"Retiring Products" entries

Four short links: 25 April 2016

Four short links: 25 April 2016

VR Movies, Retiring Products, Public Surveys and False Democracy, Federated Design Teams

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | +Nat Torkington | April 25, 2016
  1. Making Movies with Virtual Reality — As Julia Kaganskiy, who runs an art-and-technology incubator at the New Museum, put it, “We’re watching the semiotics come together in front of our eyes.”
  2. A Methodology for Retiring Products — if you’re any good, you’ll have to do this.
  3. Boaty McBoatface and the False Promise of Democracy — my take: you want opinions, but you also want committed opinions. Your poll/survey/vote will erect (or fail to erect) barriers to participation, and those barriers represent a measure of commitment. No barriers = lots of votes, but high risk of Boaty McBoatface. High barriers = few votes, but from those who care.
  4. Team Models for Scaling a Design System — actually a dig into federated design teams, which is the rough shape that a lot of large companies end up in. The fundamental tension: As a design system stabilizes, every team I’ve observed has designers that do build, document and sustain it, and designers that can’t or say they want to but don’t.

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