There were a couple of big and exciting updates this week. The two standout launches came from NotebookLM and Mobbin. NotebookLM’s deep research update is significant, turning Notebook into a true end-to-end research partner that can explore the web and synthesise findings, which you can easily query. Mobbin introduced animations, opening a new way to gather inspiration for an important, often overlooked part of the design process.
Alongside these headline releases, several other platforms shipped thoughtful improvements. Here’s what stood out.
NotebookLM deep research
NotebookLM has quickly become one of my favourite tools. For researching, analysing, and querying information, it’s hard to beat. It’s still AI, and it works best when paired with clear human direction, but the experience is genuinely impressive. Their latest update is a great addition to the core features.
Google announced deep research for NotebookLM this week, a major step that turns the tool into an active research assistant. The feature can now search the web on your behalf, review many sources, and produce a structured, citation-backed report that drops directly into your notebook. From there, you can work with the material using the tools already in NotebookLM, including audio overviews, video overviews, study guides, and follow-up questions.
Google Notebook LM - Deep Research
This update brings research and analysis into one place. You no longer need to gather material elsewhere and then move it into NotebookLM; the entire process can now happen within a single workflow. Google also expanded file support in the same release, adding Google Sheets, Drive PDFs, Word documents, Drive URLs, and images, which makes it easier to build a complete research set. NotebookLM has been evolving into a more comprehensive research tool for a while, and this release takes it further.
Designers can use tools like Notebook LM to quickly gather domain knowledge and information, either by querying existing internal documents or by performing open-ended web searches, reducing the initial research time by up to half.
Jess Eddy
Mobbin animations
Mobbin is another one of my favourite tools. It’s useful in so many parts of the design process. If you care about design inspiration, it’s the place to go. You can explore full user flows of beautiful mobile apps and Websites, and their latest update makes it an even stronger all-around resource for designers.
Mobbin also announced an important update this week: animations! 🥳 Mobbin also announced an important update this week: animations! 🥳 You can now see animations from popular apps so that you can have a peek into animations and micro-interactions. The release includes a few other updates; you can now set your auto-play preference for videos, and teams and enterprise customers can invite teammates with links or request access to their company workspace when their email domain matches.
Mobbin Animations
Mobbin is the most useful tool I’ve found for design inspiration, and it’s become a core part of many designers’ design process.
Jess Eddy
Other product announcements
Several other tools also shipped thoughtful improvements that deepen their ecosystems and streamline common designer workflows. Here are the highlights across Builder.io, Penpot, Sketch, Spline, and Miro.