Building slow products for easy living @handheld_proj • @north_mail now in early release. @spotify, @meta, @fiftythree, @fuseproject
NYC via Melbourne
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Designing for Android 🤖📱
I've spent too many hours over the years cross-referencing websites, taking screenshots on different devices, looking at internal data, and searching for documentation in order to understand what screens to design for.
Here's what I've learnt [1/12]
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I think this is the first time I’ve seen a trend sweep across multiple design disciplines at the same time.
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Anyone else tired from this game we’re playing?
If I just do one more project,
Update my website,
Tweet another tweet,
Learn to use Blender,
Get promoted,
Write an article,
Learn to code,
Speak at a conference,
Work in web3…
Then I’ll be safe.
Then I can relax.
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Being remote feels like you just deliver work *to* people, rather than working *with* people.
And for me, that means I'm expelling all my energy without getting anything coming back the other way.
Any tips?
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'Show layout bounds' is such a helpful debug tool on Android. I wish iOS would natively support the same.
If you haven't used it before, Settings → Developer Options → Drawing.
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May be whack, but I want @figmadesign to have a “word document” page-type where I can scribe like I’m on Dropbox Paper and then augment the document with sketches and mocks inline or in the surrounding canvas.
So much of designing is typing. And no, a text box isn’t the same 🙃
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Today is really exciting for me, as I've just shared a TestFlight of my new app with a few close friends!
After leaving Spotify, I started to rethink personal email based on the role it plays in 2024. It's an opinionated take that challenges some of the fundamental ideas Gmail introduced 20 years ago.
It's also my first real foray into software development, and it's been immensely rewarding to jump from @figma to XCode—even for basic views with the help of ChatGPT. The rest of our team are the real heroes for bringing the app to life.
We are looking for an additional engineer who wants to contribute to the app as a side project (with compensation options).
I'll start to share more as we progress to bring you all into the process, and will let you know when we open up more slots.
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After 7 fulfilling years at Spotify, I’ve decided to make a change and so today’s my last day. It was really cool to be able to work on such a range of fun projects… Canvas was probably the most rewarding.
I’m going to be experimenting with a few of my own ideas for a while 🤙
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The whole process of defining layouts and constraints in @figma, then writing specs, talking to eng, merging builds, taking screenshots, reviewing and then repeating is so cumbersome.
We gotta get to a point where designers are *easily* connected directly to code.
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Raw and polished metal is on it's way back. Presumably as part of the 70s revival and as a change from natural-everything. Different from the 00's stainless steel sleek-ism, it seems to be more of an industrial minimalism.
ALT GIGI STUDIOS HQ
ALT SF-SO Studio
ALT Foundation End Table
ALT Ivy Studio
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🌶 opinion but I don't think it's good enough to have messy design files now that we work in collaborative tools. Someone should be able to come into your file, orient themselves and guide themselves through your thinking and process.
Design, then take the time to tidy up.
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Apple Maps is full of incredible details. It even seems like they delay the rotation of objects to create a perspective/parallax effect (a little hard to tell in recordings).
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Welcome to our world 😀 If you want to nerd out even more, this is officially known as curvature continuity. It comes from industrial design and is a big part of 3D modeling for high-quality products (like an iPhone or a car).
aliasworkbench.com/theoryBui…
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In short, a rounded rectangle (know as tangent continuity) continues the direction of the straight line at the start of a corner, *but* it instantly goes from straight to curved. A squircle (continuous continuity) has a smooth rate of change in the curvature of the line.
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Has anyone discovered how to get out of the emoji keyboard search box?
I just restart my phone each time.
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I’d pay good money for a YouTube channel where automotive designers break down the design of cars. Aesthetic origins, constraints, tech/engineering influence, why some cars end up as a mess.
Too bad industrial designers hate the internet 😂
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I really love this sentiment. It’s part of the reason I left Spotify to start Handheld Projects.
I believe we’re at a point where software is pervasive enough and we’ve experienced the side effects of “free” for long enough, that many people will (once again) value bespoke, artisan software that costs money.
You can think of CD-ROM desktop software as pre-industrial food. It cost a lot of money and was harder to produce.
