#005 The Design Insider: Digest
Google I/O conference round-up, plus new features from Spotify, Twitter and more
In the news
I/O conference round
After being cancelled last year, Googles annual developer conference returned last week in a virtual format. The event saw Sunder Pichai and several other Googler's take the stage to unveil a host of new updates and features. Below are outlined some of the most noteworthy announcements;
Material You: The new design language will give users access to more features, refined styles and new controls for a more personalised Android theme. The most significant updates include;
A new system that autogenerates a colour palette based on your wallpaper, giving a more unique and cohesive look to all applications across your entire android ecosystem.
Refreshed widgets with better controls and personalisation options.
More animations and smoother transitions.
Privacy dashboard from which users can control app settings.
New accessibility focused features.
Google Flutter 2.2: This new version of Google's UI toolkit includes better reliability and improved performance, a payment plugin for in-app purchases, and a more streamlined process for bringing your Flutter apps to Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Smart canvas for workplace collaboration: Google workspace will get several new updates to make it more flexible and intuitive, allowing for better collaboration and user experience. These include;
New Smart chips: Users will now be able to use the @ button in google docs to tag documents and meetings, in addition to other team members, which they can already do. The new feature will also be made available in sheets very soon.
Checklists: You'll soon be able to assign checklist action items to users on both mobile and web. These will appear in their google tasks as a to-do list.
Pageless docs: This feature will allow you to remove the boundaries of a page, so it expands to whatever device or screen you're using. You'll be able to switch back to a paginated view if you're printing something in PDF.
Google Photos gets new features: Google photos will get several new features, offering users a personalised experience. These include;
Personalised memories: An AI that selects three or more images that share patterns like shape or colour and highlights them for users in their Memories.
Computational photography: This feature will use machine learning and neural networks to synthesise the movements between two nearly identical photos and fill in the gaps with new frames to bring an image to life.
Better organisation: Several new features to help you better organise and control which images you can see. These include; renaming or deleting a trip highlight, a password-protected folder to store more personal photos and much more.
New updates added to Goole Maps: Google maps will get five new features to enhance the overall user experience and safety. These include;
Routing updates; Google will use machine learning to update the navigation information for users, directing them via routes that avoid hard-braking moments that can lead to crashes.
Live View: This feature will let users see where sidewalks, crosswalks and pedestrian islands are, along with the shape and width of a road to scale.
Busyness indicator: This feature will give you a live overview of the busyness of several parts of a city or neighbourhood, so you can plan which areas you'd like to avoid or visit accordingly.
Tailor-made maps: This feature will highlight the most relevant places based on time of day and whether or not you're travelling. Example: If you're walking around in your hometown at 8 AM, it will highlight coffee shops. However, if you're at a weekend getaway, it will more prominently highlight monuments and attractions.
Redesigned Google Pay app rollout begins
A redesigned version of the Google Pay app, which has a host of new features to help users better manage their money and boosts engagement with businesses, will begin rolling out to users in the US, India and Singapore.
Spotify unveils a host of new features
Updates to the listening experience via Apple watch: Spotify Premium subscribers will soon be able to download their favourite content directly to their apple watch and access it offline. In. In addition to this, users will also have the ability to control playback on other devices such as TV's directly from the apple watch, either manually or using Siri.
Audiobooks coming soon: The Swedish audio-streaming giant is partnering with Storytel to make 500,000 audiobooks available to stream directly on its platform. It will work by syncing the accounts of Storytel subscribers on Spotify, allowing them to access their content on both platforms.
Improved accessibility for Spotify Mobile: Spotify is rolling three new updates aimed at improving the accessibility of its iOS and Android app. These include;
Buttons with increased readability: Buttons will change colour and text formatting to make it easier for visually impaired users to spot and engage with them. The update will also aid users in situations where there’s low lighting or high screen reflections.
Options for text resizing: These updates will allow users to increase the text even more than the existing dynamic text changes, thus improving overall navigation on the app and giving listeners greater control to personalise their experience.
