principles

Praise people but don’t forget to have the hard conversations.

Praising is important and so is having the tough conversations when someone isn’t giving their best. People appreciate when you have the tough conversations with them because that’s where they can draw all their future growth from.

If all you do is praise and high-five everyone, your team

We tend to undervalue the elementary ideas and overvalue the complicated ones. Most of us get jobs based on some form of specialized knowledge, so this makes sense. We don't think we have much value if we know the things everyone else does, so we focus our effort on developing unique expertise to set ourselves apart. The problem is then that we rej

7 Fundamental Principles of Design

1. Affordance

2. Discoverability

3. Feedback

4. Constraints

5. Conceptual Model

6. Mappings

7. Signifiers

Scott Belsky Talk at South Park Commons

• Often designs from frustration 

• Right now, greater skill is being brought by compute and developing a democratization of many things (code, design, etc.). Because of this, taste will probably be the most important skill 

• Taste is derived from culture and overlap of industries 

• Because of that

“People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Seven questions that every business must answer:

1. The Engineering Question

Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?

2. The Timing Question

Is now the right time to start your particular business?

3. The Monopoly Question

Are you starting with a big share of a small market?

4. The People Question

Do you have the right te

One of the most intelligent case studies in design is the Chinese tea cup. They’re made without handles simply because if it’s too hot to touch, it’s too hot to drink.

Humans naturally want to add more. Add a cardboard sleeve, add a warning on the outside of the cup, add a handle. The result of all these things never cools down the actual contents.