Matt Webb reports in this talk that the doorway effect (the tendency to forget what you were doing when you walk through a doorway into a new room) applies to digital doorways too. For example, switching windows or logging into a site. I do wonder if sitting on back to back meetings in the same software feels so tiring because you miss out on the doorway effect and what Matt wonderfully calls the 'deallocation and reallocation' of attention. Those transitional moments are when we often have great ideas. Does missing out on emptying our mind affect our creativity?

Sometimes, my superpower is being the only one in a meeting who actually listens.

Surely any company mandating Return To Office should also mandate a Right to Switch Off? If you’re only productive in the office, then evening and weekend work at home is a waste of time.

The slash careers of the noughties and tens (actor / singer) have been replaced by the pipe ( | ) of LinkedIn headlines. The slash says, “I am one of these things at a time”. The pipe says, “I am all of these things.”

Most people approach every problem with an open mouth.

Adlai Stevenson (via [[Dave Trott]])

I signed up for a Substack yesterday, clicked a button by accident, and was immediately signed up to 27 others. TWENTY SEVEN! That is brutal UX.

2010s: ‘Do what you love’. 2020s: ‘Monetise what you love.’

From blog post to essay. From “I can’t” to “I cannot”. Writing on the internet is becoming more formal to, in part, signal its importance. I cannot by Lucy Schiller

Phantom shortcut pain: the bewilderment and frustration experienced when you try and use a keyboard shortcut from one piece of software in another but it doesn’t exist.

Today I learned that the approach to design research I have been taught and honed over the years is known in academic circles as ‘constructivist grounded theory’. Now you know!

Last week I facilitated a CMO round table discussion on how AI will impact the way consumers discover, explore, and purchase products and services. Great fun and great discussions.

My latest data auralisation / sonification. Where was my mind in 2023?

What will the Raspberry Pi of AI be?

A sudden realisation (that I’m probably late to the party on): ‘Storytelling’ as a leadership skill isn’t just the ability to keep people engaged and more persuadable through the use of a well constructed narrative arc. It’s the ability to construct and control a narrative. It’s meaning making.

Data sonification / auralisation inspiration: https://wvnl.xyz/solarbeat/

Slide

I’m super pleased with this one.

I just thought about “Now” pages (like mine) as a changelog for people. And now I know I’ve spent too much time working on this bit of software.

…we’ve created a world where the burden of proof demanded of a decision driven by taste and judgment is infinitely greater than one based on a narrow set of rational choices. Or like Michael Bierut from the design firm Pentagram said, “most processes leave out the stuff that no one wants to talk about: magic, intuition, and leaps of faith.” Sari Azout

New daily standup question: What could we play with today to move the work forward?

A birthday effort for Toria. Happy with the shape of this. Less happy with the colours.

It is ridiculous how much I’m having to cajole myself into sharing my lettering efforts, even to a website where no one is likely to find them. But here is #3. And I like it. I did not like #2.

What is our preferred future of language?

I’m trying to bring a bit of Japanese garden thinking to my 4sqm office. I’m pretty pleased with the window surround I built.

I’ve wanted to put more effort into typography for a while now. For the first time though I’ve found it hard to get motivated to start learning something new. The gap between what’s in my head and what I have the skill to produce is so vast and there are other activities I could do where it’s not and I would be much more satisfied in the short term. So this first effort is a reminder to myself to get out of my own way and start.

Oomphwoche

I’m taking a week off work with no plans, just three goals:

Refresh - end the week feeling better (more energised, more focused) than I started it

Rekindle - get inspired to do amazing work

Reconfigure - play with some new routines and habits to create a work system that resolves the tension between productivity and creativity

My Oomphwoche begins.

Working on a post-modern game show format. It’s called Zero Resolution. I need to figure out how you win…

I love Concept Handles. Giving something a name so you can talk about it with others, recognise it etc. But we seem to be erring on the side of medicalising everything rather than just labelling. The recent relabelling of imposter syndrome to imposter experience (driven largely by the researcher who originally labelled it) fights against this.

I mentioned to a German colleague how odd it is that the German word for mushroom is Champignon and they replied: “No, not all mushrooms. Just Champignon.”

I keep seeing people write/say a priori instead of the English beforehand. I first heard it from VC Josh Wolfe. Is this a Silicon Valley phrase working its way through other subcultures?

Optimism bias in action? When you book an early morning Uber in advance, you never get the driver who accepts the day before.

Can consulting teams ever get to the same state of creative flow as, say, a writers room or a product team?

Is design inherently capitalist (or something) if it’s done for anyone other than yourself? Even if no money changes hands it reinforces existing power structures.

Is scenius always tied to a physical place? Are there examples of online scenius?

I’m thinking about August’s Business Operating System framing and how it’s a very good way of thinking about a team’s operations. Team’s, companies, need to create the platform (services, infrastructure) on top of which their employees can build the right “apps” to serve their customers.

Cultural norms built by brands

c. 3.6M households in Japan celebrate Christmas Day with KFC because of a campaign in the 70s.

“It filled a void,” Rokka says. “There was no tradition of Christmas in Japan, and so KFC came in and said, this is what you should do on Christmas.”

Source

Updated the blog post here

What's on the page is all there is.

All I've been doing is playing and experimenting with different tools and methods. I am not concerned with prescriptive methodologies because that can just lead to box-ticking processes. For me, tools are valuable if they get you to think things that you wouldn't have thought without them.

15 years of behavioural science boils down to: Make it easy and people will do it.

Russell Davies, Firestarters

There is nothing like geeking out with people who care about design craft and methodology to get you all fired up.

One man's noise is another man's signal.