Going Abstract
I listened to this great conversation with Donna Spencer last week. She’s an Aussie, but I’ve never come across her writing or speaking, which is a real shame because she had a lot of interesting things to say.
It seems to be consensus that the last 10 years of UX has been a huge time of growth, but also a lot misdirection, wasted effort and lost knowledge.
Even one small area, speed, seems to have suffered. Donna says UX is slow these days because designers are creating lots of individually polished screens. They are focused too far into the details, and they really should be working far up the stack. Not necessarily ‘strategically’ but away from the interface.
Details are what get attention because it’s easier to plan and ‘check off’ a flow, or ‘components’, but designer time is better off modeling.
The conversation has clearly been percolating in my head all week. Thinking about aversions and addictions, tools like Figma (very visual) are an addiction to me. More abstract stuff is an aversion.
But if you banned me from using any interface design tool and possibly the computer in general, I’d probably get more done.
I’ll have to think of a healthy middle ground… There’s also this other danger zone where no one does anything that even comes close to designing anything of substance. Rather than 80% of this project, maybe I could spend only 50% prototyping and designing and still get to a good result?
On competing in an Aquabike
- It’s Aquabike not aquathon
- Yes, that’s a thing.
- 2km swim, 90km ride
- Ankle feels sore, so I’m not running on it thank you very much.
- NO! I will not slide down the triathlon to chronic injury pipeline
- Give into the checklist. The checklist always wins. It may be a smug bastard, but it’s always right. No towel after a swim, the checklist would never.
- Distance wise, it’s a bit of work. But you are not an Iron Man. You are not a half iron man (70.3). You are not half a half iron man.
- You are not classic. Or ultimate. Or even Olympic.
- Every competitor has a sticker on their bike, and often you are riding next to an ‘ultimate’ or a ‘classic’. These are powerful brands.
- Ok, you are going to need more than 2 water bottles. I mean ‘bidons’. Sometimes these are handed out. There were many different ways to affix them to your bike. The no hands sippy straw is a whole other thing — I could never, but whatever gets you to the finish line I guess.
- Karma. Shaking your head as you zoom past a fellow cyclist suffering from cramps. Karma’s a bitch!
- Cramps. Part of nature. One of life’s great mysteries. They will come for you. As a warden told me with a wink “you’re gonna have to ride ’em out.”
- He also said “you are about 5km from the turnaround point. You could get back there and decide what to do (keep going or end the race).” I’m not the kind of person who kicks and screams or would regret a DNF for the rest of my life, it’s just not that important to me… But after 3 hours or so of riding your guts out… It doesn’t feel like an option. Live free or die. Get rich or die trying. The spartan war horn. etc
- Have fun!
Using narratives when presenting designs
“(Narratives) also work very well with design. If you’re going over ui mockups for an app, having a narrative actually helps set the stage, to say,”before we take a look at anything, here’s what we’re trying to accomplish with the user experience, here are our goals, here’s the challenges that we’re trying to solve. I’ve been at mock up meetings where everyone thinks they’re a ui expert. If you don’t have the narrative, you’ll get comments like move this over here.. You don’t do that if everyone is on the same page with reading a short narrative beforehand.”
Note: I love the term “mock up meetings”, it takes all the seriousness out of design which is likely a good thing.
Amazon Narratives: Memos, Working Backwards from Release, More
Trust vs Persuasion
“As human beings we are trusting engines. We evolved to give people the benefit of the doubt. Why? Because it’s the right move 99% of the time. Most people are being truthful and if you have as your strategy: I’m going to believe what people say, it makes you a fantastic friend, a wonderful person to work with…. Who passes on their genes? Nice people!” Malcom Gladwell
“Influence, the classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say yes–and how to apply these understandings.” Influence - Robert Cialdini
Make money from Home
This TikTok (it’s a joke) has a surprising amount of sales and persuasion jammed into about a minute. Everyone is in sales..
Transcript from @chadandjenny
“So how do we make money from home?”
Curiosity. I don’t know if anyone actually asked this question, but it’s a great way to get attention and hook you in. The line “Making money from home” is legendary within the annals of internet display advertising (think of all the lonely, bored, poor people clicking around the internet - basically everyone).
“For starters this is not a sponsored video. We just get this question all the time.”
Authentic. Sounds like, this is is not fake, this is real. Also social proof (we have lots of viewers). A la “many people are saying…” from Trump.
“Honestly, the answer is really simple.”
Ok, so making money, easily (from home), and simple (even I can do it).
“Basically, I just trade stocks on an app called Robinhood. I left a link in the bio if you want to check it out. It’s free to download, free to sign up. They’re actually giving free stocks so they are paying you to sign up. Again, not sponsored.”
Here’s the ask (click link, download and sign up for Robinhood). But an ask is costly. It sounds like an ad now, right? So he immediately qualifies with “if you want to”, no pressure. Free x3. Ends reassuring that this is not a fake, scammy thing (because that’s what you’re thinking).
“I know trading sound intimidating. Here’s my strategy in a nutshell. I see a stock going up and I buy it. I just watch it until it stops going up and then I sell it. And I do that over and over. And it pays for our whole lifestyle.
This got a lot of laughs on Twitter. But I think it’s designed to sound simplistic. You sort of can’t believe it’s true. It can’t be that easy?
“If you are wondering how much you can make doing this.. In this month I turned $400 into $14,000. And in this month I turned less than a $1000 into $20,000.”
He shows screenshots from the app of the gains. Hard to fake and extremely powerful to see $20,000 and a big up arrow.
“Honestly, my favorite part about this isn’t even the amount of money you can make but just the fact we don’t have to go to a 9 -5 job.”
The whole tone is casual, and this is consistent. They sort of rub the money in your face, but would rather talk about the lifestyle, relaxing, travel etc. A bit more trustworthy – like oh they are just a chill couple who don’t want to work a crappy job (like I have).
“So if you have friends who want to make money from home, you can tag them or send them a link. Or if you make money this way, share it in the comments so other people know there’s other people doing this now.”
Here’s the second and final ask: spread the good word. Also, everyone has friends who want to make money from home.. It’s like asking, do you have friends who want to make more money? Asking for testimonials is also interesting, since it’s sort of framing this as a taboo or secret thing that people are doing, and they are trying to break the stigma (rather than sell something).
Sustaining Oxygen & Harmful Exposure
Social Oxygen. Grabbed from Gretchen McCulloch featured on a recent A16z podcast. A riff on this might be hydration. It’s a positive thing for our body, mind soul, that, pre-covid, we picked up quite easily. A bit here on the way to work, hallway conversations, bumping into someone at the cafeteria, or maybe after work at the bar. All these moments fill up the tank – along with the more obvious social interactions like with partners, friends or at parties or events.
Gretchen also talks about how we use war metaphors when we talk about covid, eg. “Front-line workers”. But that’s not really how the virus works. We can’t bomb the virus or assassinate the leader. In Australia, from a young age, we are taught about sun safety. We know when the UV is highest, and we know how to protect ourselves from it. We already do things like test sewers for virus, maybe if the data and instrumentation improves, we could see something like a reliable score or number for the virus in your area. Sun exposure. Virus exposure. The longer you are outside, exposed to the harsh sun or virus, the higher your risk.