I don’t believe in Zoom fatigue An Article by Matt Webb interconnected.org It’s not Zoom fatigue, it’s Zoom whiplash. It’s a hunch. I can’t prove this. The trick to get around this is to move smoothly up and down the gradient of social interaction intensity, never dropping below a basic floor of presence: the sense that there are other people in the same place as you. Instead of having two modes, “in a call” and “on my own,” we need to think about multiple ways of being together which, minimally, could be: In a video call In an anteroom to a video call, hearing the sound of others In a doc together On my desktop but with the sense that colleagues are around And the job of the designer is to ensure that their software ensures the existence of these different contexts, instead of having the binary on-a-call/not-on-a-call, and to design the transitions between them. communicationworktransitionssoftware
The surprising effectiveness of writing and rewriting An Article by Matt Webb interconnected.org The act of writing the first draft creates new “essential data” that feeds the imagination and makes possible figuring out the second draft. Or: In your head, ideas expand until they max out “working memory” – and it’s only be externalising them in the written word that you have capacity to iterate them. Or: Good writing necessarily takes multiple edits, and the act of writing and act of rewriting are sufficiently different that performing both simultaneously is like rubbing your tummy and patting your head. The McDonald’s Theory of Creativity writingthinkingiteration
Primitive design An Article by Matt Webb interconnected.org I want it to feel intuitive I want any new features to be platform features, not one-offs. And the second of those is weird, right? It’s like sketching out a toy spaceship, having a list of rules about play, and attempting to simultaneously invent the shape of the Lego brick. That’s platform design I suppose. Redesigning a newspaper will mean bouncing between comps and style guides, designing both. Inventing the iPhone user interface will have seen apps and app paradigm evolving together. Co-Evolution of Problem and Solution Spaces in Creative Design designsystemsmaking
Micromorts A Definition by Matt Webb interconnected.org There’s a standard way to understand the relative danger of any activity. A micromort is "a unit of risk defined as one-in-a-million chance of death." For example: skydiving is 8 micromorts per jump running a marathon: 26 micromorts 1 micromort: walking 17 miles, or driving 230 miles Generally being alive averages out at 24 micromorts/day. deathchance
Four years of noting down my favourite words An Article by Matt Webb interconnected.org I like words, and I note down ones that catch my eye as we cross paths. Sometimes I read over the list, random access style, just to remind myself of forgotten thoughts. Each word is a bookmark into a little cascade of concepts in my brain. So because I’d like to keep these words somewhere I can find them in the future, I’m putting them here. Storm Doris Mimecom Cloudbleed Athleisure Cromwell H7N9 Trappist-1 ... (+448) wordseuphonycollections
Clues for software design in how we sketch maps of cities An Article by Matt Webb interconnected.org Given there’s an explosion in software to accrete and organise knowledge, is the page model really the best approach? Perhaps the building blocks shouldn’t be pages or blocks, but neighbourhoods roads rooms and doors landmarks. Or rather, as a knowledge base or wiki develops, it should - just like a real city - encourage its users to gravitate towards these different fundamental elements. A page that starts to function a little bit like a road should transform into a slick navigation element, available on all its linked pages. A page which is functioning like a landmark should start being visible from two hops away. The Image of the City urbanismcitiessoftwareunderstanding
Social Attention: a modest prototype in shared presence An Article by Matt Webb interconnected.org My take is that the web could feel warmer and more lively than it is. Visiting a webpage could feel a little more like visiting a park and watching the world go by. Visiting my homepage could feel just a tiny bit like stopping by my home. wwwsocializing
Ancient magicians as innovation consultants An Article by Matt Webb interconnected.org The Codex Justinianus (534 AD), being the book of law for ancient Rome at that time, banned magicians and, in doing so, itemised the types: A haruspex is one who prognosticates from sacrificed animals and their internal organs; a mathematicus, one who reads the course of the stars; a hariolus, a soothsayer, inhaling vapors, as at Delphi; augurs, who read the future by the flight and sound of birds; a vates, an inspired person - prophet; chaldeans and magus are general names for magicians; maleficus means an enchanter or poisoner. I happen to have spent my career in a number of fields that promise to have some kind of claim to supernatural powers: design, innovation, startups… It’s not hard to run through a few archetypes of the people in those worlds, and