tannerc

This is a surprisingly good article. As a product designer of 10+ years (having worked at Facebook, Atlassian, and now Lyft), I would recommend anyone outside of the design field to read this.

It provides a much crisper picture of what modern designers workflow looks like than other resources.

Typically when these types of guidance are shared they're littered with more harmful advice than good. For example: "Look at what other apps are doing and copy it!" Except what another product is doing may not work for your product. The design of a final product isn't just the result of visual decisions, it's also driven by things like: business objectives, budgets, team size, time constraints, tech capabilities, target market size and demographics, etc.

So to have the article call attention to things like Dribbble being home to designs that are primarily "conceptual as opposed to the finished product when it comes to real applications" was refreshing.

Great read!

These were dumb comments for me to make, I wish HN supported deletion at times like these. Oh well.

I'd add here that the observations of this research aren't that striking. We've known for some time that time may not be a single direction arrow but rather one pointing both ways, dependent on what we're observing and our classification of what's possible.

In his book Your Brain is a Time Machine, Dean Buonomano gives an excellent and well-written example of how studies like the one reported here actually work. A favorite quote of mine from that section sums the point as so:

"Decreases in entropy are improbable, not impossible, and given enough time the improbable becomes probable."

Interesting that many of the comments here attempt to label this as false research simply because it's taking one state and changing it to another.

Absent from the conversation seems to be agreement on what exactly "time" is.

Much has been studied and said about time, but if we think of time as being something other than an observable change—or that of a recognizable, unified state to one of chaos, aka entropy—what is it?

This is a fascinating share, if not for the results—"None of the measures of intellectual engagement was linked to the speed of decline of people's mental abilities over time"—but for the study itself.

"Many people also dropped out of the study. Only 96 of the 498 people recruited took part in the last round of testing. The researchers lost touch with 13 people, while 57 people died and 332 declined to take part."

Do studies like this often reach the front page of HN?

Important last-line: "It took Facebook's team 4 hours and 13 minutes to fix the issue - the fastest report-to-fix for me."

Technically correct, this is a style guide template and not a complete design system. Good catch.

This is... really poor. I went ahead and purchased the system to see what it entailed and while it is fairly thorough, it's nothing really unique nor does it provide ready-made components for use.

You're basically paying $39 for the file setup/template and expected to fill in the components or elements yourself. Essentially you have to do all the work anyway so you're better off saving the money and building your system on your own anyway. There isn't anything in the purchased file that is all that helpful unless you're an absolute product design noob with no understanding of how systems work (in which case you should do that research instead of purchasing anyway).

Roads certainly limit where one can drive, but the alternative is pretty disastrous.

As with anything: there is a time and place. Design systems are wildly powerful for scaling, creating a cohesive language across a brand or product, and moving quickly.

Just because you have a design system doesn't mean the buck stops there. You can keep building new roads if you know where it is you need to go that the existing roads won't take you.

Perhaps that is your topic then: how to discover and explore diverse interests.

I know I'd subscribe to someone dedicating time to research and write about identifying interesting subjects, diving into them, and the results.

Many years ago I did a webcast for Moz (formerly SEOmoz) on the topic of how to find things to write about. The webcast is behind a member wall (free to sign up I think) but might be helpful to you[1].

Other tricks I use to come up with things to write about: search Twitter/Quora/Reddit for people specifically asking questions related to what it is you want to write about (e.g. "automatic habit"). Then break each question down into its fundamental components to create a more complete set of topics, asking who, what, where, when, why, and how of each specific question you encounter. This way one question ("What types of habits should be automated") can very easily become several ("Who benefits most from automating habits?", "Where does automation take place?", "When should someone consider automating habits vs. not?", etc.).

1 https://moz.com/webinars/from-nothing-to-expert-how-to-blog-...

Perhaps consider a different perspective? Instead of approaching conversations with the mentality of "I want to share my take" approach them with the mindset of "What can this person teach me?" Always, in all interactions.

For me, it was helpful to use Seth Godin's advice[1]. I used email to reach out to people I admire, to pull ideas from their mind, and eventually I found others reaching out to me to do the same. Like all good things: connections take time.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/how-to-send-...

The way to become an expert in anything is to research the thing, do the thing, and reflect on the thing. Blogging is a good way to conduct the first and last part of that process.

If you'll allow me a personal anecdote on the matter:

10 years ago I knew absolutely nothing about "creativity." I worked in an environment where the word was tossed around a lot, but any time I asked what it meant I got conflicting, confusing, and sometimes seemingly backwards responses.