Just as our parents fell into the trap of engineered convenience foods, TV dinners, high-fructose corn syrup and unnaturally bright Fruit Loops, Millennials fell into the trap of free, privacy-abusing, and sometimes harmful cloud software.
But just as Millennials were able to recognize the damage of post-1950s food, I believe younger generations we recognize the damage of post-Y2K software, and understand that cheap always comes with a cost.
Quality software deserves your hard‑earned cash
Quality software from independent makers is like quality food from the farmer’s market. A jar of handmade organic jam is not the same as mass-produced corn syrup-laden jam from the supermarket.
Industrial fruit jam is filled with cheap ingredients and shelf stabilizers. Industrial software is filled with privacy-invasive trackers and proprietary formats.
Google, Apple, and Microsoft make industrial software. Like industrial jam, industrial software has its benefits — it’s cheap, fairly reliable, widely available, and often gets the job done.
Big tech companies earn hundreds of billions of dollars and employ hundreds of thousands of people. When they make a new app, they can market it to their billions of customers easily. They have unbeatable leverage over the cost of developing and maintaining their apps.
Independent software makers are small teams that don’t have those economies of scale. They can try to compete on price by compromising their craft, or they can charge a fair price knowing this will drive a large number of people to choose big tech instead. Either way, big tech wins because they take a 20–30% cut of the app store money earned by most independent makers. A cost that the big tech companies do not incur.
Big tech companies have the ability to make their software cheap by subsidizing costs in a variety of ways:
- Google sells highly profitable advertising and makes its apps free, but you are subjected to ads and privacy-invasive tracking.
- Apple sells highly profitable devices and makes its apps free, but locks you into a proprietary ecosystem.
- Microsoft sells highly profitable enterprise contracts using a bundling strategy, and makes its apps cheap, also locking you into a proprietary ecosystem.
Some tech companies raise hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capital investors, and use this money to subsidize pricing — until the money runs out, and the quality soon declines.
I’m not saying these companies are evil. But their subsidies create the illusion that all software should be cheap or free.
Industrial software has become so incredibly cheap that most of us have lost the sense for how much value a quality piece of software can provide. We have become numb to the taste of good software and hypnotized by the idea of “free”.
I’m not sure why, but we seem more willing to spend money on good fruit jam than on good software. I notice that I spend less on personal software than I do on groceries and many basic things. Yet software is one of the few things I pay for that truly gives me leverage. Consider its cost per use.
Independent makers of quality software go out of their way to make apps that are better for you. They take a principled approach to making tools that don’t compromise your privacy, and don’t lock you in.
Independent software makers are people you can talk to. Like quality jam from the farmer’s market, you might become friends with the person who made it — they’ll listen to your suggestions and your complaints.
If you want to live in a world with more than a handful of software makers, then spend a bit more on quality independent software. It deserves your hard-earned cash.
ALT Quality software from independent makers is like quality food from the farmer’s market. A jar of handmade organic jam is not the same as mass-produced corn syrup-laden jam from the supermarket. Industrial fruit jam is filled with cheap ingredients and shelf stabilizers. Industrial software is filled with privacy-invasive trackers and proprietary formats. Google, Apple, and Microsoft make industrial software. Like industrial jam, industrial software has its benefits — it’s cheap, fairly reliable, widely available, and often gets the job done. Big tech companies earn hundreds of billions of dollars and employ hundreds of thousands of people. When they make a new app, they can market it to their billions of customers easily. They have unbeatable leverage over the cost of developing and maintaining their apps. Independent software makers are small teams that don’t have those economies of scale. They can try to compete on price by compromising their craft, or they can...
ALT Google sells highly profitable advertising and makes its apps free, but you are subjected to ads and privacy-invasive tracking. Apple sells highly profitable devices and makes its apps free, but locks you into a proprietary ecosystem. Microsoft sells highly profitable enterprise contracts using a bundling strategy, and makes its apps cheap, also locking you into a proprietary ecosystem. Some tech companies raise hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capital investors, and use this money to subsidize pricing — until the money runs out, and the quality soon declines. I’m not saying these companies are evil. But their subsidies create the illusion that all software should be cheap or free. Industrial software has become so incredibly cheap that most of us have lost the sense for how much value a quality piece of software can provide. We have become numb to the taste of good software and hypnotized by the idea of “free”. I’m not sure why, but we seem more willing to spend...
