Jesper Bylund

Geek culture

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT

This is a repost of a earlier blog from a previous system.

Ever get the feeling that game developers are geeks? “Duh!” right? Well, I’m a game developer, I’m not a geek, and I am seriously starting to wonder how much the geek culture is holding back gaming.

Woke up this morning and thought about every single console game I have ever finished, they aren’t many, and you know what? I used a walk through every time… Every time?!?!

Yep, I haven’t completed a single console game on my own. I have finished a lot of PC games though.

But this got me thinking, now I am not really a hardcore gamer. But in the eyes of my very casual gamer friends I am super hardcore. I’ve played video games since I was six, as an adult I even work with video games, doesn’t get much more hardcore. So why haven’t I even finished a console game? The answer took eluded me for some time, but after a bowl of cellulose “stay-fit flakes” I asked my non-gamer girlfriend and to her the answer was obvious; they’re too hard.

But I’m a game developer! And I’ve played video games for fifteen years! Her answer was a little too shocking for me to bear. But after a few minutes the idea didn’t sound that absurd at all.

So what if games are too hard for me? What does this have to do with geek culture? Well think about whom the geeks are; almost by definition the players who adhere to geek culture are the hardcore gamers. These people don’t mess around, they break games faster then I heat a microwave pizza. These are the people who want games that offer them challenges that they have a hard time overcoming.

This means that because games are catering to the geek culture games are hard as hell. But guess why I play games with a walkthrough? I find most games challenging enough anyway, I want to experience a game. I don’t want to grind it to death to finish it (the story in FF12 seems to be good, it’s just too bad I will NEVER have enough time to grind for 100+ hours…) I just want to play.

Wake up developers! If we continue to cater to the geek culture, we will get amazingly hard games with incestuous internal logic guaranteed to turn off all casual and non gamers.

Look at the market right now, income for every major publishing house is up. But so are the prices, only Nintendo seems to be able to increase the amount of actual players, and they are really doing a poor job at supplying games for them.

Our market will crash if we don’t embrace games as a sport and as an art. Developers should know better.

The first step in doing this; don’t force players to assume geek culture just to play your game! Keep them simple, allow gamers to choose how hard the challenge is, and for gods sake don’t make the controls harder then they need to be.

New blog format

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT

A new blog format and away we go...This is my fourth attempt to find a blog or content management system that I can actually use on my own site. So far not even my own code has worked up to speed. Let's see if google can meet my demands through blogger.

Soon to be updated.

Accessability 2

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

A lot of core gamers and core game developers are, more or less, opposing accessibility design for the reasons that making a game accessible "dumbs down" the game or "makes the game shallow". Players and developers pushing for accessible games claim that this is not the case. Well let's just set the record straight with some quick analysis: Accessability does dumb down gameplay and does make games more shallow. But, this is only true for a very small part of the target demographic. This is only true for the power- or core-gamers that fully learn the micro strategies of playing a game and then use that knowledge to play on a macro strategic level. For these players games will become to simple or shallow and certainly dumbed down if we make the games more accessible.

But how many are the core gamers? We have absolutely no idea. But paying core gamers we do know. Very few games, ever, have sold more then 10 million units. But games aimed at the hardcore crowds do tend to sell close to ten million (close in the millions that is, Halo 3 sold 7 million I believe). That means that there are about 10 million core players that really don't need more accessible games. Doesn't that make accessability pointless? No. Certainly not.

How many paying players are there? We don't have a clue. What we do know is that the previous generation of home consoles (dominated by the PS2) sold over 200million units. Even if every single gamer bought two consoles that still 100million home consoles... On the handheld side the GBA sold about that many units alone. So for every core gamer there are about 10 less then core gamers actively paying for consoles and games, maybe just not as much.

This is the crowd that developers are aiming for when they're focusing on accessibility. This does not mean that all games should be accessible. After all, selling 10 million units of a game is plenty. But selling hardcore multiplayer shooters alone as the industry is doing today is simply incredibly stupid from an economical perspective. No wonder the Wii is selling so well, what else are these gamers playing? Online games some of them for sure (like the 11 million current subscribers to World of Warcraft).

So have no illusions, games are a low entry entertainment. Most gamers don't want to learn how to play a game. They don't want to compete or be the best. They simply want to play. Sound odd? Think about why PvE is more popular then PvP in MMO's or why Multiplayer didn't explode before the instant respawn became standard or why coop shooters are doing better then deathmatch shooters.

Next time I write about accessibility I'll adress what low entry entertainment really is and how to focus on it.

Accessability and Piracy

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Most digital industries are claiming piracy is bad, that its hurting sales and destroying the marketplace.But so far all we've actually seen in a decline in album sales and recently game developers fleeing from the PC platform. We've also seen increased sales on the machines that have easy access pirated material: iPod, Nintendo DS, Playstation, PC. The machines are selling like hotcakes, why isn't the software selling? The current industry theory is that piracy is destroying the marketplace, but let's look at one more piece of the puzzle before I launch my own opinion: PC titles that are easily accessable and do NOT use DRM sell. Not just a little either, they're actually on par with sales estimates that don't calculate with piracy.

Why is this? Well, from the hardware sales we can draw the simple conclusion that consumers are buying the hardware that supports the most variety; "I wan't a DS 'cause it has the most games".

Shouldn't they buy games to then? Perhaps they do. But if they're unsure about a product why not download it first? It's often simpler and quicker then going to the store. Oh, and you don't need to wait for the company to ship it to your part of the world either. The DS is actually selling a lot of games per console. So even though piracy is rampant it's not really hurting sales. Or at least, there is no data to support that. Maybe if Nintendo let consumer access demos of games when the consumers wanted to instead of through another console and when it's released in the right territory we'll have something to compare with.

Why isn't the iPod driving sales then? This is the simplest answer ever. A single song through iTunes cost 0.99$... This might not sound expensive, but that's insanely expensive. Think about it like this; from the sellers point of view the price is honest or even cheap. But consumers usually have gigabytes of music... That translated to thousands and thousands of songs and very few people can afford to pay thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars for music. They will choose either to pirate it or not buy it at all. So when the music industry is trying to close down pirates, their really destroying the demand for music.

So is piracy hurting sales? Maybe. But it's also making sure that consumers actually get the media item, type and/or quantity they want. If publishers made their products as easily available as pirated material and for prices that consumers are actually prepared to pay piracy might be a thing of the past.

Now I don't want comments saying that products will always be to expensive etc etc. If that were the case the pirates would never buy the product under any circumstances and the industry would therefore not be loosing sales.

Adding Fun part 1

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Preface, first draft How does one write a book anyhow? I have no idea, I've tried it before but I've never gotten past the first 20 or so pages and my narrative arcs are just crap. But this is different, I hope, this is a book without dramatic narrative. In fact, this is a book about design. And I can't be more passionate about a subject (after all, sex is an activity).

Design was for a long time the process to get things to work, engineering design, or the process to make something aesthetically beautiful, artistic design. But today these fields are merging and are joined by the less respected but at least as important field of human interaction design, the process of designing things so that they work with humans attached at some point or end. Basically making sure someone can use the damned thing.

This is where I come in. Engineering design I leave to the engineers, aesthetic design I leave to the people that can draw. But designing for humans has become my calling and I will in these series of articles or possibly book-to-be define and teach you about my theory for adding fun to any product.

I will use a lot of practical examples from a variety of products but will center mostly around games. As they are the most obvious products that need to add fun.

Next up: a short brief on Raph Koster's Excellent: A Theory of Fun which explains the beginning of what fun is.

Adding the fun 3 - cognitive models

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Cognitive models are the basic blocks of understanding we use the deal with the world around us. Don't worry, I'm about to explain just what that means. When we look at something or hear something we try to understand what it is by summing up it's parts. Using the smallest parts we already understand we match what we're looking at to the part we understand, do they overlap? If not we use other parts until we find one that does. If we don't have one then we think of a category of parts to put the new thing in and call that a part we understand.

Example: If we see a bicycle tire for the first time to try to understand what it is by matching it to things we already understand. If we know what a wheel is we'll call the bicycle tire a wheel. If we don't know that a tire is we might not be able to match it to anything and will therefore sum it up as well as we can: "a round metal and rubber thing".

When we have a lot of there parts we'll start to see that some things are made up from parts. For example a tree is made up from wood and leaves. And a car from metal, wheels and an engine. But to perceive these more complex things we can't keep using the parts that they are made up.

This would demand to much of our perception, our minds would be overheated immediately. Human beings can keep 7 +- 2 (ranging from 5 to 9 depending on a range of factors) things in our awareness at any one time. This means that it's possible to understand 7+-2 things at the same time. If you see a car and can only understand the parts, you'll freeze up due to overloading before you get past the car door.

Cognitive models are a way for human beings to abstract things, give them a name and remove the unnecessary information that isn't required to understand it. So I can add my wheel and engine and metal compartment parts together to form the model Car. I then place all the cars I see into that model and now I understand what cars are. At least until I see a completely different car.

Everything can be, and is, understood in this way. Try looking at something and looking at higher or lower layers of complexity.

Keyboard - buttons - plastic - rectangle shape.

Keyboard + computer part + writing interface + hand extension.

Pretty easy to understand huh? It gets a bit harder to think of things such as army maneuvers or Darwinian evolution as simple cognitive models but this is what makes humans work. Without cognitive models we would be very limited indeed. And we still are in some respects, to understand new things we compare them to already complex models. When they fully, or partly, overlap we categorize them together. But this means a lot of parts that don't belong get added to the model. This is called prejudice and is a huge problem for humans, no matter how open minded they are.

Next up, I'll explain how Raph Koster's theory of fun explains what fun is by using cognitive models.

Adding the fun part 2

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Our limited awareness Everything around us is competing for our attention at all times. Things that are large, have bright colors and move quickly usually take up most of our attention. This is because we, as humans, can only perceive a set amount of things at a time. Basically, we only have a bit of attention and we fill it up really fast.

We know a lot more about attention then most people think, read up on cognitive psychology if your interested in more details. In short, attention is limited and has a set of rules for what is more important to be aware of. Most of these rules we learn as we grow (speeding cars will hurt you if they hit you) some are based on instincts (sharp or slithering animals are not to be trifled with).

Thankfully we have cognitive models to help use make the most of our attention.

What are cognitive models? I'll get into that next.

Age of Warcraft

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I just started playing Age of Conan and I must say I'm impressed. I've played a lot of MMOGs for research and Age of Conan has the smoothest and most intuitive startup of them all so far.
The fighting feels really liquid and action packed, at least for a start, much unlike the one click combat of WoW.
But the environments make me feel claustrophobic. Don't get me wrong, the world in AoC is beautiful, its just so packed with hills, rocks and stuff that I can't the forest for all the trees.

Overall its a very interesting game but I need to play it a bit more to give some form of real evaluation. A friend of mine claims that the content dries up after lvl 40. Judging from my previous MMO experience I'll get bored a lot sooner the lvl 40 but we'll see, I'm still going strong at lvl 9 and it took me several weeks to get passed lvl 7 in WoW.

I still have my article on the cognitive limitations of the avatar coming up soon. Just need to sit down and write. Later!

Another line of work

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

So, after encouragement from Ole Herbjørnsen at Funcom, I've started playing World of Warcraft again. This time with the aim to max level a character and analyze the various systems I find on the way.

Now I've played WoW at least four times before. And the start of this character was no different, it was boring. Really boring. But then at around level 15 something previously unknownst to me happened.
I was enjoying myself!
Not the actual gameplay though, the fighting and grinding was still boring. But I started enjoying traveling through the world. The world itself in WoW is quite beautiful with it's five year old graphical style and the vastness and continuity of it really got to me. But instances and fighting... Let me give you an example:

Last night I had planned with a few of my friends to play Wailing Caverns, a horde instance in the barrens. It is the second instance for players playing the more colorful horde side of WoW.

But after dinner I found myself procrastinating, a lot. Even doing dishes!
Eventually my girlfriend Caroline prodded me:
"Weren't you supposed to play an instance with the guys?"
"...yes..." *sigh* "do I have to?"
"erh... I'm not sure you should pay for this game."

I did play WC, I did enjoy doing something with the guys. But I'm glad I have a few hours yet before I have to do it again. The basic gameplay in MMO's has got to change. Not many people can actually enjoy the one-click combat.

Anticipating the quality of Starcraft 2

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

May the Blizzard fan-boy storm commence. Starcraft 2 is coming our way. We don't know when but the holiday season 2009 seems a good guess. It's almost 2 years after the first showing, characteristic of Blizzard, it's the right time of year and the game seems quite polished today. Letting Blizzard add the final twinkle in the year to come. South Korea and fans around the globe collectively shot their load as the first footage was revealed. Starcraft 2 looked great from the start and seems to hold true to the original. But is this really that odd? The game has been in production for what? 6 years? Anything less then a game of the year would be incompetent on Blizzards part.

So how do Blizzard ensure such quality in their products? Actually the secret isn't very secret. It's just not customary in the industry today. They take longer to make the games. That's it. They don't add more because they have time, oh no. They just take longer making the same features, and therefore make them a hell of a lot better.

Games aren't movies, we don't have a near perfect theoretical model for how to make them, neither in production nor result. And we certainly don't have expensive rental of equipment and locations. What we do have is expensive personnel costs. But this is quite strange, games cost a lot of money to buy. They don't cost a lot to make compared to movies. Why aren't more publishers making games the slow and steady Blizzard way? Because we're still not making any money of of merchandise. Which is odd since the merch that does exist is selling, and fast.

Basically, the industry has a lot to learn from Blizzard. And most of it isn't about creating games, it's about how to run a company and an interest. Games take time, therefore we must position them as long term developments and sales. Merchandising and expansions are a must. Just as longer development time with less features, we know it pays off. Just look at Blizzard.

Anyone having problems with chrome?

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I'm having some problems with google chrome:

Some javascript web applications freeze for a second or two now and again.
CSS color updates (for backgrounds) are really slow in some web applications (www.rememberthemilk.com)
I can't use blogger, it tells me that javascript in my browser has been disabled... LoL! :)

Anyone else having problems? Sure this is a beta, but with regards to their launch information that stated that they had better QA then any other browser application it's really weird that these simple problems should trickle through. Or are they extremely advanced problems with simple symptoms?

Capturing the Online Games Market

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

As I posted about earlier the web 2.0 applications are forerunners to a new type of game development market that is opening up online. Namely online games of which the flash games are currently most famous and seems to be the default platform in the foreseeable future.

Two large companies are apparently aware of this development as Ubisoft and Garage games have both already started delivering for the platform. While Garage games game platform is a closed network that relies on a plugin download they already have advanced 3D games up and running. Visit InstantAction and have a look.
Ubisofts upcoming Heroes of Might and Magic: Kingdoms might be delivered through flash, but it is to early to tell will HOMMK.

Time will tell but if I were a large publishing house today I'd try like hell to push Adobe to release open GL or direct X support with flash.

Read the previous post for more on the point.

Cloud based computing

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The cloud based computing term is thrown around a lot on the web these days. While we wait for a completely cloud based computer to be released (www.cloudo.com) we'll have to make do with what we've got. This is my rundown of how I solve the common everyday problems. I bought an Asus EEE pc. It's great, it's small, it has battery life and a full qwerty keyboard. The biggest problem is the OS (xandros) which I can thankfully replace with a proper one (ubuntu, xp is to slow). But it still doesn't have the kind of power I'm getting used to while at my computer.

Sure for office work I mostly use google documents, and for storing images (if I needed to) I have picasa or flickr or oosah or a million other services. But what I really want is a place to put all those things that I want to keep with me. Bookmarks, notes, files and so on. Google had most of these needs covered with google bookmarks and google notebook, but Google have yet to release their fabled online drive. And they also messed things up when they released Chrome, which is a great browser, that doesn't support it's own products such as bookmarks!?! Way to go Google, your age is showing. Is this the first step towards becoming Microsoft? Seems to be.

But lo! Saving the day a small upstart called Drop Box smashes into my life and makes things work. Drop Box is a small program or online interface that lets you sync a folder on your computer with an online storage space. It runs in the background, doesn't take up any RAM (a lot of bandwidth though if you handle a lot of files) lets you sync the folder to an unlimited number of computers (windows, mac or linux) and has no file size limits. Sounds awesome? It is.

But whats the catch? Well, drop box is still in development and you can only sign up for 2GBs of storage... Sure, their free and that's great. But I was hoping for more. This is a service I'd be happy to pay for though.

Coop wrong for its purpose?

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Coop play is used to let players play multiplayer without the stress of competition. But does coop serve this purpose?Most coop games simply duplicate the singleplayer gameplay mechanics to create coop play, this technique inherits the problem of competition because the players are now competing for the same objectives or, worse, taking seperate paths as in Gears of War which makes play singleplay but with extra penalties of death. A more interesting use of coop are the paralell objectives for squads in Resistance 2 online multiplayer or the paralell objectives on battlefield in the upcoming RTS Battle Forge. Perhaps paralell multiplayer is a better goal for cooperative play. What do you think?

Death spank and odd news

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Sorry for the lack of updates. Redesign and a new job makes my time short and the tech buggy as hell. I just saw the first trailer from Deathspank... yeah, thats right! It's Ron Gilbert's (anyone else who has no clue?), accoring to kotaku, "long awaited" episodic RPG/adventure.

Now re-read the previous paragraph a few times and close your mouth.

It's supposed to be a mix between Diablo and Monkey Island, and judging from the trailer I saw they seem to have hit the spot dead on. I'm excited, and not because another good game might be in the works. There are in fact a whole bunch of good games on the horizon. I'm excited because this game looks like it's really, truly, funny.

Not entertaining. Funny.

A sitcom of games if you will. Can anyone say "main-stream hit"? Readers of this blog will know that I love easy fun and that, at least I, find such entertainment really hard to find these days. Go on Guy, make a wonderful game!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGWT6YPu4v4&hl=en&fs=1]

Debate about the use of cooperation in games

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Check out my post (and the rest of the discussion) about cooperative game play on the developers blog Understanding Games.

Duke Nukem or Prostitution games?

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

According to Kotakuit seems like Duke Nukem Forever will actually launch. This year. Seriously.
Wouldn't it be awesome if this game launched, sold 10 million copies and was the best shooter ever? Every publisher would have to rethink their strategies and developers worldwide would be stunned.

A friend of mine was very recently made Junior Game Designer at Avalanche, I was talking to him today when he mentioned a discussion he was having on games about difficult subjects. Really difficult. He was playing with the idea of creating a game about prostitution or pedophilia. He was struggling with the problem that he's learned that games are supposed to be fun. And making prostitution or pedophilia fun might not be everyones cup of tea.

I've been having thoughts about this for some time and I think that Raph Koster seems to be on the same track as me. Games don't need to be fun. Most games on the market aren't fun, think about gears of war or Mass Effect. They aren't fun, they are entertaining for sure, but not fun exactly.
Maybe it's because we still use the name games that we've narrowed our scope to just fun, maybe we should call it interactive entertainment instead. The term sums up our industry a lot better, Brain training is not fun, but it is entertaining.
Games, or interactive entertainment, should be engaging.

And nothing is stopping the most heinous acts from becoming engaging, give a player a perfect control and the order to perform a gruesome act they will quite possibly do it. But they will quite possibly also experience completely different feelings than fun. Hopefully at least.
But to let this happen we need to let go of all the bells and whistles we are using to create fun today. Maybe rape should not be awarded with points. Maybe it shouldn't be awarded at all. But should we shy away from letting the player do it? Certainly not. We are after all, trying to engage peoples feelings and thoughts through our art, and they must perform the actions.

This is interactive entertainment after all!

E3 anticipation

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Follow the big three press conference countdown and feed gathering at:
www.jesperbylund.com/e3.html

E3 big three rundown

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

E3 is on it's way and the big three have shown their cards. But who "won"? We can't be sure until E3 is over but I have a few points to share: Microsoft Had a great presentation showing exclusive titles lite Gears of War 2, Banjo & Kazooiey (no I can't spell it) and Fable 2. They also revamped their Xbox live experience with a modern, and this time quite pretty, interface starring customizable characters for players. Much like Mii's but better looking. They also showed that Avatars (official name) will be of use to players unlike Wii's Mii's. Microsoft also launched some rip-offs of Sony games such as Lips (singstar) and some camera interaction game thingie (eyetoy). Overall, Microsoft created a lot of excitement for the platform.

Nintendo Had an irritating speaker on stage making flat jokes about random stuff. Get her away from the stage. But they also unveiled Wii Motion + which is an add on to the Wiimote (more like a Wiimote 2) that allowes for better movement recognition... So now the Wii will work like... it was originally planned? Looked pretty good. They also unveiled some more games, first party of course, each with their own add on. Nintendo, if I hadn't already sold my Wii I would never be able to afford all these add ons. Stop trying to steal my last cents you evil bastards.

Sony Sony had by far the best presentation. No doubt. But they didn't show enough content to wow me. Actually it didn't feel like they showed much new stuff at all. PSN video store is live as of yesterday, very apple of them. Thank god. MAG is a massive online action game. Great. What else? Oh yeah, the games are coming. There seem to be a lot of them, but since we didn't actually see that many it's hard to tell. Home will eventually come, but since what I really wanted from the beginning is Microsoft's Avatars system, Home will probably fall flat.