I wanted to better understand the concept I kept hearing about, so I started a blog. I worked hard to read everything I could about creativity, wrote down my thoughts on the subject a few times a week, and connected with people also interested in the subject.

After just a couple of years I started building up a sizable audience. It turned out a lot of people didn't know much about creativity and wanted to follow along my journey. My naivety was theirs, and by sharing the journey of discovery and rumination with the audience, they felt like the journey was just as much their as it was mine.

After six years I had more than 150,000 subscribers to the blog and a book deal with a real publisher. I ended up being invited to write for Adobe's creative publication 99u as well as Inc.com. As of a year or two ago I started being invited to speak on creativity at events around the world. I also ended up building a number of successful products (apps and publications) based on the things I learned over my years blogging.

Everything I learned about creative thinking over the last decade is thanks to that blog and the time I put into it.

The catch is this: it takes time and effort to blog, about anything. At times it can be an arduous task. You can dedicate 10 years to it like I have and still not see anything tangible come as a result. But the biggest benefit to blogging about a specific subject—particularly if you are not yet an expert in that subject—is the same benefit to journaling: it gives you an excuse to think about the thing in ways that you otherwise may not.

It is widely debated within creative circles whether or not incubation is a necessary step for creativity and problem solving[1].

Yet repeatedly research and anecdotal data indicates that some type of break in any behavior—separated by tasks which utilize alternative forms of thinking—is beneficial.

So if you're working on a complex logical problem, jumping away for a bit to do less intense and more playful work can help spark new insights, and vice versa. 90 minute chunks of highly involved work followed by a short burst of walking, taking a shower, doodling or free writing, or simply resting can be really helpful for your mind. We shouldn't shy away from breaks as beneficial.

I wrote this back in June of last year as a reference for myself, it is not at all scientific in any way, but a reasonable analogy nonetheless: "It's like when you constantly write or say the same word for five minutes, your brain burns out on it and suddenly the word doesn't appear to make sense. Working on the same specific problem or task for any sizable amount of time means the neurons in your brain around that area of work are constantly firing." Eventually the work "doesn't make sense" and the possibility of creative thinking is greatly hindered.

Sometimes the best way to get an insight is to get away from the work.

1. See Gary Klein's book Seeing What Other's Don't.

Having children is just one of many ways you can make an impact and "leave something behind" for the future.

But isn't that exactly what design should do? Not mimic for the sake of mimicry, but attempt to better understand the rationale for any decision and ultimately designing with intent. The homework is the meat of the thing.

So what if the result is the same? At least the team behind the work now understands how they got there—and communicate as much to their current or potential fan base.

I wouldn't want to hire a babysitter to watch my child if their sales pitch was: "I've watched a lot of babysitters in movies, I know what I'm doing." It's a bit of a silly comparison of course, but the point remains: how you get to a result is just as important—if not more important—as the result itself. That's good design!

Related to what we might label "modern" infrastructure, I just got back from a trip visiting the outskirts of Illinois.

The towns there are small, but full of people hungry for opportunities and good work.

Yet everywhere you go there is no work to be done. Businesses—even big box stores like Walmart or Target—are closed down. Homes lay vacant despite their reasonably cheap (at least for someone living in Silicon Valley) $20,000 price tag. Even churches in the area have to close their doors but leave their steeples standing, unable to draw in an audience or—and most importantly—any money to maintain things.

This isn't Detroit I'm talking about, it's a fairly typical suburb of a larger metropolitan area in the midwest.

The answer for many of these people has largely and loudly been: "Bring back jobs from overseas! Stop outsourcing work to China!"

But of course that's not a valid answer, since the problem is that the jobs these towns once knew now belong to machines which can work tens of times harder and longer at a fraction of the cost of their former human counterparts. Yes, some of the work has gone overseas, but much of it has just become "modernized" by technology.

And here's the thing: the infrastructure for things as simple as Internet access in these parts of the US just isn't there.

So nobody goes to school to learn programming or design or how to be a modern entrepreneur because they (the individuals and schools) just don't have any connection to those parts of the landscape. And when they do, their model is wildly out of date.

One of the Universities I visited and, later, a high school had each just opened a computer lab for students in which the goal wasn't to help students learn programming, or design, or anything like that, but merely how to type.

This of course added on top of the decrepit roads, buildings, etc. The state is wildly out of money because it can't put people to work, and the people can't work because the infrastructure just isn't there. It's depressing to see, really. I want to know how we can improve this, and what someone living on the other side of the country might do to help.

