Plicity

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.

We need to use these new tools in a truly creative way. And that’s why the really powerful inputs will continue to be human – empathy, observation, humour and cultural understanding. These are things that help us break through the creative ceiling.

discovery would be better if it were social.

Today, the onus is on the user to figure out ways to learn how best to prompt an LLM. Tavel imagines a future where learning from others—and easily sharing knowledge—becomes a more integrated part of the experience.

“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

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

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.

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

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