Do you ever look at the news, and wonder about the process behind the news cycle? I did, and for the last couple of decades it’s been the subject of …read more

Get ready to be mercilessly chainsawed in half by randos rolling around the map like bowling balls, ‘cause the Gears of War: Reloaded multiplayer beta is this happening this weekend and next. It’ll be a nice dose of 2006 nostalgia hitting right in th

Game Pass – will it continue forever? (Microsoft) The Monday letters page struggles to predict what’s going to happen with the PlayStation 6, as one reader sees their opinion of the Switch 2 change over time. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk Final Pass I agree with a lot of what was said about the current state of Xbox in the Reader’s Feature this weekend and how the more Microsoft spends, and the more companies they own, the less the seem to be in control. Which is very strange really.The biggest recent failure has got to be Game Pass, which has not had the impact they expected and yet they don’t seem ready to acknowledge that. If they’re thinking of increasing the price again, like those rumours say, then I think that will be the point at which you can draw a line under the whole idea and admit it’s never going to catch on. But would Microsoft ever shut down Game Pass completely? I feel that would almost be more humiliating than stopping making consoles, so I can’t really imagine it. Instead, they’ll make it more and more expensive and put more and more restrictions on day one games until it’s no longer recognisable.Grackle Panic button Strange to see Sony talking relatively openly about Nintendo and Microsoft as competition. I can’t remember the last time they mentioned either of them, even if they obviously would prefer not to have, if they hadn’t been asked by investors.At no point did they acknowledge that the Switch has completely outsold both their last two consoles, so I’m not sure where their confidence comes from. I guess it’s from the fact that they know they’ve done nothing this gen and still come out on top, so from their perspective they’ve got plenty in reserve. Expert, exclusive gaming analysis Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Having your panic button being ‘do anything at all’ must be pretty reassuring really. Nintendo has had to work to get where they are with the Switch but Sony is just coasting it.Lupus James’ LadderJacob’s Ladder is a film I’ve been meaning to watch for a while, and I guessed the ending quite early on, but it feels like a Silent Hill film. I don’t know if you guys have seen it but it’s an excellent film and the hospital scene near the end, and the cages blocking off the underground early on, just remind me of the game. A depressing film overall but worth a watch.Simon GC: Jacob’s Ladder was as a major influence on Silent Hill 2 in particular, even the jacket James is wearing is the same. Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk Seeing the future I know everyone likes to think of themselves as Nostradamus, but I have to admit I have absolutely no clue what Sony is planning for the PlayStation 6. A new console that is just the usual update, that sits under your TV, is easy enough to imagine but surely they’re not going to do that again?But the idea of having new home and portable machines that come out at the same time seems so unlikely to me. Surely the portable wouldn’t be a separate format, but I can’t see it being any kind of portable that runs its own games because it’d never be as powerful as the home machine. So, it’s really just a PlayStation Portal 2? Like I said, I don’t know, but for some reason I have a bad feeling about that the next gen and whatever Sony does end up unveiling. I suspect that whatever they and Microsoft does it’s going to end up making the Switch 2 (and PC) seem even more appealing by comparison.Gonch Hidden insight I’m not going to say that Welcome Tour is a good game but what I will say is that I found it very interesting at times and I’m actually kind of surprised that Nintendo revealed some of the information that they did. Most of it could probably be found out by reverse engineering it and just taking it apart but I’m still surprised it went into as much detail as it did.You’re right that it’s all presented in a very dull way but personally I found the ‘Insights’ to be the best part of the game. The minigames really are not very good and I was always glad when they were over. So, while I would not necessarily recommend the game (it’s not really a game) I would say that it can be of interest to people who have an interest in how consoles work and how Nintendo think.Mogwai Purchase privilege I’ve recently had the privilege of buying Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from the website CDKeys, using a 10% discount code. I was lucky enough to only spend a total of £25.99; much cheaper than purchasing the title for console. If only Ubisoft had the foresight to see what they allowed to slip through their fingers. I’d also like to mention that from what I’ve read quite recently ,and a couple of mixed views, I don’t see myself cancelling my Switch 2. On the contrary, it just is coming across as a disappointment.From the battery life to the lack of launch titles, an empty open world is never a smart choice to make not even Mario is safe from that. That leaves the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally that’s recently been showcased and is set for an October launch. I won’t lie it does look in the same vein as the Switch 2, far too similar to the ROG Ally X model. Just with grips and a dedicated Xbox button. The Z2 Extreme chip has me intrigued, however. How much of a transcendental shift it makes is another question however. I’ll have to wait to receive official confirmation for a price and release date. But there’s also a Lenovo Legion Go 2 waiting in the wings. I hope we hear more information soon. Preferably before my 28th in August.Shahzaib Sadiq Tip of the iceberg Interesting to hear about Cyberpunk 2077 running well on the Switch 2. I think if they’re getting that kind of performance at launch, from a third party not use to working with Nintendo hardware, that bodes very well for the future.I think we’re probably underestimating the Switch 2 a lot at the moment and stuff we’ll be seeing in two or three years is going to be amazing, I predict. What I can’t predict is when we’ll hear about any of this. I really hope there’s a Nintendo Direct this week.Dano Changing opinions So just a little over a week with the Switch 2 and after initially feeling incredibly meh about the new console and Mario Kart a little more playtime has been more optimistic about the console and much more positive about Mario Kart World.It did feel odd having a new console from Nintendo that didn’t inspire that childlike excitement. An iterative upgrade isn’t very exciting and as I own a Steam Deck the advancements in processing weren’t all that exciting either. I can imagine someone who only bough an OG Switch back in 2017 really noticing the improvements but if you bought an OLED it’s basically a Switch Pro (minus the