The Apple Vision Pro is designed to blend the digital and physical worlds seamlessly. Imagine having virtual screens, interactive 3D objects, and immersive environments right in your living room. Whether you’re watching a movie, playing a game, or collaborating on a project, the Vision Pro promises an experience that feels incredibly real and engaging.
Screenshot
One of the coolest aspects of the Vision Pro is its versatility. It’s not just a device for entertainment; it has the potential to revolutionize how we work, learn, and interact with the world. Imagine virtual meetings where you feel like you’re in the same room as your colleagues, or educational experiences where historical events come to life in your living room.
Apple has put a lot of thought into making the Vision Pro user-friendly. The intuitive interface and easy setup mean that you don’t need to be a tech genius to get started. Plus, it integrates seamlessly with other Apple products, so you can easily access your apps, photos, and more.
It’s exciting to think about how this device will evolve and what new possibilities it will unlock. Whether you’re a tech enthusiast, a gamer, or someone curious about the future of digital experiences, the Vision Pro is definitely something to keep an eye on.
Favorite Features:
Great for expanding your laptop with a big virtual screen
Did you know you can select text from any image on your iOS or MacOS device? It’s as easy as double-clicking or touching the word and selecting copy. Check out the example below.
I remember in the 90s when OCR started to become a big trend, costing hundreds of dollars and taking several minutes to convert the scan to text.
The COOLors site provides an easy way to explore, discover or pull palettes from a photo or image. It has a fun interface and allows you to test for certain types of accessibility. Watch the quick demo of how it works.
Watch the ScreenCast.
Working with Shades
While creating a palette, you can also select View Shades which allows you to quickly view shades of a color and select or copy for use in your palette.
Over the past several weeks The Learning Guild has been alternating between their Friday 2 pm Twitter Chat and a Zoom based event where a guest explains, dives deeper and answers chat questions on topics that were presented during online events this year. I was a guest and this is a summary of several of the topics we covered and wanted to provide a summary along with links. A video will be shared on YouTube later this month so keep an eye out if you missed the session today.
providing feedback – be sure to allow the user to fail and learn from their mistakes.
don’t just say that’s incorrect.
look for ways to provide users a way to dive deeper, explore and share what they learn
provide tools for managers and leaders to utilize content to connect, blend and refresh on key elements they want to utilize in their toolbox
Keeping Up to Date
Growing up in a household of a teaching sparked a interest to always ask why, how, can I do it? So always be thinking about and breaking down what you do, why, how it works and what can you apply to your next learning experience? Tools that I use to keep up to date:
Feedly.com is my favorite tool to stay up to date with topics, I try to check in 1-3 times a day on my phone in-between meetings, tasks and typically will review on a tablet in the evening. You can organize contents, tags, keywords, you can even remove words that you do not want to be included which is handy when you want to focus on a particular top or area. With the paid version you unlock more functionality with team sharing, annotation. Check it out, free to download or try via the web site.
Sidebar.io is the second resource I use daily to keep inspired for creative ideas and to keep learning. You can sign up for a free email that delivers the 5 latest stories to your inbox which I love and will review weekly what I missed.
TechSmith Tools
We got a question about using Snagit and Camtasia for creating, capturing, and building media. We use Snagit just about every day and Camtasia as needed, one thing I wanted to make sure you check out is their community support, blog, education (for registered users) via TechSmith Academy and resources. Make sure to follow Matt Pierce @piercemr on Twitter.
During the last part of the session, we invited 30+ attendees to experiment and add their thoughts around what they learned, what they wanted to share, and access to the resources. You can view the board and a gif below which shows the magic of 30+ people adding what they learned.
Please reach out to twitter.com/learningguild or @learningguild on Twitter to share your thoughts if they should continue the series. I VOTE YES and would love to see more interactions to continue and dive deeper into the latest community challenges, sharing ideas, and looking at how we can continue to grow.
Miro is one of those tools that gets me so excited about the possibilities and how it can help teams get stuff done because it works transparently, for the most part, and allows you to create, brainstorm, gather feedback or quickly collaborate on the next steps. The tool works via your browser or you can download an app for your desktop or mobile device. If you have an Apple Pencil, Surface Pen, or similar you can draw, annotate more naturally on screengrabs, elements, or just write some notes.
In the past 90 days Miro has launched several new features:
It allows you to invite additional non-registered users for collaborating, gathering data, and participation without having to add them to a paid plan. This is a game-changer that opens up the possibilities of how you utilize the platform outside your primary team.
Visual tables which allow you to use rows and columns to organize text, graphics, icons, and screengrabs
Attention management which allows the board owner to gather all collaborators to a particular part fo the board to focus their attention
More integrations including Jira, Confluence, Trello, Airtable, Notion
Use your mobile device to convert handwritten stickies to virtual sticky notes that are editable
How I Use Miro:
Team brainstorming where we review concepts, gather ideas, organize concepts
Tracking stakeholder meetings, notes, and export as PDFs to share post meetings
Brainstorming: voting via collaborators
Quick wireframing using the PEN tool and lo-fi using the add-on
Creating tables to organize ideas
Moodboards to capture concepts, research, and feedback
Webinars to involve participants in sharing, brainstorming and collaborating
Working with journey mapping and mind maps for projects
Capturing stickies from my wall to share with remote team
This week launched a new MIROVERSE where you can share your templates with the community so that they can learn, get new ideas and personalize for your team.
Why are you still reading this? Jump over to Miro.com, sign up for a free account, and start to plan your team’s next collaboration session.
Two resources for learning and planning around designing for everyone. Understanding the possibilities during planning will lead to a more usable experience.
Accessibility Do’s and Don’ts
Thinking about best practice do’s and don’ts check out this blog post.
Thinking about Accessibility for Teams during planning and workflows.
Developed by the US.gov for assisting teams around inclusive design. check out this quick start guide.
Are you looking for amazing ways to use your mobile device to create content? In this session, you will learn how to use your phone or tablet to brainstorm, sketch, take notes, collaborate, create audio- and video-based media, and animate using several mind-blowing apps. You’ll leave the session feeling inspired and have the practical information to apply one or more apps when you get back on the job.
– Explore several apps to enhance creativity on your mobile device. – Discover several free and inexpensive apps to improve brainstorming, productivity, and collaboration. – Apply these apps immediately on your next project.
Whether you are experimenting with an idea, developing a new interactive experience you can now utilize Google’s Poly in your app or while using TiltBrush to pull together an idea quickly, storyboard a concept or just play around. Learn more at Google’s developer site or watch the quick video for a quick overview of how developers are using it.
We moved to Zoom last month and loving it. I work with several teams every day brainstorming, reviewing, and focusing on creating new experiences for our audiences. We had been a Webex house for several years and during a recent visit to San Francisco last month saw a billboard with Zoom.US on it and decided to check it out. Wow, it is powerful, what I love in the first couple weeks:
Using an iPad Pro in a meeting with an Apple Pencil to quickly communicate, highlight, sketch or visualize a concept while someone is sharing their screen. Great for quick feedback and communication. Previously, would have to switch presenters, files or take a picture we can now focus on the creative side. (Quick video highlight below demonstrates remote view, while I am drawing on an iPad, viewers can see the highlights, and we can brainstorm the user experience.)
Recording can be automatically saved to your desktop or the cloud and shared immediately.
Quick visual feedback with icons or via chat.
No problem sharing an invite and having first-time users view in their browser or quickly install and video chat with no roadblocks to date (using with several users around the world.)
VR has quite a bit to offer creative types in terms of building worlds and images that would be impossible otherwise. Oculus Story Studio is is giving away Quill, based on a 1 day internal hackathon event.