map them onto types of ancient magician. Those like Steve Jobs (with his famous Reality Distortion Field) who can convincingly tell a story of the future, and by doing so, bring it about by getting others to follow them – prophets. Inhaling the vapours and pronouncing gnomic truths? You’ll find all the thought leaders you want in Delphi, sorry, on LinkedIn. Those with a good intuition about the future who bring it to life with theatre, and putting people in a state of great excitement so they respond – ad planners. Haruspex. Those who have the golden mane of charisma: enchanters. Startup founders. People with a great aptitude for systems and numbers, who can tell by intuition what will happen, from systems that stump the rest of us. We call them analysts now. MBAs. Perhaps the same aptitude drew them to read the stars before? Mathematicus. Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview magicinnovation
Hints towards a non-extractive economy An Article by Matt Webb interconnected.org There’s a movement called the circular economy which is about designing services that don’t include throwing things away. There is no “away.” A non-extractive economy is going to look very different to today’s economy. These points feel opposed somehow but they are part of the same movement: With CupClub, it’s all about infrastructure. With the battery-free Game Boy, it’s untethered from infrastructure: once manufactured, no nationwide electricity grid is required to play. We’ll need better tools to track and measure. There will be new patterns for new types of services. New technologies to build new products. New language. So it’s fascinating seeing the pieces gradually come together. Introduction to Permaculture economicsrecyclinginfrastructure
What the prototype tells you A Fragment by Matt Webb interconnected.org As soon as I make something, I think of the 100 things I want to have next. That’s why prototyping is good. You don’t need to have much imagination, you just listen to what the prototype tells you. The situation talks backCo-Evolution of Problem and Solution Spaces in Creative DesignThe Battle for the Life and Beauty of the EarthThe game discovering itself designmaking
aboutfeeds.com A Website by Matt Webb aboutfeeds.com Use feeds to subscribe to websites and get the latest content in one place. Feeds put you in control. It’s like subscribing to a podcast, or following a company on Facebook. You don’t need to pay or hand over your email address. And you get the latest content without having to visit lots of sites, and without cluttering up your inbox. Had enough? Unsubscribe from the feed. You just need a special app called a newsreader. This site explains how to get started. How would I improve RSS? rssbloggingmicrosites
Mutual appreciation A Fragment by Matt Webb interconnected.org To use slightly different terms, mutual appreciation is a healthy jealousy without envy – a drive to achieve the same but without wanting to take it from the other. The Small GroupScenius collaborationteamwork
How would I improve RSS? An Article by Matt Webb interconnected.org My sense is that RSS is having a mini resurgence. People are getting wary of the social media platforms and their rapacious appetite for data. We’re getting fatigued from notifications; our inboxes are overflowing. And people are saying that maybe, just maybe, RSS can help. Re: How would I improve RSS?aboutfeeds.com rssblogging
Like, just a post complaining that screens should be better An Article by Matt Webb interconnected.org It’s been 19 years since Pixar released Monsters, Inc. with all that CGI hair. Where are my hairy icons? Ones that get all long and knotted as the notifications number goes up. Why can’t I feel my phone? I found that paper from 2010 (when I was complaining about keyboards) about using precision electrostatics to make artificial textures on touchscreens. I should be able to run my thumb over my phone while it’s in my pocket and feel bumps for apps that want my attention. Touching an active element should feel rough. A scrollbar should *slip. Imagine the accessibility gains. But honestly I don’t even care if it’s useful: 1.5 billion smartphone screens are manufactured every year. For that number, I expect bells. I expect whistles. A Brief Rant interactionsoftwareinterfacesdevices
The Image of the City A Book by Kevin Lynch mitpress.mit.edu To become completely lostApparencyOn the edge of something elseNothing there, after allPaths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks+6 More 125 Best Architecture BooksScenes of thoroughgoing samenessClues for software design in how we sketch maps of cities urbanismplacecities
To become completely lost To become completely lost is perhaps a rather rare experience for most people in the modern city. We are supported by the presence of others and by special way-finding devices: maps, street numbers, route signs, bus placards. But let the mishap of disorientation once occur, and the sense of anxiety and even terror that accompanies it reveals to us how closely it is linked to our sense of balance and well-being. The very word "lost" in our language means much more than simple geographical uncertainty; it carries overtones of utter disaster. Disorientation citiesplacegeographywayfinding