I want Sony to win this war. Nintendo has proved their point and thats great, we need to focus on a larger market. But the Wii is still a piece of shit and doesn't have any games I'd like to play. Microsoft is giving consumers plastic boxes that scream with whirring fans and crash ever so often. But they are giving developers what they want. And they are delivering on their promises. The playstation 3 really is a superior machine for the consumer. It's quiet, doesn't require add ons and is a smooth entertainment package. But Sony is fucking it's console by not delivering proper support for developers, meaning most games come to the 360. They're slow in delivering systems for the PS3, even though the systems usually are great in the end. And the PS3 is still expensive like gods own nude pictures.

Come on Sony, stop being arrogant and help yourselves. I don't want another Windows monopoly destroying the games industry.

EA defending developers and games

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Yes it's true, EA has stepped up and defended Bioware's Mass Effect (a quality game like few others) and requested that Fox corrects their slanderous lies about their product.

Not only is this an action I can endorse and be happy about, media should never try to censure other media, but it is also a sharp kick in the teeth to all those hardcore gamers out there that haven't quite understood that companies like EA do a lot of good for the industry. Regardless of what you think of them. Don't believe me? Who else could say this to Fox? http://kotaku.com/348187/ea-calls-fox-out-on-insulting-mass-effect-inaccuracies
And for that matter, who else (yes I know activision-blizzard can, but they're hardly a month old company) could manufacture a product like spore?

Lets applaud EA and hope they win against the ignorant media censureship of Fox, then we can discuss originality and innovation. Let's win recognition first.

Easy fun games

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I think there is a huge drought of easy fun games on the market. Games that are easy to play, simple to understand with short playtimes and a "cozy fun" approach rather then the "arcade adrenaline furious fun" that seems to be the norm in game development today.

Thankfully, along comes Flock and gives me hope, though I'm rather suspicious about the game mechanics...

Fearing hubris or fame

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Every once in a while you get an idea that you feel will change the world because the idea is so great. Now, this might have worked in the time of ancient Greece or in early Rome. But today such an idea must be approached carefully.

Are you sure the idea really is that great? Have you tested it, through prototyping or discussion, against nay-sayers and won anyone over?

If not; shut up. The idea might not be that great...

If you have; That's great, now comes the real work.

Try to poke holes in your idea or theory until either: a-you succeed and the idea had some flaws, or b-you can't find any flaws and it really might change the world.
Just remember that most ideas that have changed the world (facebook, capitalism etc) have flaws, and many ideas that haven't changed the world don't have any real flaws.

The reason I'm getting into this is because I had an idea on the bus last week. An idea about what fun really is. A cognitive explanation to how fun works that is simple enough for designers to use as a road map in games development.

Now you understand my fear of hubris eh?

Over the next two weeks I will be fleshing out the idea and posting about it here, please, please, try to kill it. If we can't kill the idea together I'll just have to write a book about it.

Feedback and rewards in games

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve had a few comments asking about game design jargon. Namely what feedback and rewards are, in a recent blog I used Assassins Creed to prove a point about how important feedback is (what would Altair be without the accurate climbing animations?).
I only want to have to write this post once so I’m writing it in English.

Feedback is the single most important factor for creating FUN in a game. Really, it is. Don’t believe me? Let me explain:

When a player interacts with the game that interaction much be shown, if the player does not see or hear what they did they wont understand that they did anything at all and stop trying to do it. Simple eh? It means that anything you do must have an effect, and it must be a relevant effect. This applies to everything in a game, from jumping and shooting to solving the puzzles and completing the game. The word feedback is usually applied to mechanical events (rock hits ground, pistol fired, foot placed on floor etc). But this is a form of reward, actually the type of reward that matters most; When you defeat a boss or finish a level you expect there to be some kind of reward, if there is none you might feel cheated and not want to play another one. But if you lack feedback from your actions nothing in the game will feel worthwhile. If you press jump and the avatar does nothing, or something less then what you expect, you’ll most likely think the controller or the game is broken.

There are as many opinions about good design as there are designers, but so far I’ve yet to hear anyone propose that feedback is in any way less then essential. That’s why its called feedback and not reward, though it actually is the same thing.

Rewards do not have to be tangible (gold coins or a wolf pelt), in the real world most rewards are soft values. A smile or a handshake is often more rewarding then winning a few bucks. This applies to games as well, some designers just seem to forget or are unaware (read: incompetent). These soft values are how we create the feeling of the game. Making sure that jumping in Mario games or climbing in Assassins Creed feels right usually means making sure that the feedbacks, or rewards, are logical and in scale with the action (leap of faith must feel more rewarding and therefore give more feedback/reward then jumping).

Now you know how feedback and rewards are linked together I thought I’d end this short text with a real problem for modern games today:

Jumping in a cartonish game, for example Mario or Jak & Daxter, feels exhilarating because the reward, or feedback, is much more then humans anticipate. This is why its fun.
But in a realistic game, such as Assassins Creed or Gear of War, the feedback must be precisely what humans expect or the illusion of realistic human characters is broken.
So how do we make that as fun?… :)

Google chrome

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Everyone is discussing it but I still have to mention the fact.Google has just released Google Chrome, a web browser with some interesting features. For example each tab in the very streamlined interface is a seperate process, quite similar to having several browser windows up at the same time. The effect is that you can free up memory without having to restart the entire application as well as one crashing tab will not crash the rest of the program.

It's built on apples webkit and is extemely fast. It also has a completely new virtual machine for javascript which should speed up web applications a bunch. Though I haven't seen that at all so far.

A good friend of mine said this morning: "Google is taking over the world. They'll launch an OS soon". My reply was that he'd already missed it. Google doesn't need an OS, they've already created one through the web using cloud computing. Soon everyone will have a linux based netbook, the only common ground will be the web. And guess who will rule supreme with their new browser fastest on the net? :)

There are a lot of worse rulers mind you...

Google maps mobile

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I just tried using google maps mobile with my sony-ericsson w960i. Download a small java app from www.google.com/gmm and start it, instantly it tells me where I am. Or more accurately where the signal tower is. I can search locations and get directions as fast as my phone can download them. Internet connectivity is amazing! Btw, I'm blogging this from my phone as well. Later

Grin visit

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Made a quick vid av Grin's Stockholm studio today and got to play some Bionic Commando. Can't say much but I want to share my perception of the game: it's really good!

Grin Visit

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

A few of my friends from Grin visited the University last week.
It was great seeing them again and I think their lecture gave the students many things to ponder. The biggest problem with the education of game developers, as I see it, is the lack of reality they perceive through their studies. Academic studies is far removed from the competition developers fight each day.

I miss the discussions with Douglas, Lo and Dan. I thinks it's time for another visit to Stockholm soon.
It was also fantastic seeing Linus Anderberg again, I haven't seen him since his going away party and its always sad to loose contact with a former colleague and friend.

Got to go, I'll soon post a short article about the nature of fun, and of course Massive Entertainment is visiting the University tomorrow!

I can has cheezburger

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The world foremost kind of entertainment, beyond any doubt. Can be enjoyed for a second or for hours.

Important read for designers

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Tim Shaefer has just released his complete first design document for his 98 super hit adventure game Grim Fandango. If your an aspiring designer or a full designer this is something you should read. It might be great, or might be crap, that's for you to decide. But it is the very successful work of an acomplished designer and we can all learn from it. http://www.doublefine.com/news.php/site/just_one_more_grim_thing/

Killzone 2

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

If you haven't seen the new killzone trailer. You should:http://kotaku.com/5024527/new-big-explodey-killzone-2-clip

If this trailer is ingame I'm stunned. Some of the effects they use are simply mindblowing. Mind you, not all of it is great. Just such a high level of polish is unusual to say the least.

Knols and articles

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Google has justed started a new service called Knol. Knols are basically articles that can be edited by the author or everyone depending on what setting the author chose. I've read that knol is supposed to be a competitor to Wikipedia but I don't see how google intends to compete with the amount of content already on wikipedia.

One good things though is that Knol will allow me to write the articles I've been promising for you online through drafts and invite reviewers to check them before I post them on this blog. Which will push me to finalize the articles a lot sooner.

But the post about difficulty level is still coming, probably this Wednesday. I'm also glad to announce that a lengthier article about the decline of creativity in MMOG design is coming. And soon, because I can't stop thinking about it.

Little Big Planet is not that original

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Games have been under attack for a long time from gamers and game media for being unoriginal. Developers have been harassed for not trying new things while developing costs keep increasing forcing publishers to stick more and more to the tried and true formulas. A few noteworthy games such as Spore have broken this mold and have been, rightly so, highly acclaimed for innovation. Another greatly anticipated title that is applauded for innovation is little big planet. Media Molecules astonishingly universal cloth toy platform game that is more then half level editor.

I need to be honest here, without ever playing LPB I'm in love with the game. I've preordered it with a bundled PS3 just to play it as soon as possible. Something I've never done before. But is it really that original?

Actually no. But that doesn't matter, because the thing is that it's the gaming press that is highly _un_original.

The reason I'm kicking the press is that, while LPB looks like it's going to be a great game, the innovation that Media Molecule is bringing to the table has absolutely nothing to do with the game part of LPB at all. The innovation is that they've sliced the world editor into the gameplay itself and making it (hopefully) fun to create and share work. The game itself is more or less just a cooperative version of Mario. But in the package is all the freedom and never ending entertainment that we are used to finding in blogs and on youtube.

I have high hopes that Media Molecule has pulled this off, creating the first MMO "game platform" platform game.

Little Big Planet PAL launch

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

If you've missed it it's a monumental day for game design today as Little Big Planet launches in the PAL territories. Hopefully the server issues from the US launch have been corrected and we can enjoy the full product. I'll post my thoughts on LBP tomorrow. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Taiurn541SE]

Little Big Planet will sell PS3s

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The Playstation 3 is far behind in this console generations sales figures. In the next two months we'll see if the PS3 will start to catch up or if it's doomed to end up third. Why this year? Because if the release of games such as LBP and resistance 2, motorstorm 2 can't shift the PS3 nothing ever will. It's up against hard competition with the Xbox360's new interface experience and video streaming functionality.

Personally I think this holiday season will see the climax of the playstation 3's sales, I don't think Sony will be able to beat Microsoft this generation but they might pull even.

How can I be so sure Little Big Planet will sell consoles? Well, besides analysts predictions and the millions of people who've still not upgraded from PS2 I just bought my own PS3, because no games until LBP were incentive enough for me to buy such an expensive machine.

How about you?

LoL day!

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Don't forget to celebrate LoL day today over at icanhascheezeburger.com!Vote for your favorite lols and just enjoy the fun.

more cat pictures

Media being educated, about media?

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

When I saw the Fox broadcast starring Geoff Keighley, a utter quack and a very biased reporter I was outraged. Media condemning media based on complete ignorance? I foresaw a new age of darkness ahead of us.

But then a light appeared at the sky, gamers and Internet freaks mobilized and did this:
http://kotaku.com/348355/quack-gets-amazon-book-rating-spammed
They spammed the quacks book with poor ratings and included reviews that where clever satire of her own blatantly dumb remarks on the Fox broadcast. While I doubt that this will have any effect on any of the involved parties (perhaps Geoff will receive more love from the community for some time) it will almost certainly be visible in some media. Some, maybe not mainstream but it's a step in the right direction.

I can't endorse destroying the sales of a persons livelihood because of stupid remarks that person made but I feel proud to be part of the community that actually does something about what they see in the world. Voices for the people are heard on the Internet, we might not be entering dark ages just yet.

Media disinformation

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

After the recent Fox/EA debacle I have been thinking just how far from the mainstream media the games industry really is. This is certainly not the first time a mainstream media gets it wrong. Sure we are still a form of underground culture but as a media form we should be a lot more prominent then we really are. Lets look at some numbers, in a recent lecture by Raph Koster he claimed that Youtube had a 190 million users each week. By contrast the second mostly sold console ever, the ps2, sold just above 100million (around 130 I think).

Now this are just two numbers and I don't claim they paint an accurate picture about the state of the games industry as a media form. But I think most gamers meet this attitude of "what? games? you mean children's toys?" pretty often.
We might be using a lot of money for our hobby, but I think we have to face that games just aren't mainstream yet by a long shot. Sure, World of Warcraft broke down a lot of barriers. But that was just a first step for games into the world of media, or what do you think? Am I just rambling here?

I think everyone can enjoy games, what we lack is accessibility to the gameplay (less fiddly controls to perform functions) and a wider and perhaps more mature content set (no? a shooter with burly men and only you can save the world? how original...).

Let's push more games into mainstream. Go Buzz! Go Singstar! Go Brain Training! Go.. Peggle? (It really is awesome)

Mirrors Edge demo

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

A Mirrors Edge demo is available on PSN today and on XBLA tomorrow. Has anyone played it yet? Mirrors Edge is interesting from many game mechanical aspects as well as the different playstyle of running away from firefights instead of engadging in them.

I'll post my thoughts on this very different game tomorrow.

Mirrors edge is fantastic

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I just tried the Mirrors Edge demo and before I say anything else: if you can play the demo and haven't: PLAY IT NOW. Believe me, it's worth it. And yes, it is that good. Mirrors edge uses a first person camera with innovative gameplay and an extremely stylized environment to bring us the feeling of being a runner. A sort of lawless messenger service that hiden on the rooftops of a sparkling white totally oppressed city.

At first the game is disconcerting but in less then a minute of gameplay I was flying over the rooftops in a state of flow. The game is challenging, fun and beautiful. The controls are fantastic and the sense of immersion is quite beyond anything else I've experienced.

I have one problem that I intend to discuss with a friend of mine who happens to be a producer at Dice. The tutorial is pretty hard and therefore setup with restart points conveniently spaced in between maneuvers. But apparently Dice has either not played this part at all themselves, or their designers are so god awful bad that they didn't see that if a player fails at doing something the player has to watch an NPC doing it. Each time. And the NPC takes about 3 times as long to do it as you do, and there is no way to skip it. In short: I fell of a pipe several times during the tutorial, which led to me sitting for 5 minutes watching an NPC walk across the same pipe with close to 1 minute of gameplay spaced in between. That's just unforgivable. Well, at least I never have to play the tutorial again.

If I were you, I'd buy this game. Personally, I can't afford it because I bought the PS3 to play it on... Catch 22 anyone?

New design wrecks havoc just like new tech

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

As you've probably noticed my blog is moved and redesigned (not final yet) because I needed to speed up my site updates. Sadly my domain host is restricting me from completing the change faster but it will be done in a couple of weeks. Which is ironically very similar to the Moore's Wall phenomena that Raph Koster has previously talked about. Moore's Wall is basically states that because new, better and faster technology is usually thought to be the same as visual improvement (graphical in games) developers are implicitly forced to focus harder on visual representation then on interactivity or function. As technology improves this will become more and more work until development is so expensive that taking chances is never profitable.

Sound familiar? It's basically the current state of the games industry. Not until technological innovation has matured so far that new technology is not leaps and bounds faster or better then the previous tech or when the leaps between tech grow longer can we really focus on creating better gameplay.

Anyway, it's a great read and the basic idea is perforating my day to day life so check it out.

New Design

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

As you might have noticed I've redesigned the website yet again.
Can't seem to make a design that I still like after 3-6 months.

Oh well, tell me what you think.

Nintendo DSi mystery solved

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Nintendo has come out of the closet! They've unveiled the new Nintendo DS, the DSi. Whats different? 0.25" larger screen, a VGA camera, SD card slot and no longer GBA playback.

What does this mean? That Nintendo doesn't seem to have any rational thought behind it's strategy. Alright, the DSi uses only oldish components which should make it cheap. But the DS lite isn't getting any cheaper so DSi probably wont either.

What are we gonna do with a VGA camera? Probably take crappy pictures. We certainly won't interact with it as we do with Playstation eye, the DSi just doesn't have the computational power.

What are we gonna do with the SD card slot? Download games from the Wii. Except Nintendo still isn't releasing that many games, and third parties are sure to be excluded as ever before.

What are we gonna do without GBA playback? The same thing we do now, ignore it.

What are we gonna do with a slightly larger screen? Well, the difference is kinda marginal so probably nothing at all. Se more of our dreaded pixelation probably.

Oh, and the entire unit is slightly larger then the DS lite. Hurray... Couldn't they at least make it a bit more sleek?

In conclusion, the DSi is a really weird new SKU of the DS lite... Which could have been dramatically improved just by making it thinner. Strategic design of the DSi seems to have been cut so that Nintendo can squeeze a few extra bucks out of the DS.

Shame Kyoto, this is the old school Nintendo doing it all over again. (i.e. you arrogant pricks!)

Objectivity versus subjectivity

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

A colleague of mine presented me with a philosophical question at lunch yesterday. She said that since humans can never experience each others emotions because our experiences are subjective, created by our brains, based on out previous experiences. But this is only partly true. Her example has using as an example that we can never be sure that one persons red is the same as another persons perception of red. Your red might well be the color I perceive as blue, but I might still call it red.

Well here's my take on the problem:

The question is a bit stupid from the start. Colors as we know them are constructed by our minds from the wavelengths of light that is bounced of different surfaces. This means that the same wavelengths hit all of us. This doesn't prove that we experience the same thing though.

In certain fields colors are used to give people a certain emotion, in art, design, marketing, this is a very powerful tool. And it works for all people, with different values given to different colors depending on cultural status.

Now here's the twist:

Color has an evolutionary function. We use color to distinguish what is good and what is bad (green is attractive to all people, as is red, while yellow and black stripes usually mean bad things). This means that our emotional response to color is not random and far from incidental. It is a part of the natural selection that created humankind.

So in my opinion color is really the judgement of our emotional response to a certain wavelength. We don't need to perceive the same red, because we do perceive the same emotion. Color could therefore be added by the mind afterwords. Or in other words: After you see a color the mind gives you feeling to each color, that feeling is your perceived color, and that feeling is measurable to some extent, and known to be alike for most people.

Hard to follow? Am I wrong? Then shoot me down in the comments, I'll respond to all serious comments.

Oldie but Goldie

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I've just started playing Gears of War again, for the PC this time. Gears revolutionized shooters when it was released with better graphics then anything before and a cover system that has become more or less standard in shooters since. It is still a fantastic game. I haven't felt excited while playing a game for such a long time that when I found myself cotton mouthed from excessive breathing after my first encounter with a Berzerker I immediately thought there was something wrong with me.

Gears uses targeting and cover systems to create a tactical battlefield. This works great and the game design is sound, but a year or so after release one starts to realize that the system can be vastly improves by making cover less digital (on/off).

It also uses camera angles and shaders for cinematic effect without actually stopping the gameplay, revolutionizing then and a "gotta be standard" today.

Now I just wish I owned a 360 to compare Gears with Mass Effect, another fantastic game that makes use of these same factors to create engaging gameplay.

Anyway, enough of the random rants. I'll post about how we can improve shooter difficulty next.

On accessablity 1

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The latest craze among developers is talking about accessibility. As a poor gamer I take great interest in this field as a developer and I'm getting a bit flustered about the complete lack of knowledge about this important paradigm shift in game development.

Most arguments against accessibly designed games are based on the assumption that the games will in some way have to be dumbed down. This is just not true. Anyone claiming this as an argument against accessibility or casual design simply has no clue what the hell accessibility is.

Let me illustrate what it is with a simple example: Paperboy.

The classic game paperboy is hard as hell and was a hardcore crowd pleaser on the original gameboy and earlier devices. Very few people would argue that paperboy is a dumbed down game. But Paperboy is accessible as hell.

The game starts quickly, has basically no learning curve, and is easily recognizable for anyone. The game is still hard as hell. But it is fast and simple to jump into and out of. It also takes no effort at all to start playing.

Compare this to Halo: is it quick to start? No, it takes about 10 to 15 minutes of badly made science fiction story, loading times and menus. This is discouraging to say the least.

Does the game have a required learning curve? Well lets see, after moving around corridors for about a minute, during which you learn to steer and look around, you are pitted against enemies. Easy enemies but they'll still kill you if you don't know what to do. Oh, and thematically the enemies, surroundings and weapons are weird as hell. A lot of people would never pick up the controller again after this short opening sequence.

Is the gameplay easily recognizable? Not even remotely. The controlling mechanism requires a high degree of spatial awareness only trained in 3D virtual spaces. So if your not a gamer you wont be able to walk around.
The basic gameplay mechanic is action packed and punishes players (kills them) for doing things wrong. Well if you don't even know what to do this punishment probably wont be much fun will it?
Oh, and let's remember that the graphics are stylized to be recognizable only for sci-fi freaks and gamers, so people without previous experience of these kind of worlds will probably not recognize anything.

See my point?

No, I'm not urging all developers to stop making hardcore games. But making games that are easier to recognize and to pick up wont require breaking most of them. On the contrary it will only make them easier and quicker to enjoy for us gamers.

Play - the new medium

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Here is a short thought that you might want to consider expressing next time someone near you doesn't understand just how significant games are as a medium. Please think about how the people near you consume media. They watch movies, read books and so on and then share their experience with others. Possibly as humor or as tips for others to try, but essentially media is a connective experience.

