Emilie Kormienko

Smartphones were inherently social, too, unlike the desktop web. Apps could tap into a smartphone’s address book for a ready-made social graph; they could import photos from a user’s camera roll, or easily grab the user’s coordinates for location-based networking.

The reality of building a product is that very few parts of it reach a significant portion of impressionable users. Onboarding is one of those things that touch just about everyone.

The best way to make your onboarding better is to try it. Try it often. Every few weeks at minimum. Think of yourself as one of your user personas, or a dumb user rather than you, the expert who knows your product very well. Question every step. Act confused.

Hard data on the prevalence of burnout is elusive since it’s not yet a clinical term separate from stress. Some researchers say that as few as 7% of professionals have been seriously impacted by burnout. But others have documented rates as high as 50% among medical residents and 85% among financial professionals.

Emotions are predictions the brain uses to prepare for what is coming next. 

Today’s dominant internet platforms are built on aggregating users and user data. As these platforms have grown, so has their ability to provide value — thanks to the power of network effects — which has enabled them to stay ahead.

But we can also ask the opposite question: Are there regions that are more active among bad readers and whose activity decreases as one learns to read? The answer is positive: in illiterates, the brain’s responses to faces are more intense. The better we read, the more this activity decreases in the left hemisphere, at the exact place in the cortex... See more