385: Raising Your Team’s UI Bar

385: Raising Your Team’s UI Bar

Author: Brian Lovin, Marshall Bock February 17, 2021 Duration: 29:32

This week, we talk about strategies and tactical tips for elevating a team’s bar to design high quality interfaces. In The Sidebar, we talk about how to transition from web to mobile design.


Golden Ratio Supporter:

A huge shoutout to Copilot, the best app for budgeting and tracking your personal finances. It’s our favorite tool for categorizing our spending, having our net worth available at a glance, and getting monthly (and yearly!) digests of all your spending.

Get the app at copilot.money.

Latest VIP Patrons:

  • Marcel mcv
  • Varada Gavaskar
  • Anas KA
  • Fede Sánchez Saorín
  • Stevanus Satria
  • Eugene
  • Carlo Franco
  • SingYu Lam
  • Siegs
  • Sam Withey
  • Rachel Jin
  • Stephen Cady
  • Felix Shin
  • Jon Lee
  • Rafał Ziółek
  • Mitchell Watts
  • Remi Chu
  • Nancy Zuo

The Sidebar:

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.

In this week's Sidebar, we talk about things to learn and new mental models to adopt in order to transition from web to mobile design.


Follow up:

  • Vincent van der Meulen tweeted a very nice note: Best thing I did early on was spend hours listening to @designdetailsfm interviews. It taught me how to talk about my work and reflect on it long before I had any skills. I got my first internship by answering the interview Qs like I thought a designer on Design Details would 😆
    • Thanks so much for your note! This makes it all worth it 😊

Main Topic:

sallythat asks us on GitHub: What to do when the design team’s bar for UI is low?

We discuss some tips and strategies for communication and finding leverage in systems to raise the bar for a product’s UI.


Cool Things:

  • Brian shared CleanShot X, a fantastic alternative to the default macOS screenshot tool. Highlights: auto-copy to clipboard and place window screenshots perfectly centered on your wallpaper.
  • Marshall shared r/thatsabooklight, a subreddit about props in movies or shows that were repurposed from everyday household items.

Design Details on the Web:


Byeee!


Every week, Brian Lovin and Marshall Bock settle in for a thoughtful, often meandering chat that pulls back the curtain on how things are made. Their Design Details podcast lives in the rich space where technology and the arts intersect, focusing less on polished case studies and more on the real, sometimes messy, work of design. You’ll hear them dissect the nuances of product decisions, debate the evolving culture of creative teams, and share personal stories from their own experiences in the industry. It feels less like a lecture and more like eavesdropping on a conversation between two deeply knowledgeable friends. The discussions regularly venture into the philosophical side of craft, examining why certain choices resonate and how design shapes our daily interactions with the world. For anyone curious about the thinking behind the pixels and interfaces, this show offers a consistent, grounded perspective. Tuning in provides a sense of community and a candid look at the process, making it a staple for designers and creators who appreciate substance over flash.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Design Details
Podcast Episodes
424: The Art of Unsolicited Redesigns [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 35:39
This week, we talk about the art of creating unsolicited redesigns at work — how to approach them, how to wrangle complexity and rabbit holes, and what to do when you have something worth sharing. In the Sidebar, we shar…
423: What We Learned in 2021 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:33
This week, we recap how we grew, and the things we learned, in 2021. In The Sidebar, we look forward to 2022 and talk about some of our personal and professional goals for the new year.Sponsor:Patreon is hiring product d…
422: The Complainisode [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:04
This week, we were invited to have a rant session about the little things in modern software that drive us nuts. A complainisode! In the Sidebar, we share our strategies for having a successful design challenge interview…
421: The Future of Remote Design Teams [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:34
This week, we talk about the pros and cons of working on a remote design team, and what we think the future of design organizations will look like in a post-pandemic world. In The Sidebar, we talk about how to weigh comp…
420: The Pointer Cursor Debate [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:49
This week, we discuss the humble cursor and its role in affording interactivity in software design. In The Sidebar, we talk about the long term impact of the features we build, the importance of smart defaults, and the v…
419: Teaching Design at Work [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:48
This week, we share our strategies and motivations for teaching design at work. In The Sidebar, we talk about the shape of software, how we visualize the tools we build, and what it means for software to feel like someth…
418: Fictional User Interfaces [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:59
This week, we talk about the weird and beautiful world of fictional user interfaces: why do futuristic UIs look so cool? And why aren't they usable? Is the future really going to look like this? In The Sidebar, we share…
417: The Side Project Prophecy [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:09
This week, we reflect on why it is that talking about building a side project can often reduce your motivation to actually finish the project. We dig into our latest side project progress and share tips for maintaining m…
416: UI Reviews and QA [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 22:33
This week, we talk about our processes for reviewing UI and making sure that things are shipping as close to spec as possible. In The Sidebar, we recap Apple’s Unleashed event, sharing our favorite moments and spicy take…
415: News Desk, Vol. 3 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:18
This week, we talk about the new Stripe Press website, pasting behavior in Figma, the latest tvOS UI, and the importance of using fake data in placeholder copy. In The Sidebar, we share our tools and strategies for remem…