OLED). The criminally low level of software support doesn’t help. I double dipped Street Fighter 6 only to discover I can’t transfer progress or DLC across from my Xbox, which sort of means if I want both profiles to have parity I have to buy everything twice! I also treated myself to a new Pro Controller and find using it for Street Fighter almost unplayable as the L and ZL buttons are far too easy to accidently press when playing. Mario Kart initially felt like more of the same and it was only after I made an effort to explore the world map, unlock characters and karts, and try the new grinding/ollie mechanic that it clicked. I am now really enjoying it, especially the remixed soundtracks. I do however want more Switch 2 exclusive experiences – going back through my back catalogue for improved frame rates doesn’t cut it Nintendo! As someone with a large digital library the system transfer was very frustrating and the new virtual cartridges are just awful – does a Switch 2 need to be online all the time now? Not the best idea for a portable system. So, the start of a new console lifecycle and hopefully lots of new IP – I suspect Nintendo will try and get us to revisit our back catalogues first though.BristolPete Inbox also-rans Just thought I would mention that if anyone’s interested in purchasing the Mortal Kombat 1 Definitive Edition, which includes all DLC, that it’s currently an absolute steal on the Xbox store at £21.99.Nick The GreekI’ve just won my first Knockout Tour online race on Mario Kart World! I’ve got to say, the feeling is magnificent.Rable More Trending Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk The small printNew Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content. You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot. You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter. Arrow MORE: Games Inbox: Is Mario Kart World too hard? GameCentral Sign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy

Perhaps the oldest, most pernicious form of human bias is that of men toward women. It often started at the moment of birth. In ancient Athens, at a public ceremony called the amphidromia, fathers would inspect a newborn and decide whether it would be part of the family, or be cast away. One often socially acceptable reason for abandoning the baby: It was a girl. Female infanticide has been distressingly common in many societies — and its practice is not just ancient history. In 1990, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen looked at birth ratios in Asia, North Africa, and China and calculated that more than 100 million women were essentially “missing” — meaning that, based on the normal ratio of boys to girls at birth and the longevity of both genders, there was a huge missing number of girls who should have been born, but weren’t. Sen’s estimate came before the truly widespread adoption of ultrasound tests that could determine the sex of a fetus in utero — which actually made the problem worse, leading to a wave of sex-selective abortions. These were especially common in countries like India and China; the latter’s one-child policy and old biases made families desperate for their one child to be a boy. The Economist has estimated that since 1980 alone, there have been approximately 50 million fewer girls born worldwide than would naturally be expected, which almost certainly means that roughly that nearly all of those girls were aborted for no other reason than their sex. The preference for boys was a bias that killed in mass numbers.But in one of the most important social shifts of our time, that bias is changing. In a great cover story earlier this month, The Economist reported that the number of annual excess male births has fallen from a peak of 1.7 million in 2000 to around 200,000, which puts it back within the biologically standard birth ratio of 105 boys for every 100 girls. Countries that once had highly skewed sex ratios — like South Korea, which saw almost 116 boys born for every 100 girls in 1990 — now have normal or near-normal ratios. Altogether, The Economist estimated that the decline in sex preference at birth in the past 25 years has saved the equivalent of 7 million girls. That’s comparable to the number of lives saved by anti-smoking efforts in the US. So how, exactly, have we overcome a prejudice that seemed so embedded in human society?Success in school and the workplaceFor one, we have relaxed discrimination against girls and women in other ways — in school and in the workplace. With fewer limits, girls are outperforming boys in the classroom. In the most recent international PISA tests, considered the gold standard for evaluating student performance around the world, 15-year-old girls beat their male counterparts in reading in 79 out of 81 participating countries or economies, while the historic male advantage in math scores has fallen to single digits. Girls are also dominating in higher education, with 113 female students at that level for every 100 male students. While women continue to earn less than men, the gender pay gap has been shrinking, and in a number of urban areas in the US, young women have actually been outearning young men. Government policies have helped accelerate that shift, in part because they have come to recognize the serious social problems that eventually result from decades of anti-girl discrimination. In countries like South Korea and China, which have long had some of the most skewed gender ratios at birth, governments have cracked down on technologies that enable sex-selective abortion. In India, where female infanticide and neglect have been particularly horrific, slogans like “Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter” have helped change opinions. A changing preferenceThe shift is being seen not just in birth sex ratios, but in opinion polls — and in the actions of would-be parents.Between 1983 and 2003, The Economist reported, the proportion of South Korean women who said it was “necessary” to have a son fell from 48 percent to 6 percent, while nearly half of women now say they want daughters. In Japan, the shift has gone even further — as far back as 2002, 75 percent of couples who wanted only one child said they hoped for a daughter.In the US, which allows sex selection for couples doing in-vitro fertilization, there is growing evidence that would-be parents prefer girls, as do potential adoptive parents. While in the past, parents who had a girl first were more likely to keep trying to have children in an effort to have a boy, the opposite is now true — couples who have a girl first are less likely to keep trying. A more equal futureThere’s still more progress to be made. In northwest of India, for instance, birth ratios that overly skew toward boys are still the norm. In regions of sub-Saharan Africa, birth sex ratios may be relatively normal, but post-birth discrimination in the form of poorer nutrition and worse medical care still lingers. And course, women around the world are still subject to unacceptable levels of violence and discrimination from men.And some of the reasons for this shift may not be as high-minded