293: Is AR a Gimmick?

Design Details

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 [e-mail]
• 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:

• We are @designdetailsfm
  • Brian is @brian_lovin
  • Marshall is @marshallbock
  • @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are
• Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes

---

BYEEEEE!