WELCOME
FEATURE
Inside the smell-o-verse: Meet the companies trying to bring scent to the metaverse
Some startups believe that it is vital to include scent to truly build an immersive metaverse. Read more about that and how the author whipped up her own scent, based on her top-ranked notes: a dash of tea rose, chocolate, and aquatic. Spoiler alert: it had a wet, cloying smell, like detergent, and wet dogs, and stale biscuits.
It was a good reminder that as much as scent is everywhere, it’s also an art form. The majority of the metaverse will be developed by software engineers, who, while skilled at their work, lack the nuanced knowledge of scent. Acknowledging this, many have brought in outside experts, such as fashion designers for Metaverse Fashion Week, and consult and contract with big-time architects on city creation. With this in mind, perhaps the job of “scent choreographer” will soon be part of the metaverse hiring boom.
fastcompany.com
Inside the design of Zoox, Amazon's quirky, self-driving car
Co.Design sat down with Zoox’s industrial design team to discuss the details shaping its unique rideshare vehicle. founded in 2014 and acquired by Amazon in 2020 for $1.2 billion, Zoox has spent nearly the last decade building an autonomous vehicle from scratch. Their goal is not to sell the car, but to build the rideshare service of tomorrow to challenge Uber and Lyft.
fastcompany.com
VISUAL
Visualizing Everyone that has Ever Lived
How do you visualize every human that has ever lived in the last 2 million years? Max Roser with "Our World in Data" had the idea to turn us all into grains of sand within an hourglass, and to equate the passing of people to the passing of time. The Humanity Today and Humanity’s Past infographic highlights a few key points in history and gives us a perspective of just how population growth has exploded over the last 2000 years.
ourworldindata.org
UX
Nick Foster On Design Thinking
Nick Foster (head of design at Google X) has been bumping up against Design Thinking for over a decade, and has developed strong feelings about it. Rather than continue to blurt out his thoughts as half-formed soundbites, he captured them in this article: 1. Design Thinking is reductive 2. Design Thinking diminishes the value of Design 3. Design Thinking fetishizes solutions
Design Thinking works as a framework for creativity, or a means to bring some of the most basic elements of Design into enterprise environments.
medium.com
A product design process for the real world
Ted Goas documented each part of his process as a playbook to refer to in the future. He thinks about his design process not as a mandatory set of actions for every project, but rather a reference and a prompt he can use to either do a task or understand why it can be skipped. Like a carpenter’s toolbox, it’s helpful to remember what tools are available, and how and when they’re helpful.
uxdesign.cc
INCLUSIVE
Apple previews accessibility features combining the power of hardware, software, and machine learning
Using advancements across hardware, software, and machine learning, people who are blind or low vision can use their iPhone and iPad to navigate the last few feet to their destination with Door Detection; users with physical and motor disabilities who may rely on assistive features like Voice Control and Switch Control can fully control Apple Watch from their iPhone with Apple Watch Mirroring; and the Deaf and hard of hearing community can follow Live Captions on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Apple is also expanding support for its industry-leading screen reader VoiceOver with over 20 new languages and locales. These features will be available later this year with software updates across Apple platforms.
“Apple embeds accessibility into every aspect of our work, and we are committed to designing the best products and services for everyone,” said Sarah Herrlinger, Apple’s senior director of Accessibility Policy and Initiatives. “We’re excited to introduce these new features, which combine innovation and creativity from teams across Apple to give users more options to use our products in ways that best suit their needs and lives.”
5 illustrations to understand and promote accessibility by Stéphanie Walter
Stephanie illustrated a few metaphors from “Designing Accessible interfaces” training - 5 illustrations to evangelize accessibility: understand disabled people's needs, reach compliance levels, connect design decisions and needs, rules of the forms, design accessibility and innovation. Also has a link to download these illustrations
stephaniewalter.design
