This design newsletter isn’t about design

This issue isn’t about design or code. While it’s nice to know what to expect with each issue, my friend Jason Rodriguez reminds us that it’s ok to stray from our niche every so often.

So today I’m writing about video games!

I once read a tweet saying every video game should have two settings: one for kids with no responsibilities and all the time in the world to master the game, and another for adults who worked a long day and just want to play something to unwind.

I’m squarely in the second camp and have been playing Roblox. Yes, that thing for little kids.

For the uninitiated, Roblox is a gaming platform where you can choose from thousands of games from multiple genres. It’s generally geared towards a younger crowd: games have simple rules, have basic graphics, take only a few minutes to learn, and are usually free to play (with in-app purchases of course).

I originally got into it to bond with my 7 year old daughter who’d been playing.

That’s how it started. Father daughter bonding.

But over time I began exploring the platform on my own. Since there’s thousands of games and barrier to entry is so low, I started playing without her too. For me it’s great “for adults who worked a long day and just want to play something easy to unwind.”

“How’s he going to tie this back to design?” you might be thinking. I’m not. This isn’t one of those “What [insert random topic] taught me about design” posts on Medium. Even if our personal brand is being known for “a thing” it’s ok to deviate from that every so often.

Worry not, I’m working on an article about case study presentations as a companion piece to my article about hiring designers. The next issue will be about design!

🧶 Stray Links

Sidebar.io is taking a break. I do virtually all of my industry reading and upkeep through newsletters, so losing Sidebar leaves a big hole in my life but I 100% understand the need for a break.

Design doesn't need yet another fancy leadership community, please. In conflicted. I’ve joined countless Slack communities but have abandoned them all. But with Twitter dying, where are we to go?

Stop resizing your browser to test for responsiveness. Or rather consider it a first line of defense and you should also do more thorough testing.

In the era of Figma and design systems, low fidelity design has a bad reputation. But the biggest value of design is not delivering a thing faster. It’s delivering the right thing faster, and that’s where lo-fi shines.

Apple isn’t paying Open Ai a dime for using GPT-4o in Siri. Open Ai thinks being on the iPhone is enough to attract more users to GPT-4o and ultimately convert some to a paid subscription.

Images of Climate Change That Cannot Be Missed is exactly what the title suggests.

Perplexity is Bullshit and ChatGPT is Bullshit are reminders of how dumb Ai currently is.

❝ Quoteworthy

🏛️ From the Archives

A favorite article I periodically re-read.

Building Bridges as a Technical Leader really helped me become the designer leader I am today. It’s important to build relationships with folks outside our team, be direct with execs, and participate in company politics (sorry there’s no avoiding it).

I’ll leave you with a meme I can relate to hard:

Thanks for reading ✌️
- Ted (@tedgoas)