Welcome back. Grindr, Vrbo and OpenTable joined the crowd of apps adding features to address Covid-19 vaccination. IKEA is experimenting with the idea of stores that do not shepherd visitors through its well-known showroom maze. And startups are trying to figure out just how much minimalism to bake into their minimalist cellphones.

A growing range of apps are adding features that let users and businesses display—and enforce—Covid-19 vaccination statuses and policies, Ann-Marie Alcántara writes for the Experience Report.

Grindr next month will let users add their vaccination status to their profiles and filter their searches for other vaccinated people. Vrbo plans on enabling its hosts to share their Covid-19 testing and vaccine requirements for guests. And OpenTable added a “verified for entry” tag that patrons can receive after showing proof of vaccination, Ann-Marie Alcántara reports.

The spread of such features, which have previously popped up from Tinder to Yelp, might influence others to get vaccinated, according to digital experience designers, who call the phenomenon “social proof.”

“If more people potentially demonstrate that they’re vaccinated, that might have a really good impact on encouraging other people to get vaccinated, because of that social proof—you start to see that that’s becoming a norm,” said Amy Lokey, senior vice president and head of global design at ServiceNow.

But since many of these features rely on people to self-report their vaccination statuses, users can potentially fake it, designers said.

“It is almost like the floodgates are open for potential bad players,” said Alex Levin, founding partner and strategy director of L+R.

Related: Yelp has beefed up moderation to manage what it calls “review bombings,” where public attention to a business over issues such as vaccination requirements results in an influx of negative reviews from users who aren’t necessarily customers. [WSJ]

IKEA is testing two new store designs that rip up the blueprint of its signature maze-like showrooms, Katie Deighton reports.

The company this month reopened a location in Shanghai that was renovated to test its “future store format,” a space that includes a “Maker’s Hub,” where staff help customers repair old items, and a cushioned area for customers to hang out. Thursday will see the opening of a new, compact IKEA in Vienna’s city center that features a rooftop restaurant and the ability for customers to order large items for next-day delivery.

In both spaces, customers can take any route that they please.

The company was slow to embrace e-commerce before the pandemic, and its online ordering system frustrated some customers during lockdowns last year. Its new store formats aim to combine a more sophisticated e-commerce offering and typical showrooms with spaces that invite customers to linger and think more about home furnishings than they did previously.

“I’m convinced that if we do our job in a good way, we’ll make home furnishing more important for people,” said Stefan Vanoverbeke, IKEA’s global deputy retail manager.

A small raft of tech startups are redesigning the cellphone from scratch in a bid to make it less addictive and all-encompassing for users. Enter the world of minimalist phones, where it is easier to design the device than to decide what runs on it.

The products of companies like the Light Phone and Punkt may be simple, but their business plans are not, reports Katie Deighton. Minimalist phone companies must keep costs competitive without access to the economies of scale enjoyed by bigger companies, their founders say, as well as keeping their crowdfunder investors happy.

These backers want minimalist phones, moreover, but some consumers say access to group messaging apps is nonnegotiable. Others think they should provide navigation or a camera. Minimalism, it turns out, is subjective.

“It sometimes feels like we’re trying to define parental controls for adults,” said Kasia Bocheńska, product lead at Mudita, the company behind the minimalist Pure phone.

TikTok is testing tools that will let developers offer augmented reality effects for its videos. [TechCrunch]

TikTok is also rolling out a radio station that plays popular hits taking off on the app. [Dazed]

Instagram is removing the "swipe up" feature from its app. [The Verge]

Bad user experiences in business software are making workers less productive. [Fast Company]

Microsoft is redesigning its beloved Paint app for the forthcoming Windows 11. [CNET]

How design platform Figma rose to become a startup worth $10 billion. [Forbes]

Toys “R” Us will return in the flesh in the U.S. as shops inside hundreds of Macy’s stores. [WSJ] 

Urban Outfitters released its own secondhand marketplace. [WSJ]

McDonald’s ran out of milkshakes in 1,250 restaurants in the U.K. [BBC]

Old Navy ditched plus-size clothes and store sections, and will instead offer all its women’s clothes at sizes from 0 to 30, and all at the same price. [Fast Company]

How and why national flags get redesigned. [Design Week] 

Newsletter compiled with Katie Deighton and Ann-Marie Alcántara