Apparency Half a century ago, Stern discussed this attribute of an artistic object and called it apparency. While art is not limited to this single end, he felt that one of its two basic functions was "to create images which by clarity and harmony of form fulfill the need for vividly comprehensible appearance." In his mind, this was an essential first step toward the expression of inner meaning. artmeaningimagesharmonyform
On the edge of something else The most common response to the question of symbolism was nothing in the city at all, but rather the sight of the New York City skyline across the river. Much of the characteristic feeling for Jersey City seemed to be that it was a place on the edge of something else. placeidentity
Nothing there, after all When asked to describe or symbolize the city as a whole, the subjects used certain standard words: "spread out", "spacious", "formless", "without centers". Los Angeles seemed to be hard to envision or conceptualize as a whole. Said one subject: It's as if you were going somewhere for a long time, and when you got there you discovered there was nothing there, after all.
Paths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks The contents of the city's images which are referable to physical forms can conveniently be classified into five types of elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. Paths are the channels along which the observer customarily, occasionally, or potentially moved. Edges are the linear elements not used or considered as paths by the observer. They are the boundaries. Districts are the medium-to-large sections of the city, conceived of as having two-dimensional extent. Nodes are points, the strategic spots in a city into which an observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci to and from which they are traveling. Landmarks are another type of point-reference, but in this case the observer does not enter within them, they are external. They are usually a rather simply defined physical object: building, sign, store, or mountain. City districtsAs a kind of gateway cities
A directional quality Paths may not only be identifiable and continuous, but have directional quality as well: one direction along the line can easily be distinguished from the reverse. This can be done by a gradient, a regular change in some quality which is cumulative in one direction. changewayfinding
Introverts and extroverts Some regions are introvert, turned in upon themselves with little reference to the city outside them, such as Boston's North End or Chinatown. Others may be extrovert, turned outward and connected to surrounding elements. The common visibly touches neighboring regions, despite its inner path confusions. place
Junctions The junction, or place of a break in transportation, has compelling importance for the city observer. Because decisions must be made at junctions, people heighten their attention at such place and perceive elements with more than normal clarity. This tendency was confirmed so repeatedly that elements located at junctions may automatically be assumed to derive special prominence from their location. citieswayfindingchoice
What we are accustomed to call beautiful Most objects which we are accustomed to call beautiful, such as a painting or a tree, are single-purpose things, in which, through long development or the impress of one will, there is an intimate, visible linkage from fine detail to total structure. beautyobjectsstructure
A certain plasticity There are dangers in a highly specialized visible form; there is a need for a certain plasticity in the perceptual environment. If there is only one dominant path to a destination, a few sacred focal points, or an ironclad set of rigidly separated regions, then there is only one way to image the city without considerable strain. This one may suit neither the needs of all people, nor even the needs of one person as they vary from time to time. An unusual trip becomes awkward or dangerous; interpersonal relations may tend to compartmentalize themselves; the scene becomes monotonous or restrictive. citiesform
As plain as day The personal experience of most of us will testify to this persistence of an illusory image long after its inadequacy is conceptually realized. We stare into the jungle and see only the sunlight on the green leaves, but a warning noise tells us that an animal is hidden there. The observer then learns to interpret the scene by singling out "give-away" clues and by reweighting previous signals. The camouflaged animal may now be picked up by the reflection of its eyes. Finally by repeated experience the entire pattern of perception is changed, and the observer need no longer consciously search for give-aways, or add new data to an old framework. They have achieved an image which will operate successfully in the new situation, seeming natural and right. Quite suddenly the hidden animal appears among the leaves, "as plain as day." natureperceptionimages