iPhones; Keyboards; The Earth
💡Think
Hey everyone!
I hope you all had a great week. I was in Berlin this week for a conference, delivering a 90 minute (long!) workshop focussing on design systems. Nerdy as hell, but it was great fun.
It was – weirdly – the first time I had done something like this not on a Zoom call, so felt strange to see people in different angles, being able to actually look around a room and feel reactions to what I was saying.
Although I've previously been a bit 🤷♂️ about the cost/benefit of an in-person session like this, I can totally see the upsides. So if you have the chance to do something not on a video call that requires attention and workshopping, I'd definitely encourage you to try and make that face-to-face.
Have a great week ✌️
📷 Look
📖 Read
❶ The iPhone isn't cool
Remember when it wasn't the norm for people to own one? It still kind of felt like something to aspire to – a marketer's dream. For non-Apple people, the fanfare around the company must be nauseating, and probably for good reason. Apple have released 38 distinct models since 2007, which sounds like a lot of potential landfill? Although, it seems like Samsung churn out new phones every week. So have you pre-ordered yours yet?
❷ A brief history of the numerical keypad
"Luis are you joking – an article about keypads?" Absolutely not, folks. This is interesting stuff. Here's the first reason – what's the difference in how the number pad on a phone and a number pad on a calculator are arranged? I guess you'll have to read it to find out. Seeing as we tap away on these things all day, this kind of content feels appropriate.
❸ How many people can the earth handle?
This is a long one, but is suitably in-depth. It's part history and part future-thinking, taking a look at the state of the planet right now and posing the question whether we're actually set up to support 8 billion (yes!) people very soon.
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Bonus round – Design heavy this week:
If you're into design systems and want to network with more people, I created a list of 160 women and non-binary people working in the field
A very cool design / code generation online tool thing
A design joke about the new iPhone
🎧 Listen
Meetings are...(toxic)
What's your meeting culture like at work? If it's anything like people I know, it's pretty inefficient. The argument in this podcast is that anything over 3 people is a meeting, and it becomes not only very expensive (3 people X 1 hour meeting = 3 hours), but very difficult to actually make a decision in that form. They argue that writing your discussions and then having a call when there is tension (rather than to chat) is a much more effective use of everyone's time.
Listen to this podcast (27 minutes)