Under Glass

An analysis of the world's best digital products

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Under Glass provides inspiration through a balanced and in-depth view of great digital product design happening worldwide and how those products connect with people.
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Launch tags:News•Newsletters•User Experience
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What do you think? …

Abadesi
Hustle Crew Academy
This is quite a beauty to behold @rob_mcmackin @dereknguyen10 why did you start this and how do you curate the content?
Rob McMackin
Maker
@dereknguyen10 @abadesi Thanks a lot Abadesi! One of that main reasons for starting was that we both live in South Korea and saw a lot of awesome product work happening here that didn't get highlighted much outside. This also made us curious as to what else is going in other markets. We also felt a lot of product/UX round ups don't necessarily tell the full story of product and wanted to see what would happen if we dug a little deeper (as much as we can externally so still not the full story, but maybe close). We try to keep it objective and positive but will sometimes offer opinions too. Rather than curate, the content is written by both Derek and I and basically just involves a bit of research and asking questions. We have a set list we ask about each product before writing that help us break it down, happy to share that with anyone if they're interested.
Justin Farrugia
@dereknguyen10 @abadesi @rob_mcmackin Definitely interested to get to know about that set of questions you guys ask yourselves before writing.
Rob McMackin
Maker
@justinmfarrugia Sure will send it onto you! Might throw it up on the site eventually too.
Graeme
I've seen this pretty much everywhere, so great to finally see it here. Congrats on the launch! How do you choose which apps to do a case study on?
Rob McMackin
Maker
@graeme_fulton Thanks Graeme. No hard and fast rules but we have some guidelines: basically we favour products with strong design that haven't been talked about much or are from regions that get talked about less that are changing something in an interesting way. A lot of times we deliberated too much on what products to talk about and ended up finding out that (almost) every product has an interesting story to tell once you dive into it.
Graeme
@rob_mcmackin Nice guidelines, I like that you're giving exposure to those who aren't recognised!
Rob McMackin
Maker
@graeme_fulton yep! Also if anybody feels they have a product that might fit in here, please get in touch as were always on the look out
Seonyu Kim
Under Glass definitely helped me to broaden my perspective of the product design world! Definitely worth it to subscribe this blog :)
Rob McMackin
Maker
@seonyu_kim Thanks for following along @seonyu_kim
Christophe Pasquier
Super
Awesome ressource, pretty rare to see deep product analysis like those. Keep up the great work 👏👏
Rob McMackin
Maker
@christophepas cheers to you and the Slite team :)
Graeme

Underglass is a great source of inspiration from apps that do things well. It gives you an in depth understanding of the patterns successful apps use, so you can learn from them and implement in your own products

Pros:

The best case studies to help improve your products

Cons:

none from me

William McMorrow
You simply cannot get proper product insights elsewhere
Rob McMackin
Maker
@wmcmorrow thanks for the kind words :)
Graeme
Michael Sayman
This is really cool! I was the creator of the FB app Lifestage (the app you guys mention in the musical.ly post), it's funny cuz I designed the whole app as a teenager. Goes to show how teenagers don't really understand teenagers as much as they think they do ;) I definitely learned that over the years. I would not fully attribute the instantaneous failure of Lifestage to its colors, but more so to 3 much-worse things: 1. The core product idea was confusing, irretentive, and complicated. 2. The UI did not make any sense for the product idea, made things even more confusing / needlessly complicated. Trying to reinvent a wheel for a wheel that doesn't roll leaves you with... well, who knows what it leaves you with. 3. Designing for teenagers was hard, even though I was a teenager myself when creating that app. I tried to reinvent the wheel to the UI of a product idea that didn't make any sense, while on the other end, musical.ly is an awesome product that has market fit. And their nav UI was basically Instagram's tab bar. Which is familiar, and great. I learned design was not about reinventing anything, but rather using the elements that make sense. Simple as that. But thankfully I learned a lot from that experience a few years ago. :)
Rob McMackin
Maker
@michaelsayman That's really interesting insight, thanks for that Michael. Either way you did a great job.
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