Hi Friends! I’m excited to share this week’s “Designing Near Future” Newsletter with you. If this email landed in your promotions folder, you know what to do. Welcome to the 20+ new members 👋 

Here’s the breakdown of what’s in store today

💊 3 Resources: Secret Creative Resources That Pros Use

⚡ 1 Tip: Intuition + Logic = Magic

⭐ 1 Shift: The Cell Phone Market is Going Through A Midlife Crisis

Let’s get into it!

💊 Resources

3 links to boost your creativity.

• The Branding Guidelines Archive A large repository of all famous brand style guides.

• Curaeted is a curated Instagram visuals references for inspiration.

• This video on How to become articulate with your speaking has some great notes for us designers.

⚡ Tip

Intuition + Logic = Magic

I have been doing a lot of reading lately on creativity and here’s a thought that I want to echo from my learnings.

Use intuition to guess the right problem and the right solution, and then employ logic to prove it.

Intuition is an inherent ability to grasp or comprehend something without conscious reasoning. It emerges from our past experiences, observations, and subconscious insights. This intuitive sense is vital in situations demanding prompt decisions, such as a filmmaker selecting a shot based on a gut feeling. Moreover, intuition connects deeply with our emotional reactions, super important in fields like design where understanding human emotions is key.

On the other hand, Logic offers a systematic approach to thinking, enabling us to dissect situations, weigh options, and forecast results grounded in data and rationality. It serves as a tool to authenticate our intuitive notions; for example, a marketer might sense that a campaign will strike a chord with the audience, but would employ logical methods like market research to confirm this intuition. More importantly, logic will identify and sidestep any cognitive biases, ensuring our decisions are well-informed and objective.

Now when they come together, real magic happens.

In real life, most decisions aren't purely logical but are deeply influenced by psychological factors. While logic might suggest that a product's value is directly related to its price or inherent qualities, our psycho-logic (Thanks, Rory Sutherland) might derive value from other factors like scarcity, branding, or social validation. For instance, a luxury product might not be inherently better than a cheaper alternative, but our perception of its value is elevated because of the brand's reputation, the product's scarcity, or the social status it confers.

Think about this in your design practice. Don’t let your ideas die because they aren’t backed by logic. Apple’s 1st Iphone didn’t come from any logical reason but just a genius with a strong intuition and even better story-telling skills.

The logic will back itself into place.

⭐ Shift

The Cell Phone Market Is Going Through A Midlife Crisis.

(You probably noticed that I shifted the shift column below resources and tips. I think this makes the newsletter more snappier but feel free to let me know if you want me to go back to the previous structure.)

It’s pretty exciting times for mobile phone enthusiasts in 2023 because big ole corporates are finally trying to challenge the status quo of what a cell phone is. While I don’t think we have an answer yet, I want to share with you why I think this market is going through a midlife crisis.

And I’ll try to make this short, in an attempt to make the newsletter even more crisp.

Experiments

Google, earlier this year launched the Pixel Fold. This phone directly competes with Samsung Z Fold 5, another folding phone costing the same as the Google counterpart. I was initially confused why someone would buy a $1800 phone rather than a tablet but looks like there is a market for it. Or at least companies like Motorola, Xiaomi, Oppo, One Plus seem to think so.

Foldable phones are expected to make up 5% of the global premium smartphone market in 2023, a significant increase from just 0.3% in 2019, as per Counterpoint research. Although, this is still pretty small at less than 2% of the global smartphone market.

Form Factor

There are primarily two designs for foldable phones: the 'fold' and the 'flip'. The 'fold' design expands horizontally to offer a tablet-like screen, while the 'flip' design contracts vertically, making a regular-sized phone more compact. Both designs feature an additional screen for use when the device is folded.

The fun part is that the flip phone style exposes a smaller screen on the outside. This is exciting to many - the ability to use all your apps in a smaller form factor. I really enjoyed reading this review of the the Galaxy Flip Z Flip 5 where the author confessed to using the smaller screen way more than that the big one.

Bigger and Smaller all at once

I found these form factors really interesting because I couldn’t figure out a strong reason for them to add more screens. Are these phones getting bigger or smaller? Or both?

I mean, parallelly, there is a strong wave to get rid of super high tech features and resort to a simplistic screens. The dumb phone, they call it. Lightphone for example, uses an e-ink screen, much smaller in size. It’s wild to think how successful even this phone is, in a world that is constantly trying to pack in cutting edge tech into a box the size of your wallet.

On a different tangent, this year, Xiaomi also showcased a phone concept which allows you to attach a full size Leica lens. This literally takes DSLR worthy picture from what I can see in the promo video.

Remember when all the phone companies wanted to make the slimmest phone ever. And for no logical real reason at all. Just theatrics and glamour. So now, today, I guess they are trying to do both - big and small at the same time.

Fun Reads:

1. Gen-Z is obsessed with flip phones

2. First Fold, then Flip, now Samsung could launch a Tri-Fold in 2023

3. Folding phones are suddenly everywhere. Are they any good?

So where are we headed?

Well, how wild can we get?

Touted as the iPhone killer earlier this year, Humane, last week debuted their device - the AI Pin. (What a horrible name.) Though, super smart of them to introduce it at the Paris Fashion Week, I might have to wait a bit to fully understand the device before I begin to critique it. But this smart device can be used to make phone calls, understand the environment, take pictures, etc. all that but without a screen.

So now we have a phone without a screen.

You see what I mean when I say a crisis?

I guess we are all just throwing darts to see what sticks. I like it though. It keeps things fresh.

Before I end, checkout the new Meta Rayban glasses too. Announced last week, This is not a phone but an extension to it. One of the most exciting features for me is the ability to record and stream live from your POV (while wearing the glasses), and instantly shift to the phone via a button on the instagram app. These glasses also boast a Meta AI assistant which is all great and all but it’s too soon to comment on the actual use case.

All in all the landscape looks a bit of a mess but this is all exciting for real innovation. There is something for everyone. I am personally excited to see what the future of personal, mobile computing looks like.

Alright that’s it for today. ✌

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