Weeknotes 2024-5
It’s the fifth week of the year and today is Ground Hog’s Day, or as some folks are calling it, Vision Pro Day. It’s the fifth week of the year and today is Ground Hog’s Day, or as some folks are calling it, Déjà vu.
This week has been busy…which is a wonderful change of pace. I’ve been working with my friends at Box Out Sports. I’m very excited by this development, as it has given me an opportunity to reconnect with some old friends from my time working at Notre Dame. I even traveled to South Bend, Indiana last weekend to meet with the Box Out folks for their first ever all-team dinner.
Design Systems Burnout
If you are not subscribed to Robin Rendle’s newsletter, The Cascade, I highly recommend it. His latest post dropped on Sunday this week and, it brings up a very real issue facing design system teams, burnout. Even if you are not involved in design systems, or even know what they are, I think it is worth reading as Robin mentions two articles I went on to read, All Work is Care Work by Jack Cheng, and A unified theory of fucks by Mandy Brown. All three of these articles have been weighing on my mind, especially as a design system consultant and someone who cares deeply about doing good work.
I have more thoughts I want to share on the topic, especially as I consider own moments of burnout, my appreciation for systems, and the future of my career.
Vision Pro Personas
I’ve used VR/AR headsets before, but they’ve never really captured my attention. But, there are some aspects of the Vision Pro that do seem interesting to me, such as a virtual monitor connected when connected to a Mac. However, there is one aspect that is a complete turn off to me when it comes to this type of device: video calls. Apple’s solution to this is to create a digital personal that combines video data with machine learning to attempt a real-life depiction of the wearer.
Justin Searls recorded a video showing what this Persona effect looks like while doing a FaceTime call. It’s an interesting approach for a 1.0 or a product. While it looks awkward, I expect it will improve quite a bit. Although, I don’t know if it will get out of the uncanny valley anytime soon.
Links!
Here some links I found notable during this week that might be worth your time to check out.