Media connects people.

Games are interactive media. Not all interactive media are games, but all games are interactive media. And games are in majority multiplayer.

Games will therefore make the normal use of media more effective and/or easier.

Because of this, I believe that games will become not a mainstream medium. But quite possibly the mainstream media.

Please feel free to disagree, but I'm not all wrong am I?

Poor critique on objectivism

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I must admit that I haven't played all the way through Bioshock. But I have read all the way through Ayn Rands books about objectivism, a socioeconomic ideology that centers around the rights of the individual.

There has been a lot of talk on the net about the depth of the story in Bioshock and that it is so impressive that it offers critisism on something as complex as an ideology. But does it really?

This is the story of one man, a hard individual that is defining his right to live by shooting people that are trying to kill him. Now this story is set in a world that is supposed to show a ruined world created by the insane hunger for power and profit that is for some reason apparently absent when these same people work for a goverment.

But here comes the first catch, Bioshocks underwater world, rapture, is owned by one man. It is more or less a monopoly or dictatorship. Two states of affairs that Rand or objectivism has never defended or, according to some scholars, made possible.
The thorny rose of criticism is frail...

Here is the second catch, Bioshock does have a character that acts in almost every way like an objectivist. The main character.
The rose of criticism shrivels up and dies...

So not only does Bioshock actually not at all critisize objectivism, they only slapped on a similar art style and some 60's socialist propagande, it also promotes the values of individuals very much like the objectivists do through the players own actions!

I don't see a problem with this. I do however see a problem with the gaming press hailing Bioshock for delivering criticism - which it does not - against an ideology that apparently neither the developers nor the press actually read up on.
My problem with this is that these are the very faults that are keeping our industry continuously frowned upon by the rest of the media.

If FOX news had made this error a lot of books would be rating killed on amazon...

Racing games transformed

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

For about two years now I've been sketching on a racing game that has no enemies, it has cooperation by other players but never competition. How would that work? Actually, it's quite easy, and also quite fun if the racing experience is done well enough. That probably why other developers have also thought about this.

Noby Noby Boy is a long way from release and unnecessarily ugly in my oppinion, but it's interesting to see games that don't follow the classic patterns. As I've ranted about before, copying patterns from other games causes diminishing return in the amount of fun they will be to play. That's why innovation is so important.

Ratchet and Clank: Quest for booty micro review

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Waiting for the Mirrors Edge demo to finish downloading I decided to try out the latest Ratchet and Clank adventure, quest for booty. QoB is supposed to be a short and sweet downloadable game that will be a fun expansion to play for previous fans of the series and a simple introduction for players who've yet to experience Ratchet and Clank.

I'm probably neither of these groups since I have played some Ratchet and Clank tools of destruction but never actually bought a Ratchet and Clank game. I am however a big fan of platformers and Tools of Destruction really gave me a taste for the gameplay.

QoB starts the player off with a great intro sequence and superb voiceacting with some geeky humor. It looks stunning and the level of graphical and sound polish is just amazing. QoB is a very sleek product... Which makes the bad side so much more dissapointing. You see, those were the good points. The Control doesn't feel sleek at all, there is no introduction and it certainly isn't pick up and play. In some platform elements (climbing comes to mind) the controls are just wonky. Jumping is jerky and collision isn't obvious because of the cinematic camera, I find myself hitting air in front of enemies or walking into fire because the damn camera is trying to be Gears of War.

Level design is also pretty bad. At least for the first few levels. The pirate cruisers at the start of the game are just copied and not very interesting. When I land on an island I have no idea where to go because the ultra-realistic scenary doesn't give any hints and I still can't see much because of the camera. Maybe there is a map or a way to look around but I still haven't figured out all the control yet. This is a downloadable short and fast game, I didn't intend to do anything but just pick up the controller and play for an hour.

To summerize this game is actually quite good. It's funny and plays really well. It just dissapoints to no end when you've played Tools of Destruction, why does a game with more time for polish play worse?! If the control is exactly the same, games have moved on, why hasn't the controls been improved?

Spore

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I've just played spore into the start of the space stage, I really like it. But it's quite unlike most other games. I have a few friends that've played spore and told me it was shallow. Even one extreme who said it was down right boring. But when I asked them why this is most of them couldn't give me more then general arguments on the lines of "not enough to do" or "not enough of a challenge" which to me sounds exactly like the critique the Sims recieved from the gamer community and it still went on to become the biggest franchise in the history of the industry.

My own oppinion is that Spore, as far as basic mechanics go, is pretty shallow. Where in the Sims you had an abundance of choices Spore offers at best about 4. But here is the tricky part. Spore has a deep meta gameplay.

The Sims was quickly hailed to be a great way of just pushing around a doll house. That is, the game itself was really more about looking in on and affecting the lives of your sims then it was about controlling them. And the same is true about Spore. Spore is a tamagotchi for an entire evolutionary tree of a species from baceria to space aliens. But that's all it is. Spore is not a classic game where you rank higher then others and so on. Spore gives the player unending amounts of creatures and vehicles and stuff, and basically says: go explore. Poke around, see how they interact. This is real hobbyist entertainment, I could spend countless hours with Spore if I had the time. Just like I can spend coutless hours painting Warhammer figures, or countless hours playing with a dog that I don't have time to have.

Spore is in essence, a simulator that lets you poke and play with simplyfied evolution, don't expect a game. This is an experience. And it is as close to a work of art as I have ever seen.

Streaming gameplay to linux

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Has anyone tried this?:http://www.streammygame.com/

It's a service that lets you stream input/output from a windows machine to another PC or a linux PC. Sounds to me like lag should be an issue but they're claiming they can play Crysis (there is a video but it's to low res to tell for sure).

The american economy

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I usually like to hold politics out of this blog, it's a blog about games primarily and politics have only very little to do with the development of interactive entertainment. But this clip caught my eye, the american government is basically nationalizing the two mig realestate agencies that have become the figurehead of the economic decline caused by the American war on the middle east.

Enjoy:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gZuG-52js0&hl=en&fs=1]

The chance of finding intelligent life in space

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

This post is a step outside my normal boundaries but when I though about this I knew I had to share. All life is formed by the seemingly random process of evolution through external demands made on the life form. Evolution is basically each individual unit of each race trying it's hardest to survive, the ones with better skills or genes will reproduce more and through hundreds of generations this process can form quite complex new biological patterns for life (the human eye for example).

Why am I talking about evolution with a title like this you ask? Well as life becomes more and more complex through adapting to a more complex ecosystem. Life forms will be forced to process more and more information. This brute force processing is not what we normally call intelligence but more the basis of intellect.

Couple a lot of brute force processing power with great complexity, for example living in a flock that has some form of communication and abstraction capabilities (communicating things that are not there at the time of communication), will lead to the right environment for the evolution of intelligent life.

This is a very short and shakily constructed version of how intelligent life comes about. We still lack enough knowledge to make more then guesses about the subject.

But tracing back to evolution all these components are important enough for any life form,in almost any stage of evolution, that they will happen if the external environment allows it.

This means that we can claim intelligent life to be an evolutionary imperative. A evolutionary stage that is a focal point of the evolutionary process. Not THE, but A. We have no idea what we, as a species, have been through or where we're going.

If this is even partly true intelligent life, in some form, is extremely likely to exist. But will we recognize it? Or will humanity still exist when it comes about? Is it already dead?

No matter what the answer to these questions; it is a comforting thought that there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe.

The future of Co-op

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Last week Tycho over at Penny Arcade had a write up about co-op and the amount of games out there that just have partially or completely broken co-op or none at all. Later Microsoft employee Ozymandias, working on foreseeing the future trends of gaming, responded to that with a Co-op Game Bill of Rights, the bill is now already in its second edition and features some core issues that games must implement to not appear broken or bad.
It also features a set of features that are harder to implement and less frequently used in current games but are highly requested by the community.

None of this strikes me as new ideas or even surprising. Let's get a few things straight:

Games are supposed to be fun. Fun is a hard concept to achieve, Raph Kosters excellent book A Theory of Fun can teach you more about what fun is but basically it is about using analogue systems of rewards that are somewhat challenging and that you have not grokked (fully mastered) yet.
Achieving this kind of fun in not hard in itself, children do it spontaneously every day. But braking that fun is really easy, that's why we need designers in the first place.
One of the simplest, if not the simplest, ways to increase fun without breaking gameplay is by making it social. Social games are games that encourages gamers to interact or at least communicate about the gameplay. Social grouping is a fundamentally fun feature in human evolution and a large reason to why we choose to group and evolve societies.

So FUN + SOCIAL = A LOT MORE FUN.

What Tycho and Ozymandias have stumbled upon is the lack of game design. This is what gameplay features used to look like in the 80's and early 90's. Yes it's a good idea to spotlight co-op because it is the most popular form of play in gaming today and developers unaware should become aware of this. But when people from within the industry don't realize they're kicking the dead design horse it scares me.
Is even our own industry unaware of what thought through design actually means for a game? Are we slowly receding into the dark ages of gaming again?

I like to hope not. In the meantime, check out the Bill of Rights and support a valiant effort!

The iPod experiment 1

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I'm a game designer and that means all other media are secondary interest at best. But music is ever present and a great help during the workday and daily commute. Now I've never been an iPod owner but I have owned a few mp3 players and a truck load of Sony Ericsson walkman phones, but none of them have ever been good enough to continue using. So with my new paycheck in hand I thought I'd hit two birds with one stone and buy an iPod touch, hopefully it will solve my music issues and allow me to play iPhone games as well!

Of I went to the local store and purchased the 8GB version (I'm cheap, let's say no more about it). Immediatly I was blown away by the packaging and ease of use. The interface is brilliant and the interaction with my PC at work was simples then most USB drives. Itunes is a terrible program to work with but the iTunes store worked well and I has my first music, video podcasts and games up and running in a few minutes.

The sound was excellent and the video fantastic, wifi surfing was awesome and applications were plentiful even though I find myself lacking offline support for things like rememberthemilk and google calendar... Why should I need to use apples software when there are better products available? From partners in other software genres nonetheless.

I was enjoying myself on the way home, interaction with my iPod was fun and simple and the video and music kept me going strong. The simple 3d racer I'd downloaded worked great and was actually kinda fun. Probably mostly from control novalty but hey, Wii right?

It's when I got I was annoyed. I could sync with iTunes at home because I already had synced at work... That means all my music that I've collected over the past 10 years is forfeit... Or I could delete everything on my iPod and start again... Why apple, would you build such stupid limitation into your device? I'm using the same damn iTunes account on both machines so security or licensing issues don't come into it at all. This is just plain dumb.

Well, I've no deleted my iPod and started over.

The experiment continues...

The Long Tail

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I just finished the book The Long Tail about how markets are shifting from focusing solely on hits to including the niches that might not sell huge volumes. The interesting thing about this theory is that it means that a lot of people are spending money on products that they wouldn't have bought a few years ago just because they were not available. The same thing is happening in games, the Wii is "expanding the marketplace" by including people who aren't hard core gamers. But expanding is really the wrong word, Nintendo is including people who enjoy games but haven't enjoyed the past few years of hard core focus in games.

So what will this lead our industry to? Will we follow the long tail and Wii in including all types of gaming niches? Of course not.

Developers seem much to inclined to play their own products. Todays casual games developers are actually not focusing on casual gaming. But rather hard core gaming with casual games. Think of Tetris, it's a puzzle game that you play alone and can't win or loose, and as such a casual experience. But most casual games I've seen on Facebook or mobile platforms recently have used this form of casual mechanic.. But rewarded hard core grinding...

So in effect, we're shooting ourselves in our collective developers foot with our own fanboyism.

I want to see games focused on people who play sometimes, for a few minutes, maybe. Don't tell me there is not a market for this type of game, there is. It just might not be worth a $200.000.000 development cycle.

"The Now Habit" by Neil Fiore

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I'm reading a book about how to overcome procrastination, the Now Habit, and it is leading me to profound and intriguing insights into myself. Why I procrastinate and how I work as a person. It's an odd sensation but not an unpleasant one. So to any procrastinators out there I definitely recommend this book, it's thin and a fast read. Don't think It'll change your life though, it will just change your understanding of life. If you really want to be more productive instead read Getting Things Done and get a Remember The Milk account right away.

The plummet of man

Tue, 13 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I had an idea a few years ago about why societies fail. I was reading about the Roman empire and realized, as so many before me, that there was a colossal change in culture before the empire started so stagnate and eventually die.
The culture changed from individual responsibility and brutal competition to belief in centralized systems and an almost spoiled attitude.

I had another idea not long ago about values being passed between generations. A hundred years ago families lived together in close proximity. The family was the central unit instead of the individuals of today. While I'm a froth-mouthed defender of individualism I do realize that this has ramifications. When families lived so close together soft values (human interaction, family history, family connections, work ethic and so on) were transferred between generations.
Quite possibly to the dismay and hardship of many individuals and ideas, not least science.
Today this proximity is lost, and while it does make things lite paradigm changes a lot easier it also strains peoples ability to learn soft values.

These basic knowledges that are not quite facts but certainly important are lost between generations. This leads to quicker cultural changes. It could also lead us to the culture of slacking that was a factor in the destructions of Rome.

There are some large if's in this rant. But as I said, it's an idea. No don't be a slacker, make up your own mind and let me know!

The power of habit in gamedesign

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I love to talk and I love games. So naturally I often talk about games with my friends. The debates often circle points about game design and one of the usual sticking points is my belief that habits, or possibly the security of the known, affect our play and our game design. My idea is that the things we are used to always seem like good things, things to be fought for if challenged. We're always slightly against doing something other then what we're used to because it doesn't feel right, mostly because of nostalgia. This is a slightly odd notion but I've just noticed the supreme example of this behavior in game developers:

Hello Kitty Online. HK online is the social MMO based on the famous character and world of Hello Kitty. It's awesomely cute and looks fun and easy. When I was invited to the beta I was excited and happy, albeit a bit ashamed about my own reaction.

I downloaded the huge client, wondered a bit about why such a game needs GB's of data and booted it up.

Hello Kitty online is a World of Warcraft clone. Seriously. It even has kill-collect quest grinding. It handles the same way, has the same systems... Why?

Yes, WoW is the most successful MMO of all time and making your systems at least as good as WoWs should be every MMO developers intent. But nothing in the Hello Kitty universe lends itself to the fiction the game play systems of WoW builds up, surely there are some systems we can copy and others we can leave out. For instance, killing in HK online seems a bit awkward. When did Hello Kitty become Dexter Morgan, hiding a serial killer under the cute & fluffy shell of a small rabbit.

I have no idea why the developers chose to copy WoW to this extent but I think most of them didn't even realize they were doing it. They thought this is what an MMO is. No, it isn't. That's what World of Warcraft is. We can make almost anything into an MMO.

That's how powerful habit is, we tend to stop thinking why? and instead think this is how it works. Designers need to watch out for this behavior, because it's an artificial boundary that impeded game development. What if we could make HK online with game play systems that give exact same results for the players as the game play systems of WoW but don't seem even moderately alike. We can do that, if we don't fall pray to the power of habit.

The power of novalty

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

There are almost always discussions about the latest hardship in any business. For the past year most of these discussions have focused on the gameplay vs. graphics battle that's happening in the marketplace. Do we really need to keep turning up the graphics? Or can we find a sweet spot and just stay complacent?

Who knows.

But I want to talk about another problem: In Hollywood action movies were for year dictated by showing novelty. It was basically what they did, if the audience had seen it before it wasn't good enough. This arms race of action finally lead to freaky movies like Total Recall where the main aim for the movie was to show weird stuff and kill a lot of people. Why or how didn't really enter into it. Fortunately Hollywood has matured since then and action movies are less about novelty today.

Why am I ranting about this? Action games are doing the same thing today.

We really need to learn from our (according to Microsoft) smaller brother, Hollywood, and stop doing the same mistakes. But to do that we need publishers to spend some cash on smaller games that might not sell well. They need to spend money on innovative products. Sony did a great job with Little Big Planet but when will we see Microsoft, EA and Acti-Blizz doing the same?

(I'm not going to mention Nintendo, their doing demos and still hindering third party developers. That's not innovation, that's arrogant Japanese.)

For a quick education about what I mean check out this clip of Postal, how often do you hunt strangers with a badger in a sling?

The spectrum of game audiences

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Most articles and books about games give a certain skewed image of our audience, the gamers.I can't claim to know what most developers believe but from interviews and articles by some of them I get the feeling that we're looking at a polarized view of game customers from the developer perspective. This could mean serious trouble for games.

By a polarized scale of gamers I mean that in almost all the interviews and articles I read there seem to be exactly two types of gamers. Hard core (or 'gamers') and casual (web games, wii and soduku). Anyone will quickly realize that there must be some space in between these two, but I think most people underestimate the scale of this... eh.. scale.

It's always hard to categorize people, who all have different habits and ideals, but in this case it really isn't that hard because the games industry have spent years defining these two groups. Hardcore gamers are players that spend a lot of money and time on games. They buy the newest consoles and really consume games. Casual gamers are players who would rarely define themselves as gamers. They spend time with really short games with little effort in preparation. Mostly they play games online but for the last year some of them have bought a Wii. Common for them is that they spend very short amounts of time on games and waste little time getting their entertainment, browser based games work better then downloadable and so on. They also spend only small amounts of money on gaming at any one time (micro transactions).

But where are the middle spectrum gamers? Who are they and how many of them are there? Well, statistics provide us with some answers here.

The Playstation 2 became a mainstream machine before the current generation of consoles were announced. Sony's machine has sold something like 120 million units. The current generation consoles, ps3 and xbox360, have together sold something like 40 million units. There is a gap of 80 million possible costumers who've still to adapt to the new technology. Now according to our scale, what kind of games consumers are in this gap? They've chosen NOT to buy the new exiting technology and instead hang on to old and outdated games. These are not hardcore gamers, they are also not casual because they do buy consoles. So who are they? In between gamers?

For another piece of the puzzle lets look at online gaming. Sadly it's hard to find conclusive statistics on players from casual gaming sites. So the closest I've stumbled over is the least casual type of online gaming. Massively Multiplayer Online Games.

World of Warcraft, the most successful MMOG in the western world, currently boasts over 11 million subscribers. It has been online since late 2004 and had over a million players by 2005. It grew really quickly and has had many millions of subscribers for several years. Now we can't know for sure what WoW's churn rate is (churn = players dropping off - new players). But a somewhat safe bet is that it's at least around 5-10%. That's a lot of players. That means that over the years WoW has had at least 20 million players. And most of them never saw end game content. That means that most gamers played the game without reaching hardcore goals, that should make them casual gamers in the polarized scale. But they're hardly casual gamers in the sense of browser based games and non investment if they're playing WoW are they? No, these must also be in between gamers.

These in between gamers are actually an interesting bunch. Because if we do a quick search for games that target this demographic we'll find only a few. One of the most famous, if not the most famous, is Sins of a Solar Empire - a spectacular RTS game by the way - that specifically targets PC gamers that used to play games but don't care to make hardware investments to be continuously shot as cannon fodder for the ruling game elite (hardcore gamers).

An even more surprising move with Sins is that is completely free of DRM. It has no copy protection what so ever. Compared to another current RTS game, World in Conflict, Sins opted for use of 'old' graphics and easy to use installation as well as a really cheap development cycle.

Even without the copy protection Sins has outsold World in Conflict by a longshot. And WiC is a fantastic game.

From the statistics I so lightly touch upon we can deduce that somewhere in the range of 20-80 million "in between" gamers are out there. They are not being actively pursued by the games industry. From my quick look at Sins and World in Conflict we can also see that they are not as prone to piracy as the hardcore demographic. They are in other words; ideal game consumers.

Here the skewed image of our gamers set in. We're not catering to a large part of our target audience. We're simply creating for the top percentage of players and hoping the rest will follow suit. We need to focus on this hard to define group of people, let's hire a marketing company to seek them out. Let's give a million dollar budget to a small studio to make a mainstream game just to see how it turns out at the stores. Let us at least acknowledge that this part of our audience is important.

If we aim for lower specs, go for gameplay that has proved to be fun and make a small but good game. Sell it for a reasonable price and make it as easy to buy as it is to pirate. Not only will we make a game that will sell, we'll probably be more or less alone in a 20-80 million strong demographic part of the gamer spectrum.

This is a huge mistake on the part of our industry. Someone at EA or Acti/Blizz should realize that.

(please comment for improvements or information)

The state of PC gaming

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

"PC gaming is dead" has been the mantra of hundreds of developers for the last 3 years now, and as more and more titles move on to consoles it seems like open platforms have been abandoned due to rampant piracy and non-existing demand... Wait! What am I saying? Rampant piracy AND non existing demand? Impossible. Rampant piracy can only exist with rampant demand, why else would anyone do it?

This week a couple of publishers/developers have gone on the record to say that, in fact, PC gaming isn't dead... It's actually at an all time high. With more then 20 million westerners playing MMO's each week and a hell of a lot more then that playing online games in general PC gaming still far outnumbers all console platforms excepting the PS2.

So what the hell are developers whining about? The answer: non existent sales. Believed by many to be due to rampant piracy. But this is about as intelligent as a doctor that your hair falling out is due to lack of calcium (or whatever) while he's blasting you with radiation.

