Vidit Bhargava

Emerging Technology

Designing Emerging Technologies in 2026

Emerging tech is not a form-factor problem. In 2026, we need to design emerging technologies that look beyond techno-centric appliances.

Visual Design

The assembly-line-ification of App Icons

Today's app icons look as if they came out of an assembly line. All looking the same, designed for maximum scale, and devoid of any identity or soul. Turning the craft of designing an app icon into a lost art.

product design

Why every "iPhone killer" will fail

Here are three bitter realities that a lot of people who want to figure out what comes after the iPhone fail to see: There's no general purpose computerThere's no Joe Six PackThe iPhone was neither meant to be a general purpose computer nor did it replace the Macintosh.So if

apps

Introducing Shiuli: Images made accessible

Most images online never get an alt-text description. Shiuli aims to change that by making it easy to generate alt-text for images.

accessibility

Solving Liquid Glass' Accessibility issues with more materials

Liquid Glass needs to have tinted glass and frosted glass materials to help make it become more legible and Accessible.

Prototyping

Fake Apps: How to prototype your way through a major redesign

How I redesigned LookUp into smaller, sizable chunks and then strung them together into a main app.

Artificial Intelligence

Not just AI: How LookUp uses Foundation Models responsibly for its Learning tools.

Centered around user needs, LookUp's AI features go above and beyond to make sure that the learning experience for English Learners is accurate and reliable.

lookup

LookUp 12: Discover, Collect, and Learn

A portfolio of LookUp's latest update, the design philosophy behind its redesign and key new features.

Action Centered Design

A short primer on Action-Centered Design

Tools follow action, just like form follows function. Action-Centered Design is a versatile framework that enables designers to design for actions first.

Artificial Intelligence

The Paradox of Context in Computing

Why more context isn’t always the solution for bad contextual computing. This post serves as a primer to contextual computing and offers a framework for designing good contextual experiences.

Artificial Intelligence

Beyond Sparkles and Chat

AI helps best when it stops taking the center-stage

thoughts

The problem with AI hardware is that it’s called AI Hardware

Thoughts on the Jony Ive — Sam Altman partnership, the problem with AI hardware and where I want to see “AI Hardware” go.

Action Centered Design

Bringing Word of the Day by LookUp to Apple TV

How an action-centered-design framework and SwiftUI helped me build the Apple TV app for Word of the Day by LookUp in an afternoon’s worth of work.

lookup

The painstaking effort that goes into crafting LookUp's Word of the Day

Real art takes time, painstaking effort, and perseverance. Generative AI cannot replace the journey. None of LookUp's Words of the Day are AI Generated nor will they ever be.

Distraction Free Computing

Action Centered Design Framework

Full video of my Action Centered Design Framework talk at the ARCtic conference in Oulu; March 2025.

thoughts

Things I learnt in the last three months while job-hunting in the Bay Area

No deep insights here. It's just a collection of things I have discovered and learned.

Ai Pin

What the Ai Pin was really good at

I wore the Ai Pin every day for six months. For research. Here’s what it was really good at.

Ubiquitous Computing

Apple's ELEGNT solution can benefit from distributed ambient displays, rather than a robot

Apple's Robotic lamp could benefit from delegating its tasks to other ambient displays, while the robot focuses on what's on the desk.

Distraction Free Computing

Design readings: "The world is not a desktop" and such

A slice of the design research I'm motivated by; from papers by Mark Weiser (Xerox Park 1994) to Paul Dourish, Hiroshi Ishii, and more fun HCI papers. This week I talk about readings from Mark Weiser, Hiroshi Ishii, Brygg Ullmer, and Paul Dourish

Artificial Intelligence

Shallow Ignorance: The AI discourse is broken

The news will have you believe that the worlds is in an arms race, with AI. Are you team US, are you team China? When is the next foundational model coming out? What about: Where's this data coming from? What's the environmental impact of using LLMs? What biases does it propagate?

prototype

How AI can help in User Research

For the user research of my thesis, I used NotebookLM to organise, synthesize, and expand on my insights. It's a great research organization tool that provides utility of drawing connections between discreet topics and helping me understand my own journey better.

prototype

Designing Distraction Free Computers

Designing distraction free computers using an Action-Centric Design approach.

UI

The way we interact with apps is changing, so should the way they are designed.

The current state of apps and the advent of Apple Intelligence makes it important to have an action centered design approach to designing apps. The phone is only a part of a much larger ecosystem.

product design

Make • Show • Learn

The iterative design processes behind LookUp's product design and features.

prototype

Prototype: A World Clock Sticker

An NFC sticker that tells you world time.