Engineered Obsession
What if the tools we use to become healthier are, by their very design, engineered to create obsession?
Hi everyone, Welcome back to the Design Lovers digest.
What if the tools we use to become healthier are, by their very design, engineered to create obsession?
I'm incredibly proud to announce my new video: "Apple Design: How Health Data Becomes an Obsession."
This isn't just another analysis; it's the most personal and important investigation I've undertaken for this channel. We deconstruct how Apple Health's beautiful design can create a powerful compulsion loop, turning the pursuit of wellness into a source of anxiety. It’s a deep dive into the psychology and ethics of the data on your wrist—and it reveals the personal decision I made after seven years of wearing an Apple Watch.
Here’s how you can watch it:
For paid channel members: It's available for you to watch right now, completely ad-free. A huge thank you for your support — it’s what makes these deep dives possible.
Want to see it immediately? You can get instant, ad-free access by becoming a channel member. It’s the best way to support our mission of creating thoughtful, independent content and watch this new investigation today:
Join the Design Lovers community
The video will be released publicly for everyone else in a few days (with ad support). I truly believe this is a conversation that matters, and I can't wait to hear your thoughts.
Now, for the other topics.
The Agent, Not Just a Generator: Testing Lovart
The channel recently featured a sponsorship with Lovart, but this text is my own initiative because I had a lot of new thoughts while testing it. Lovart is an interesting new service positioning itself as the first AI design agent.
In some ways, it's true. It has built-in pipelines that help it handle design tasks. It describes concepts, finds references, formalizes requirements, and only then generates, selecting the best models for the job based on their strengths and weaknesses.
It can't handle truly complex tasks yet. But for non-designers, this could be very interesting. I was lucky enough to get early access and was able to test a case for a real client's ad campaign. I had a banner with text and a logo. I asked it to remove them and then crop the image to 3:4, 1:1, and 16:9 aspect ratios. It did the job. Yes, the faces were slightly different in each generation, but for a quick ad, it wasn't critical. There was no miracle in terms of generation quality itself — we still face the same limitations.
Referral link: https://www.lovart.ai/?referralCode=2U74XZA
The Frightening Compromise of the iPhone 17
Apple seems to be getting noticeably worse at controlling leaks. We're still more than a month away from the announcement, yet we already know almost everything about the appearance and many technical details. I'm waiting for the iPhone 17 Air and will definitely buy it for testing, but it's already clear: this will be a very compromised model.
Have you noticed that despite a twofold increase in iPhone battery life over the last 10 years, it hasn't actually become more convenient? Unlike MacBooks or iPads. The release of a thin model with a smaller battery is a bigger step back and a greater dependence on the market than it might seem. I would even dare to say it's a frightening prospect for Apple (and this is coming from me, someone often called a fanboy in the comments). This is an interesting topic for analyzing hardware design, human perception, and battery performance. And it brings us back to the terrible Low Power Mode feature, which is essentially a voluntary crippling of the phone's functions.
The battery situation is well illustrated by three classic effects that are important for any designer:
Learned Helplessness. Building this effect into an interface seems like a bad idea. Low Power Mode is a prime example. The user is taught that to achieve a basic function (getting the phone to last until evening), they must voluntarily degrade their own experience. (A simple introductory article on this effect in the context of design: https://uxplanet.org/improve-creativity-by-overcoming-learned-helplessness-7ba64bd15cb4)
The Red Queen Effect. Compromises could have been avoided through optimization rather than constantly increasing power, which consumes all battery gains. The Red Queen Effect is when you have to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place. (A serious paper on the topic, recommended for professionals: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/red-queen-effect)
The Hedonic Treadmill. We have to mention this one. It's the tendency of a person to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major life events. A new, slightly longer-lasting battery brings joy for only a short time before we get used to it as the new normal and demand more.
See you in the next one, Ilia