Let's analyse what the hell is happening with piracy and see if we can find any advantages that may sway the public away from buying games:

Non pirate game:

It will cost you $50.
it will (with a massive margin compared to DLs) cost you a trip to a store or a few days while you wait for the game to arrive.
It will take time and irritation to install (install, serial, download patches)
You'll need the damn CD/DVD to play it (does everyone even have an optical drive nowadays?)

Pirated game:

It will cost you very little (Internet bandwidth mostly)
It will take less time then a trip to the store
It will install easily
You'll never wait in line or be left without it on launch day
It'll be easy to install
Once installed you can play it whenever you feel like it by just clicking the icon.

I don't even know what to say to this. This is the dumbest way to market something, ever. It's like selling coke is 1CC bottles that require tools to open them. And what do publishers do to stop piracy? They either hunt down the END USERS of the products and slap them with subpoenas or they install ever worse DRM software making games even harder to use.

Now, I'm not a genius in any way. But anyone can see where this is heading. Piracy will never end while publishers continue this crazy blitzkrieg against their customers.

Hey publishers, need ideas about how to make money from games again? These are just some short idea, I bet a lot of smart people can think of even more ways:

Tips for publishers:

Only sell high value content in stores (boxed content with extras, more content or just a really nice box)
Sell ALL games online. There are already services for this, all you need to do is give them a master copy of the game.
Let gamers register their games for something worthwhile (all multiplayer require an account, don't be asses though, let customers be able to use their google accounts, open ID accounts and so on. Oh, and make games available for re-download to those accounts)
Don't go after end user pirates, that just sows seeds of distrust. When a pirated version of a game is logged online, email the customer informing them that their issue is illegal and give them a credible reason, and easy way, for buying the real thing. How about they cash in but don't need anything else, they'll just get an automatically updated serial and the optional box in the mail.
Learn from other entertainment industries. There are hundreds of possible tie-in products available from toy makers, novelists, children book writers, painters, t-shirt producers and so on. Sign on with a few, it doesn't matter if you don't make enormous amounts on the first deal, get the ball rolling and the cash will start flowing.
Open API for your games information. Most of the successful web apps available today use open API's so that other services can exchange information with them. Why not in games? Should I, as a player, really need to find my online friends AGAIN for every single online game I play? They all use the same mail addresses anyway. And I can't even search through my Gmail contacts damn it.

These are just a few suggestions, feel free to pitch in with even more and send this to a publisher near you. Maybe someone will have an epiphany and realise "ooh, keeping customers happy is a good thing!".

The strangeness of a mans mind

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

In the particular case: my own. I was on my way home Saturday night when I started chatting to a young lady next to me on the bus. it turned out she lived near me and was giving me her number when I stopped her and insisted on getting her address instead.

I have absolutely no idea why I thought this was such a grand idea at the time, but somewhat reluctantly and surprised she gave me her address, we hugged and went our separate ways. Now of course, there is no way for me to find this girls number, I could simply spam her front door but that's not really something you want to do in this age of communication.

Why did I think this was a good idea? I have no idea. It was certainly a strange thing to do judging from her confused expression when she gave me her address.

This leads me to believe that trying to find new ways to look at the world have somehow gone to my head and I am now to far gone to return to earth. Or even more probably: I'm just ranting and will post something serious later on.

Time consumers

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

For my Bachelors thesis I'm writing a design document for an expansion of an MMO and reporting on how I can msot effectively communicate that design to others.
For my design my mentor and friend Ola Holmdahl gave me a book about the insecurity in our society today because of the many fractured facets of our lives we are trying to control. Compared to the life long professions and family life of a hundered years ago many people are becomming stressed and unsecure.

This is a problem of information, a problem that is turned on its head in MMOs where we face the same issue but see it suface as boredom instead. Players choosing to stop playing after the single player campaign is over or after the first five or so levels.

But this is great news to any crafty coders and internet savvy people out there. The first person to create a community similar to linkedIn and with the functions of Gmail and Google Calendar that works online and from a mobile platform wins.

One community for finding jobs and projects, or workers and qualifications.
That also helps you communicate and keep track of you shopping lists and random tasks. As well as lets the project plan it's resources and taskes.

We could quell the whole problem before it becomes and epidemic. But I don't really think this will happen for some years to come. The problem is that it is too wide a target for investors. "You want people to do all that? With an understandable interface? It will never work...".

It will take a lot of time, and a lot of resources. I'm available for hire by the way... ;)

WAR release

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Warhammer Online has finally received a release date: September 19.Which gives it a months head start on the next expansion for World of Warcraft in November.

Is this a good thing? There can be very little doubt that these two games are direct competitors. The warcraft universe is basically a ripoff from Warhammer and Warhammer Online has copied most of WoW's game systems.

WAR now has some time to gather a following. But will it divert attention from Wrath of the Lich King or will it simply loose a million players when the WoW expansion launches?

Hopefully WAR will survive with enough player growth to shake up the MMO marketplace a bit. But only time will tell, for all the faults of WoW it has proven again and again to be stronger then newcomers in the arena.

Warhammer Online first impressions

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The highly anticipated MMORPG Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is finally launched and I have, as most of you, started playing. Right now I'm stomping through Blood Mountains (at least I think it was called that) as a fierce and funny black orc, screaming and yelling as I rampage around and kill anything I see. My first impressions of the game are really only threefold:

1. Polish

I didn't play the first release of WoW so I can't compare with it. But I can compare WAR with Age of Conan, Vanguard and Tabula Rasa. It's kicks ass in the polish department. WAR feels complete, I have yet to see any bugs and though some animations and quests are a bit jerky at times they don't subtract a whole lot since they're never really believable in an MMO anyway.

2. Gameplay

There's a whole lot more to do in WAR then in WoW or Vanguard. The developers behind WAR have really pulled out some great innovations in using MMO mechanics to come up with gameplay activities. Quests are sometimes logically based on other quests which I had no idea I was missing in other MMOS. For example: one of the first quests as a greenskin is to kill dwarfs found in barrels washed up on a shore under the towering walls of a dwarf keep, and thirty minutes into the game I find a quest where I stuff dwarfs in barrels and throw them off the keep. Now this might exist in certain areas of WoW or Vanguard, but I have yet to notice it if it does. In WAR, my experience so far really seems integrated into the world. Not taped on like the quests of early WoW.

Public quests work great by the way. And they are a really fun way to spend 15minutes away from solitary questing.

3. World or Setting

Warcraft is a ripoff of Warhammer, which in turn is a ripoff of Tolkien's middle earth. That's ok.

But Warcraft really started to invent the setting while they build WoW, so we can see the cracks in the setting design in the early parts of WoW that get smaller as the setting is refined into later stages and of course the expansion. WAR doesn't have this problem, it's based on an very fleshed out fantasy world that has so much story, depth and humour that it rubs of on all the people working with the world. In short, WAR feels a lot more like a world then World of Warcraft and the humour of Warhammer is everywhere, spot on, and making sure that it never gets too serious.

I'm impressed by WAR so far, I'll be back with more thoughts on the game in a few days.

Warhammer Online guild

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I started a guild in WAR yesterday. So far I'm pretty impressed by the fact that there is actually incentive to do so in WAR. Guilds level up and give skills and features for all members to brag about. This might be the first guild/convergence/corporation/whatever that I actually feel inclined to be active in. More on this as it develops. ;)

Web 2.0 and twitter especially

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

If you've missed it by some chance web 2.0 applications are taking over the world. Not only are over a billion people online more or less constantly but more and more people are using web 2.0 apps to do work and day to day tasks.

This is a market that is a lot bigger then the games industry and since it is rapidly becoming the default state of entertainment (190 million users visit youtube each week) more game developers should be aware. Raph Koster is aware of this and is receiving flak and praise from around the internet, his latest discussion that we are loosing ground against flash games can be found here: Koster: "The web is kicking the console industry's ass"

This might seem extreme to a lot of gamers and game developers but it is really where games were going all along. Games spearheaded the invasion of application for the PC back in the late 80ies early 90ies. Now the same people who saw the benefits of digital offices are moving these applications online. Why shouldn't games be online as well?

And NO, a 6GB download for an MMO is NOT an online game.

Before flash releases support for 3D acceleration we're stuck using plug-ins that most people wont download or 2D games that just aren't as impressive today as in the golden age of NES.

But in the mean time, check out Twitter and Remember The Milk and maybe you'll get a clue as to what the industry will be doing in 5 years.

I'll post about games that are already taking the plunge later today.

Web 3.0

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The next step in web development has been claimed to be the semantic web, sounds great but I think we're a few steps away from that. The next step I believe will be to integrate web services seamlessly into our user experience, essentially making them part of our everyday lives without gluing us to the screen with 789 tabs open. Enter Ubiquity, the command line interface that lets you use all web service functions from a standard browser window. Check it out, the example video will blow your mind.

http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/

Weekly rant

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Blizzard VP says that players would feel cheated if they introduced micropayments in World of Warcraft. This is about as dumb a report as I've ever seen... NO? Really? Why would they feel cheated just because they spent $300+ grinding to earn their epic gear and along comes a spoiled kid n00b and buys a complete set his first day.Why would they feel cheated? Just the fact that Blizzards VP actually had to say this says a lot about the normal level of awareness about game design. I know that many companies are only just waking up to the fact that more designers are needed to spot these problems early on. But I am still astounded each time someone excretes one of these ideas.

Yahtzee stole the show at GDC with another brilliant Zero Punctuation. Yes it's crass, yes it's cheap, but he's also right on the money and one should never underestimate the power of really short entertainment.

Wii problem? meh...

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

A lot of reviewers and gamers are starting to complain about a problem that was obvous over a year ago. There are no games for the Wii.

I don't understand this, I love my Wii. I love it as much as I love my Ipod. I look forward to turning it on, listening to the gloing-gloing theme, and messing around in the menu and settings. I use it for at least 5 minutes a month and it was totally worth the never, even once, cut price.

Well, I'll be off now. I'm busy playing games and watching Blu-Ray movies on my PS3...

WiiFit

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I just spent an evening with WiiFit and I have to admit that my hype level was way higher then my real life impression.

The WiiFit board is a large chunk of plastic, it feels cheap, it looks cheap and it in all probability is cheap. The games that come with it feel cheap, look cheap and play cheap.
The problem is not the board itself, which I think is a great idea, but the level of quality of the board and it's games. It's just pitiful...
The quality is not in the same room as the Wii and Wii sports, they don't even seem to be related. If the Wii is an ipod then WiiFit is a Soviet world war 2 tank covered in rust. Nintendo just looks like a greedy bully when I look at WiiFit. I hope for Wii's sake that the coming snowboard and skateboard games make a lot better use of the board.
Because even though my impression is not even remotely good, the balance board is a good idea. Especially for games lite SSX and its like.

Will Home give the PS3 an edge?

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Home has launched. It's in beta but still released for all PSN users. The launch is covered in bugs but Sony has already come on record with a release plan of fixes. But will Home lift the Playstation 3 to new heights? Well Home in itself is not much more then a glorified chat client. So it's kind of surprising to find that Sony has released home without any real content... There's great avatar customization and a few games. But not much to look at, no game rooms, not even any real content to purchase... It's more or less an empty store/club. Which is more then mildly depressing.

Sony has once again released a platform and forgotten to give the developers a heads up.

When can we expect to see some cool game rooms released then? There is no word... Sony is shooting itself in the foot. Content is king, it's because of compelling content we're supposed to buy a PS3 from the start.

This is like the Nintendo Wii all over again, I loved my Wii before I sold it, used to boot it up and play with the menu for a few seconds several times a week. But I never did anything else.

Today I'm booting up my PS3 each Thursday to download some more clothes to LBP (which I still play whenever I have a friends nearby) but other then that.. I checked the weather last week?..

Sony, get smart really quick. This isn't hard. You create platforms, for them to sell you need talented developers to fill them with content. If you really can't think this far ahead maybe you should just hand over the Playstation brand to Microsoft. I would hate that, but at least developers would have a go at the platform.

World of Goo review

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I've just played World of Goo, the indie title by developer 2D boy that does everything right! The mechanics of World of Goo have more in common with building sand castles then any other computer game and as such is more of a toy then a game. But this is not a bad thing. To be accurate I have to say that I've only just finished the first chapter of the "story campaign" but so far this game does everything right as far as game design is concerned.

It's accessible, simply and easy yet engaging and engrossing. You can jump in to play for a few minutes or play levels of increasing complexity for hours. It's also a feast for the eyes and ears and has a lot of humor.

My only issue with the game is that it's fullscreen, it wants to take up all of my attention while playing. And though this might be most effective and certainly the first choice of most players it's quite odd to play such a light title without the ability to keep IMing on the side. I do that in WoW, why not in WoG?

Watch a video of the gameplay, if you find it even mildly interesting or seemingly fun you'll really enjoy the title. And please, BUY this game. It's cheap, it's indie and it doesn't use DRM. Support a just cause by getting your money's worth.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A_JfkzPwww]

Zelda phantom hourglass review

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

"I've finally finished my first Zelda game!" I exclaimed close to tears and threw my DS on the bed.
Not often have I felt so lost after playing a game. ZPH is a strange mix of genuine entertainment and mind boggling boredom... But I'm getting ahead of myself.

People have always told me I should play Zelda. And believe me I've tried, but all the zelda games I've tried (a link to the past, Wind waker) have run the train of enjoyment straight into the great brick wall of irritation and boredom. Mostly because of completely illogical puzzles and confusing control schemes. (Don't get me started on these games...)

But ZPH seemed different, the controls are wonderful and no matter what odd things I'm trying to do with Link (or my case "Lard") I find myself doing it with ease and enjoyment.
Then I run into a few problems...

Why the hell am I playing the temple of suck over and over again?
Why is the game filled to the brim with puzzles that break the logical boundaries of the game making the puzzles impossible to guess unless your one of those people with enough time and lack of brain that you'll actually try everything until the puzzle is solved.
Why can I save the game at all times when it only actually saves at certain stages anyway?
No, Nintendo, I don't wanna play through that god damned temple again!
Sailing is boring. In ZPH's defense there are golden frogs that let you teleport around the sea, which brings me to my next point...
Why the hell is it so hard to hit the damn golden frogs?! To be able to teleport around the sea I have to spend more time sailing around firing at the damn frogs then I would completing the game!

It's not a bad game, just with some major faults that seem unforgivable coming, as they do, from Nintendo. Which is supposed to know how to make fun and accessible games...

I give this game a weak 2/5. Want to spend money on portable entertainment? Buy a comic book or a book. This is just bad value for my money. Hope I wasn't to bitter for you guys, sorry about that.

Adaptive difficulty level

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Difficulty in games is always a hard balance to find. Since a game is a continuous loop of events you want each iteration to be a little harder to keep engaging the player while being simple and enough to overcome with the training the player got from the previous iteration. Simply put, developers want difficulty to work for everyone and smoothly ramp upwards as the game progresses. This pacing of difficulty is really hard. And today's titles mostly do this by hand and play testing, which works great for many titles but becomes increasingly hard as games become more complex. One of my closest friend, a developer for one of Sweden's largest game development companies, has told me that a few of their titles actually have a form of adaptive difficulty level, but in my opinion the system he explained was very crude.

This is my suggestion, bear in mind that it is purely theoretical and not based on any single product though I will use the shooter genre as my general example:

Stop using levels and number of enemies as difficulty setting. These elements affect the players emotional response to situations and should be used as tools to do that. Nothing else.

Instead, use adaptive AI to make the difficulty adapt to the players performance. This system can be susceptible to breaking if it's not made to be imperceptible, which is a problem, but not near as big of a problem as pacing issues in current titles.

Take a shooter, make enemies miss ratio increase as players health diminishes, at the same time make enemies hits do less damage. Make sure however that these changes are small, I predict that changes larger then around 10% will be noticeable by players. Change things as much as needed, but strive to make it unnoticeable. Even 10% makes a huge difference. So far so good, this level of adaptability is surely used in titles already.

Next, monitor how often and how much damage a player takes, compare that to the kills or percentage of damage the player does (the percentage where 100% is a kill, this way HP won't affect the statistic). Use this data to restrict or increase the difficulty decrease. If a player scores a lot of kills and takes a lot of damage but does not die the difficulty might be good. If the player doesn't do any real damage however the difficulty is probably quite tough.

If monitored for the last 10 to 30 minutes of game time the numbers should give you a general performance for the player, in any situation and however good they get. And if a player tries to fool the system by playing badly it won't affect the balance for very long, the player that does very low damage for a half an hour might take less damage for a few minutes but the player wont win anything by playing this way and therefore has incentive not to try to cheat the system.

Of course, this adaptive system would also need balancing: how fast should it react? what statistics should be most important? Should it keep track across game sessions? But the point is you'd only have to balance this system once. It could then balance your entire game, from tutorial to boss fights without the developers needing to tweak levels. They could instead spend their time creating interesting situations.

Agile development another new oldie

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

It struck me about a week ago. Agile project development, which is a somewhat new fad in software development, is not really that new. Now most of you are probably shaking your heads thinking Of course it isn't, we've been using it for ten or more years. That might be true but I'm talking seriously old here.

Compare agile development, where features are implemented in short both to enable developers to work instead of plan and at the same time not commit the entire project down one road if something changes during development. With Kaizen, where each working (or even living) person takes time to be just one step better, just one step more efficient, each day.

Now I know, the parallel is a bit stretched, But it's not really that far fetched is it? We're all simply trying to improve our projects just one step (feature?) at a time.Perhaps we can learn even more from Kaizen and shorten our sprints even further.

Amazon game shop

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Amazon has tossed down the gauntlet on the casual games industry and started a downloadable casual game portal. Check it out and tell me what you think. Games are priced at a competitive $10 and with amazons huge customer base it will certainly be interesting to see the effect this might have. More and more mainstream businesses are approaching the games industry, hard core developers tremble and might go extinct.

Apple conference, iPhone OS 3.0, iTablet?

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

WWDC is today. In approximately 7h. What do you think will happen? I sincerely hope for an Apple Tablet, basically a larger, more powerful, iPod Touch with a huge battery. But I don't really think it will happen. Apple is working on it and when they can get price, performance and form factors together to really blast the market with tablets they will. I just think it's to expensive today.

iPhone OS 3.0 will launch today however. Which brings a huge amount of updates to the iPhone and the App Store. Let's see those landscape SMS' and ad hoc multiplayer games flourish!

Apple's September event

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

With Snow Leopard out and another event planned it was time for the annual iPod update. This time Apple released faster versions of the iPod touch for improved game experiences. An iPod nano with a camera and a few new colors for iPod classic and shuffle.

But the real news is iTunes 9. iTunes has finally been updated with a few small but essential additions. iTunes has for the last 3 years or so lagged terribly behind the rest of Apple's products both in interface and useability. So this was about time. But it wasn't the complete overhaul we were hoping, not an iTunes cloud sadly.

iTunes 9 has limited content sharing over LAN for home users and a revised interface for the iTunes store. Which was badly needed. But besides that the changes are minimal and of little interest. Hopefully iTunes 9 was just in preparation of iTunes 10 which hopefully will be a drastic improvement.

Let the rumors commence.

Blur dev gives stupid quote about online leaderboards

Thu, 28 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This is quoted, out of context, from developer magazine. Just to be fair. “I don't think the majority of people really care about being number one in the world.”

No?´Really? That might be because only a couple of hundred even have a chance to make that list. Leaderboards where you're way of down around the millionth place seem to loose their charm don't you think?

I'm glad Blur have good arguments behind their design choices.

Brütal Legend demo impresssions

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

One word: Awesome. To tell you the truth, I had already planned to buy Brutal Legend just for the story writing and the fact that original games are few and should be promoted. But after playing the demo I have to say that the team at Double Fine has outdone themselves. This is one hell of a game, the gameplay is simple and fun while the narrative is awesome. The game has excellent polish and definitely seems worth the money.

Truthfully, I'm a bit surprised and a bit impressed. I had not suspected that the game would be this fun to play.

Business Card Design - minimalist color fetish

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Another business card design, this one with a slightly less hidden fetish for the mint/new spring green that I really like. For some reason this color represents the color of sunshine and happiness for me. Has something to do with new leaves on birch trees in spring but that's as far back as I care to identify the emotional response.

The card had, besides the clear fetish for green, a slogan about design that I regularly use as a mantra and a short pitch about why I can help improve your product. Not the most convincing one I've written but still alright. The typography of the pitch is a bit dodgy as the wording wouldn't let me balance the characters by reshaping the sentences. Might return to this one.

Business Card Design - minimalist typography

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I realized last weekend that I'm missing a proper business card. Time to design one. And since I'm at home, sick but not dying, I took the time to do a couple of sketches.

This card is based on the very popular typographic design posters you'll find floating around the web. Complete with a more minimalist front with the logo from my current WP theme design (not launched, still sketching and tweaking)

Coop mechanics again

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Check out my new post on Understanding Games as I continue my intellectual struggle with cooperative play and improving how games are made. Don't miss my comment on how Completitive Play might be a great new model for creating active cooperative play.