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I see some junior folks (younger me included) struggle to identify when there’s still 10% more design work remaining.
When you think you’re finished, create a prototype of all screens and functionality. It can be basic, but details and missing pieces will likely bubble up!
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Last year I helped my Chinese school revise their web app (cos it's more fun than studying 🙃).
There were good elements to the app but it needed better structure around it. Rather than tearing it apart, I guided them towards some overarching refinements.
Here's my thinking - AMA!
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If you’re trying to get into software product design, here’s my advice:
1. Do not spend money on courses. Instead, pay for Figma and Protopie/Play.
2. Start designing fake apps. Copy the best ones until you internalize the decisions they made and understand why.
3. Learn how to test features and flows on usertesting.com and pay to test your fake apps. The feedback will help you understand the crux of the job.
4. Offer freelance work for a low fee, but in return, ask for walkthroughs of the dev process, data analysis, and iteration cycle.
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One of the challenges of visual design at big companies is that while every detail counts, you don’t control all the details.
The last 10% makes a 90% difference but takes 200% more effort, if you have the ability to affect it at all.
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My OCD accidentally turned into a hobby and now I spend a bunch of time thinking about file organization (that's not true, I've always thought too much about file organization). Cli and I wrote about our approach at Spotify. spotify.design/articles/2020…
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Show-don’t-tell is one of design’s best superpowers.
IMO, if a verbal conversation is continuing for too long, we should suggest that it stops, while we spend a couple of hours visualizing what’s been said.
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For those who missed it on Tuesday, we launched Car Thing for the millions of cars that don’t have fancy new systems.
It was a joy to lead the design for the last little while and I’m proud of what the team achieved!
carthing.spotify.com
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Unless you’re designing at FB scale, customers use your app for its novelty, or you’re delivering 5x value, you shouldn’t be inventing novel UI patterns or behaviors. Our job is to be thoughtful, deliver quality and design incrementally at the speed of our customers.
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I said "fuck you" aloud—in the most endearing and appreciative way—when the AirTag rotated at the end.
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Interesting how Hyundai are simultaneously developing distinct design languages.
Ioniq EVs with model-specific styling, unified only by their “pixels.”
ICE/hybrids with thin-light bars and minimal surfacing.
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Remember when it was simple to design for iOS devices?
Now Android is the platform with fewer device considerations.
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Design is really having a moment in automotive… this is the new Prius.
I doubt the talent has changed, so perhaps design teams are getting better support from leadership. Maybe electrification is forcing stale brands to fight to retain their customers?
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Switches can take on many forms (when you're not building for 1M people).
Would you like to see any of these in Inbound?
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If you only design for one resolution, choose 360 x 740dp. It's most common and is similar to other popular resolutions (360 x 720, 747, 780).
If you only buy one device, choose a Samsung S Series that's 1-2 generations old. Right now, that would be an S9 or S10.
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Finder feels very outdated for a modern OS where every person with every level of sophistication has to make sense of all this. May follow up with a sketch ☺️
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Are you a principal/staff IC? Do you work at a larger company? Help us help you! A few of us at Spotify are chatting with folks in the industry to better understand and define the IC track. Send me a DM if you're interested in learning more or helping out 🙏
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I'm reading Magic Ink and it reminded me of how underserving message inboxes are.
worrydream.com/MagicInk/ (h/t @pasql)
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I sometimes see teams fall into a trap where they have user needs defined from real insights, but then design a UI which demands more than what’s available. And suddenly the energy switches from solving user needs to solving UI needs.
Let me give a concrete example…
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I think access to qual/quant data about users is one of the most important things for a designer’s personal growth. Without it, all your beliefs and instincts are built on assumptions.
If you’re young, consider a company that generates high quality insights.
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Remember when we designed software in PS? A tool, which I just discovered, now has a tool for rendering a tree 🥴
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Paper by FiftyThree (huckhum, @WeTransfer) gets more beautiful everyday. @allenylau, you’re a dangerously talented designer.
