Lisa Fu

Frank chimera on meaningful distinctions

Meaningful distinctions:

• Profit vs benefit

• Simplicity vs clarity

• Success vs progress

• Convenience vs comfort

• Fun vs satisfaction

• Thoughts vs thinking

• Information vs knowledge

• Choices vs decisions

• Scale vs resonance

• Achievement vs influence

• Descriptions vs evaluations

• Expansion vs growth

• Consumption vs consideration

• Control

bad assumptions to avoid:

• you are solving the wrong problem

• You were wrong about how much organisational support you have for this project

• You don’t have a particular competitive advantage you thought you had, or you didn’t see the advantage before your competitor copied you

• You were working on features that excited you but that don’t actually matter m

the whole point of applied research is to inform decisions. You don’t necessarily need specialised communication channels and documentation. You need to get the insights in front of the decision makers when they need them. Look at the types of communication that are most effective in your organisation and copy what’s already working.

- just enough

On process and ethics:

It might seem overkill when you’re just working on software but it can be a short distance between creating a platform to share cat photos and participating in surveillance capitalism. So it’s best to follow good practices from the beginning, when everything seems the most straightforward.

- just enough research, Erika hall

If validate is a permanent fixture for you or your team consider balancing the possible priming by pairing it with invalidate as in… let’s test the design to validate or invalidate it. Even better just say evaluate. It feels too good to be proven right.

Just enough research - Erika hall