Most of the engineers I know learned to program via "top-down", as did I (though I'm a designer).

Whenever anyone asks me how to get started in programming, I tell them to forget about buying any of those "Dummies Guide" books and instead just pick a problem they're really passionate about and Google anything they need to learn to make the idea happen.

Such an approach certainly doesn't teach you a lot of the most important thing about programming (garbage collection, what types of objects to use and when to use them, etc.) but it does get the job done.

And that's the thing I think matters most for those just starting out: if you try to learn bottom-up and get all the fundamentals, you're going to burn out.

Of course such advice goes right out the window if your goal is to actually become a real, breathing, programmer. Because you can't afford to make mistakes and the foundational stuff ensures you're less likely to do so.

Whereas just Googling how to put together a project will likely leave you with a functional project, yes, but also less-than-ideal code.

Poor collaboration within a small team is something I'm experiencing now, and it's devastating.

Would be curious to hear if you found a way out, or a way to improve collaboration within a currently flawed group.

iA Writer has been invaluable for me in capturing notes at work or on-the-go.

We've known this for some time, but this is additional evidence to the notion of our brain processing and prioritizing which information gets stored in short-term vs. long term memory.

This also explains deja vu, but possibly not as many on this thread have tried to explain.

I've written about this about two years ago, the leading theory of deja vu being that your brain processes and stores an experience in the long term memory before it's had a chance to properly store it in short term. By the time the short term memory has caught-up, the event feels already lived, because it's already been processed and stored in long term memory.

At least, that's one theory.

Hi, author here! Thanks for flagging.

Despite the article being four years old—I'd like to think I've come a way in terms of better referencing reliable sources since then—there is evidence in the reference cited that speaks directly to the claim, but you would have to stretch yourself to uncover it. Or you could just Google it I guess.

e.g. the claim from the article: "Your [pre]frontal cortex happens to be a major dopamine hub...it's the hub for processing dopamine" is formed from the association of dopamine's function within the frontal lobe; namely, and from the source, how depletion of it has been identified as a major hinderance to abilities stemming from that area of the brain.

Of course the all-reliable (/s) Wikipedia also tells us: "The frontal lobe contains most of the dopamine-sensitive neurons in the cerebral cortex." Dopamine certainly plays a major part in that region of the brain, again a Google search yields enough on the subject to warrant a statement of the variety I originally made.

If they're treating ad views the same as regular story views, it's once the ad is initially loaded[1].

But, as others have mentioned, Snapchat appears to be more interested in sponsored content and Discovery features.

1. https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-video-metrics

There's specifically a setting that you can select on any Page or Profile to "See First in News Feed." [https://www.facebook.com/help/1188278037864643]

It's not faster, it's quicker, and there's an important distinction between the two—particularly for $M car owners.

Going from 0-60 is a nice perk (quick), but until these cars can hold that speed longer (fast) many car enthusiasts aren't likely to bite.

The most important part of your comment was the other parameters, not of speed but of the car itself. A friend of mine is a Ferrari owner who admires what Tesla can do but will die before he gives up the hard roar of a powerful engine.

It's very different than your proposed—albeit much better—alternate headline, as revenue isn't the only driver of store rankings. It appears dollars are a very small measurement for general category rankings (there's a different category for "Top Grossing"), since free apps also rank.

Having a headline of "One download was enough to get me to #18 on the app store" is not only clearer, it's also arguably more compelling.

FWIW I thought the article was about how the author reached a top rank by paying someone or investing in ads for 70 cents.

Misleading title: this is about how the author's app reached a high rank in the Mac App Store for a specific category yet he only saw 70 cents in profit as a result (one sale).

Why discount VR so readily?

Seems that as VR becomes more accessible it would be a phenomenal way at delivering news and in-depth stories. VR can do a lot in the way of empathy and communicating things which the printed word—or even 2D video—never can. Similar to how the television influenced the standard news cycle and social media challenged it further.

Some of the best news stories from this year have been immersive 360 videos published by The Times, imo.

> A tool that could understand my intent and then propose structure or similar sentences and words

I'm working on this exact thing right now fwiw, in my app called Prompts. I imagine machine assisted apps are going to percolate up over the coming years, or months, in a way we haven't seen yet. It's pretty exciting, if we can get it right. Written language seems like a decent place to start.

Interesting insights. There's a lot to unpack here, but ultimately it boils down to working with, and creating, a "bicycle for the mind." The computer is one such example of such a technology, but so are the software programs it runs, as are art forms and language.