design
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InVision acquires design visibility tool Wake
InVision, the NY-based design platform focused on collaboration, has today announced the acquisition of Wake.
Wake is a design tool focused squarely on supporting design visibility throughout a particular organization. Wake allows companies to share design assets and view work in progress as designers build out their screens, logos, or other designs. Design team leaders, or other higher-ups at the company, can upvote certain design projects or give feedback on specific tweaks.
InVision CEO Clark Valberg said that one of the most attractive features of Wake is that sharing on the Wake platform was implicit, rather than on InVision where designers have to take an extra step to upload their prototypes on InVision.
Wake will continue to operate independently within InVision, and Valberg has plans to integrate some of the Wake tools into the InVision core product. Moreover, as part of the deal, Wake will be introducing a free tier.
“We’re in the midst of a shift,” said CEO Clark Valberg. “The screen is the most important place in the world. Every company is now a digital product company. The world of design is growing and the Wake product represents a very interesting philosophical vector of that market.”
The entire Wake team will join InVision. Wake was founded in 2013 by Chris Kalani and Johan Bakken, with a customer list that includes Capital One, Spotify, Palantir, Stripe, and Airbnb. In fact, InVision’s Valberg said that Wake’s customer overlap with InVision was one of the first things that alerted InVision to Wake.
Wake has raised a total of $3.8 million, with investments from First Round and Designer Fund.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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Arbtr wants to create an anti-feed where users can only share one thing at a time
At a time when the models of traditional social networks are being questioned, it’s more important than ever to experiment with alternatives. Arbtr is a proposed social network that limits users to sharing a single thing at any given time, encouraging “ruthless self-editing” and avoiding “nasty things” like endless feeds filled with trivial garbage.
It’s seeking funds on Kickstarter and could use a buck or two. I plan to.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Why would I give money to maybe join a social network eventually that might not have any of my friends on it on it? That is, if it ever even exists?” Great question.
The answer is: how else do you think we’re going to replace Facebook? Someone with a smart, different idea has to come along and we have to support them. If we won’t spare the cost of a cup of coffee for a purpose like that, then we deserve the social networks we’ve got. (And if I’m honest, I’ve had very similar ideas over the last few years and I’m eager to see how they might play out in reality.)
The fundamental feature is, of course, the single-sharing thing. You can only show off one item at a time, and when you post a new one, the old one (and any discussion, likes, etc) will be deleted. There will be options to keep logs of these things, and maybe premium features to access them (or perhaps metrics), but the basic proposal is, I think, quite sound — at the very least, worth trying.
Some design ideas for the app. I like the text one but it does need thumbnails.
If you’re sharing less, as Arbtr insists you will, then presumably you’ll put more love behind those things you do share. Wouldn’t that be nice?
We’re in this mess because we bought wholesale the idea that the more you share, the more connected you are. Now that we’ve found that isn’t the case – and in fact we were in effect being fattened for a perpetual slaughter — I don’t see why we shouldn’t try something else.
Will it be Arbtr? I don’t know. Probably not, but we’ve got a lot to gain by giving ideas like this a shot.
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Furniture maker Floyd raises $5.6m to expand product line, move into new Detroit HQ
Detroit-based Floyd has announced a $5.6 million Series A funding round that will let the company expand its operations and release new products. The company has been in Detroit for the last five years and they’re dedicated to creating better furniture and a better experience around furniture. This injection of cash should go a long way in helping that mission. Floyd launched its… Read More
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Goodbye, photo studios. Hello, Colormass virtual photoshoots
Ikea is a leader among those that have pushed the limits when it comes to using digital imaging to take product marketing to the next level. When you look at an Ikea catalog or its website, you might think you are looking at rooms full of Swedish sofas, coffee tables and stylish lamps, but you’re actually looking at highly realistic, but digitally manipulated 3D facsimiles — the… Read More
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The negative instinct
I’ve seen, of late, a tendency for young, intelligent men (and sometimes women, although this is primarily a male phenomenon) to fight back against the inequity of the startup ecosystem by joining political movements that are far right of Libertarianism. This tendency, one borne out of helplessness and frustration, is also defined by a certain mindset: that the world owes them success. To… Read More
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Uber’s design director on what it took to redesign a global product
Didier Hilhorst is a director of design at Uber. In this episode, he shares how his graduate degree in economics helped mold him as a designer and, in turn, shape how he and his team redesigned Uber from the ground up. It’s not every day economics and design overlap with one another. But for Didier, they do. He explains how elements usually not thought of as a design tool, such as price,… Read More
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With new tappable gestures, Tinder’s photos become more like Stories
Tinder today is rolling out a new navigational experience for users of its mobile application that’s designed to make it easier to move between profile photos and profile text. In the updated app, photos now take up more screen real estate – that is, they extend to the edge of your phone’s screen. The way you move between photos and profiles has changed too, as you now tap… Read More
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Outside of AI, companies are doing less research and more development
If you’ve been following the headlines in the world of AI, you might be fooled into thinking that corporations are doubling down, rather than withdrawing, from pure research. But on the ground, things are considerably more complicated — tech companies are spending more on the development part of R&D while relying more on cash strapped universities to move the needle on… Read More
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Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg on facing exclusion in design with actions
Automattic, MIT Center for Civic Media and my company, The Mash-Up Americans, have been working together to have honest dialogues, build empathy and help make the world a more inclusive and compassionate place with technology and design. So far, we’ve laid out the problem, explored our assumptions, and talked about how we engage with one another online. In this, our… Read More
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Twitter tweaks its design again in an attempt to woo newcomers
In an effort to better cater to newcomers, Twitter once again is redesigning its app across mobile, desktop and the web. The revamp isn’t a radical departure from its prior look-and-feel or user experience – unlike when it introduced its own stories-like feature called Moments, for example, or when began reordering the tweets in your timeline. Instead, the update involves a series… Read More
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