The product designer's task is to create a new f(). The designer doesn't get to define x: that's empirical. And they don't get to dictate y either. A given y is only a worthwhile target if it's worth paying for in the eyes of the user — also empirical. That means x and y are requirements for f(). They are fixed, f() is variable.
Mirrors and clocks transformed society, but they ’re so old that nobody questions them.
Clocks created a culture of anxiety.
Mirrors created a culture of narcissism.
But it wasn't long after that that the Ace editor, I believe it was, was kind of the first, really solid, open source, in the browser code editor. And that seemed to unlock a kind of explosion of people seeing that. I know Github used it in the early days for some of their stuff, but lots of other projects as well. Suddenly people saw, oh, there's... See more
Even bad images have something to say. So many of the memes that float around message boards and social media feeds are a complete mess, edges fuzzy and pixels popping out all over the place. But the poor quality becomes part of the point: It’s a marker of virality, a signal that the image has been shared and stolen by multiple viewer-artists who... See more
In Design, we often strive for minimalism—using as little as needed to get a job done or a message across. A key tactic in that aim is to avoid redundancy. [...] But adding game feel requires just the opposite. Our digital products are trapped behind a hard pane of glass. We use the term “touch”, but we never really touch them. To truly Feel a... See more