Creating a minimalist WP theme

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

These are just sketches for my WP theme. Just getting ideas out to test them visually. Experimenting with design is really an awesome process and I wish we had the tools to do the same with interaction without involving a group of developers and spending a lot of money.

Experimented a lot with gradients and feedback as if the objects had a real world existence.

Worked pretty well but not at all to the degree I was looking for. Getting users to experience fake tactile experience through Gestalt Closure is really hard without sound.

Here I tried relying more on the grid to make the site look structured and clean. But I bailed out in the last minute and added a few details outside the grid that didn't work at all.

Here I was just trying to present a lifestream that could work as a living resume of my entire life. Before long I realized that what I really was designing was an XML feed. Not at all what I had set out to do.

Testing out the idea of a virtual business card. But it started feeling cheap really early. The point of a business card is to be able to hand it around. A website doesn't have the same appeal for the function. If I wanted you to find out exactly who I am I'd probably hand you my resume, not my site.

This was one of the most interesting models I tried. Another fake spatial space website but with equal amounts of information about me and information that I wanted visitors to see. Worked pretty well but ended up a bit cramped. Not far from my current direction though.

Dawn of War 2 impressions

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Dawn of War 2 is Relic Entertainments follow up on the massively succesful Dawn of War series. Relic being the only remaining RTS studio competing with Blizzard sure has it's work cut out for it but the success of Homeworld, Dawn of War and recently Company of Heroes seem to indicate that they are somewhat good at what they do (understating for effect). Dawn of War 2 is a game that is more focused on small unit tactics compared to the massive armies of it's predecessor but apart from that not a lot has really changed. Don't get me wrong, it's a big change. And for the better in my opinion.

DoW2 is simple put: fun. It's a lot more like the classic Myth series then Command & Conquer style RTS games which makes play a lot more focused and immersive. The graphics are great and the different units with their different abilities make for interesting game dynamics. But there are a few glitches in this new way of playing.

First though, I wonder why it requires such outrageous system specs? It's not prettier then Company of Heroes but it makes my core2duo 2,4 Ghz, 2GB DD2, XFX 8800GT 512MB machine stutter and jerk. Sure, I'm running the game in 1080p but I have no problem running CoH in the same resolution. Isn't DoW2 based on the same engine? Recommended system specs are way below my machine so I can't help feeling Relic somehow forgot, or didn't have time for optimization. Please patch this up, this is just silly.

Gameplay wise there is also a question of complexity, long time readers will know by now that I've been an active advocate for simple games for the past 5 years but DoW2 is plain weird. It's a game made to be simple to pick up, small units, distinct advantages for different units. Small skirmishes and simple to understand goals. Sounds great right? So why does each unit has 3 interchangeable special abilities that seem to come in enormous variety, all with different uses and hot keys?

It's like if some part of the design was just hammered into the game without following the same rules as the rest of the game: Overall game design "simplicity and stream lined experience" Unit and ability control "pre 2000's complexity comparable to text based logistic shipping simulators from the early 90's?" I'm drastically exadurating now but the complexity is really strange to find in this game. It just makes little sense. Why aren't the unit abilities locked to special roles? Or at least the ability groups locked to certain units? Does a sniper really ever need to use melee-charge? And why can't I control all the abilities with the same keys, as I do in World in Conflict? Button A for ability A, button B for ability B and so on. No matter WHAT that ability is?

Oh, and the multiplayer gameplay is copied without shame from the original version of Dreamlords. But that's just awesome. ;)

Defending limitations

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Doing things differently, doing things in a new way is hard. The hardest part is that you have to change how you think about whatever it is you are going to do. This is usually called thinking outside the box. Thinking without prerequisites about the project at hand. This is why limitations are so good. Because they force a new set of rules on the product, however small or large that difference may be, that change the direction in which you take the product.

Are you stuck with some design or problem? Try giving yourself a strange rule to follow. Or find the rules and limitations of your work before you try to create it. Working without limitation just leads you in circles.

E3 information overload

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

E3 is back and with a vengeance, it's more news then ever and the quality of games has increased by an order of magnitude since the last E3. The things I've found most interesting so far are:

Motion controlling for the future by Microsoft with project Natal and by Sony with the playstation motion controller.

Games of unsurpassed quality with Uncharted 2, Assasins Creed 2, modNation Racers and God of War 3.

Did I mention that Xbox 360 is adding applications for Twitter and Facebook as well as opening the renamed Zune Video Store in Europe? The Wii gets more peripherals and circa two games but honestly, who cares?

Final Fantasy boosting PS3 sales in Japan (Console Wars)

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

PS3 sales skyrocket as Final Fantasy Advent Children complete is released with the playable demo of FF13.This is quite probably one of 2009s biggest releases on the PS3 and points to the outcome of this generation in the console war. There will be no #1 gaming platform.

The Wii has outsold everything x2 and but still has poor support from and to third parties. The Xbox 360 has a clear lead over the PS3 but is clearly not a winner though Microsoft has made both a ton of money and millions of new customers. The PS3 continues to stagnate with good support but far from the great support of the golden PSX days.

In conclusion I miss those days, there was a clear winner, a clear platform that every developer aimed for and a wide spectrum of games. Maybe the next generation will see a renaissance of games development. Maybe we'll see total domination by Adobe Flash or OnLive.

Flower impressions

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Sublime. Flower is the most engaging experience of movement, speed, atmosphere and space I've had in any game. The runner up, Eve Online, is not even close but even Eve is light years ahead of most games. Flower has room for improvements, nothing is perfect. But it might be the most innovative game I've played since Dune 2. It is not a classic game in almost any way, it is more an interactive experience of engaging fun rather then a computer- console- arcade- game. And it's better for it. It breaks most of the molds that hold this medium from growing but is never artsy or pretentious.

The only complaint I have with flower is that I have to play it with the SixAxis controller. Don't get me wrong, the 360 controller would certainly not be better and I doubt even the wiimote would be an improvement. A clunky piece of plastic simply doesn't do the experience justice. For preference I would have liked to play it using an iPod nano. But we can't have everything can we?

Flower. It's the best game in it's range (a short, small, cheap but luxurious experience). Buy it. You'll not regret it, I wish I was home playing it right now.

Thatgamecompany has really hit the mark with this one, let's hope they keep reshaping our perception of games and entertainment!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BDG5ax_eTo]

Free Realms dissapointment

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Back from my vacation I stumble upon a weird fact. Free Realms is platform specific... Now, I don't understand the technology behind the scenes of Free Realms but it seems to me that when you make a entry level MMOG that is designed to be free fast and easy to play. You might not want to block out 10% or computer users, namely Mac user.

I just launched the website on my MacBook Pro and simply couldn't find the play button. No information. No anything. I understand the huge difference between building for one versus two platforms but in a production as large as this and focused on such a low requirements user demographic why would this ever happen? I understand that Age of Conan doesn't support Mac. But Eve Online and World of Warcraft don't seem to have a problem making it profitable. Why is Free Realms not on more platforms?

Google releasing Chrome OS for netbooks

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

My first thought: "Google OS, great! Go google! Wait, haven't googles products got steadily less and less stable and good as the company has expanded? oh well..." Then I realize this is another OS on an already shattered market (PC/laptop). Of course it's based upon Linux but it doesn't support a lot of heavy features. Basically it's made to boot an Internet browser and nothing else. This is, of course, Google's stratagem and has been from the start. And I see their point, web apps are steadily taking over functions I used desktop apps for earlier.

But there is a long way to go, web apps are just not responsive enough for smaller tasks, I use notepad, and Things. Programs that are snappy. I haven't seen anything web based that comes close to them in responsiveness.

Maybe HTML 5 can speed things along.

How fast do you want your data?

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Media is becoming snippets of entertainment. Don't believe me? Check out a few Ted talks or simply watch something good on youtube. The reason I can say this is because the Internet is letting people choose their entertainment on demand. They watch, read and play what they want when they want it.

But since there is a lot more media available then you can ever consume in a lifetime people are choosing to experience what they want now. We see short funny clips, but we might spend hours watching such clips. We also watch high quality TV-series or a new blockbuster movie but not nearly as much as we check blogs or mail.

The point is, media is getting smaller, quicker, more effectively made for individuals. We can either use that knowledge to create content that will appeal to the new customer behaviour or we can fight it and say that the people using content this way are just tech freak pirates anyway.

The early adopters are not copies of the next generation of media consumers, but they do show the trend. It has been that way for the past hundred years with Radio, Cinema and TV. Why would this trend be different?

How to improve learning

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Had a few minutes over to finish my short presentation on education reform, I hope you like it. Feel free to ask about anything you feel I'm neglecting to mention, should extrapolate on or if you think I'm just plain wrong. [slideshare id=2386832&doc=improvelearning-091030160512-phpapp01]

Interactive art, game?

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Every Day the same Dream is a short flash game that I think you should play. It's story of a faceless man who tries to break out of his routine of getting up, dressing, saying good bye to his emotionally detached wife and driving to a miserable job. It's not exactly cheerful. It might even provoke dark thoughts. It's conveys a sense of how valuable life is in a strange way. This game is provoking. It doesn't provoke your ideals. It provokes how you live.

A fantastic interactive experiment that I can really recommend:

Every Day the Same Dream

iPhone gaming platform

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The iPhone is here to stay. With over 10 million units sold the product is one of the most successful mobile computing products ever. Nokia and Sony Ericsson may sell a lot more phones but certainly not per model. What makes the iPhone so special? Well it was first with Apple's ingenious touch interface which has set the standard for a generation to come. But besides the initial shock of a good UI for mobiles the staying factor for iPhone is the application store. Or should I say Apple's solution for including developers in the process.

Developers can buy cheap SDKs, build almost what they want and then sell their products for great margins through Apple's store. This makes quality high, prices low and the incentive for developers volcanic. No matter what other mobile companies are doing they won' catch up without an enormous amount of software that can sway the public. This is a hard trial for the much anticipated Android platform from google.

There are some successful games for the iPhone already, and expect to see a lot more as developers stop looking at what they can do and go back to designing what will actually be FUN on an iPhone.

The real question in this situation really has to be: why is the iPhone the first arena where this system for development has been put in use and why aren't other companies (Sony, Nintendo, Nokia, Microsoft) jumping on the chance to produce a similar development chain for other or competing platforms?

Steam isn't far off. Unity is more or less there, even for the iPhone. Android? Running free without design or visual appeal, NOT a strategy that will work in the modern software world. Let's hope for the best, I'm downloading an SDK asap.

Law of Design - redefined for today

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The most basic law of design, for the 20th century at least, has been form follows function. The idea that objects should be created based on the action they are used for. With the digital world today, the law is a bit broken. But I claim that the law still works, with just a slight tweak. I just saw Objectified, the fantastic documentary about industrial design. One of the designers calims that the original law of design form follows function doesn't apply anymore because design today has become more and more digital, more abstract. With objects like the iPhone, with all its functions, form cannot represent what it does. It is too complex.

But the law is still sound. If we abstract the purpose of the law a bit, it means that any product should really become its function, a pair of scissors is really nothing but the function for cutting. For two reasons this is a good thing: An object that objectifies its function is effective. An object that objectifies its function is simple to understand for the user. Scissors are rarely used inefficiently or misunderstood but it's users.

When we go digital, we remove the analogue function of the object. It can no longer have a shape based on that function because the function does not exist in the real world. Now, a certain element of the object will always be part of the real world, the interaction with the object.

And this is where the law comes into play again. If we think about the function of and object, not as a physical movement or action, but as an interface for a human being to perform a function, the interaction itself becomes the function of the object.

Some may argue that the abstract function of the object, e.g. gaming or texting on an iPhone, is the main function of an object. But that function also has an abstract layer of interface, the GUI, for that action. This is form and function for an abstract object or function.

So deconstructed, the law of design transformed for today world would read: Form follows interaction.

LOVE mmo is complete

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

At least according to developer Eskil Steenberg's blog. LOVE is a hugely interesting MMO since it's mostly procedurally generated with the world being constantly constructed and destroyed by players. Also noted for being developed solely by Eskil (except for the music) it looks to be quite an achievement. So far though the game is only feature complete, which since it's procedurally generated also means content complete, it does not mean it's ready for release though. Eskil is probably going to test the shit bejesus out of the product before launch or open beta. I for one will be glued to the site looking for a download button.

LOVE MMO technical alpha available

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Help Eskil get his bugs smoothed out and speed the release of LOVE. Just download the tech-alpha demo here and start it up. It will send machine info to Eskil to improve compatibility and let him know how much server load he can expect for beta testing.

LOVE pre-play impressions

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Sitting here watching the love tech alpha on my 37" LCD screen. It's just a flythrough of the world that loops over and over again, showing of scenes form the game and the engines dynamic day and night cycle.

It's really different from other games. It's astonishing that it's made by one person. Really impressive, check it out if you're on a PC.

MacBook Pro 13" first impressions

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I succumbed. It might be the designer in me or it might be constant frustration in having a trough of computers that never, ever, work as intended (Windows 7 is pretty good though).

I bought a MacBook Pro 13". The cheapest kind.

Unboxing, great. Installing, no? No installation needed? Add password to wLan and it's updated and functioning already? Wow.

Migrating images and itunes library form pc to mac, this has got to cause problems.

iTunes... done. Worked first time. Synced with iPhone without a problem. Oh look, up pops iPhoto and it's already categorized and sorted my images for me...

Well then, no more fuss I guess. Just a beatuiful responsive laptop to use. Guess this means I can get back to actually working on my computer instead of configuring it continuously...

Shit

Michael Jackson is dead

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

And finally the haters and tabloids shut up. About a year to late. No matter what the man was like personally he gave us a lot of really good music. Even if you didn't like his music it's beyond question that a lot of people did.

Let's make a pact, we'll try to remember people for what they did, not what the tabloids wrote?

Monopoly city streets

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The word wide Monopoly match is finally running smoothly without slowdowns or lag. The game is a fantastic experiment on the google maps platform. I've been wondering why it hasn't been used more for games up til now, let's see if that changes. There is only one problem with the game. Chance has such a small effect on actual play that the main strategy in Monopoly (buy everything as fast as possible) is not only dominant but effectively the only one. Still pretty fun though, buying your own neighbourhood.

Opera and storytelling

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Last night I saw Macbeth at the Swedish royal opera house. It was stunning. My first opera and live Shakespeare. Very intriguing. In the intermission my friend, a producer at EA DICE, said an interesting thing: While opera is clearly far behind most other media in terms of storytelling the music holds up the experience making it excel as an art form.

First I just thought he had a fair point. Then I realised the same can be said for most games, which I'm sure was a thought he shared.

So what can we use to hold up storytelling in games? Interaction is what holds games as experiences up to a level of excellence but can it be used to save storytelling?

Plants vs Zombies first impressions

Wed, 20 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Popcap have released their newest casual venture Plants vs Zombies. Basically a simplified tower defense game with levels and really cute graphics. My first impression was, truthfully: "Wow! This is great! This is so much fun!". Yes, I committed the exclamation fan-boy crime.

My second impression, 20minutes later was: "What? Is this it? This isn't that much fun..."

The next time I had a conscious thought was an hour later. An hour of hard concentration trying to kill zombies. Have no doubts, this is a most excellent game. And I will get into detail on why I think this is shortly.

UPDATE:

Downloaded the demo on my girlfriends Mac, two hours later she'd bought the full game. Two days later she was stuck on one of the final levels of the game. She'd grinded the entire game. Yes, I'm proud of her!

Playstation 3 drive error update

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Got another PS3 on my warranty. Pretty decent by Sony I think, sadly it was broken as well. Went back to the store and got another one, courtesy of the Sony retailer in Sweden, this time it worked. Then I realized my enormous mistake. A PS3 drive is encrypted to specific machines. That means you can't swap drives to other PS3's.. Now this I just don't understand. There are no real security benefits with not being able to swap drives. If a hacker wants to pirate something they will, eventually, break the encryption. But besides that, why use a specific machine? Why shouldn't I be able to move my drive to another PS3.

Maybe I want to upgrade to the newest revision of the PS3 hardware some time in the future? No? Alright Sony, if that's the way you want it.

Since I'm now without save games and with no real must play titles out right now, I am seriously thinking about exchanging it for an Xbox 360 elite. At least there I know what kind of problems to expect...

Playstation 3 slim and pricedrop

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Huzzah! The rumors were true. Sony has announced that they will release a slimmer, cheaper version of the PS3 September 1. Wow. That's great. A lot of more people will buy PS3s...

It's just a bit sad that Sony is already lagging behind with every service associated with the PS3. The online functionality is simple not nearly as good or entertaining as Microsofts Xbox Live. PSN has less games and content. PS3 developers are still not getting enough help to really push the PS3.

So, as I did smile for a short while at the very late price drop, I'm afraid it might not be enough. And while I do enjoy and respect the 360. Something tells me I just don't want Microsoft to dominate my living room as they have, for far to long, dominated my workspace.

Playstation Portable Go $249

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Sony finally released information about their new incarnation of the PSP. The PSP Go. Without UMD it will sell in paralell with the PSP 3000 while all new PSP titles will be available on UMD as well as digital download. It has 16GB internal memory and place for a memory card. It's also about the size of an iPhone but with about the same size screen as the PSP 3000. I want one.

Power of Crowdsourcing example

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Hanna is a geek in Sweden. I don't know her, I don't know of her. She's not a huge name as far as I can tell. But she just did something amazing using Twitter and Spotify. About an hour ago she created a collaborative playlist on Spotify and tweeted the playlist link asking for Christmas songs.

One hour ago. The playlist is now 18 songs and 1.2 hours long. Potentially it could last forever if more people join in.

Thanks Hanna, for showing us a great example of the power of social media and crowd sourcing.

Hanna's Christmas Playlist

Project Natal

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

You've probably seen Microsoft's new interface for the Xbox 360: Project Natal. If you haven't, project Natal is a 3d stereo-optic RGB camera with a microphone. So it sees depth, color and can hear. Coupled with the Xbox 360 it allegedly allows you to do full body motion capture in real time as well as facial recognition and voice recognition. If you have no idea what I'm talking about watch the video(s) for the quickest look at what it does.

Project Natal at Xbox.com

If you do know about Natal, consider this:

Milo is probably scripted and pretty fake though surely the technology is possible just not Milo's AI. As a gaming interface Natal might be hard to use with the normal games of today, this does however not mean that it wont sell well or be fun to use. It certainly will. But with less gamish games probably.

There is a seed I'd like to place with all of you though. Think about the iPhone, what it really does well is that it forces applications and games to use a very easy to use interface that looks good. Microsoft are trying to do the same with Microsoft Surface technology but it is very expensive and hard to implement...

And along comes Natal. Not only does it implicitly force the use of an easy interface, your body is quite probably the best interface you'll ever use, but it's also available for existing technology. And it doesn't have to be very expensive.

This might be the interface that really leads us to ubiquitous computing. Typing still needs a keyboard, even on an iPhone, but navigation and normal use could be done by Natal.

Let's hope it works.

PS3 Bluray Disc drive failure

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I was playing Uncharted last night. Really liking that game even though I wish they'd spent a little more time on polish. Greatly looking forward to Uncharted 2. All of a sudden, all sound effects other then footsteps disappear. I get frustrated and blame the developers for slouching. A moment later, the game asks me to pop in the disc.

17 different tries with different sorts of discs later I google around and find out my drive is broken. Well that's to bad. But it led me to realize something: everyone known that MS repair service is working like an oiled machine these days (after an initial BDSM relationship with their customers), but who knows anything about Sony's return policies?

I'm going back to the reseller store to find out, this is going to be interesting.

Quality as an USP

Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I recently gave my first impressions on PopCap games latest casual title Plants vs Zombies. It's a really fun game that has very little in common with the other hit titles from PopCap except for one thing: quality. All of PopCaps games are genuine quality products with little if any glitches and no flimsy art that cramps their style. Well so what? It's simple, quality is lacking in a lot of big titles. And quality is the ultimate deal breaker with entertainment. Let's explore why:

Most games are quality products that have bugs, glitches or unfinished parts due to last minute feature additions or late night crunching to ship the title. This is all well and good. We seem to be selling a lot of games. But looking at the numbers in another light we also see that individual titles seem to sell less from year to year. This decline can't be solely based on one factor of course; competition, piracy mega hits like World of Warcraft have very clear effects on the sales of games. But quality is a factor that has been overlooked for a very long time from the developers point of view. Quality over a certain "it works dammit" threshold just isn't cost efficient enough.

Before I give a few examples of why this is not necessarily true let me just define what I mean with quality:

Quality doesn't mean that the game is good. It means that whatever your game or product does it does good.

You never see a Ferrari with a wobbly steering wheel. That would devastate the drivers experience of the Ferrari. Likewise you seldom see cartoon characters in real world sitcoms. Or a pinkish plastic cover, that falls off, on your new MacBook. So why is it we find crashes, graphical glitches, strange sounds and missing textures in AAA games?

Because quality was not an issue for the developer. The features were.

Look again at PopCap games, do they have the features of other casual titles? In some cases yes, in others no. Apple's iPhone isn't close to cheaper smart phones in terms of features and power. Yet it outsells them ten to one. The list goes on. But the point is that production companies might want to start looking into quality instead of features.

