While Development and QA are often assigned with the responsibility to keep software safe from hackers, recent events with Facebook, Twitter, Zoom, and more show it’s designers that aren’t thinking enough of software threats and how to handle them.
Discussing the engaging user interface of Tiktok, its content presentation, and how it was a natural evolution after Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.
Exploring the two fundamental questions any designer should start with, and why companies seem to so often miss them - What is the problem you are trying to solve? What is the demand you are fulfilling?
After an initial kick-off with Neeva and its disappointing Digital Bill of Rights (https://neeva.co/digital-bill-of-rights), Guus and Joe turn to the topic of how design jobs are changing. They put fourth that design is a mindset and way of thinking that forms a foundation of a designers toolbox, but as product platforms grow (voice, chat, bots, AR, VR), designers need to specialise their skills and take control of their own destiny. Designers can’t assume because they did mobile UI, they can appropriately handle VR. Instead, they need to invest their own time learning new skills if they hope to take on new types of work and stay relevant in the changing technology landscape.
Guus and Joe look at the https://replika.ai/ application, which creates a digital version of your personality, and discuss how bots build and grow their identity. The end of the conversation begins to tackle the future of design as a discipline, which is continued in episode 94.
As stores, restaurants, and cafes open, Guus and Joe discuss the deplorable state of physical space design we now have to deal with.
Following up on old episodes of Let's Fix Things and The Dark Side of Design, which asked "Does it matter if all my friends are only digital", Guus and Joe continue to explore the topic, now that digital is all we have during lockdown. What do friends, relationships, loneliness, and connection all mean in a digital world.
An extra 5-minute episode around Don Norman and design fundamentals.
Based off an article written almost a decade ago by Don Norman, Guus and Joe discuss how design education has changed in the last 20 years and the current skill gaps with students exiting university and joining the workforce.
For the first time in months Guus and Joe are recording from the argodesign studio in brand new isolation booths. The discussion this week focuses on two elements driven from the COVID-19 situation. Dystopian drawbacks and potential new entrepreneur activities. The former looks at Boston Dynamics robot dogs released in Singapore to watch and remind people to keep a safe distance, the latter looks at new ways individuals are creating jobs through online worlds and video games.
Starting off of an article where a person managed to get personal data from an old Tesla car, Guus and Joe discuss the ongoing topic of data privacy, data clean up, and regulation. The discussion moves back and forth between company responsibilities, individual responsibilities, and what designers can do to help both.
As we continue to have a global captive audience, industries such as of sports, music, video production, and more are finding new ways to engage with audiences. Applying the rule of "create once, scale infinite" everything is software now.
Jumping off Marc Andreessen's It's Time to Build essay and a post from India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Guus and Joe discuss how the COVID-19 situation is accelerating trends and changing businesses. What companies thought may take another 5 years to accomplish is happening in months, and now companies are left with the ability to either adapt, or suffer.
On continued lockdown in Amsterdam during the COVID-19, Guus and Joe look at what technologies might make a leap forward due to this worldwide change in social behavior. While many of us thought AR might be the next big technology, will VR leapfrog it and become the more natural extension of the real world, giving us an escape during times of solitude and restricted movements?
What happens when truth becomes irrelevant. As the world sits in their homes waiting for the end of the COVID-19 closures, many may fall deeper into their own echo-chambers. With billions of people posting their opinions and their own "truth" beside news, if you search, you can find support for almost anything. While many look at the mental and economic impact of COVID-19, Guus and Joe look at it's impact on the delivery of information and how "Truth|" may become something of the past.
Tackling the situation of the year, Joe and Guus look at how companies are adapting against the new regulations around working from home in a distributed environment. They discuss what they have done with argodesign, and how they challenge other companies, tech or otherwise, to rethink how they conduct business to produce better results under the new circumstances.
After a one year hiatus, Guus and Joe return to discuss design, technology, regulation, and more. In this episode, they discuss what has happened in the last year, what has changed in moving from Raft to argodesign, quick highlights on the merger, and how we think of delivering the best business results we can as argodesign.
All good things must come to an end. With Raft changing over and joining argodesign as their European office, Guus and Joe have officially decided to end Let’s Fix Things. In a longer episode, they discuss how Raft started, splitting away from frog design. The discuss the exact events on day 1, bootstrapped the beginning to get salary, and give thanks to everyone in the studio and our listeners.
For everyone who stuck with us, or simply listened to a single show, we say thank you for your time and attention. Keep an eye out for new content coming soon from argodesign as we begin a new chapter for the studio.
Prima returns and joins again to discuss the long standing topic of Ethics in design. Hot off the IxDA conference with ethics being a big topic, the trio discuss why designers often miss the conversation, don’t produce results, and how they can begin to solve this towards provide solutions on ethics within their teams.
Guus and Joe and joined by new Raft Lead Prima Sung to discuss a recent set of news article around AI being leveraged [weaponized?] to create fake and auto generated content. They discuss how AI is leveraged in creating new materials, and how AI is impacting identity. Finally they discuss the future of work for design and what could be coming in the next decade for designers.