Welcome back. Startups are revving the NFT hype machine by offering frames designed specifically to show off digital art. Figma, a collaborative prototyping platform for designers, has been turned to surprising uses during lockdown. And customers of KFC and Taco Bell may soon be able to order food by text.

Artists and startups are working together to design a new type of hardware that turns previously intangible digital art into something collectors and galleries can hang on their walls, Katie Deighton writes for the Experience Report.

Proponents of purpose-built frames say the medium deserves a new kind of display, both for aesthetic reasons, and to offer a tailored user experience.

Companies like Qonos are offering wall-mounted “canvases,” while New York City’s Infinite Objects is sending smaller “video prints” to the buyers of artists’ nonfungible tokens or NFTs: Pieces of code that authenticate the ownership of a piece of digital art.

Beeple, the digital artist who recently sold an NFT for $69 million, said he is already working on ideas for new kinds of frames, without saying what they might look like.

“I want to make an object that, as soon as you walk into the room—if you’ve never seen it before—makes you go, ‘OK, what the heck is happening?’” he said.

Professional collaboration software has seen a boom in the pandemic, not only as a remote-work tool, but also in what one might call off-label uses, Ann-Marie Alcántara reports.

Adobe XD, for instance, has been repurposed to create presentations for clients, résumés and 3-D models for scientific inquiry. On the online whiteboard tool Freehand, people play Pictionary and other drawing games.

And product designer Bonnie Kate Wolf once spent 12 hours on Figma, a popular professional collaborative tool normally used to design and prototype user interfaces for apps and websites, creating fan art of Taylor Swift.

“It’s become a far more prevalent thing during the pandemic,” said Shannon Rhee, product designer at Brex, a financial services company for small businesses.

Ms. Rhee uses Figma for day-to-day design work, but has also used it to make birthday cards and to help a friend plan her apartment. “I hadn’t really seen people use design tools for fun things like this in the past,” she said.

KFC-owner Yum Brands is buying a startup that lets customers order food via text, Heather Haddon reports.

Yum is set to use software made by Tictuk Technologies for fast-food ordering through text as well as social-media apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. The tech turns around a customer’s order in as fast as 60 seconds, said Clay Johnson, Yum’s chief digital and technology officer.

Sales at Yum have risen since testing Tictuk’s technology in roughly 900 KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurants in 35 countries, the company said.

Online orders also tend to come with bigger sales, and require less staff labor, said the company’s chief financial officer, Chris Turner.

Hallmark Cards is shutting down its e-card service at the end of April. It said it will focus instead on “new digital capabilities that will make it easier and more seamless for our customers to experience our brand and live a more caring and connected life filled with meaningful moments.” [WSJ]

Zoom wants to let other platforms use its teleconferencing technology. [WSJ]

Slack users can now use the platform to have conversations with any other Slack user, at any company or organization. [Protocol]

Most U.S. news organizations won’t let most readers cancel their subscriptions online. [NiemanLab]

Gucci's latest sneaker can only be “worn” in social media. [Dezeen]