Maybe you don't need to be able to customize everything in the game. Maybe it just needs to look great from the start.

Real time search - the problem

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Both Google and Microsoft's new search service Bing has partnered with Twitter to provide real-time search results for queries. This is great news for finding valuable information but it also creates new problems to overcome; filtering out the irrelevant data. Search today is based on relevance through counting the number of links to and from a site. This relevance also weights the linked sites. This is the basic idea behind Google's PageRank system. But its fundamentally flawed, namely the older the site the more information and weight it can get. Google has of course tried to minimize this affect but it's still visible when searching for certain topics. Google "next apple event" for an example. The search result is completely useless.

Twitter however has the opposite problem. Without a system like PageRank to value the posts a lot of relevance comes from time. The latest posts are the most relevant. But this also means that topics that aren't current might not yield any relevant information available. So the time problem is reversed from Google's PageRank time problem.

So how will we solve this? Well, I don't have a definitive answer of course. But I've more and more come to believe in crowd sourcing as a means to get accurate data. Perhaps relevance can be calculated not from the content itself but from how we interact with it. If users can be filtered out from bots (usage patterns for bots are really hard to mask over time since the cloud could potentially remember ever mouse move they make) relevance could be weighted from number of users who actually read or view the content.

No doubt Google has teams working on this. And no doubt they will eventually buy some small startup doing it a lot smarter than they are. It's an interesting problem nevertheless.

Sony is officially gimping developers

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Kaz Hirai, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment has just gone on official record stating that Sony was planned from the start to gimp Playstation 3 developers by providing complex and hard-to-use hardware to maintain the longevity of the platform.

"We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?" quote copied from gameindustry.biz

In other words, because the hardware isn't powerful enough to actually last 10 years, Sony is gimping developers so that it'll take close to 10 years to use the hardware fully... Great idea Kaz, maybe next generation you can shoot all the developers that report sales of less then 10 million to improve quality.

Read the full story over at gameindustry.biz

State of the Game Industry in Sweden

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Sweden has had a strong game development industry even since before the launch of the classic shooterBattlefield 1942. In the last year though, the economic downturn has cause some large studios to file for bankruptcy or sale. But the worst economic down turns usually make the most fertile grounds for new industry. Something the Swedes are proving true. Baraboom is a small group of friends trying to make it on the iPhone. Not an original concept but not a bad one either. They've chosen to be inspired my Remedy's classic car shooter Death Rally and with a unique style and control scheme their first title Auto Crisis looks awesome. Check it out when it launches in the app store around christmas. [vimeo=http://vimeo.com/7942457]

Ludosity is another small independent studio launching their first own IP very soon. This small startup is comprised of students straight out of school into an incubator. Most impressive and looking at their really unique title Bob came in pieces you can really tell where the innovation in the industry is going on. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uiH-_d7InE]

So don't hesitate to innovate and stop worrying about the economy. If small companies such as these two can create high quality products like this on small funds and high spirit, we'll pull through. ;)

Also please note that while none of these companies have dedicated resources or large budgets to create their web presence, they both have more professional sites than most larger companies...

Steam tax

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I just bought Dawn of War 2, the sequel to the massive juggernaut of tactical gaming Dawn of War from Relic Entertainment, so I thought I'd offer some thoughts on it. But first, let's gripe about digital distribution. Why on earth am I paying 10$ extra to buy the game on steam? Look, publishers, I LOVE game boxes and special editions and such. But I hate optical media discs. The reason being I always lose them and never, ever, use my optical drives anymore so I'm never sure they're installed. Steam on the other hand is always ready to go. I will therefore always buy games from Steam, but if I like the game I will probably buy a special edition box, for art books and such. I'm certainly not alone in this since Steam has, at least, over 15 million active users, so why on earth are you charging us a "steam tax" when your obviously already making more money from a digital distribution sale because you won't have to pay for box printing and such?

I suspect that the answer is either "publishers are dumb old-school people with no clue" or possibly "publishers want to make third party digital distribution unpopular and then launch their own digital distribution platform when it's ready in 2025". Because these are the only answers that seem to cover all the information. Neither is a very good answer, anyone have any alternative possibilities?

Strange news about Happiness

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

What is happiness to you? To me I've always defined it as reaching my goals, whatever they may be. Turns out I'm wrong. Dead wrong apparently. As Dan Gilbert explains in the video below happiness is comprised of a lot of synthetic happiness. And as Luis C.K. displays in the next video our many many choices leave us stranded in a place of chasing happiness that is really all around us. What we need to do is really enforce more restrictions on our own lives.

For games and products, this translates into restricting what they can do. Think about how strange that is, restricting what players / users can do will actually make the product more fun and usable. Not because it is, but because the choices will make that happiness more available.

[ted id=97]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk]

Strange reading habits

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

It seems most of you are only here to find out who I am. Fair enough. I'll make a better presentation of myself soon.

Streaming Online Games

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Two services have just been announced that host the game rendering and mechanics in the cloud. Basically this means that you install a small client that only sends your input (keyboard, mouse) commands to the game on the server which returns the games video frames in seeming real time. You wont know the difference from playing locally. This sounds to good to be true, we all know about lag online and the technical issue seems to be insurmountable. But there isn't one player on this, there are two large services (OnLive and Gaikai) with proper backing being developed and possibly shortly released.

The OnLive demo from GDC left reviewers in awe but still not convinced. Gaikai only focusing on online games might make it a lot more technically possible (as most lag is from game state calculation any way) but still to be proven.

What do you think?

Visit OnLive and Gaikai and check it out.

The Aggregated web

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

What is the next step for web? Where will we be in 3 to 5 years time? What will the new web look like? Let me share a theory with you. The semantic web is often talked about as the next big shift online. Information marked in smarter ways so things will be infinitely easier to search for. Will the next step for web be the semantic web? Probably not since there is no real technical platform for this. Nothing that has been widely accepted by developers at least. And in web that is really what matters.

No instead we're already seeing the next step in web but only through the corner of our eye.

The next step in web will be the Aggregated web. Yes, that simple. While we are seeing more and more sites that aggregate feeds about the site or news about the common topic on the site these are really only precursors for the aggregated web. As mobile devices improve and more and more services offer APIs we'll see a shift from surfing the web to using services and information in real-time in the real world. A huge leap in integration between the real world and the web. In fact, we're already seeing this trend with the iPhone and stream of Android phones on the market.

Information is simple to find through search today. As more and more services offer open APIs to support different interfaces and devices we'll see a trend for information to become less tied to design also. Eventually most services and information on the web will be data streams with replaceable layers of interfaces.

So finding information about a topic on your cellphone, tv or laptop will be equally simple and fast. But the visual display of that information will probably differ, both in complexity and according to the users taste.

This will eventually spawn the trend for interesting interfaces aggregating the information you're looking for, real-time or otherwise, wherever you are. This is why I think the next step for web is the Aggregated web. Services are already popping up in a wide variety of styles and devices, just look at Twitter. When enough interesting services, and enough interesting information, has migrated to this sort of technology the interfaces on the web today will just not matter.

To finish with a situated example; your pen might feed information regarding grammar as you write while your fridge might aggregate special offers from stores near you. Sound like a poor 1950's vision of the future? Wait, I just got an offer from my local store via Twitter on my iPhone. All these devices really need is upgrade to Android and these examples can be used today.

Welcome to the aggregated web, you heard it here first. ;)

The amazing power of discussion

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Sometimes we need to put our ideas into words just to understand them ourselves. This is because the limitations in our language to describe ideas force us to make them more structured and less fuzzy around the edges. We don't always do this however, which is a bit sad since we only communicate a fraction of our ideas.

I think about this often when I'm talking with friends. Because it is only when I'm talking to another person that I really flesh out ideas enough to make them understandable and usable.

Last night I had a great conversation with an old friend and I am pleased to share with you a few of the ideas we discussed here. I'll post them later tonight or tomorrow but I will say that we solved fear of death, the reason for religion and why the last Harry Potter book was a bit of a anti climax.

The big brother state of Sweden (swe)

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Från och med den första december 2009 är Sverige en övervakad nation – det är då som FRA får tillgång till en stor del av vår Internet- och mobiltrafik. Detta kommer att få ett antal konsekvenser. De mest påtagliga är att flera grundläggande rättigheter i praktiken kommer att sättas ur spel. En självklarhet som brevhemligheten kommer efter den första december 2009 inte att existera på Internet. Även andra grundlagsskyddade rättigheter som källskyddet är starkt hotat. Många organisationer har skarpt protesterat mot FRA-lagen, däribland Journalistförbundet och Advokatsamfundet. En majoritet av det svenska folket är emot FRAs avlyssning.

Flera juridiska experter uttrycker dessutom stor tveksamhet till om FRA-lagen är förenlig med Europakonventionen, dvs. den europeiska konventionen angående skydd för de mänskliga rättigheterna. Sverige har förbundit sig att följa den konventionen och rimligtvis bör lagen alltså prövas i Europeiska domstolen för de mänskliga rättigheterna. Telia ansvarar idag för en majoritet av den trafik som FRA kommer att vilja avlyssna. Därför uppmanar vi Telia: ta FRA-lagen till domstol.

The first Real virtual world

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Oh alright, virtual worlds have been around a long time. But never as alive as this. One of the largest MMOG's in the world, Eve Online, is getting a sister game from the same developer. The game, Dust 514, will feature shooter gameplay in the same world as Eve. That's right. Games in different genres played in the same game world at the same time. Even if the games themselves do not interact directly the indirect possibilities of cross game effect and not to mention news has the potential to be amazing.

This could really be the first MMO world that might live on, with the games coming and going. A true perpetual world.

The Genuine Man

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The marketplace has changed radically in the past 5-10 years. All of a sudden we find ourselves in the middle of crashing multinational corporations that aren't as flexible or personal as smaller firms. The shift that has happened is a shift towards quality. Consumers today look for genuine experiences. Genuine products from genuine companies with individuals working for them, not the grey wall of suits in the giant corporations of the 80's and 90's.

But this shift has missed a small but vital point in itself. If we all look for genuine content for our lives, and that content is provided to us in genuine, but still, designed ways. Doesn't that make us anything but genuine?

In persuing the genuine experience are we trying to be genuine ourselves and if so, what does that really mean?

How can a person be genuine? Or better yet, how can a person not be genuine? Finding genuine experiences and genuine products might actually be helping in becoming more genuine people. More individual, with more specialized products. Only consuming what we really want to and not following exclusively the main stream of content.

This is a huge problem for companies today as everything from entertainment to basic services strive to be more genuine and personal without loosing it's cost efficiency. This is especially interesting for game developers as all games are crafts of art and love. There are no non genuine parts of a game. So we could, theoretically, make the entire process of creating a game, selling the game and living with the game a genuine experience available for the consumers.

But how could we do this? Well, what is a genuine experience? Creating a genuine experience is hard no doubts, and this is just a theory of mine. But let's begin with making customers part of the process from the start. Customers could be allowed to invest in the process and through investment get discounts on the finished product as well as more information about the development process such as developer commentaries, alpha footage and maybe even product testing. How much disclose is already a very fine balance and selling the information to the customers would make it even more so. But it would help keep development agile and make the product as well as the development a lot more genuine.

The product itself is actually the simplest step to make more genuine. Simply replace the word product with experience and rethink it. Very few products sold today are simply products made to used and thrown away. Start thinking about your products as experiences for the user and a completely new dimension for sales and value becomes visible. Does a player want to pay for content? Yes. Does it need to be large expensive expansion packs of ontent? No.

There are of course an infinite amount of possibility to what we can do to improve the genuine emotional impact of our products and services. But taking the first step and doing anything at all is really the hardest part.

Welcome the genuine consumer into the marketplace and start your company on becoming more genuine today. Shift happens, either we lead that shift or we're left behind by it.

The perpetual generation

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A lot of people are talking about the changes that the web and new media are bringing to society at large, while at the same time fashion and all types of designers are digging in our past to find the good points in 30's and 50's design. But let me present a tidbit that guaranteed will haunt you. This generation, this fashion, this snapshot of society in history, will be available in all it's cultural glory for coming generations until the end of man. Facebook, Google, Youtube and Flickr are making sure that the culture of the early second millennium will be saved in witnesses description (blogs, twitter and articles) video (youtube) and high resolution pictures (flickr) until we stop using digital media.

50's culture is amazingly alive today because of the availability of pictures and video from the decade. But when the digital material of decades is available on google for searching (possibly filtered by years, or sorted maybe? What do you think?) the game changes. The trends of today might haunt us, but there is no question that whatever we are captured doing or saying will stay with us until we are forgotten by our grand children's children.

A happy thought no? Our legacy will live for a very long time, we will all achieve that which our forefathers struggled to do. Makes forming our lives the way we want them a bit more important don't you think?

The Playstation media center

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I've been drooling over getting Boxee to centralize my media for a few months. Everyone wants a simple way to use all your media in one place without having to move it around right? Well now it's possible. I had never thought about installing Ubuntu on my Playstation 3 before. I already had a computer and didn't want to mess with my console. It's great as it is. But then I realized I could install Boxee on ubuntu and use my PS3 as a media center... It's made for this type of media use, it's just not as good as Boxee. Or Ubuntu.

Shortly after this realisation I found that installing Ubuntu doesn't change anything on my PS3 except take up some HDD space. Well I have a few GB's over anyway. So there is no risk (PS3 backup before installing and your set to go) then install Ubuntu. It works. Everything works. Damnit, so simple. Install Boxee, damn. Works like a charm.

So now I'm the owner of a Playstation 3, including media center functionality such as streaming my music and video library form my Vista PC, my music from last.fm and series from Hulu. I can still play playstation games AND other games such as Eve Online.

Why didn't I think about this before?

There is no excuse anymore, if you don't own a PS3 buy one. This is the cheapest possible home PC running Ubunutu. It just happens to be silent, media expert and BluRay compatible as well. Why do I even own a PC anymore? I use it as a footrest.

Still, the Playstation 3 is a weird machine. It's NOT the ultimate home console, but it just might be the ultimate home media computer.

The Prestige Problem

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Prestige is usually a problem in organizations and development alike. People with too much prestige become complacent some of the time and obstacles for the organization, most often this happens not on purpose but because of the real prestige the individual has earned over years of work.

Because of this problem many companies and developers strive for prestigeless workspaces. They ask for prestigeless applicants and so forth. But this attitude lacks a basic understanding of prestige.

Prestige is a cultural gauge which we use to measure ourselves with. If you as an individual do good things and make good things happen you usually acquire prestige from your surrounding social circle (whether privately or professionally). But if you perform poorly or bring about negative effects you usually lose prestige.

While this system is far from perfect (a single mistake might wipe you out) and for form fair (seeming to deliver gives as much prestige as actually delivering, presuming you can keep the facade up) it is still a social system all organizations should be aware of. No one can be completely free from prestige. And they should not either.

Prestige is usually the most direct form of reward individuals can see as a result of their work.

But we also need to be really wary of prestige, it can lead to horrible evils in any organization. Perhaps it might help if we start thinking about prestige as something less durable. What do you think?

The seamless music experience of Minigore

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Minigore is a small promotional iPhone top down shooter created by developer Mountain Sheep. It was launched to get a publishing deal to an adventure game based on the characters, gameplay and art style that sets Minigore apart. So far so good. That Minigore is one of the best looking and most polished feedback titles in the App store doesn't make it any less good.

But what I really wanted to talk about is the seamless music experience. Minigore takes advantage of iPhone 3.0's API for the iPod player. Which means it won't stop your music when you launch Minigore. On the contrary.

The music plays through the loading screen as well as the menu and into the game itself. The game also understands that music is playing and doesn't play its own soundtrack.

Compared to playing Minigore there can be no more persuasive argument for creating seamless experiences. Whether through sound, interface or social functions. Seamless_ness_ really does add enormous amounts of emotional goodwill to your product.

Don't believe me? Try it yourself, it's 99 cents and worth every penny.

The sickness of actually liking your job

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

My friend called me a few minutes ago. Friend: Hi J, what are you up to?

Me: I'm working.

Friend: I thought you were sick?

Me: I am.

Friend: So why are you at work?

Me: I'm at home, got a fever and feel terrible.

Friend: ...and you're still working?

Me: Yeah.

Friend: What the hell is wrong with you?!

Me: ...I honestly don't know.

Tools are not your trade

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We all showcase skills we have by listing the tools we're proficient using. Usually on our CV or talking with friends and business contacts we say things like "I use X to do Y" or similar. I just realized that this is somewhat strange, for any task a tool might be more or less important. In some extreme cases the tool is the task and knowing how to use it is essential for the job. But for knowledge workers, when is Photoshop really a critical skill? Graphic design is the real skill, with the addition of experience using software designed specifically for the task. Would a switch to painter really make all that skill obsolete?

This is most striking for programmers. If you know how to code a web app using an object based language, which language tends to be irrelevant. Sure, knowing the language a company uses beforehand is an advantage. But certainly not crucial, anyone new to a workplace has to learn the specifics of that job anyway.

Uncharted 2 multiplayer beta impressions

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I like Uncharted 1. Let's get that straight before I say anything else. Because it does make me slightly biased. But that aside, Uncharted 2 among thieves really ups the ante. The graphics are slightly better, everything is more smooth and the free running/climbing is really more integrated into the world.

The multiplayer beta is just what it sounds like, a demo that only showcases multiplayer. And its a lot of fun. Gameplay is engaging even though it's quite slow compared to other shooters. The levels are pretty large and since you can climb you have to think vertically unless you want to get shot repeatedly by the other players climbing the ruins.

There is a modern standard leveling system and a matchmaking system that we really don't know much about since there aren't that many players playing it.

So far though, the beta has me convinced that the game itself is holding up to the hype. Still, Uncharted is just as much about the narrative progression as the game mechanics. And we haven't seen them yet.

User Experience Design terms - Resistance

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

All fields of technology and design needs terms to define complex meaning regarding their subject. This is my attempt to create a few such terms for user experience design. Please help out through the comments or DM me on twitter! Resistance refers to the resistance of experiencing the design. This can encompass the macro experience of, for example, music:

Find a song you like (resistance)
Purchase the song (resistance)
Listen to the song

But resistance can also mean the micro experience of the music:

BPM might not match the listeners mood (resistance)
Singers voice might hit strange notes (ever listened to death metal or opera and hated it despite a catchy tune? resistance)

So resistance can build both from the users cognitive or psychological experience of the product as well as the practical obstacles the user has in order to experience the intended design.

Since all negative values are experienced as twice as important compared to a positive value, resistance is important to reduce.

Reducing resistance as much as possible is in fact the process of making something accessible but the term is a lot more exact. Defining what we're really intending to do.

Reduce resistance of user experience, make the user experience flow in using your experience!

UX needs a common language

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

After a short debate with @miakolmodin about the difficulties of building a portfolio when what you do is design interaction we stumbled upon an interesting flaw in the design process. User Experience has no language. Now this might sound a bit redundant but all development needs language to convey principles and models that are often used. Why, for example, are we still trying to convince people that simplicity in interfaces is a good thing? We should have a word for this model of design that literally means "_grade of simplicity in the interaction, with overtones of how good it i_s". Just to speed up the process.

So I figured I'd give it a go shortly. Thanks Mia for a great idea!

Video service explosion

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

One of the reasons Hollywood is putting up such a fight against piracy is that Bittorrent has become the main delivery of video content in the world (excepting Youtube which Hollywood does not consider a threat, yet.). But recently things have started happening. iTunes launched it's video store a couple of years ago and while it is only available in the US so far it is delivering a lot of content. Hulu, Voddler and Netflicks are also showing the market another way to make a profit. The list goes on and on as new companies try to change the way the market works.

While I find this to be a great development I'm a bit sad that companies need to out compete the old system just to deliver content in a way that pirates have been doing for over ten years. But I guess change is, as ever, ver hard for Hollywood.

Until one of these services can offer a large amount of content for sensible amounts of money in Europe however, I think I'll stick to my newest find HDMT. A great international streaming service for new movies and TV shows, all in HD.

Why change is hard for companies

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Change is of course always hard, but I'm not talking about personal change here but about change in organization and how companies and industries work. We have a lot of current examples with now with the entire Music and Mobile phone industry plunging off the revenue cliff like lemmings. New ideas tend to come from people who have a lot of time on their hands. You see, there is something about our minds that just makes us crave new things. This might sound strange as we've all had grand mothers and friends who just put up a fight against everything new. But we are slightly skewed as witnesses towards these events, they're not against new things you see. They are just a bit frightened that what people are pushing for might make what they were doing sound wrong or stupid. Basically, we're all afraid to be laughed at.

But we still love to learn new things, most of us travel or read or watch movies. And while we often do pick out favorites just to be safe we always got those favorites or find new ones because we learn as we go. Fast or slow, we all learn and move on. But the process takes time.

This is why youth always seem to be full of fresh ideas. Sure, many of them have been tried, not all youngsters check before they start to wave red flags, but certainly not all of them. This is because young people have more free time to indulge and learn new things. Name any period in your life when you learned more than as a student? Can you honestly say that most of what you learned happened in classrooms?!