as we’d like to think. Boys around the world are struggling in the modern era. They increasingly underperform in education, are more likely to be involved in violent crime, and in general, are failing to launch into adulthood. In the US, 20 percent of American men between 25 and 34 still live with their parents, compared to 15 percent of similarly aged women. It also seems to be the case that at least some of the increasing preference for girls is rooted in sexist stereotypes. Parents around the world may now prefer girls partly because they see them as more likely to take care of them in their old age — meaning a different kind of bias against women, that they are more natural caretakers, may be paradoxically driving the decline in prejudice against girls at birth.But make no mistake — the decline of boy preference is a clear mark of social progress, one measured in millions of girls’ lives saved. And maybe one Father’s Day, not too long from now, we’ll reach the point where daughters and sons are simply children: equally loved and equally welcomed.A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!See More:

Liquid Glass – the tech world’s abuzz with this new term from Apple’s design playbook following their reveal of the new slew of operating systems at WWDC 2025. What is liquid glass? Well, it’s a multi-tier strategy on Apple’s part to redefine interfaces, moving away from the minimalist interfaces to introduce gorgeously refractive glass-like interfaces instead. These glass elements interact with screen elements by bending light like real glass would. Think of holding a magnifying glass to a newspaper to watch the text around the edges warp while the center stays clear. There’s speculation that this move towards glass-based interfaces was a conscious effort to further Apple’s spatial interface goals… but to be honest, we were in love with Liquid Glass back as early as 2021. What do I mean? Well, I’m talking about the NightWatch, an Apple Watch dock from 4 years ago that did exactly what Liquid Glass did, amplify the watch’s screen into a gorgeous liquid orb while your watch was charging! Designer: NightWatch Click Here to Buy Now The NightWatch, as its name so succinctly implies, is a dock for your watch while it charges overnight. Shaped like a massive orb, this dock turns your watch’s night-time charging face into a massive, magnified alarm clock that’s easier to see. Moreover, the dock amplifies the watch’s audio too (through clever design details), transforming your Watch into a makeshift alarm clock that works remarkably well. There’s no hidden components, no inner trickery – the entire NightWatch is a cleverly designed, solid piece of lucite that does three things remarkably well. First, it docks the Apple Watch and charger inside it, magnifying the watch screen so the numbers are clearly legible even from a couple of feet away. Secondly, channels located strategically under the Watch’s speaker units amplify the sound (sort of like how your voice is louder when you cup your hands around your mouth) so your alarm rings louder. Thirdly (and this might be the best feature yet), the lucite orb is touch-sensitive. Which means a mere tap on the surface causes your Watch screen to wake so you can see the time! The dock may have been designed in 2021, but its design philosophies align with Apple’s Liquid Glass push brilliantly. Liquid Glass is all about mimicking real-world materials, bringing physicality to the digital world while still maintaining a pristine aesthetic that boosts focus and highlights important elements. That’s exactly what the NightWatch does too – it takes the Watch’s flat digital interface and brings real-world physicality to it through the refraction and magnification of the clear lucite. It also helps easily highlight important elements by enlarging your watch face for clearer timekeeping. The NightWatch is compatible with all Apple Watch series (as long as your watch doesn’t have a case on it). Click Here to Buy NowThe post ‘Liquid Glass’ Apple Watch Dock might be the Coolest Smartwatch Accessory of the Season first appeared on Yanko Design.

One stock recently impacted by a whirlwind of volatility is Block—the fintech powerhouse behind Square, Cash App, Tidal Music, and more. The company’s COO and CFO, Amrita Ahuja, shares how her team is using new AI tools to find opportunity amid disruption and reach customers left behind by traditional financial systems. Ahuja also shares lessons from the video game industry and discusses Gen Z’s surprising approach to money management.   This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. As a leader, when you’re looking at all of this volatility—the tariffs, consumer sentiment’s been unclear, the stock market’s been all over the place. You guys had a huge one-day drop in early May, and it quickly bounced back. How do you make sense of all these external factors? Yeah, our focus is on what we can control. And ultimately, the thing that we are laser-focused on for our business is product velocity. How quickly can we start small with something, launch something for our customers, and then test and iterate and learn so that ultimately, that something that we’ve launched scales into an important product? I’ll give you an example. Cash App Borrow, which is a product where our customers can get access to a line of credit, often $100, $200, that bridges them from paycheck to paycheck. We know so many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. That’s a product that we launched about three years ago and have now scaled to serve 9 million actives with $15 billion in credit supply to our customers in a span of a couple short years. The more we can be out testing and launching product at a pace, the more we know we are ultimately delivering value to our customers, and the right things will happen from a stock perspective. Block is a financial services provider. You have Square, the point-of-sale system; the digital wallet Cash App, which you mentioned, which competes with Venmo and Robinhood; and a bunch of others. Then you’ve got the buy-now, pay-later leader Afterpay. You chair Square Financial Services, which is Block’s chartered bank. But you’ve said that in the fintech world, Block is only a little bit fin—that comparatively, it’s more tech. Can you explain what you mean by that? What we think is unique about us is our ability as a technology company to completely change innovation in the space, such that we can help solve systemic issues across credit, payments, commerce, and banking. What that means ultimately is we use technologies like AI and machine learning and data science, and we use these technologies in a unique way, in a way that’s different from a traditional bank. We are able to underwrite those who are often frankly forgotten by the traditional financial ecosystems. Our Square Loans product has almost triple the rate of women-owned businesses that we underwrite. Fifty-eight percent of our loans go to women-owned businesses versus 20% for the industry average. For that Cash App Borrow product I was talking about, 70% of those actives, the 9 million