This is because the Desktop was originally designed in 1973 to suit a very different need in computation—the need to mirror digital content with its physical equivalent (WYSIWYG, anyone?). But in a post-Internet world (at the cusp of 5G and the AI singularity, I might add), the way we consume and produce content has largely moved away from the... See more
Each jewel of Indra’s Net includes the reflections of all the other jewels; the significance of this symbolism is that each entity in the universe contains within itself the entire universe. This idea, rather than positing interdependence among separately existing entities, asserts that the whole does not owe its existence to the coming together of... See more
While conversing with your Dual, you can ask it to help you with things. You might want to find notes related to a certain topic, brainstorm research questions, or get your hands on a summary of an article. What your Dual can do for you is entirely determined by its set of skills, also refered to as its skillset. Skills are simply Markdown files... See more
To avoid accidental presses and to make the moment more deliberate and meaningful, we went with a long press. The challenge with a long press is always discoverability—How does one know they’re supposed to hold? The answer is to provide instant feedback with an animation that builds anticipation. [...] Another choice we make to improve... See more
For the people who’ve figured out the right incantations to type and buttons-buried-in-submenus to click, computers can automate administrivia, surface information, and make them feel “more fully participant in the future”. But getting there is an arduous journey, and many people get in a place where computers just make things harder. The... See more
This messaging app I built for, and with, my family, it won’t change unless we want it to change. There will be no sudden redesign, no flood of ads, no pivot to chase a userbase inscrutable to us. It might go away at some point, but that will be our decision. What is this feeling? Independence? Security? Sovereignty?
I wanted the experience of computation to feel. I wanted the experience to feel fluid. I wanted to create something that users could move through without friction or boundaries.