And this, alarmingly, is the problem. As companies get larger and the people working for them are more senior they get busier and busier. Which leaves less time for learning. While people are promoted because they do excellent work, they usually struggle to keep doing excellent work and thus have even less time to indulge.

Because of this we end up with a pyramid of ideas and power that is completely polarized and slightly ageist. The broad bottom is made up of mostly young people with most of the ideas while the upper parts are made up of mostly older people with less modern ideas. It's not the fault of any of them. It certainly isn't intentional. But it's bad for the company and it leaves the company less open to change. Not because the people in charge don't believe in change, but because they haven't had time to live the change that has already happened.

An old saying is that winners work hard and play hard. I would argue that because they work hard and find the time to play they are still agile and current enough to be winners. They have all the experience and still have had time to learn the modern ways of doing things before Google took over the market.

Ah, you'll now think, or did earlier, what about companies such as Google? How can huge organizations like them stay current?

Well. They don't. Not completely. But they are fighting this trend by letting their employees use 20% of their time to work on their own projects. A few other companies use similar strategies but Google is the most famous promoter which is why I chose to make an example out of them.

No one can stop change. We have to move with it or be left behind. This includes the Music industry, Mobile phone producers and web start ups equally. Maybe using a bit more time for playful learning can give us a competitive advantage?

Oh, and "free work time" is also the only way to motivate people working creatively apparently:

[ted id=618]

Why hardcore's love peggle

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A wired article on why hardcore gamers love peggle finds a strikingly simple way to categorize gamers as casual or hardcore. It's a short and good read, check it out.

In summary the article proposes, based on Popcap games data and theories, that gamers either put effort into understanding complex casuality or they don't. Hardcore and Casual. Which would explain the difference in appetites as well as time invested and similar data available from this kind of categorization.

Why intelligence doesn't matter

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We all need some way to calculate just how good a person is. No matter what that person is doing for us. This is a basic, intuitive process, for humans. Today most people seem to judge themselves and others based on intelligence. This illusive concept that means something like powers of the mind. But because we can be so different as individuals we've started to divide this concept of intelligence into slimmer and slimmer shards, or different kinds of intelligence. There's social intelligence, emotional intelligence, mathematical intelligence and so on and so on...

This seems really strange to me. When intelligence becomes categorized by what we're using it for... isn't that competence? Sure it is.

So what we really need to be looking at is what kinds of competence a person has. But then, some of you might ask "what about what the individuals really know. Like facts and processes and such". Well this is a fair and good question. But maybe just a few years old...

With Google and the always online society, why would we ever need to remember individual facts perfectly? We can just collect them when needed. One of my favorite authors calls this extelligence. Facts, information and knowledge stored in other people.

What we really need, in all situations, is not intelligence. It's the right kind of competence and extelligence.

Why the Apple tablet will fail

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Rumors about the possibly impending launch of a tablet computer/thing from Apple have been raging since the release of the iPhone. But all this buildup will hurt the product. Apple is always secretive about new launches and improvements of their products. This strategy, coupled with benchmark-creating levels of quality, makes Apple appear to deliver almost perfect quality beyond anything their competitors can achieve. (This is why most nay-sayers focus on technological specs and the like when comparing Apple's products to others. ) But this same stamp of quality also creates enormous pressure on new product launches. And the iSlate/iTablet /Apple Tablet will quite probably be highest pressure launch yet.

Already analysts are talking about the iSlate/iTablet as a Kindle killer, presuming millions of units sold in the first 6 months and a market created or recreated solely by this machine.

While I don't doubt that Apple will release a Tablet, and that it's quality will be outstanding, I do doubt that it can live up to all this hype.

A color e-ink tablet with touch display and the perfect UI using all the products from Apple's App store and launched with an SDK to make developers sit up and howl could just barely live up to the hype.

And Apple can hardly deliver this, since color e-ink touch is just a tad expensive these days.

Don't get me wrong, he Apple iSlate will be awesome. It has to live up to the highest quality standards in tech today just for Apple to launch it, my faith in Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive is solid as rock. But the hype might be killing a perfect product. What if they release the iSlate and it doesn't live up to half the expectations? Will sales half just because of the anticlimax?

Well, this being Apple, probably not. But still, it would be a shame if an innovative product unlike anything but the invention of the iPhone and the Personal Computer would be accepted as anything but great innovation.

WWDC roundup

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Faster iPhone. That's scary. Why not let me boost my iPhone CPU Apple? Sure, I might get worse battery life but at least I can use the same apps and play the same games as the iPhone 3GS users. Revamped MacBook line. Oh yes, it's better and cheaper. And I'm buying a 13" MacBook Pro

Snow Leopard. Looks great, not much different just faster. Which is really what we wanted!

iPhone OS 3.0. Still awesome, but I'm a bit irritated with having to wait another 2 weeks to use it.

1 Million iPads have been sold

Mon, 03 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT

After the release of the 3G iPad reports are coming in that the 3G version has already sold over 300 thousand units. Added to the over 300 thousand pre ordered iPad WiFi's the iPad platform is now close to or already has passed the million unit mark. We can now officially regard the iPad as a great success, both for Apple and for the Tablet computer.

Update: It's now official. Apple said in a press release today that they sold their millionth iPad last Friday, 28 days from platform launch. Less than half the time it took to sell that many iPhones. Anyone still not believing in the iPhone OS? Find out more here

A template for life

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

A lot of people take time to argue to me that there is no template for life. No one way to live. This argument is strikingly similar to Wittgenstein trying to persuade us that we don't exist.

No template for life is a template for life.

A circular argument that only shows that you haven't thought about it very long. There are actually endless templates for life, thousands of manuals on how to live, all of them true. For a given value of true. And most of them conflicting.

Adding the Fun

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

I decided to start a new project that is closer to my heart than anything for the passed three years. A blog dedicated to explore gamification and game theory for products. Originally meant to be a short book I decided doing the research and most of the writing as a blog might help the project along. Who knows, it might actually be better for it.

You'll find it continuously updated over on Tumblr: Adding The Fun

AirPlay review: flawed feature

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

AirPlay, the amazing feature released by Apple in iOS4.2, allows you to stream audio and video to AirPlay enabled devices. While such devices are severely limited right now (only for iDevices and not even Macs) the feature works like magic and is a revolution we've been waiting for in sharing media in the real world.

So why flawed? Coming home today I switched my podcast over to my stereo as I entered my apartment. While making dinner I was smirking at some droll statement when I received a text. The sound was played on my stereo. Not my iPhone.

If AirPlay simply tranfers all audio (or video) from the system to another system the practicality evaporates quickly. With the decrepid notification system still on iOS will we be doomed to listen to beeps and pings until iOS5?!

Steve, please, don't let this continue.

AirPlay review - the future is upon us

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Today it looks like iOS 4.2, the new version of Apples operating system for the iPhone and the iPad, is being pushed back another week. I've been trying out AirPlay on my iPad (the developer preview) and I have to say this is the future. In http://www.apple.com/itunes/airplay/iOS has a killer app beyond anything else in the mobile space today. I'm not kidding.

AirPlay let's you stream music and videos to and from any iOS enabled devices. Whole there aren't many such devices yet this is the future of media we've been waiting for.

Coming home, sitting down with my iPad and than choosing what I want to listen to on my wifi stereo system is a form of media disintermediation that really takes the leap from 50s hifi systems to the visions of the future represented in movies such as Total Recall or Minority Report.

AirPlay really does change everything. Lets just hope Apple opened it up to third parties. This is the way we'll want to consume media in the coming years. Let's hope it get wide adoption on all platforms.

Apple Airplay

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

With the upcoming release of iOS 4.2 Apple has revealed a new feature, or an upgrade to the old Airtunes feature, called Airplay. Airplay will let us stream media content between our iOS devices.

Just think about it, coming home from a shopping spree just aching to tell your spouse about the hideous dress/jacket/guy you saw. Whipping out your iPhone and displaying the picture on your Apple TV or iPad. Sounds like the future to me!

There are only two questions that come to mind I'm really interested in:

Will Airplay allow us to send content to a Mac as well as from one?
We know third party devices will be able to receive media but can third party apps also send media through Airplay? Since it's a part of iOS it should be an open API... right?

Check out the CNET write up for more thoughts on Airplay.

Apple eases up on iOS developers

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Apple has just released a statement that they are easing up restrictions for developers of the iOS platform. More specifically in sections 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.9. Exact information is scarce so far but Gizmodo is digging hard right now and Engadget has found out that this means Apple will allow "any and all" third party development apps including Flash CS5!

Apple also says they'll the App Store Review Guidelines to "help developers understand how we review submitted apps".

Great day for iOS developers!

Apple gives a shit

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Reading Daring Fireball I stumble as Grubet, yet again, puts his finger right on the point. Why do Apple command such rabid fans?

Like pixels on glass rather than pixels under glass. This is the result of a new manufacturing process Apple has pioneered. No other company gives a shit about things like this.

- John Gruber on the iPhone 4 display

Because they give a shit. Every other company can learn from this. Making quality products instead of focusing on internal politics or increasing the profit margin just a little bit more will be a lot more economically sound.

Apple launches international video service

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

At the launch of the Apple TV Steve Jobs claimed that video rentals would launch in 9 countries outside the US "soon". We've heard Apple state again and again that iTunes video is being released in the rest of the world and so far have yet to see it. But I doubt that this has anything to do with Apple, video rentals cross nations and even more so across regions seem to be the unholy grail of the movie industry. For some reason they just don't want to open the flood gates to international video services.

Let's hope this latest move by Apple can finally open a crack in that wall. Hulu EU? Yes please.

Apple TV prepared for Apps out of the box

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

iFixit's tear down of the new Apple TV reveals 8GB of internal storage. This means that the device, running iOS, is fully prepared to run normal iOS apps. The only questions that remain are will Apple let us and how will the input work?

Bill Gates being a great father

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Quote from Bill's Q&A with Stanford students:

"When my son asks me questions like 'What's fertilizer?,' 'What's a black hole?,' 'Why do supernovas explode?,' I can answer those questions. Why? Because I have the internet. We learn together." - Bill Gates 2010

Check out the rest of the Forbes article here.

Business Card Design

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Had an idea on the subway home last night and sketched it out in photoshop, think I nailed the minimalism and I like the not-so-subtle twitter hint. :) Maybe the quote could be seen as arrogant?

Complexity leads to nothing

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

“Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, or else we will have to stop making content in the costly and complex way we have grown accustomed to making it. And we don’t know how to do that.”

Simply brilliant! Read the full post here.

EpicWin app review

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

When I first saw the EpicWin app trailer a few months ago I had a nerdgasm. The sheer amount of hilarious humor applied to something so mundane as a to do list really hit the spot with me. This iPhone app really looked like an epic win, if not for productivity than just for comedy.

[youtube AmKwF_Si734]

EpicWin was released today and I downloaded it on the subway on my way to work. I was happily choosing my avatar and plowing through the "tutorial" quests (the first few to do's that get you up to speed with the app) and I find myself creating smaller and smaller to do's just to progress in my quests.

The way the game handles valuation of tasks makes it a bit strange but I'm not going to say to much to early. I'll keep using the app a few days and update when I've really come to terms with it.

It's just a few bucks and worth it just for laughs. You can find out more at the developers site: EpicWinApp.com

Update: Launch trailer is up

[youtube OU1Q3b1EN9M]

Update 2: EpicWin apparently closes all other music or sound processes. So if you're listening to music and open EpicWin your iPod/Pandora/Spotify will actually stop the music, not just pause it. This is really annoying if you're just quickly adding a task.

Fear of success or fear of failure - why we don't try new things

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

I don't know about you, but I certainly do less exciting things than I could. Actually I do know a bit about you. I know that at certain times you go beyond your comfort zone and have a fun exhilarating time, but usually you back out right back into that comfort zone. During work, time with your family, even at parties most of our time seems to be spent not doing the things we want to.

We cant do them all of course. But we could live a bit more.

Why don't we? Fear of success: My own worst enemy. The fear of succeeding and adding to the pressure can be daunting. This is why we find errors in our own work, why we focus of details that don't really matter.

Fear of failure: The fear of not succeeding can be stifling because we fear the mocking of those around us. This is why we find reasons that projects have to fail. Why we spend a lot of energy on finding reasons or scapegoats to blame tha failure on.

Learning to indentify when and why we're backing into our comfort zone _isn't enoug_h. When you've identified such a situation, your doing something right. This is when you should get going.

Try it, right now. Go do anything that makes you nervous.

First impressions of the iPad

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad I didn't like it. It was just to basic, I thought I'd never buy one unless they upgraded it quickly.Three months later I had just touched one and "got it". The UI made all the difference, it IS just a gimped laptop but with an interface that makes what you can do fun.

I just unpacked my own and tried out most of the functions I've been looking forward to. Unsurprisingly it feels like my iPhone only the screen makes the entire experience slightly more immersive.

As I'm typing this there is no doubt in my mind that this is the future of computing, at least the near future, but should you get one? If you work on the road or need to upgrade a net book the answer is Yes. If you have a great laptop or use a desktop machine however, don't. Not yet, let the platform mature a bit and you'll be much less grieved.

Flipboard review

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Flipboard is a news aggregator. Much like feed readers you've probably used in the past. The difference is that Flipboard reads your Twitter and Facebook streams, scans them for content and present it to you in a fantastic UI.

Flipboard is extremely competent and feels great to use, it's well implemented into Twitter and Facebook functionally making it easy to reweet, comment, like and share.

Flipboard is free in the Appstore right now but I'd recommend giving it a look as fast as you can as a lot of media companies are gunning for Flipboard for scraping material not presented in their RISS feeds. Well see how it pans out in the end but this is really how you'll want to use social media in the future.

[youtube LDARc7jhM8U]

Games industry killing itself over used games

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

One of the largest problems facing the games industry today is used games. Publishers can't compete with the low prices and have launched campaigns trying to persuade customers that buying used games hurt developers. This is almost certainly true but the problem is, as so often with situations like this, not used games but how games as a medium are developed and sold. Let me describe why this phenomenon exists and what developers can do to change it today. Books and movies are more rarely sold used then games

There is a market for used books and movies, and it's pretty large, but nowhere near as large as for games. This is because the products leave a lingering thought with the consumer that they "might want to see / read it again". In this post I'll call this emotional impact.

I'm not saying that games don't have emotional impact, in fact they might have more emotional impact then traditional media, but in games it works a bit differently.

Traditional media is completely based on narrative

Narrative has always been a way for humans to interpret the things happening around us, in other words; we look for patterns that might not be there. Putting stories on events to make them understandable.

Traditional media is a way to channel this interest by offering interesting stories, that have been thought out before hand and then feeding them to the audience. We've been doing it since long before Shakespeare

When a movie, book or any work of fiction presents us with a narrative that we particularly like we achieve a sense of satisfaction. Known in story telling as catharsis.

Games don't work like this

Games have two sets of narrative going on at once; the story narrative that is usually fed to the player (s) in more or less sophisticated ways. The game mechanical narrative, the story that the player build by doing things in the game: "I ran around the wall and shot that guy from behind, I'm such a ninja!".

The first narrative is directly comparable to traditional media and is the dominant narrative in games such as the Final Fantasy series or the Metal Gear series. The emotional impact of these games are usually quite high and sure enough, you'll find a lot less of them on the used shelves at your local Gamestop.

The second narrative however, is unique to games as a medium. It is the dominant form of narrative in games such as Battlefield or Gran Turismo. These games can be resold without much emotional impact because the main experience is already experienced. Playing the game again won't be as interesting.

Let's compare this to a vacation trip. The pictures from said vacation are valuable, because they let the consumer remember the experience. But going back will be different, we all know this, that's why we don't always travel to the same spots.

Experiencing the game mechanic again can often be more interesting by playing the sequel or a similar game. A consumer will rarely play the same game again if there aren't new goals to reach or if similar games and sequels are noticeably different. (If your game is a shooter you'll probably not ever get consumers to do more then one play through. If that.)

So how are we going to solve this?

From this point of view, I've identified three key ways of making more emotional impact and staying of the used games shelf:

Create games that capture the emotional impact of narrative. Create games with more traditional story that can keep the players coming back.
Create games with game mechanic lock-ins. So that they are forced to keep playing your game to get the same pleasurable mechanic. Look at fighting games for example. Fighting games seem to be generally online or party experiences, with unique fighting styles they deliver experiences that you can't interchange easily.
Games that are more focused on mechanic narrative, don't release them as boxed products. Seriously. They are easily interchangeable and after one play through they are simply not very interesting. Sell them as episodic content through direct downloads or as subscription services.

This might sound a bit crude, but the games industry is not as successful per unit as other media industries and mostly I believe this is because the industry isn't selling games as consumers want them. The games industry is just copying other mediums and then complaining about all the problems that they run into.

If you've read this far I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject, comment away, I answer all comments.

How can I use iPhone apps on my Mac?

Thu, 27 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Sadly, there is no way to use iPhone apps locally on your Mac. If you are a developer you can start apps within the SDK but not, as far as I know, apps downloaded from the appstore.

See my previous rant about it here.

How do you make time to play games?

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Great news! Both Torchlight and Ratchet & Clank are both going coop!

A lot of games are opting for cooperative or immersive multiplayer modes to allow players to be more social and have even more fun with their products.

But there's a problem. Sorry to be the grouch, but the first step of getting out of a trap is noticing it's there. Cooperative and multiplayer games are mostly synchronous. Which means you have to play them at the same time. In fact minimizing gameplay lag is on of the largest problems game developers have today.

But is that really a good thing? It's great for action. But it's terrible for pick up and play gaming. Which is already the dominant form of play if we compare online games and casual platforms such as the Nintendo Wii, DS and the iPhone with more core audience devices such as the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360.

The problem with multiplayer is the same as with loading times. If we, as developers, are trying to convince our players to spent $60 and 20 hours to play our game, the game really needs to be fun and easy to get into. Loading times subtract from the experience, but not nearly enough as waiting for friends, not having friends or worst of all; having friends that all need to cash out $60 for the game. This kind of tribal synchronisation is very probably not that usual.

We need to open up to the fact that games are a part of life and start designing for finding new friends or, if possible, playing with friends asynchronously.

How to Monetize haters

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Ever created anything or said something you stand for? Of course you have. Chances are that there were people grumbling at you or about what you did/said.

In person this is rude and we all grow thick skin over the years to bear the bleating of haters. But in business it can be a huge problem.

Making haters into evangelists is on of the best uses of social media to date, but I want to talk about a beautiful way Jason Calacanis recently monetized the hate aimed at him.

For those who don't know, Jason Calacanis is a serial entrepreneur with some great successes currently developing Mahalo.com and the ThisWeekIn podcast network (not to be confused with the TWiT .tv pod casting network run by Leo Laporte). Being successful and especially in a public space means you will attract haters in the hundreds or worse.

Tired of the haters Jason put on a special podcast featuring all hater guests. That's right, anyone with any complaints again Jason were invited to speak against with him about whatever it was they didn't approve of.

This is brilliant. The podcast earns its revenue from ads and lo and behold the haters were filling the podcast with compelling content, not just for loyal listeners who'd chuckle at the event but for even more haters who'd love a go at Jason.

Short and simple, Jason was making his haters earn him money by hating him and looking all the more noble and right for doing it.

Jason, I don't agree with everything you say but my god; that was one brilliant move!

Watch the episode here for a great example of how to monetize your haters.

In defence of Millers number in design

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The great design site UXmyths recently wrote an article claiming to debunk the use of Millers number in design. The article is a great read and really well researched, I recommend reading it to anyone who hasn't studied Miller in psychology or cognition class. But the article missed the mark. It debunks how people use Millers number, but not the importance of Millers number nor it's application in design. Basically, I think somewhere along the way someone misinterpreted the theory. Let me explain why.

Millers number The renowned psychologist George Miller is most famous for discovering a certain limit to the human short term memory. This limit has to do with the number of information bits that a person can remember at any one time, he called it the Magic number 7 +- 2. This in itself has absolutely nothing to do with design, just as the article on UXmyths has detailed.

Short term memory and decision making To think about something we need to hold the different thoughts or parts of thoughts in our minds. This is especially important in decision making where it is not to your conscious advantage to forget parts of the decision. Since this is limited to 7+-2 we can never remember more parts of any choice. But what about ideas? What about bits of information that are really just the sums of huge amounts of other information? To handle things like this we use chunking.

Chunking? Chunking is the process where we categorize information that fit together, for any satisfactory reason, into one bit of information. For example a car is seen as a car not "a metal body with chair in that sits on four wheel rotated by an engine". For the best explanation of chunking vie seen to date check out visual chunking and the law of Prägnanz. LINK

Why does this support Millers number in design? Millers number sets a upper limit to chunks before they become noise. So while it is quite useful to have a menu with more than 7+-2 choices it would be really frustrating and hard to remember if there were more areas of interest or chunks of information on any one page.

So millers number is excellent in design, UXmyths is dealing with the simplified use of Millers number which leads to results that are just plain wrong.

In a sentence: Make sure you understand complicated psychological theories before you apply them to design.

iPhone 4 bumper case review

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The iPhone 4 is an amazing looking product. And it feels even better. I can best describe it as sleek, it's thinness and glossy glass body makes it smooth to touch and to get out of a pocket.