actives that we underwrote, fell below 580 as a FICO score. That’s considered a poor FICO score, and yet 97% of repayments are made on time. And this is because we have unique access to data and these technology and tools which can help us uniquely underwrite this often forgotten customer base. Yeah. I mean, credit—sometimes it’s been blamed for financial excesses. But access to credit is also, as you say, an advantage that’s not available to everyone. Do you have a philosophy between those poles—between risk and opportunity? Or is what you’re saying is that the tech you have allows you to avoid that risk? That’s right. Let’s start with how do the current systems work? It works using inferior data, frankly. It’s more limited data. It’s outdated. Sometimes it’s inaccurate. And it ignores things like someone’s cash flows, the stability of your income, your savings rate, how money moves through your accounts, or how you use alternative forms of credit—like buy now, pay later, which we have in our ecosystem through Afterpay. We have a lot of these signals for our 57 million monthly actives on the Cash App side and for the 4 million small businesses on the Square side, and those, frankly, billions of transaction data points that we have on any given day paired with new technologies. And we intend to continue to be on the forefront of AI, machine learning, and data science to be able to empower more people into the economy. The combination of the superior data and the technologies is what we believe ultimately helps expand access. You have a financial background, but not in the financial services industry. Before Block, you were a video game developer at Activision. Are financial businesses and video games similar? Are there things that are similar about them? There are. There actually are some things that are similar, I will say. There are many things that are unique to each industry. Each industry is incredibly complex. You find that when big technology companies try to do gaming. They’ve taken over the world in many different ways, but they can’t always crack the nut on putting out a great game. Similarly, some of the largest technology companies have dabbled in fintech but haven’t been able to go as deep, so they’re both very nuanced and complex industries. I would say another similarity is that design really matters. Industrial design, the design of products, the interface of products, is absolutely mission-critical to a great game, and it’s absolutely mission-critical to the simplicity and accessibility of our products, be it on Square or Cash App. And then maybe the third thing that I would say is that when I was in gaming, at least the business models were rapidly changing from an intermediary distribution mechanism, like releasing a game once and then selling it through a retailer, to an always-on, direct-to-consumer connection. And similarly with banking, people don’t want to bank from 9 to 5, six days a week. They want 24/7 access to their money and the ability to, again, grow their financial livelihood, move their money around seamlessly. So, some similarities are there in that shift to an intermediary model or a slower model to an always-on, direct-to-consumer connection. Part of your target audience or your target customer base at Block are Gen Z folks. Did you learn things at Activision about Gen Z that has been useful? Are there things that businesses misunderstand about younger generations still? What we’ve learned is that Gen Z, millennial customers, aren’t going to do things the way their parents did. Some of our stats show that 63% of Gen Z customers have moved away from traditional credit cards, and over 80% are skeptical of them. Which means they’re not using a credit card to manage expenses; they’re using a debit card, but then layering on on a transaction-by-transaction basis. Or again, using tools like buy now, pay later, or Cash App Borrow, the means in which they’re managing their consistent cash flows. So that’s an example of how things are changing, and you’ve got to get up to speed with how the next generation of customers expects to manage their money.

You’ve drawn fifty versions of the same screen — and you still hate every one of them. Begrudgingly, you pick three, show them to your product manager, and hear: “Looks cool, but the idea doesn’t work.” Sound familiar? In this article, I’ll unpack why designers fall into detail work at the wrong moment, examining both process pitfalls and the underlying psychological reasons, as understanding these traps is the first step to overcoming them. I’ll also share tactics I use to climb out of that trap. Reason #1 You’re Afraid To Show Rough Work We designers worship detail. We’re taught that true craft equals razor‑sharp typography, perfect grids, and pixel precision. So the minute a task arrives, we pop open Figma and start polishing long before polish is needed. I’ve skipped the sketch phase more times than I care to admit. I told myself it would be faster, yet I always ended up spending hours producing a tidy mock‑up when a scribbled thumbnail would have sparked a five‑minute chat with my product manager. Rough sketches felt “unprofessional,” so I hid them. The cost? Lost time, wasted energy — and, by the third redo, teammates were quietly wondering if I even understood the brief. The real problem here is the habit: we open Figma and start perfecting the UI before we’ve even solved the problem. So why do we hide these rough sketches? It’s not just a bad habit or plain silly. There are solid psychological reasons behind it. We often just call it perfectionism, but it’s deeper than wanting things neat. Digging into the psychology (like the research by Hewitt and Flett) shows there are a couple of flavors driving this: Socially prescribed perfectionismIt’s that nagging feeling that everyone else expects perfect work from you, which makes showing anything rough feel like walking into the lion’s den. Self-oriented perfectionismWhere you’re the one setting impossibly high standards for yourself, leading to brutal self-criticism if anything looks slightly off. Either way, the result’s the same: showing unfinished work feels wrong, and you miss out on that vital early feedback. Back to the design side, remember that clients rarely see architects’ first pencil sketches, but these sketches still exist; they guide structural choices before the 3D render. Treat your thumbnails the same way — artifacts meant to collapse uncertainty, not portfolio pieces. Once stakeholders see the upside, roughness becomes a badge of speed, not sloppiness. So, the key is to consciously make that shift: Treat early sketches as disposable tools for thinking and actively share them to get feedback faster. Reason #2: You Fix The Symptom, Not The Cause Before tackling any task, we need to understand what business outcome we’re aiming for. Product managers might come to us asking to enlarge the payment button in the shopping cart because users aren’t noticing it. The suggested solution itself isn’t necessarily bad, but before redesigning the button, we should ask, “What data suggests they aren’t noticing it?” Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you shouldn’t trust your product manager. On the contrary, these questions help ensure you’re on the same page and working with the same data. From my experience, here are several reasons why users might not be clicking that coveted button: Users don’t understand that this step is for payment. They understand it’s about payment but expect order confirmation first. Due to incorrect translation, users don’t understand what the button means. Lack of trust signals (no security icons, unclear seller information). Unexpected additional costs (hidden fees, shipping) that appear at this stage. Technical issues (inactive button, page freezing). Now, imagine you simply did what the manager suggested. Would you have solved the problem? Hardly. Moreover, the responsibility for the unresolved issue would fall on you, as the interface solution lies within the design domain. The product manager actually did their job correctly by identifying a problem: suspiciously, few users are clicking the button. Psychologically, taking on this bigger role isn’t easy. It means overcoming the fear of making mistakes and the discomfort of exploring unclear problems rather than just doing tasks. This shift means seeing ourselves as partners who create value — even if it means fighting a hesitation to question product managers (which might come from a fear of speaking up or a desire to avoid challenging authority) — and understanding that using our product logic expertise proactively is crucial for modern designers. There’s another critical reason why we, designers, need to be a bit like product managers: the rise of AI. I deliberately used a simple example about enlarging a button, but I’m confident that in the near future, AI will easily handle routine design tasks. This worries me, but at the same time, I’m already gladly stepping into the product manager’s territory: understanding product and business metrics, formulating hypotheses, conducting research, and so on. It might sound like I’m taking work away from PMs, but believe me, they undoubtedly have enough on their plates and are usually more than happy to delegate some responsibilities to designers. Reason #3: You’re Solving The Wrong Problem Before solving anything, ask whether the problem even deserves your attention. During a major home‑screen redesign, our goal was to drive more users into paid services. The initial hypothesis — making service buttons bigger and brighter might help returning users — seemed reasonable enough to test. However, even when A/B tests (a method of comparing two versions of a design to determine which performs better) showed minimal impact, we continued to tweak those buttons. Only later did it click: the home screen isn’t the place to sell; visitors open the app to start, not to buy. We removed that promo block, and nothing broke. Contextual entry points deeper into the journey performed brilliantly. Lesson learned: Without the right context, any visual tweak is lipstick on a pig. Why did we get stuck polishing buttons instead of stopping sooner? It’s easy to get tunnel vision. Psychologically, it’s likely the good old sunk cost fallacy kicking in: we’d already invested time in the buttons, so stopping felt like wasting that effort, even though the data wasn’t promising. It’s just easier to keep fiddling with something familiar than to admit we need a new plan. Perhaps the simple question I should have asked myself when results stalled was: “Are we optimizing the right thing or just polishing something that fundamentally doesn’t fit the user’s primary goal here?” That alone might have saved hours. Reason #4: You’re Drowning In Unactionable Feedback We all discuss our work with colleagues. But here’s a crucial point: what kind of question do you pose to kick off that discussion? If your go-to is “What do you think?” well, that question might lead you down a rabbit hole of personal opinions rather than actionable insights. While experienced colleagues will cut through the noise, others, unsure what to evaluate, might comment on anything and everything — fonts, button colors, even when you desperately need to discuss a user flow. What matters here are two things: The question you ask, The context you give. That means clearly stating the problem, what you’ve learned, and how your idea aims to fix it. For instance: “The problem is our payment conversion rate has dropped by X%. I’ve interviewed users and found they abandon payment because they don’t understand how the total amount is calculated. My solution is to show a detailed cost breakdown. Do you think this actually solves the problem for them?” Here, you’ve stated the problem (conversion drop), shared your insight (user confusion), explained your solution (cost breakdown), and asked a direct question. It’s even better if you prepare a list of specific sub-questions. For instance: “Are all items in the cost breakdown clear?” or “Does the placement of this breakdown feel intuitive within the payment flow?” Another good habit is to keep your rough sketches and previous iterations handy. Some of your colleagues’ suggestions might be things you’ve already tried. It’s great if you can discuss them immediately to either revisit those ideas or definitively set them aside. I’m not a psychologist, but experience tells me that, psychologically, the reluctance to be this specific often stems from a fear of our solution being rejected. We tend to internalize feedback: a seemingly innocent comment like, “Have you considered other ways to organize this section?” or “Perhaps explore a different structure for this part?” can instantly morph in our minds into “You completely messed up the structure. You’re a bad designer.” Imposter syndrome, in all its glory. So, to wrap up this point, here are two recommendations: Prepare for every design discussion.A couple of focused questions will yield far more valuable input than a vague “So, what do you think?”. Actively work on separating feedback on your design from your self-worth.If a mistake is pointed out, acknowledge it, learn from it, and you’ll be less likely to repeat it. This is often easier said than done. For me, it took years of working with a psychotherapist. If you struggle with this, I sincerely wish you strength in overcoming it. Reason #5 You’re Just Tired Sometimes, the issue isn’t strategic at all — it’s fatigue. Fussing over icon corners can feel like a cozy bunker when your brain is fried. There’s a name for this: decision fatigue. Basically, your brain’s battery for hard thinking is low, so it hides out in the easy, comfy zone of pixel-pushing. A striking example comes from a New York Times article titled “Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?.” It described how judges deciding on release requests were far more likely to grant release early in the day (about 70% of cases) compared to late in the day (less than 10%) simply because their decision-making energy was depleted. Luckily, designers rarely hold someone’s freedom in their hands, but the example dramatically shows how fatigue can impact our judgment and productivity. What