In praise of the particular, and other lessons from 2023

ut working this way, I feel better-equipped to make progress on my ideas than I have in quite some time. Single-user experiments like this emphasize problem- finding and discovery, not precise evaluation. In fact, my work with one student uncovered a startling hypothesis that consumed much of my year: what seems like a problem of forgetting is some... See more

So in 2023, I switched gears to emphasize intimacy . Instead of statistical analysis and summative interviews, I sat next to individuals for hours, as they used one-off prototypes which I’d made just for them. And I got more insight in the first few weeks of this than I had in all of 2022.