the will to have nice things

“I came back to my country of origin after my first degree, when I got lucky enough to study at ÉCAL, and I could clearly see how the approach in Switzerland is different,” she explains. “It’s like learning a craft, and once you learn the craft you can play. There is a rigorousness, a precision in the execution and a certain desire for clarity whic... See more

Obsess over perfection.

If you are designing something that a customer is going to use or that will represent us in public, it’s not good enough unless it’s flawless and extraordinary.

Especially in software, many situations have winner-take-all dynamics due to network effects and switching costs. Being the winner means being in the 99.99-percentil

... See more

A contractor said something during this project which I thought was both compassionate and the sign that he was a skilled professional, and I thought I’d share: Scene: My mother, who has some mobility challenges, is sketching out what she wants in her kitchen. He listens.

We got these phone booths (a K6 from the 1930s, and a KX100 from the 1990s) for the @stripe lobby, as a reminder that there are always two paths in everything we make: something that elevates and makes you smile, or, well, whatever the thing on the right is. https://t.co/OREBUJElp6

I once sat in a room with a bunch of machine learning folks who were developing creative artificial intelligence to make “good art.” I asked one researcher about the training data. How did they choose to operationalize “good art”? Their reply: they used Netflix data about engagement hours.The problem is that engagement hours are not the same as goo... See more

I really believe that you should love your tools, and that by loving them it encourages you to connect with them and use them when you otherwise might not.

I encourage the viewer to slow down, and interact, and don’t worry that we might lose them if the information they think they want isn’t immediately presented. I’ve realised the most successful sites I've made are the ones my children (5+3) enjoy playing with – and believe adults want the same fun interspersed in their day of closing cookie popups ... See more