helps here: Swap tasks.Trade tickets with another designer; novelty resets your focus. Talk to another designer.If NDA permits, ask peers outside the team for a sanity check. Step away.Even a ten‑minute walk can do more than a double‑shot espresso. By the way, I came up with these ideas while walking around my office. I was lucky to work near a river, and those short walks quickly turned into a helpful habit. And one more trick that helps me snap out of detail mode early: if I catch myself making around 20 little tweaks — changing font weight, color, border radius — I just stop. Over time, it turned into a habit. I have a similar one with Instagram: by the third reel, my brain quietly asks, “Wait, weren’t we working?” Funny how that kind of nudge saves a ton of time. Four Steps I Use to Avoid Drowning In Detail Knowing these potential traps, here’s the practical process I use to stay on track: 1. Define the Core Problem & Business Goal Before anything, dig deep: what’s the actual problem we’re solving, not just the requested task or a surface-level symptom? Ask ‘why’ repeatedly. What user pain or business need are we addressing? Then, state the clear business goal: “What metric am I moving, and do we have data to prove this is the right lever?” If retention is the goal, decide whether push reminders, gamification, or personalised content is the best route. The wrong lever, or tackling a symptom instead of the cause, dooms everything downstream. 2. Choose the Mechanic (Solution Principle) Once the core problem and goal are clear, lock the solution principle or ‘mechanic’ first. Going with a game layer? Decide if it’s leaderboards, streaks, or badges. Write it down. Then move on. No UI yet. This keeps the focus high-level before diving into pixels. 3. Wireframe the Flow & Get Focused Feedback Now open Figma. Map screens, layout, and transitions. Boxes and arrows are enough. Keep the fidelity low so the discussion stays on the flow, not colour. Crucially, when you share these early wires, ask specific questions and provide clear context (as discussed in ‘Reason #4’) to get actionable feedback, not just vague opinions. 4. Polish the Visuals (Mindfully) I only let myself tweak grids, type scales, and shadows after the flow is validated. If progress stalls, or before a major polish effort, I surface the work in a design critique — again using targeted questions and clear context — instead of hiding in version 47. This ensures detailing serves the now-validated solution. Even for something as small as a single button, running these four checkpoints takes about ten minutes and saves hours of decorative dithering. Wrapping Up Next time you feel the pull to vanish into mock‑ups before the problem is nailed down, pause and ask what you might be avoiding. Yes, that can expose an uncomfortable truth. But pausing to ask what you might be avoiding — maybe the fuzzy core problem, or just asking for tough feedback — gives you the power to face the real issue head-on. It keeps the project focused on solving the right problem, not just perfecting a flawed solution. Attention to detail is a superpower when used at the right moment. Obsessing over pixels too soon, though, is a bad habit and a warning light telling us the process needs a rethink.

By TREVOR HOGG Images courtesy of Chocolate Tribe. Nosipho Maketo-van den Bragt, Owner and CEO, Chocolate Tribe After initially pursuing a career as an attorney, Nosipho Maketo-van den Bragt discovered her true calling was to apply her legal knowledge in a more artistic endeavor with her husband, Rob Van den Bragt, who had forged a career as a visual effects supervisor. The couple co-founded Chocolate Tribe, the Johannesburg and Cape Town-based visual effects and animation studio that has done work for Netflix, BBC, Disney and Voltage Pictures. “It was following my passion and my passion finding me,” observes Maketo-van den Bragt, Owner and CEO of Chocolate Tribe and Founder of AVIJOZI. “I grew up in Soweto, South Africa, and we had this old-fashioned television. I was always fascinated by how those people got in there to perform and entertain us. Living in the townships, you become the funnel for your parents’ aspirations and dreams. My dad was a judge’s registrar, so he was writing all of the court cases coming up for a judge. My dad would come home and tell us stories of what happened in court. I found this enthralling, funny and sometimes painful because it was about people’s lives. I did law and to some extent still practice it. My legal career and entertainment media careers merged because I fell in love with the storytelling aspect of it all. There are those who say that lawyers are failed actors!” Chocolate Tribe hosts what has become the annual AVIJOZI festival with Netflix. AVIJOZI is a two-day, free-access event in Johannesburg focused on Animation/Film, Visual Effects and Interactive Technology. This year’s AVIJOZI is scheduled for September 13-14 in Johannesburg. Photo: Casting Director and Actor Spaces Founder Ayanda Sithebe (center in black T-shirt) and friends at AVIJOZI 2024. A personal ambition was to find a way to merge married life into a professional partnership. “I never thought that a lawyer and a creative would work together,” admits Maketo-van den Bragt. “However, Rob and I had this great love for watching films together and music; entertainment was the core fabric of our relationship. That was my first gentle schooling into the visual effects and animation content development space. Starting the company was due to both of us being out of work. I had quit my job without any sort of plan B. I actually incorporated Chocolate Tribe as a company without knowing what we would do with it. As time went on, there was a project that we were asked to come to do. The relationship didn’t work out, so Rob and I decided, ‘Okay, it seems like we can do this on our own.’ I’ve read many books about visual effects and animation, and I still do. I attend a lot of festivals. I am connected with a lot of the guys who work in different visual effects spaces because it is all about understanding how it works and, from a business side, how can we leverage all of that information?” Chocolate Tribe provided VFX and post-production for Checkers supermarket’s “Planet” ad promoting environmental sustainability. The Chocolate Tribe team pushed photorealism for the ad, creating three fully CG creatures: a polar bear, orangutan and sea turtle. With a population of 1.5 billion, there is no shortage of consumers and content creators in Africa. “Nollywood is great because it shows us that even with minimal resources, you can create a whole movement and ecosystem,” Maketo-van den Bragt remarks. “Maybe the question around Nollywood is making sure that the caliber and quality of work is high end and speaks to a global audience. South Africa has the same dynamics. It’s a vibrant traditional film and animation industry that grows in leaps and bounds every year. More and more animation houses are being incorporated or started with CEOs or managing directors in their 20s. There’s also an eagerness to look for different stories which haven’t been