1. Have we forgotten how to design?

Firstly, the move-fast-and-break-things world prioritizes not just the concept of shipping things in imperfect states, but accepting less-than-ideal solutions knowing you can patch them over later. And while that can be true, as Steve Jobs so famously said about hardware buttons on a phone, you can’t add a physical button later; the devices already shipped. There are situations where you can reasonably go back and revise, but there are others where you cannot.

2. Micro Snitch

How do you know if an app is turning on your Mac’s microphone without telling you? Micro Snitch can tell you. It’s far from new, but I was reminded about it the other day and it seems like a good app to have installed.

3. Acme Weather

The creators of Dark Sky are back with a new weather app that “embraces uncertainty”, which is a nice twist. Also good to see their privacy commitment remains in tact: they collect minimal data and don’t share/sell it (an unfortunate rarity in the weather app space).

4. H-Bomb: A Frank Lloyd Wright typographic mystery

This is a fascinating read and it must have been a lot of work to unpick this typographic mystery.

5. My use of ‘AI’ on this site

A nice piece on AI-use transparency from Adrian Roselli:

All this together is me coming clean where I have cheated (images) and also committing to you (and me) that this has always been and will continue to be a site written by a human (still me). On top of that, this site is not following the fad of trying to chase the trend and write about every iteration of ‘AI’.

What am I up to?

• Last week I quipped that we might need to update the “fast, cheap, good” diagram to [FAST] <-- PICK ONE --> [GOOD]. Thinking on this some more, I realised [we might not have to change the diagram at all].(https://davesmyth.com/pick-quality)
• I’ve published the first of my design process interviews, with Joshua Galinato. Please share if you find it interested, and send suggestions of designers you’d be interested to hear from.
• My next available Unoffice Hour slot is 1 April
• I have limited availability for new projects from April.

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Until next time,

Dave

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