINKING
Meta to Unleash AI 'Users' on Facebook and Instagram
After some not-so-great attempts with AI chatbots in the past, Meta is now looking to roll out AI-generated "users" to grab the attention of younger people. This raises questions about whether real human connections are getting lost in the shuffle, about privacy and how these AI characters will fit into our social media lives.
rollingstone.com
Google Search Changes Are Killing Websites in an Age of AI Spam
In trying to remain the best place for finding information online, Google implemented generative AI features at the top of search pages that summarize the web's content in various ways, sometimes impacting smaller websites. As AI generated content grows, think critically about what that means for human-generated content.
cnet.com
VISUAL
Visualization: Most Beautiful News of 2024
A visualization of some of the most positive trends, amazing achievements, creative solutions of 2024. A dose of feel-good news from 2024...
informationisbeautiful.net
What Will Happen in 2025?
A visualization of a survey of more than 23,700 people across 33 countries about their predictions for this year, capturing a snapshot of sentiments and standpoints in different countries and regions.
statista.com
