Thank you! I wish some conscious billionaires got together and bought up as much land as possible and titled it the local indigenous populations. Why is this not a thing yet?
It would be ironic if we ourselves turned into AI-like super powerful entities and AI in a sense of the word as we understand it now, never happens. If that moment were ever to get here, I would imagine we would not "exist" for long or under any pleasant circumstances given the likely fact that the creator of such technology would embed themselves at the center of it, with unlimited powers to control others.
This article hits me right in the gut because I'm guilty of every one of those HAVE YOU EVERs. Ouch.
Even as we speak, I'm here commenting away (why?) on Hacker News when I should be publishing posts, building a list, growing my business so I can find a product in the service and getting it done already. Uuugh, just saying that makes me feel terrible. How do I overcome this...
What steps? You are your own boss, you can set your own rates to whatever you like. I think the challenge for most freelancers is fighting their own mind. Somehow, they feel they have to justify their rates and that someone is going to judge them. If you deliver significant value to a business you are helping, does that not justify it? I think a lot of it has to do with self-confidence and ability to think like a business, not a freelancer. If you constantly put yourself in an "employee" inferior position then you will think like that and behave accordingly. Set yourself free of that mindset and you will be on par with the people you talk to.
I agree. It's a known fact that guys don't develop fully until well into their late 20's, early 30's. For example: I took accounting and finance courses in college and I hated them. I did not understand accounting concepts and felt stupid while others seemed to grasp them. Fast forward, I am now in my early 30's and the same concepts now make sense. I actually enjoy looking at finance topics (not so much accounting, but I understand a lot more of it now). I've often questioned the timeline on education and why we try to learn the most important topics in our early 20's when half of us cannot comprehend them entirely until late 20's. Sure, there are always those who do get the information and advance quickly, then go on to achieve great things, but what percentage of the whole population does this?
For a loss of this scale, you'd think the authorities would start looking into Cotten's communication prior to all of this. I would imagine the things he spoke about with others would provide some clues.
Ironic that you mention material design and DO as prime examples of good UI when any UX designer who has to deal with the blunders of those two things will tell you that both are examples of horrible UX/UI.
I call this me-ism. Because I think it's good, it must be good. Because the company I like is doing it, it must be doing it right. What most people who gripe about design & UI do not seem to understand is that those decisions were made for a reason - usually to bring some sort of value to the table not for the sake of making things look clean and fresh.
Another comment here shows some ignorance too by saying that "I was lead to believe that its best to assume users are dumb, but my experience is on the contrary". This comment completely misses the point that users of one app/website will behave differently from users of another app/website and what works for one may not work for the other. At the end of the day there is a business being ran and money being made - the design decisions they make typically impacts their bottom line (for the better) or the design would have been reverted.
Is it just me or is anyone else bothered by Plaid privacy policy on the information they collect? I want to use this app but reading through that privacy policy is the stuff of potential nightmares. "collect information including: account numbers, routing numbers, names, balances, history, loan info etc etc..." pretty much everything. Umm no thank you.
It feels like us humans are unable to solve the challenges ahead of us. One could argue the sort of effort and organization required to make an appropriate change would take a couple of hundred years, yet here we are with only a decade to meet the unattainable IPCC goals. Let's hope we don't see each other on the battlefield, in wars that are surely to come. I will lie down and die before I kill a fellow human being.
It blows my mind that to date we have major companies who put forward horrible UX. Few come to mind off the top of my mind: Chase, PayPal, Digital Ocean. Trying to get statements from Chase is like playing ping pong. Webflow, Freshbooks, all major offenders.
Google UX in general is atrocious. They keep changing the format on every product so you never know where to look. The use of dark patterns is especially horrible. I don't know if what they do is on purpose terrible, or someone just failed at their job, but Google and material design in apps is particularly bad at doing things for the user. Any time someone references Google or some other large corporation and say "see, they are doing it this way" I want to slap them.
Thanks for sharing your story. There are many valuable lessons there and I certainly wish you all the best.
I am familiar with Gumroad as someone who has used it to buy things. From what I recall, the UX was smooth but left me wondering about the ease of cancellations / ways to handle refunds. I recall not feeling like the product lacked something critical - perhaps it was Paypal integration, but I don't remember. Something about it didn't sit right with me as a customer.
