In this week's episode, we discuss the state of our industry's current design tools—especially in comparison to the tools available to other disciplines—and we speculate about what those tools could look like in the years to come. In News, we compare notes on Figma's newly released Auto Layout feature. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a flashcard app and a peek behind the park.

Golden Ratio Patrons:

Flywheel is a delightfully designed managed WordPress hosting platform, thoughtfully built for busy creatives. Streamline your workflow with their slick platform and sweet set of workflow tools perfectly made for designers! Get started at getflywheel.com/designdetails

Sisu is looking for a thoughtful and data-savvy designer to help build the next generation of analytics software. You can find out more at sisu.ai. (You might recognize Sisu from our interview with Michie Cao)

Latest VIP Patrons:

Huge shoutouts to our latest members!

• Filipa Amado
• George Tsolpakis
• Luke Seeley
• Paweł Sysiak
• Cal Rowston
• Callum Cussen
• David Afolayan

News:

• Sketch previewed some of their plans for features in 2020, including many already present in Figma
  • When Sketch announced Smart Layout, Figma assured users that their own Auto Layout would be coming soon

Industry Talk:

• Mike Rundle lamented the state of our UI tools compared to the tools of other design professions
  • Kelly Sutton replied that our tools aren't part of the critical path to finished software
• Framer X touts itself as "the best tool for interactive design"
• Webflow allows you to "build better business websites, faster. Without coding."
• React Podcast - "75: Sunil Pai on The Future of UI Frameworks"

One Cool Thing:

• Brian shared Mouseless, is a flashcard-style app for keyboard shortcuts that helps you "unleash your keyboard’s superpower"
• Marshall shared The Imagineering Story on Disney+, a "journey behind the curtains... to discover what it takes to create and build Disney theme parks around the world"
  • General Magic is a documentary about "the untold tale of how a great vision and epic failure changed the world"

Design Details on the Web:

• 📻 We are @designdetailsfm
  • 🎙 Brian is @brian_lovin and brian@designdetails.fm
  • 🎙 Marshall is @marshallbock and marshall@designdetails.fm
  • 🎚@Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are
• 🙌 Support us on Patreon - your support literally makes this show possible. Thank you ❤️
• ❓ Got a question? Ask it on our Listener Questions Hub, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show :)
• ⭐️ Enjoying the show? Leave us a review on iTunes

BUH-BYEEEEE!