content
Raw size isn't enough
Content as value
A web of books
Rewarding Curation
An Article by Wesley Aptekar-CasselsSomething interesting about the design of Twitter is that it doesn’t have much of a way of rewarding curation, only authorship.
...I’m inclined to think that the mechanisms of distribution of information are very important, and I think figuring out ways to reward good curation is probably an important thing.
...I don’t really know what the solution is here, but I do think that finding and curating good links and bits of information is useful, and something that should be rewarded more than it currently is.
The McClusky Curve
An Article by Shawn WangHe coined this thing, which I call the McClusky Curve… So if you go first, you want to either be first in the cycle or you want to go later and add a very differentiated, deeper, in depth take that nobody else has where you’re adding value to the conversation.
But if you go anywhere in the middle, you’re just in the noise.
...I think this is the fundamental tension to staying relevant to the discussion, and therefore growing your readership. Your creation process needs to generate some mix of timely vs insightful, yet of course the worst of all is to try to do both and end up with neither.
Care for the Text
An Article by Robin RendleWhenever I’m stuck pondering the question: "How do I make this website better?" I know the answer is always this: Care for the text.
Without great writing, a website is harder to read, extremely difficult to navigate, and impossible to remember. Without great writing, it’s hardly a website at all. But it’s tough to remember this day in and day out—especially when it’s not our job to care about the text—yet each and every <p> tag and <button> element is an opportunity for great writing. It’s a moment to inject some humor or add a considerate note that helps people.
…These are the details that make a good website great.
All websites are just digital movie theaters now
An Article by Ryan BroderickIf I had to guess where this is all going, I’d say that what an internet platform is actually has already permanently shifted. Instead of apps trying to dominate specific features — a platform for video, a platform for expiring content, a platform for connecting social networking, a platform for livestreaming, a platform for resumes — we’ve already entered a new era of online networks where they all will essentially offer the same services and instead, focus increasingly on specific demographics.
Safari 15 isn't bad, just misunderstood
An Article by Jeff KirvinWhat I see in Safari 15 is the first steps into a new design language for iOS, one prioritizing adaptive, contextual interfaces. Ever since the move to the new “all screen” iPhone X design, content has been king on iOS, and Apple has been removing more and more user chrome. This is the next step on that journey.
The vanishing designer
Visionary designers have lost their conceptual integrity to an industrial complex optimized for consensus, predictability, and short-term business gain. The rise of customer-obsession mantra and data-driven culture cultivated a generation of designers who only take risk-free and success-guaranteed steps towards the inevitable local maxima of design monotony.
The same, the same, the same
Look around us. Every business is an app and every app feels the same, because every designer has the same resume, follows the same process, graduates from the same program, uses the same tool, scrolls the same Dribbble feed, reads the same Medium articles, expects the same career outcome, lives in the same ideology bubble.
Design as an engineering problem
The Silicon Valley giants, testifying with their runaway success, claimed to have “solved” design as an engineering problem. The solution substituted the human essence of design — intuition, ingenuity, and taste— with the tangibles, measurables, and deliverables.
Companies say they are “design-driven”, but designers are actually driven by dashboards filled with metrics like CSAT, NPS, CES, DAU, MAU. We rigorously run tests, studies, experiments as if innovative ideas are hidden in spreadsheets, waiting to be extracted by data scientists.
The heat death of design
Losing the design diversity means falling into a singular narrative of how design must be done, which grants unfair and self-reinforcing advantage to the mainstream while discouraging, stifling, or even punishing the idiosyncratic designers who bring unorthodox but remarkably innovative processes to the table. The true opportunity cost is the diverse future that humanity can no longer access.
A future without diversity is fundamentally stagnant: imagine designs so standardized that you can’t tell them apart. While every design is guaranteed to be good, none will be great. New designs are marginally better than previous ones with the rate of improvement eventually approaching zero. We have reached the heat death of design.
Design with courage
- Make a bold decision (that is controversial).
- Make a mistake (as a result of a bold decision).
- Challenge “conventional wisdom”.
- Challenge authority (that preaches conventional wisdom).
- Challenge hierarchy (that perpetuates conventional wisdom).
- Ignore the committee (and the need to converge).
- Decide who your clients are (and aren’t).
- Ignore clients that aren’t (especially those who pay the most).
- Cultivate clients if none exists (instead of compromising your design).
- Be a generalist (and ignore your job title).
- Be a specialist (who specializes in being a generalist).
- Design things from scratch (and build them yourself from scratch).
- Design things that no one wants (yet).
- Design freely (and think freely).