From a UX perspective, I feel that some of the commenters here are onto something. The website does not make it clear what the product does. Looking a bit into it, it feels like there are two products in one - payments and audience building - something that I would expect to be separate. It's like the product is trying to do 2 things well instead of 1 thing really well. Of course, this is my personal opinion which could be harsh and unfair seeing how I am not really qualified to give advice. In all, you know your customers and their needs best and it's great to hear you havent given up on gumroad. I hope things go your way and you accomplish everything you set out to do.
If you have to sell yourself on a portfolio then you are talking to the wrong prospects.
Some of my best clients have never seen my portfolio. Even the ones who start off with "where can I see some of your work" forget all about my portfolio by the time we are done speaking. If you do a proper job of explaining what your job entails, what the client gets out of it and where to focus priorities, you'll likely never need to show your previous work.
Sadly, most junior UX wannabes don't understand this and continue to try and impress people with portfolios. They get the client they deserve. This does the industry no favors, but I could care less. Once that business is butt hurt by a previous designer and decides to commit to a real process, we can talk.
If you are part of the problem, you don't get to complain. Be the one designer who does 80% data and 20% design. Just say "no" to stupid ideas and squash them like a bug. If you are an entrepreneur running a business, you are in charge. Do you tell a plumber how to do his job? No. Then act like the plumber and do things the right way and tell them to thank you later. Results speak for themselves.
Same in Japan. Zero results for "porn". On a different note, I can't believe how terrible google news UI looks. It used to be easy to find things, now it looks like some designer had to prove something so he wouldn't be let go. Ahh, maybe I am getting too old for this - first they ruin Gmail, now they spread that vomit they call material design to the rest of the web.
As a designer who often hands over designs to developers, I find it all too frequent scenarios where developers struggle interpreting design into code. I have NEVER seen a developer who can implement a design exactly per spec in CSS.
This is not to say that developers are incompetent with CSS, in fact, it probably says more about CSS than it does about the developer. The fact that CSS has gotten so convoluted is counter to its original goal.
Perhaps I have just work with companies who don't have an A-class developer team? I don't know. But it's not unusual for developers to straight up tell me "I'm not a CSS guy". Like... really? Who is then?
I'm a consultant in my 30s and I worry about my 50's and 60's. I feel like, if I don't get a recurring revenue product going that sells itself without the trade of time for money, I'll be totally screwed. I've tried and failed a few times on various projects, and it feels like time is running out. There are definitely fewer attempts left in me and it takes a hell of a lot of energy to stay positive and try all over.
Is anyone planning to scan all the available PDFs or data sources and put together a comprehensive tool for all hospitals in each state? Now THAT would be a hell of a tool to get hospitals scrambling to lower "not real" prices.
These "influencers" and their instagram accounts are so cringeworthy. How can anyone live their life like this, constantly posing and putting on an image? This can't be healthy. I get the money making aspect and getting paid to do something like travel.. but at what point does posing for glamour shots take away the fun of enjoying the places you go? Why do people follow these people? I don't get it...
Possibly too complex of a tool with not enough demand for it? It probably takes a certain type of individual (like us) to care about this sort of thing or to even think about it. Personally, I hate wasting time looking at 20 different things every time I want to get a complete picture of something. Imagine you had a dashboard where you could not only connect services, but add your own charts, documents, info, stickies, whatever.
Now that I think about it, I wonder how much could just be done with Zapier, google docs and some other services out there. Time to research!
You still have to check everything manually one by one. Imagine if you wanted to check 15 things, that could take a while whereas a dashboard would show you all the info you wanted to know in 1 place.
It's like nobody at Google uses an iPhone or has heard of Facetime. "Oh look, there's an app that lets you call and at a tap of a button turns that call into video! I wonder if we should do something similar?" "- nah, that would be too easy."
Google chat services have always been a big joke to me. I'd cringe any time someone said "can we Hangout" or "Google Hangout". It's like nobody at google knows what "hang out" means and how that does not apply to conversations.
Is it just me or does Google basically throw a bunch of money at a bunch of things to see what sticks, scrap the failures and repeat the process over and over again - and in the process messing with services some people actually like.
I can no longer put trust in Google's consumer product reliability knowing that at any point Google will shut the service down because it does not meet some internal quota on usage.