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💎 Shoutout to @Blakejmyer, @sidlywinks and @slobrockia for their incredibly beautiful work on the point.app brand, card and app 👏👏
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I made these for the F1 subreddit last year, but I didn't have enough karma to post them 😑
So here you go Twitter...
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Now that you know, you’ll see it everywhere! Run your finger along the corner of a cheaper product. You might feel a “bump” as the curve begins. Then do the same on any Apple product and you’ll notice you never feel a bump. Also look at how the shadows or reflections compare 🤓
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If you want to look up the base resolution / viewport of a specific device, I've found YesViz to be the most useful and accurate. yesviz.com/viewport/
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I'm excited to share what I've been working on for the last year! Tell your music-friends to try it out :) artists.spotify.com/blog/int…
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Should you even spend the time designing for different resolutions?
My belief is: design for the predominant platform within your userbase and only check the other resolutions when it affects your layout/composition, or the 'fold' is important. Otherwise it's a waste of time.
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Does anyone know who designed Pinterest’s new creation flow, creator tools and creator code? Cos they did a really nice job 👏
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Verrrry happy that iOS has this Focus feature! This was actually a central idea to my final year college project ☺️
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Getting in a room with teammates and discussing your early thinking is kinda nice, if not challenging at times.
Sharing early work in a deck and getting a stream of “have you thought about…” comments hit you in the face from the invisible shadows of the internet is very unfun.
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It feels really good when you need to change part of a component in @figmadesign and the changes waterfall through every other component it affects because of auto layout, nested components and base elements.
Tools that save time encourage iteration and that's a very good thing.
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It’s always nice to see your ideas and work validated by others. We built Canvas as one way to help artists express themselves beyond their music and better connect with fans. Square, static artwork was a relic of old and provided a great vessel for these goals.
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The way that taste cycles is forever fascinating.
WindowsXP’s and MacOS’ overly detailed icons felt so dated and cringe, but then we return to maximalism in a slightly new style and it feels like a new, welcome release from where we are.
I have to share some details of our beautiful new icon set. Tiny but unbelievably mighty. The level of detail, lighting, tactility. Chefs kiss, so proud.
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Having a Samsung S9/S10 makes it easier to QA implementation against your design spec by taking screenshots. You want your test device to match the resolution you design at.
Otherwise, ask an engineer to take a screenshot in the Android Emulator. It's called "Screen Capture."
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When you bring your S9/10 screenshots into Figma, just scale them down to 360 x 740dp (1/4 of their actual resolution).
If you're like me, you may be confused why Samsung's app bar is 42dp (not 40 or 48dp). Don't be confused. That's just how it is 😑
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Hot take: the bigger a company gets, the less time you spend talking to customers and the more time you spend talking to colleagues. In order to move work forward, aligning to other teams becomes more important than aligning to customer needs.
Agree or disagree?
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That moment when you archive a project in Abstract and it gets stuck in a syncing error and continuously emails all 6,000 employees in your company.
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Junior: learning to find good solutions.
Mid: can find good solutions, but sometimes it’s more of a feeling.
Senior: can see solutions others can’t, explain their value in terms others understand, and rationalize them against other considerations and trade-offs.
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Well this is nice 🌞
A warm October day in Brooklyn, trying to write regex that remove reply headers and quoted blocks from email messages in our app.
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If you don't want Google Docs to be stuck in an age of paper and printers, install Styler for Chrome and apply these overrides. It also makes dividers lighter... (see next tweet)
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It makes me laugh and it makes me happy that this Facebook empty state I designed in 2014 somehow still exists today. Maybe software can have permanence.
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That’s one opinion! For me, how I spend my 8 hours is important, and that includes the connection I have to the people I work with. And work has been how I’ve met most of my friends, as someone who moved to the US without knowing anyone.
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Definitely in the case of Meta 😱
Google’s just looks like Google TV while utilizing transparency to take advantage of pass-through.
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In my experience, capitalism operates until the false belief that if you work hard, you can have anything.
It ignores the fact that working hard erases the time or energy needed for anything else, and that if you do find time you just spend it recharging.