told. Africa gives that opportunity to tell stories that ordinary people, for example, in America, have not heard or don’t know about. There’s a huge rise in animation, visual effects and content in general.” Rob van den Bragt served as Creative Supervisor and Nosipho Maketo-van den Bragt as Studio Executive for the “Surf Sangoma” episode of the Disney+ series Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire. Rob van den Bragt, CCO, and Nosipho Maketo-van den Bragt, CEO, Co-Founders of Chocolate Tribe, in an AVIJOZI planning meeting. Stella Gono, Software Developer, working on the Chocolate Tribe website. Family photo of the Maketos. Maketo-van de Bragt has two siblings. Film tax credits have contributed to The Woman King, Dredd, Safe House, Black Sails and Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning shooting in South Africa. “People understand principal photography, but there is confusion about animation and visual effects,” Maketo-van den Bragt states. “Rebates pose a challenge because now you have to go above and beyond to explain what you are selling. It’s taken time for the government to realize this is a viable career.” The streamers have had a positive impact. “For the most part, Netflix localizes, and that’s been quite a big hit because it speaks to the demographics and local representation and uplifts talent within those geographical spaces. We did one of the shorts for Disney’s Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, and there was huge global excitement to that kind of anthology coming from Africa. We’ve worked on a number of collaborations with the U.K., and often that melding of different partners creates a fusion of universality. We need to tell authentic stories, and that authenticity will be dictated by the voices in the writing room.” AVIJOZI was established to support the development of local talent in animation, visual effects, film production and gaming. “AVIJOZI stands for Animation Visual Effects Interactive in JOZI [nickname for Johannesburg],” Maketo-van den Bragt explains. “It is a conference as well as a festival. The conference part is where we have networking sessions, panel discussions and behind-the-scenes presentations to draw the curtain back and show what happens when people create avatars. We want to show the next generation that there is a way to do this magical craft. The festival part is people have film screenings and music as well. We’ve brought in gaming as an integral aspect, which attracts many young people because that’s something they do at an early age. Gaming has become the common sport. AVIJOVI is in its fourth year now. It started when I got irritated by people constantly complaining, ‘Nothing ever happens in Johannesburg in terms of animation and visual effects.’ Nobody wanted to do it. So, I said, ‘I’ll do it.’ I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, and four years later I have lots of gray hair!” Rob van den Bragt served as Animation Supervisor/Visual Effects Supervisor and Nosipho Maketo-van den Bragt as an Executive Producer on iNumber Number: Jozi Gold (2023) for Netflix. (Image courtesy of Chocolate Tribe and Netflix) Mentorship and internship programs have been established with various academic institutions, and while there are times when specific skills are being sought, like rigging, the field of view tends to be much wider. “What we are finding is that the people who have done other disciplines are much more vibrant,” Maketo-van den Bragt states. “Artists don’t always know how to communicate because it’s all in their heads. Sometimes, somebody with a different background can articulate that vision a bit better because they have those other skills. We also find with those who have gone to art school that the range within their artistry and craftsmanship has become a ‘thing.’ When you have mentally traveled where you have done other things, it allows you to be a more well-rounded artist because you can pull references from different walks of life and engage with different topics without being constrained to one thing. We look for people with a plethora of skills and diverse backgrounds. It’s a lot richer as a Chocolate Tribe. There are multiple flavors.” South African director/producer/cinematographer and drone cinemtography specialist FC Hamman, Founder of FC Hamman Films, at AVIJOZI 2024. There is a particular driving force when it comes to mentoring. “I want to be the mentor I hoped for,” Maketo-van den Bragt remarks. “I have silent mentors in that we didn’t formalize the relationship, but I knew they were my mentors because every time I would encounter an issue, I would be able to call them. One of the people who not only mentored but pushed me into different spaces is Jinko Gotoh, who is part of Women in Animation. She brought me into Women in Animation, and I had never mentored anybody. Here I was, sitting with six women who wanted to know how I was able to build up Chocolate Tribe. I didn’t know how to structure a presentation to tell them about the journey because I had been so focused on the journey. It’s a sense of grit and feeling that I cannot fail because I have a whole community that believes in me. Even when I felt my shoulders sagging, they would be there to say, ‘We need this. Keep it moving.’ This isn’t just about me. I have a whole stream of people who want this to work.” Netflix VFX Manager Ben Perry, who oversees Netflix’s VFX strategy across Africa, the Middle East and Europe, at AVIJOZI 2024. Netflix was a partner in AVIJOZI with Chocolate Tribe for three years. Zama Mfusi, Founder of IndiLang, and Isabelle Rorke, CEO of Dreamforge Creative and Deputy Chair of Animation SA, at AVIJOZI 2024. Numerous unknown factors had to be accounted for, which made predicting how the journey would unfold extremely difficult. “What it looks like and what I expected it to be, you don’t have the full sense of what it would lead to in this situation,” Maketo-van den Bragt states. “I can tell you that there have been moments of absolute joy where I was so excited we got this project or won that award. There are other moments where you feel completely lost and ask yourself, ‘Am I doing the right thing?’ The journey is to have the highs, lows and moments of confusion. I go through it and accept that not every day will be an award-winning day. For the most part, I love this journey. I wanted to be somewhere where there was a purpose. What has been a big highlight is when I’m signing a contract for new employees who are excited about being part of Chocolate Tribe. Also, when you get a new project and it’s exciting, especially from a service or visual effects perspective, we’re constantly looking for that dragon or big creature. It’s about being mesmerizing, epic and awesome.” Maketo-van den Bragt has two major career-defining ambitions. “Fostering the next generation of talent and making sure that they are ready to create these amazing stories properly – that is my life work, and relating the African narrative to let the world see the human aspect of who we are because for the longest time we’ve been written out of the stories and narratives.”

