iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Wow. Just used Google today after a long time using DuckDuckGo. Google is basically unusable now. Amazing how quickly it has become enshitified.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Watching Good Will Hunting. Randomly served by Netflix’s algo. So great. Matt Damon, Minnie Driver and Ben Affleck are soooo young. And of course Robin Williams is amazing.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I miss live keynotes. There was a bit more humanity and humour. These folks in the recorded ones might as well be AI.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

“These are the best <insert product> weve ever made” is so redundant in #Apple keynotes. Who says, “These are a bit more shit than last year’s ones. Sorry.”?

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

iOS 26 really has made me not enjoy using my iPad anymore. The UI and UX is so fucking broken.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Just put Massive Attack’s Protection album on and listened to it in full rather than just the title song. It’s such a perfect album and a great period for music. A time when music went digital, but before digital ruined it.

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Reposted by Andy Polaine

kottke.org @kottke.org · 27/07/2026

“Datatype is an OpenType variable font that turns simple text expressions into inline charts. No JavaScript, no images, no rendering library — just type the syntax and Datatype’s ligature substitution does the rest.” [franktisellano.github.io]

franktisellano.github.io

Datatype — variable font that turns text into charts

An OpenType variable font that turns simple text expressions into inline charts. No JavaScript, no images — just type.

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Reposted by Andy Polaine

zeldman @zeldman.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

“A great creative leader is not the best creative in the room... The real skill is is building conditions in which other people do the best work of their careers, and then getting out of their way.”

medium.com

You Are Not the Best Creative in the Room

And if you lead a team, that is the point.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

It’s just impossible to find sober avocados these days.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

What has gone on with the iPad’s UI? It’s just gone from bad to worse. The whole multi-window/tasking thing is a mess.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Congratulations my Spanish friends 🇪🇸 ⚽️ 🏆!

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Reposted by Andy Polaine

Daniel Benneworth-Gray @danielgray.com · 13/07/2026

Sam Neill on tackling depression and imposter syndrome when you’re between jobs.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Fucking banks, man. It's just AI all the way down and absolutely useless. If this is the future of customer service, I'm using my mattress.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

I'm looking for another, preferably female, player for my Tuesday night (8pm GMT+1) #dnd game. I know there are several design folks out there who play, which would be a nice crossover. Get in touch if you're interested.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

OMG, I just tried to use Pinterest having not logged in for about a year. It's ruined and totally full of sponsored junk. When did that happen?

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

My hundredth essay at my newsletter (in just under 500 days). It's about beauty and pleasure, films and trees and singing, about the small things,and their relationship to democracy and the large things.

meditationsinanemergency.com

In the Dark Times Will There Also Be Singing?

This is the one-hundredth essay at Meditations in an Emergency. Thank you everyone who has joined me here. A while back I bought a first edition of a Willa Cather novel for nothing much at a library ...

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Spotted this in Basel yesterday evening. Happy #pride my queer and alternative relationship friends. ❤️🏳️‍🌈

A double rainbow between buildings in Basel

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Man, Google Meet really is a pile of shit. It's barely and MVP.

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Reposted by Andy Polaine

Adrian Howard @adrianhoward.com · 29/04/2026

I've been having some lovely chats with old and new clients recently about my coaching work. One of the things that came up was how I deeply sucked at letting people know what I did. A first attempt at doing a better job of that is now at quietstars.com/coaching Feedback welcome :-)

quietstars.com

Personal 1-1 Coaching with Adrian Howard — Quietstars

You're having problems managing complex cross-disciplinary product development. You want work to be fun and productive again. I can help get you unstuck.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Hegseth blocking promotions of women and people of colour. Meanwhile a black man and a woman are two of four crew who flew around the moon.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

OMG, different radiusing of all the corners in Mac OS26 is driving me nuts.

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Reposted by Andy Polaine

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

If there is one hill I will die on, it is this: data is NEVER neutral, because the act of choosing how to quantify something is inherently opinion-based. "Data-driven" decisions are always a smokescreen. (if there is a second hill I will die on, it's that DS9 > TNG, but that's not in the article).

productpicnic.beehiiv.com

Designers will never have influence without understanding how organizations learn

We confuse prototypes with demos, and validation with confirmation bias. As a result, we cannot lead — instead, we are led.

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Reposted by Andy Polaine

Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

In a listening session there is no list of questions. I was chatting with a group of @andypolaine.bsky.social's students at the #LucerneUniversity describing how to focus on building trust and helping the person in the session explain what their inner thinking was at a past moment in time.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

The AI ✨ symbol is the new Intel Inside sticker. Nobody cares about your “AI Inside”. But they do care about menu and UI selections being replaced with a prompt box, and price increases when they don’t want AI features they can’t turn off. Just make your stuff work better. That's the USP.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Quite apart from liquid glass being awful, the lack of polish on any of the new apps and interface from #Apple is really sad. Look at the state of this in Keynote. The "floating" thumbnail rounded-corner palette rams up against the non-rounded and chopped off window top-bar. It's just an ugly mess

A screenshot crop of Apple's latest version of Keynote showing the floating, rounded-corner slide thumbnail bar disgracefully misaligned with the non-rounded, chopped off window menu bar. It's a mess.

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Lou Downe @loudowne.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Good Services came out 6 years ago and I am SO excited to finally announce that the Sequel - Bad Services - will be out in late May!

A green book that says Bad Services: How to fix services that don't work

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

I notice I struggle with certain green hues. My father was red/green colourblind: What's My ΔE? 0.219 ΔE₀₀ (CIEDE2000) Can you beat it? muldoon.design/playground/w...

muldoon.design

What's My ΔE? — Chromatic Census

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Marzia Aricò and I are hosting a free webinar today at 16:15 CET on our experiences coaching design leaders. Register here: us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

us06web.zoom.us

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

The latest episode of my #podcast Power of Ten is out with my guest Alan Colville. We explored the nuances of design leadership, the importance of embracing conflict, the dynamics of communication, and the significance of vulnerability in professional relationships. www.polaine.com/power-of-ten...

polaine.com

Alan Colville - Embracing Conflict | Andy Polaine

In this episode I spoke with design leader Alan Colville, exploring the nuances of design leadership, the importance of embracing conflict, and the dynamics of communication in both public and private...

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Can’t believe how badly Apple have lost their visual design way. I just went to open Pages on my iPhone and winced—really, no joke—at the icon.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

The Disney+ price hike from €89 to €159 seems pretty extreme. I can't think of many other products or services that increase by over 78% in one go. #enshitification

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Ugh. Descript is one of those apps that was a bit janky, then improved, and now just a total UI mess. It feels like it's been designed by people who have never used video editing apps in the past.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

I didn’t realise U2 had fallen on such hard times.

A sign on the side of a brick building saying: the EDGE café.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Sore throat the last couple of days. I’m annoyed to discover that sage tea actually works. It takes like compost.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

Ugh. Tahoe has turned my Mac into a Fisher Price toy.

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Reposted by Andy Polaine

Elizabeth Goodspeed @goodspeed.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

How many designers does it take to be a studio? I wrote about how "studio" has shifted from structural descriptor to signal; shorthand for how a practice wants to be read. But as "studio" stops signaling size + authority, do mythologies around growth collapse too? www.itsnicethat.com/articles/eli...

itsnicethat.com

Elizabeth Goodspeed on how many designers it takes to make a studio

The question of what counts as a “studio” – and what you call one – reveals the industry’s ongoing tension around identity, ambition and scale.

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Andy Polaine @andypolaine.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Last chance to get our brand new 2nd edition of Service Design: From Insight to Implementation at a hefty discount.

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