Plicity

One very common pitfall for naive implementations of discovery, ranking or status is to inadvertently stop newcomers from “breaking in”.Any social experience will typically have attention or display mechanisms that need to take relative status into account. A naive implementation of a “suggestions” feed or a “top users” might be to rank content bas... See more

Midjourney’s launch on Discord was brilliant. As a new user, I knew enough to ask for an image of a rabbit on a firetruck. But by watching others, I discovered I could create vector images, recast photos into Ghibli-style art, change aspect ratios, or convert photos to pencil-shaded drawings.

“Craft is fractal. It begins as a flat, broad idea—a rough sketch, raw and unformed. But as you dive deeper, you sculpt and fine-tune, peeling back layers to reveal hidden worlds in the crevices. A piece starts ‘ugly,’ then transforms through selective beautification.” —Dev Valladares on the fractal

If someone were great at making prompts to understand health or other personal data, she would love to “follow them” to use their prompts. A product that supports this dynamic could get a lot of traction.

What is really interesting is considering the second-order effects of the ability to create software 10 times faster than just a few years ago.

Playdate excels within constraints. Its one-bit screen and tiny processor mean it can’t run graphics-heavy games, but that limitation encourages developers to think about what they can build. The tiny black-and-white screen. The bright yellow color. The ‘season’ of games. The crank. The crank! Playdate proves that craft isn’t about doing more: It’s... See more

But also, social media has gone from connecting friends to stealing people’s time. Between all the ads, it’s hard to know what’s actually a good productin online shopping.

Yet fiction sales are surging, up 31 percent in India, 21 percent in Mexico, and 16 percent in Brazil. What's with the disparity? I think it’s because great fiction refuses to be compressed. You can’t neatly summarize Dostoevsky ’s suffering or package up Cormac McCarthy ’s moral ambiguity into bullet points. Fiction is valuable precisely because i... See more

One of Airbnb’s most meaningful UX decisions is highlighting the human hosts behind each listing. Instead of faceless hotel rooms, users meet real people who host their spaces.

Each listing says “Hosted by [Name]” and includes a host profile with pictures, bios, and reviews. This personal connection warms the experience and reminds users they are gu... See more