I’ve gotta change.
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I think we need more nuance when we describe “social media” and its effects.
The damaging trend that I’m seeing is the shift to “broadcast social” which is less about social connection and more about social relevance and fame.
Twitter, IG, TikTok have all moved that way.
The problem with “broadcast social” is that it takes on a model of creator-fan rather than peer-peer, resulting in a winners-take-all dynamic that’s void of true connection and social nourishment.
Creators post for fame and relevance, while fans engage to gain access to—or benefit from—creators, and independently try to create their own fame and relevance as creators themselves. This doesn’t create interwoven communities but disconnected clusters.
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Really like how you’ve framed this! It’s something I think about (get anxious about?) a lot having gone from the hardware world with its permanence to software with its ephemerality.
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The fear that I’d have to be constantly engaged in new languages/environments otherwise my hard earned knowledge would diminish over time. And so it’s too hard to keep up without being dedicated to it.
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It's also good to understand how an interface will appear on older phones. For that, check your designs against 360 x 640dp. It's still very relevant, especially outside the US.
These devices include the Samsung S6/S7 and tons of older phones from Huawei, HTC, LG and Sony.
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But some interface layouts (like music players or Stories) respond to both width and height. For this, the screen ratio is most important. 19.5:9 and 16:9 will cover iOS and most of Android.
20:9, 19:9 18.5:9, 18:9 are other ratios, from most to least common.
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Would it be useful to many people if I started a support group for OCD-inclined designers?
Not as in, omg look at that kerning. As in, my brain can't move past a decision or irregularity and it's causing me continual discomfort. I've found sharing the experience can be helpful.
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Right now, a lot (like a lot) of people are taking pride in honing skills and working towards a fuzzy goal of what they want to achieve in life.
What happens to the psyche of all these people when AI outperforms them? How is their identity and purpose challenged?
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Think of all the decisions we make to build a piece of software. Or the thousandsss of collective decisions made up to the moment we sit on a plane and fly somewhere. Or all the technology invented so we can wipe our hands on a paper towel.
That stuff blows my mind 🤓
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Here’s an Origami prototype of Artist’s Pick that I designed last year for Spotify’s artist app.
All data is fake for mock-up purposes. This is not Jhene’s real account.
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I gotta believe these shoes by Tom Saks were on the mood board for the Vision Pro. Really digging the space theme.
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I’m putting (edited) tags up there with typing dots ••• as unnecessary stress brought about by UI.
Anyone else get those “oh shit now I look like I second guessed myself” (which usually I did) fears?
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I love when companies formalize organic user behaviors in a product. Really nice to see @figma turn dashes into stylized dividers.
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I’ve struggled with perfectionism a lot, especially when I was younger.
A narrative that has helped me recently is “it’s not perfect but I’m proud.”
It helps cut off obsessive thinking about what a thing isn’t, and allows me to appreciate the accomplishment for what it is.
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If you're a senior IC in either NYC or European timezones and are available for 2-3 months of contract work, I'd love to talk to you about an exciting gig we have at Spotify.
Please send me a DM and retweet this for me 😀
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Perhaps schools should teach mutual understanding classes alongside debating classes.
Imagine a championship where the goal was to completely understand the values and perspectives of another person, how they intersect with your own, and the space in which you can make progress.
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360 x 640 resolution phones do not have software-based 'navigation bars'. They have soft keys, separate from the screen (except the Nexus 5).
This gives the interface an extra ~48dp of height.
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Well this is a nice lil surprise. I’m glad the product is resonating with people 🎶🚗
Spotify Car Thing's wait-list signups surpass 2 million people (and climbing) cnet.co/3Cmu4gm
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While prototyping with logic (vs a timeline) can take longer in the beginning, it makes it so fast to develop options and iterations that use different combinations of that logic.
I love @FacebookOrigami for this.
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Since the majority of our mobile interfaces are vertical scroll views, width is the most important factor. The greater the width, the more text and elements will fit horizontally.
320 → 360 → 375 → 393 → 412 → 414.
The "fold" may also be important for your product.
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I haven't been this excited about a product announcement since I was a teenager watching Apple keynotes. beta.origami.design/
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