A beta for podcast transcripts: Auto-generated transcripts for podcasts will be coming to the iOS and Android apps in the coming weeks. The beta will initially work only on Spotify Original and Exclusive podcasts, with a full rollout expected soon.
Live virtual concerts: Spotify is venturing into the world of virtual concerts, with the rollout of a new live-show feature later this month. The shows will be around 40-75 minutes and cost $15 to attend for free and premium subscribers. A cut from the revenue will go to artists; however, the exact amount is yet TBC.
Twitter relaunches verification and more
Get verified: Twitter will finally start rolling out their new verification application process in the coming weeks. To qualify, users will need to meet one of the six category-specific verification eligibility criteria. These include;
Government.
Companies and brands
News, journalists and organisations.
Entertainment.
Sports and gaming
Activists, organisers, and other influential individuals.
In addition to these criteria, to qualify, a user account must have a profile name, profile image, confirmed email address or phone number, be active within the last six months, and record adherence to Twitter's Rules. Upon approval, users will automatically get a blue tick added to their profiles.
Ticketed spaces: A few weeks after opening up the ability to host for all users with 600+ followers, Twitter is now previewing a ticketed feature for spaces. The host will receive 80% of the revenue after Apple, and Google’s in-app purchase fees are taken care of. To host a paid live audio room, you must have at least 1000 followers, be 18 years old and have hosted three spaces in the last 30 days. The feature will initially be open to US users only, with no precise date for the full rollout.
TikTok reveals new tools to combat bullying
TikTok looks to minimise abuse on its platform and become more welcoming with a new feature that allows users to bulk select 100 comments to report and delete. A selective market roll-out is being done to test the feature before a global roll-out follows fast.
RIP Internet Explorer
Microsoft will finally kill off internet explorer in favour of Microsoft edge. The changes will start with removing support for IE on Windows 11 in August 2021 and total retirement of the browser by June 2022.
Recommended reads
Responsive vs Adaptive Design - A Complete guide: Responsive and adaptive are two excellent design solutions to help you build websites that work great on any screen size or resolution. This article breaks down the differences between responsive and adaptive design and which one is best for your website.
Getting started with wireframing: Wireframes are skeletal blueprints for a website — bare-bones and without any styling. They’re used to demonstrate content, interactivity, and basic layout before fleshing out the design. This article covers the basics of wireframes, with examples of the various types that exist and best practices to create your own.
The UX of Default Settings in a Product: Digital products have so many settings and features. Therefore, pre-configuring some of these to save users the inconvenience of selecting the appropriate choices themselves is beneficial. This article looks at five ways default settings can improve a digital products user experience and reduce decision fatigue.
How to use cognitive biases to improve your conversions:The human brain processes an insane amount of information, making over 35,000 decisions every day. To do this efficiently, it simplifies and uses shortcuts, which can lead to cognitive biases. In this two-part article, the author walks you through the ten most common biases and will demonstrate how you can utilise them when designing digital products.
Paradigm-shifting concepts in product design: In this article, the author shares their thoughts on four fascinating design specific subjects; Life Centric Design, First Principles Thinking, Automation in Design and Futurism - Experience Design.
7 Blind Spots That Sabotage the User Experience: Companies spend lots of time and money building digital products that fail to deliver from both a user experience and commercial perspective. This article explores the seven ways they often sabotage themselves into doing this, so you understand what you need to avoid to prevent this from happening to yourself.
Useful tools and resources
Book of the week - Information Architecture - For the Web and Beyond: Information architecture (IA) is far more challenging—and necessary—than ever. This book guides you through this difficult topic, covering everything from the best practices, essential concepts, methods, and techniques for doing this when designing digital products.
People + AI Guidebook: A set of recommendations, methods, best practices and examples for designing with AI, based on data insights from hundreds of Googlers, industry experts, and academic researchers.
Design patterns for mental health: A collection of best practice guides created by designers, developers, mental health practitioners and researchers to help companies and individuals design mental health products and services that work for people.
User Hero: User Hero helps you collect all your research in one place and makes data analysis easy using note-taking, insight tracking tools, rainbow charts and reports, so you get the most out of talking to your users.