293: Is AR a Gimmick?

This week, we bring back the Fight Me segment with a debate on the usefulness of augmented reality in apps. Is it a gimmick or not? In Follow-up, we debut a proposal for our new cover art, and we shout out Linzi Berry's latest blog post. And as always, we share a couple cool things like an addictive game and a bizarre novel.

Cover photo by Niantic via The Verge

Follow-up:

If you missed last week's episode with Linzi Berry, give it a listen

Erik Bro shared the episode with his fellow designers at Reddit

Here's the new cover art proposal, in case you don't see it in your podcast player of choice

The current cover art is by Ryan Morrison
Email us with your cover art ideas at [email protected]

Article: "A system built on parity: How to treat all of your users equally" by Linzi Berry, Kathy Ma, and Sam Soffes

Read it on the newly redesigned site for DesignSystems.com from Figma

Fight Me:

Article: "How Does the Magic Yellow First-Down Line Work?"
Site: Pokémon Go lets you "catch Pokémon in the real world"
Photo: Old Man Yells at Cloud is a Simpsons reference and Marshall sometimes
Photo: Old car radios have these big, spring-loaded buttons that move a physical needle
App: Wanna Kicks lets you "try on and shop footwear in AR"
Site: Apple - Augmented Reality for iOS is Apple's case for augmented reality
App: WordLens (now a feature within Google Translate) lets you "see the world in your language"
Video: "Hearthstone Animated Short: Hearth and Home" is pure joy

One Cool Thing:

Brian shared Factory Town, an early access simulation game that lets you "build, automate, and optimize your own village on procedurally-generated 3D terrain"

It's a lot like Factorio, "a game in which you build and maintain factories"
Article: "Engineering with Redstone in Minecraft"

Marshall shared John Dies at the End, a novel that deftly balances Lovecraftian horror with shameless potty humor

The movie version is currently available to stream on Hulu
Marshall also read Children of Time, which was kinda meh

Design Details on the Web:

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Brian is @brian_lovin
Marshall is @marshallbock
@Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are

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BYEEEEE!