This week, we discuss the humble cursor and its role in affording interactivity in software design. In The Sidebar, we talk about the long term impact of the features we build, the importance of smart defaults, and the value of time well spent in our products.
Sponsor:Patreon is hiring product designers in San Francisco and New York City. Today, Patreon is at the heart of the creator economy. In the last 8 years, the product has grown to support more than 250k creators, who are collectively supported by more than 8 million patrons. So far, Patreon has paid out more than $2.5 billion to creators, and are now on pace to pay out over $100 million every month.
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Patreon — Patreon is hiring product designers in San Francisco and New York City to build the future of the creator economy. Join their small team and level up today.
Sympli — Designers and developers working together need control over their assets. Sympli tracks every version of every design: no guessing what changed, no lost files or overwritten work, development-ready specs. Learn more at Sympli.io.
Play — Play is the first native iOS design tool made for teams creating mobile products. Design, prototype, and collaborate, directly from your phone. With Play you can experience your design as you create it while taking full advantage of native iOS features not found in other design and prototyping tools. Full access invites available for the first 25 people here!
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Latest VIP Patrons:This week, we discuss the humble cursor and its role in affording interactivity in software design.
Anonymous asks: Hey Brian and Marshall, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the use of the hand pointer cursor icon for clickable elements. Windows, macOS, and HTML seem pretty clear that it is intended only for links which lack the visual affordance that buttons have while Material design and seemingly most web apps embrace the hand for all clickable elements. I haven't found what the official rationale is for using the hand everywhere and I'm also curious what users most expect at this point.
Byeee!
The Sidebar:In this week’s Sidebar, we talk about the long term impact of the features we build, the importance of smart defaults, and the value of time well spent in our products.
424: The Art of Unsolicited Redesigns
423: What We Learned in 2021
422: The Complainisode
421: The Future of Remote Design Teams
419: Teaching Design at Work
418: Fictional User Interfaces
417: The Side Project Prophecy
416: UI Reviews and QA
415: News Desk, Vol. 3
414: Memorable Software Moments
413: Design Mentorship
412: Side Project Perfectionism
411: Follow-upisode
410: Agency vs In-House Design
409: Twitter’s Follow Button
408: News Desk, Vol. 2
407: Pixel 6
406: Who Leads UI Design?
405: News Desk, Vol. 1
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