Product Development, Cell Phone Bans, Figma, Waymo, and Late Bloomers

Weekly Review of News in Technology, UX and AI

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Here’s the latest news, resources, and use cases from the world of product, UX, AI and technology. Let’s go:

• 💯 Mastering Product Development

• 📵 Cell Phone Ban

• ▶️ Figma

• 🕒 TIME

• 🚖 Waymo

• 👴 Late Bloomers

Podcast

Mastering Product Development and Team Dynamics - With CEO Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is the CEO and founder of Particle41, a dev firm specializing in software development, DevOps, and data science. In this episode, Kyle and Ben explore the interaction between product management and software engineering, and how important both are to product development. Ben shares his journey as a serial entrepreneur and his approach to balancing work and life through the four pillars of faith, family, fitness, and finance. He delves into the importance of agile scrum processes, the role of a fractional CTO, and the significance of outcome-based communication in business. We also discuss the challenges and strategies for app modernization and team formation, exploring the importance of blamelessness and system optimization.

News and Useful Reads

New York City is moving to ban phones from school. Will it work?

Phones in schools has been a hot topic for a long time. Phones and teenagers will continue to be a hot topic. But New York City may soon limit phone usage during school hours.

David Banks, the chancellor of New York City Public Schools, announced Wednesday that he and Mayor Eric Adams plan to ban the use of phones in the coming weeks, saying phones have gone from a distraction to an addiction for many of the city’s more than 900,000 students.

Figma announces big redesign with AI

Figma announced a major redesign to its tools at its annual conference. It will also be, unsurprisingly, adding AI to most things. Like all companies. And it is coming out with Figma Slides, which I think will be interesting since many of us hack Figma for slides anyways.

Ideally, all of the new Figma AI tools will allow people who are newer to Figma to test ideas more easily while letting those who are more well versed in the app iterate more quickly, according to Yamashita. “We’re using AI to lower the floor and raise the ceiling,” Yamashita says

Strategic Content Partnership with TIME

The New York Times continues with its lawsuit against OpenAI, but other publishers are signing deals. TIME just announced a deal with OpenAI for last 101 years of content.

Today, TIME and OpenAI announced a multi-year content deal and strategic partnership to bring TIME's trusted journalism to OpenAI’s products, including ChatGPT.

Waymo ditches the waitlist and opens up its robotaxis to everyone in San Francisco

If you live in San Francisco or are visiting, you can now take a robotaxi as Waymo has opened up its service for everyone.

Waymo is opening up its robotaxi service to anyone who wants to ride in San Francisco. Previously, customers interested in taking a ride in one of the company’s driverless cars needed to sign up for a waitlist, which could take weeks or months to open up.

Other Interesting Finds

You Might Be a Late Bloomer

Not everyone finds their calling or purpose early in life. In fact, that may be exception rather than the rule. Either way, some of the most successful and impactful people in our history have made that impact later in life.

Today we live in a society structured to promote early bloomers. Our school system has sorted people by the time they are 18, using grades and SAT scores. Some of these people zoom to prestigious academic launching pads while others get left behind…

But for many people, the talents that bloom later in life are more consequential than the ones that bloom early. A 2019 study by researchers in Denmark found that, on average, Nobel Prize winners made their crucial discoveries at the age of 44. Even brilliant people apparently need at least a couple of decades to master their field.