Cases News 6 Years to Make a Fan, G370A Budget Case, & Phanteks Technical Fan Discussion, ft. CTOJune 9, 2025Last Updated: 2025-06-09We cover Phanteks’ new G370A budget case, the XT M3, and the Evolv X2 MatrixThe HighlightsPhanteks’ new X2 Matrix case has 900 LEDs and is aiming to be around $200Phanteks’ G370A is a $60 case that includes 3x120mm fansThe company has a new T30-140 fan that required 6 years of engineering to makeTable of ContentsAutoTOC Grab a GN Tear-Down Toolkit to support our AD-FREE reviews and IN-DEPTH testing while also getting a high-quality, highly portable 10-piece toolkit that was custom designed for use with video cards for repasting and water block installation. Includes a portable roll bag, hook hangers for pegboards, a storage compartment, and instructional GPU disassembly cards.IntroWe visited Phanteks’ suite at Computex 2025 and the company showed off several cases along with a fan that took the company roughly 6 years to make.Editor's note: This was originally published on May 21, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.CreditsHostSteve BurkeCamera, Video EditingMike GaglioneVitalii MakhnovetsWriting, Web EditingJimmy ThangPhanteks Matrix CasesWe’ve talked about Phanteks’ X2 case in the past but the company was showing off its new Matrix version, which has matrix LEDs. The X2 Matrix has 900 LEDs in a 10x90 layout. It’s supposed to be about $30 to $40 more expensive than the base X2, which means it should end up around $200.  The interesting thing about the case is that the LEDs wrap around the chassis. In terms of communication, the LEDs connect to the motherboard via USB 2.0 and use SATA for power. This allows Phanteks to bypass a WinRing 0 type situation. Another Matrix case had 600 of them in a 10x60 LED configuration and is supposed to be about $120. Phanteks also has software that allows you to reconfigure what the LEDs display. When we got to the company’s suite, it had been programmed to say, “Gamers Nexus here,” which was cool to see. We also saw that the LEDs can also be used to highlight CPU temperature. Phanteks G370A Grab a GN15 Large Anti-Static Modmat to celebrate our 15th Anniversary and for a high-quality PC building work surface. The Modmat features useful PC building diagrams and is anti-static conductive. Purchases directly fund our work! (or consider a direct donation or a Patreon contribution!)Phanteks also showed off its G370A case, which is a $60 case that includes 3x120mm fans in the front coupled with a mesh front that offers 38% hole porosity. The company tells us that manufacturing typically offers around 25% porosity.  It has a glass side panel and the back side panel of the case is just steel and has no ventilation. Taking a look at the placement of the front fans, we asked Phanteks why they weren’t higher on the case so the bottom fan could get more exposure to the bottom power supply shroud area and the answer the company gave us was simply clearance for a 360mm radiator at the top. There’s not a lot of room for the air coming into the shroud. Some of it will go through the cable pass-through if it’s empty. The back of the case features a drive mount.XTM3The company also showed off a Micro ATX case called the XTM3. It comes with 3 fans and is $70. For its front panel, it has a unique punch out for its fans. The top panel is part standard ventilation but it does have one side that provides less airflow, which covers where the PSU would exhaust out of. The side panel does have punch-outs for the PSU, however. We don’t test power supplies, though that may change in the future. Power supplies can take a lot of thermal abuse, however, so we’re not super concerned here.  The case should be shipping in the next month or so and is 39.5 liters, which includes the feet. We appreciate that as not a lot of companies will factor that in. There’s also a lot of cable management depth on the back and the case also supports BTF. In addition, there’s a panel that clamps down all of the power supply cables. T30 FanPhanteks’ T30 fan took the company 6 years to make and is a 140mm fan. The company is competing with Noctua in the high-end fan space, but is going for a grey theme instead of brown. Phanteks CTO Tenzin Rongen Interview Visit our Patreon page to contribute a few dollars toward this website's operation (or consider a direct donation or buying something from our GN Store!) Additionally, when you purchase through links to retailers on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission.Finally, we interviewed Phanteks CTO Tenzin Rongen to discuss technical details behind the company’s long-developed fans. Make sure to check it out in our video.