The bumper takes all that away. With a thick rubber edge that sticks to your hand, your pocket, the table, everything really. With plastic sides making the bumper pretty useless for protecting the phone from dropping it on the sides.

I don't know. I can't figure out what it's for.

Basically, don't go near this thing. It really sucks.

Is anyone using the Magic Trackpad?

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Good question:

RT @cameronmoll: So, anyone still using their Magic Trackpad?

iTunes 10 review

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

iTunes 10 is out, the first major release for years. After playing around with it for a week this is what I've noticed:

Still does not use the standard front end API for OS X making it laggy and ugly.
The slight UI overhaul makes it less of a mess. But it still is a mess to use.
It has Ping, a social network exclusively about Music. Not very engaging though.

Please Mr Jobs and Mr Ive, please do a remake of iTunes soon. It really is a terrible user experience and it does not stand up to the quality of other Apple products. I love the store(s) but the app is crap.

Update: the Icon has caused quite a stir and is being widely critized. Steve Jobs has commented on it sucking saying: "we don't think so".

Lifestreaming with the iPad vs Courier

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Amazed by the interface of Apples new iPad? Or are you holding out in hopes of the seemingly amazing Microsoft Courier? Both these designs are actually derivative from Eric Freeman and David Gelernter at Yale University mid-1990s research on lifestreaming. Life streaming is a process in which you aggregate all the digital tasks, documents and events into a timeline, or stream, of events. This chronological stream is easier for humans to understand than the spread out systems of files and events hidden in separate programs. And because of that life streams might be more productive as a tool than the common user interfaces of computers today. (The concepts really are amazing and I recommend for all designers to research life streaming in depth.)

The reason why life streaming is easier for our minds to understand is that it represents information and tasks more like physical objects than data. Because it's so much more understandable we can focus more time and energy on the goal of the project or task than on organizing the files and folders needed for it.

The possibilities of tech not ever getting in the way is mind boggling. But I can't help to think I'd rather see really smart start ups make open interfaces that can be shared across devices than Apple or MS hogging the space to lock us down.

Competition, however, is always a good thing in the end. Only time will tell.

Mac developers as secretive as Apple

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Regardless of what OS you like it really is the applications that make up most of your experience on a computer. Some applications become iconic to the platform they are built for becoming inseparable from the experience. And when they disappear, the platform trembles. My recent move from Windows to Os X has made me realize that Apple's insistence on aesthetic applications from developers really does make an impact for the end user.

Which is why it saddens me when my two favorite developers Atebits and Cultured Code, makers of Tweetie and Things respectively, both have disappeared from they're online homes.

They are still there, small updates trickle out. But from the devs themselves there is not a sound to be heard. The last post on the Atebits blog was in November, Cultured Code hasn't let out a peep since September.

They seem to have learned the same secretive style that Apple is so famous for. But for small application developers this can be a fatal tactic.

Delivering perfect polished updates to any product is every developers dream. But we all know from the large hulking creations of larger development companies that this strategy is flawed. Without releasing updates consistently to the end user you might be heading in the wrong direction without ever knowing it.

If the web in the last few years has taught us anything, it is that focus and communication is key to any feature. Twitter is more focused than Buzz, Google Apps have a constant stream of features being tested compared to the take it or leave it strategy of MS Outlook.

So please Apple developers, don't hide behind a wall like Apple does. Come out and talk to us, what are you working on? How is it progressing?

When you're releasing updates to each physical product every 18 months you might need to work in secret silence. But when you're creating a better Twitter app, you can at least let your waiting fans know how it's going.

Media moving into the real world

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMT

This morning I was tweeted a video of Jesse Schell from Schell games discussing the evolution of media. He believes, and I think rightly so, that media is moving into the real world as more and more consumers look for authentic experience.It's a great video, sadly not the best sound but well worth it.

http://mediaevolution.23video.com/v.swf

New iTunes Redesign

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

iTunes is long overdue an overhaul. The old program has become so bogged down with features one can't help but wonder when Apple will update it. They might follow their mobile strategy and split into several parts or go for the completely cloud based streaming version a la Spotify.And they might announce it this Monday at WWDC. This is why I thought I'd redesign it while it is still a huge challenge.

My design is based on a rethinking of what iTunes manages, namely media. But lot's of different forms of media. In this design of iTunes every media item is considered to be a media bit no matter if it's a song, an album, an app or a book.

As you can see this design is radically different from the current version of iTunes. I've followed Apples recent reductionist standard in design and tried to eliminate everything unnecessary while retaining the purpose of the program.

There are three main areas of interest in this design:

The top navigation bar which holds filters, search and player controls. Allowing users to easily find what they're looking for.
The media view which allows users to browse through media, partly for fun and partly for aimless just looking. It also gives a great overview of what types of media and with modal boxes for more information can give users details if they want.
The bottom devices dock. This is where media is divided to the available devices as well as start and stop the currently playing list. I'll explain a bit more about devices below.

The start screen shows you the available devices as well as your favorite and most recently used media bits, this way the user instantly has an overview of where they left off last time.

I've considered devices to be anything that has media in it. From left to right:

The currently playing list displaying the artwork for the currently playing media with a simple play/paus control for the queue. Users access the queue by clicking this icon or just drag and drop media to it to add it to the queue.
The computer library. WIth home sharing different computers can share with all devices over a home network, I've just eliminated the extra fuss by reducing it as far as I've been able.
Peripherals, in this case my iPhone. Used in the same way as computers, playlists and the queue. Drag and drop or click to view contents.
Playlists, drag and drop media to and from and click to view.

A lot of people use playlists as a way to traverse their media libraries. I have actively made this harder as playlists are a lot more harder to search through as media libraries grow. Instead I've focused on search and filtering to allow easy browsing of the library. I have however thought this to be a perfect place for Apples famous horizontal scrollbars should the number of devices increase.

Filters are used to group media bits making it easier to find what you're looking for in a large library, seach is however crucial since most people tend to grow really large media libraries. Click a filter and all media is displayed as stacks or bits, click one suck stack or bit to see it's contents and either filter further or search the stack.

The currently playing queue acts as both a queue for media and as the main media player. It's a simple principle to learn and as all devices work in the same way the user needs never get confused or irritated at features appearing and disappearing depending on context.

Media bits can be freely moved between devices, making sharing and syncing simple and easy to understand.

Each media bit has detailed information available only if the user wants so know more.

The player controls have been moved aside leaving only the large play and pause button on the icon for the currently playing list/device. I'd love to get some more work done on this project in the future but I think Apple might beat me to it. And I'm excited by the thought of comparing my work with that of Jonathan Ive's team!

There are a few weak points in this design so far, namely the lack of the iTunes store and the lack of a way to arrange Apps on devices. While I've thought about solutions for these and believe that this design can accomodate them I haven't had the time to sketch it out yet.

Hope you like my work, and if you're reading this Mr Jobs; yes, I'd love to come work for you. ;)

See higher quality versions of this design at Flickr

Official Twitter client for OS X

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Some time ago the amazing developer(s?) at Atebits launched Tweetie. It quickly became the defacto standard of quality for twitter apps, both on the iPhone and on desktop OS X. Since then Atebits have been purchased by Twitter and Tweetie2 for iPhone has been rebranded and rereleased as the official Twitter app for iPhone.

Well that's great. But before that happened I was waiting for the OS X update for Tweetie that Atebits had been working on for some time. Twitter might be more interested in the mobile market but I hate to see good design wasted, and I really want to keep using Tweetie on my mac. So please Twitter, release the official Twitter client for OS X, the app formerly known as Tweetie2 for mac.

Apple eases up on iOS developers

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Apple also says they'll the App Store Review Guidelines to "help developers understand how we review submitted apps".

Great day for iOS developers!

Real profit

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

All companies are temporary. Even if they last a hundred years they still have a life span. To maximize profit during that life span long term care for customers is critical. They need to keep wanting your goods until the company has run it's course.Short term stock holders can just shut up.

Samsung Galaxy Tab preview

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Before I start, I haven't touched the Galaxy tab myself yet. But from the video's available from IFA and other preview hands ons I have a question that might break the product: It looks great. It sounds great. The specs are great. It runs the speedy Android 2.2 Froyo.

So why does it lag? Why isn't scrolling silky smooth? Why does the interface have load times without transitions?

Boiled down to one question: Since the device seems to be more than a match for Apple's iPad, why does it lag up the user experience?

[youtube m447vlifXDY]

Steve Jobs says Individualism is good

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

“As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups.”- Steve Jobs

Couldn't agree more Steve, well said.

Update: Read the entire Wired interview with jobs here. It's from 1996 but Steve is amazingly insightful about the internet of today.

Stop living for the weekends and start living

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Today, like every Friday, I'm receiving an alarming amount of tweets on the lines of "tgif!" "weekend is near". This focus on living only in the weekends is starting to freak me out. Why do we only live on the weekends? Probably because we have full control our own time. But this won't work in the long run, we can't spend 71% of our adult lives waiting to live. We need to find a balance to live and work in the same days.

If you hate your job, get a new one. Find something you enjoy doing and never settle for something less.
Don't work long hours. Work towards goals and achievements. If you can make things happen, point them out to your boss and state that you'll come in later or leave earlier when you can. Because living is important to you and your work.
If you have children, spouses or situations that you can't change. Make sure you live with them. Maybe you can do things with your children that you will enjoy as well as them.

Whatever we do, we can't live only in the weekends. We can't spend 5 days out of 7 looking forward to a short burst of life. We need to squeeze more time out of the days we have already.

So this Monday, why not do something fun?

Terms for Interaction Design

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

To work effectively with other people we need terms that define abstract things so we don't get stuck on them, such as Grok and User Interface. Let's define two more: Object and Model.

Any interaction consists of a one or more systems of thought. In cognitive psychology such systems (or representational models of the real world) are called cognitive models.

When we interact with something we use a lot of these models. But the term isn't fleshed out enough for daily use in interaction design.

An Interaction Object is the entire interaction process with a thing or a process. Using a pair of scissors (holding them correctly, using them to cut and understanding in what way they cut) consists of many cognitive models but only one Interaction Object. But every process or new function is a new object. A Swiss army knife has as many objects as it has tools.

A Interaction Model is one set of possible interaction methods. Much like the cognitive model a Interaction Model consists of only a single thought process about something. A pair of scissors can be held by the handles, one model. A pair of scissors has cutting surfaces that are sharp, another model. Etc etc.

Using these terms we can discuss interaction design for abstract products such as games and web apps with much greater efficiency.

Example 1: A menu on a web page is an Interaction Object. And if it has more than one or two Interaction Models you're making it to complicated.

Example 2: A game avatar has several Interaction Objects. To be able to understand them they must have very few Interaction Models.

Example 3: Facebook has a lot of Interaction Objects, but most Objects only has a single Interaction Model. Does this make Facebook easy to use or harder to Grok?

Can you use these terms or are they still to complicated or undefined? Let me know what you think.

The definition of Bad Design

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

I took this picture of a door in my office. It has two handles. The top large green one is for emergencies only, and people have apparently been using it. To solve the problem, a large sign has been taped to the handle bearing the legend:

"Do not use this door handle unless it's emergency situation"

Problem solved. Anyone can see that there's something wrong here. But let's boil it down:

The handle problem

If the handle is not to be used, placing it above the normal handle, making it larger and green is probably a bad idea. In fact, it's the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do according to various studies on cognitive processes, visual recognition and psychology. Of course, this design is made for emergencies only and for such is pretty good.

The normal handle below the emergancy handle requires the user to touch a button on the wall first in order to open the door. The additional step of course makes it less useable, but the really interesting design choice here is WHY THE F why in the world one of the handles require a button on the wall and the other does not... The result is the same so there is no difference to the user. Couldn't the second handle also be used by just, you know, pushing it? And while we're at it, why not just have one handle from the start? It would be much more cost effective.

The sign problem

The sign is another great feat of design. First of all it obscures the handle. Rendering it useless in an emergency situation. But since the sign is well fastened and laminated with hard plastic you wouldn't be able to use it even if you knew where it was.

Smart people were involved in every step of this process. But noone looked at the overall intended function, nor the users intended use. Not one. This is why you need designers.

The desktop metaphor is being replaced

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

"The desktop metaphor was invented because ... you had to manage your own storage" - Steve Jobs, 1996

He was right.

The desktop metaphor was great because you had all your files and needed to be able to navigate and store them. Today with standards for different types of data this metaphor is becoming obsolete. Most things can and are stored on the web.

Stored in accounts, used and read by apps that handle those file types.

How much more intuitive will general computing be when people no longer need to handle the management and storage of files?

The future is just around the bend, and it has email for you

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Just think, soon you'll be explaining what Mail really was and why the icons look like envelopes to kids that have never seen a mailman in real life. Tempus fugit.

The future of Apple TV - sans apps

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The were a lot of rumors around before the launch of the new Apple TV, the most interesting ones from Engadget that claimed the Apple TV would be fully compatible with iOS apps. But Steve Jobs claimed it had no local storage, how would that work?

Looking at the tech specs page of the Apple TV site I can't find any information about storage though. There must be some storage to fascilitate buffering of video but it could work just fine with only RAM.

What the future of the Apple TV will be no one knows. But if it doesn't have local storage it won't ever handle apps. We'll have to wait for the next generation.

Now begins to long wait for the post launch tear down that will tell us if it has local storage or not.

The future of UX is play

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

In case you didn't know; UX week is a conference in San Fransisco that, if your into UX, you wish you were at. It has great speakers on great subjects and sounds like heaven for all us UX designers spread across the planet. Nicole Lazzaro has a presentation scheduled on the future of UX where she argues that design focusing on increasing positive emotions rather than minimizing negative experience is the future of UX development. A field where game design is leading the way.

I for one am really happy someone is bringing this up at a large conference. I studied game design for this very reason and I'm still having a hard time selling the idea to my colleagues, the notion that games are basically toys is still deeply ingrained in western culture and it's now starting to hold us back from creating better experiences.

For anyone interested in learning from game design I recommend you start with legendary designer Raph Koster's excellent book A Theory of Fun.

The iPad - short and simple

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The most over hyped machine ever has been unveiled and a torrent of fanboyism and hatred has echoed over the blogosphere. So now should be a good time to talk about what the iPad really is.

It's just a larger iPod touch!

Yes. Yes that's exactly what it is. Well ok not exactly, it's a lot faster. But basically just a large iPhone without the phone. Not sure why people are complaining about this though since I've heard tens or possibly hundreds say they wanted a larger iPhone when it was first launched.

Why isn't it wide screen? Because it's a doubled iPod touch screen, this way apps will work with very little fuss and developers don't have put too much effort into designing specific apps for the iPad and iPhone.

So, will it be awesome? Probably yes, your iPhone is pretty awesome right? Imagine not having to squint at the screen to surf and you're there already. Also we know Apple will release a software update for the device before launch. It probably won't mean too much but we're likely to see at least one more feature that we'll like. Just because Apple likes to push positive.

So it will sell a billions units? Apples track record says yes. But they have failed before. and all tablets so far have died a gruesome death. Mind you, smart phones weren't exactly a super hot market before the iPhone launched. They certainly didn't cause the amount of hype and development that Apple created in the marketplace.

That's it. The iPad. We haven't seen all it can do, but this is what it is. A larger iPhone, just like millions of users have been clamoring for.

Just because it doesn't cure cancer and live up to the pre unveiling hype doesn't mean it won't be awesome. It's to early to tell if the iPad will be a hit or a miss. But regardless it will push general computing further towards touch UI. Which is really the innovation Apple is bringing to the table. Not a new UI. But a new use for their most successful one.

The New Twitter interface reeks of WebOS

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Twitter.com has released a new interface based on two panes; one for the real time stream for tweets and one for the selected tweet, it's options and dialogue. [youtube rIpD7hfffQo]

This design is really closely related to the official Twitter iPad app:

But what gets me most is that both these designs are so very closely related to the Palm HP WebOS:

[youtube XgwUs6h57PE]

Jump into the video and really check out the WebOS cards interface model. How different is it from Twitter panes model?

The slow death of Business

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

When an organization grows so large that people working for it loose contact with the intended result of the organization is begins to die.

This situation leads to the belief that the organization itself is of importance, even though it was just created to solve a specific issue. And the people working in the organization loose focus of the organizations function and the organization starts growing in areas without return, administration and administration of administration.

The way to make sure this does not happen is to keep organizations small. Create another organization to solve a new problem, do not grow the old one.

Theme revamp in 5.. 4.. 3..

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

When I was almost finished with my former blog theme I was caught up in HTML5 and Wordpress 3. So I sadly never finished it, but the new design will be up shortly. I'll make due with this minimalist placeholder theme for a few days.

Theme revamping

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The new theme is finally online, with a load of bugs and weird things of course. Please bear in mind that this theme is made exclusively for NEW browsers and therefore does not support browsers from last year or Internet Explorer.

Tshirt design: Discrete

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Had a little downtime and decided to design a T-shirt based on one of my mantras in life:

Twitter is censuring Wikileaks

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 00:00:00 GMT

With the storm of debate sparked by Wikileaks Twitter has been forced to publicly speak out defending Trending Topics. This Thursday Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner claimed that "Twitter favors novelty over popularity,". The trending topics are set algorithmically and aren't affected by human intervention.

There is however a huge flaw in this statement. We can clearly measure, using Google RealTime search, that the discussion about Wikileaks has increased in with the same frequency as Apple events usually do. And Apple events DO show up in Trending Topics...

So the question remains, why is Twitter censuring Wikileaks?

UI is important, learn to know what good or bad

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

UI is the second most important part of any application or service.The service or function is more important, but it's not important at all if users can't use it.

How to know whats good or bad? Thankfully, our old friend Cognitive Psychology provides us with the key. Just record a user using your UI (or use it yourself and make notes).

Every time they try to do something that requires testing or a moments thought counts as negative.
Every time they do something that doesn't require thought and was intended counts as a positive.

Every negative counts twice, that's how humans perceive negative impact.

The higher the score, the better it is.

Of course, this is only generally true, performing 200 actions to change a song on your MP3 player is not a good UI. Even if every step was intuitive.

UX Perception is key

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

As in all things the truth is very rarely important. The perception something is much more important. In UX design this boils down to what the user feels and thinks about what they are using.

(Talking about the Gamecube controller) the greatest videogame controller ever designed, mainly because it had a really big button on it. - the RexBox blog

Simplicity was created, not by actually removing buttons, but by showing the user a primary button. Subsequently most design focused on that big green button. How we perceive an object, function or service is a lot more important than how that object, function or service actually works. Most companies get this wrong again and again.

Second week with the iPad

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

My first impression of the iPad, after the glowing halo of hype wore off, was really not that good. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the iPad, there wasn't. It just didn't work the way I wanted it to. A week later I hadn't really changed my mind, until I was typing away earlier tonight and realized why I didn't feel it fitted into my life. It's a unitasking machine.

The iPad doesn't multitask, yet, but after comparing my experience using the same apps on my iPhone 4 I'm now convinced that my problem is not a result of the device lacking features, but instead that the iPad forces me to focus on my work.

Work which I've learned so well to digress and be distracted from on my other machines. I'm just not used to having to focus for more than a few minutes at a time.

This discovery has really turned my experience around, I can't wait to work like this for a few more days and see where it leads me. Unitasking is the new productivity buzz word. Let's see if this machine helps me become more productive or leaves me doing less complex work.

What design is

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

"Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don't take the time to do that." - Steve Jobs 1996

Most people I've talked to seem to have this conception that design is somehow visual only. Preferably graphical for the game & web business. This is a preconception we really need to change if we're ever to get mandate to properly design.

And yes, this is the last Jobs quote in a while I promise.

What is a user interface?

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

A lot of people I talk to are confused about design. Not least when they hear about abstract design such as web design, UX design, game design etc. I can't blame them. As designers we really tag ourselves with the word most appropriate for the task at hand. Even though our main work is always to solve problems by design. But let's make things easier For most designers working with abstract design the term user interface is crucial. But exactly what is a UI? Sure, it's the thing the user interacts with. But where does it start and where does it end?

User Interface Interface is a proxy layer between a human being and a function.

But what does that mean? For a pair of scissors, the scissors themselves are the user interface between a human hand and the function of cutting.

A computer has two layers of user interfaces between the human and most functions. The keyboard/mouse or physical UI, and the graphical or text based abstract UI.

But what if the user interface is a part of the function? The iPhone for instance doesn't really have a physical UI. There is nothing physical to interact with (excepting the home button, volume and mute controls but lets not digress from the example). But it does have a graphical abstract UI.

Why is this definition important? Because now we can all say user interface and know what we're referring to. No more wordplay to guess what the other person is talking about.

Whats does Apple's new iOS 4 mean?

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Apple has just gotten off stage at the World Wide Developers Conference, announcing the iPhone 4. But more importantly they're highlighted the iPhone OS 4, and renamed it iOS 4. Why rename it?

Well first the iOS is also on the iPad. But I don't believe that is enough of a reason for the change. The more interesting implication is that the iOS will become a wider device OS that Apple will keep developing hardware for.

Apple TV? Maybe. But be sure that Apple will release information late and that hype will build up.

Why Apple is loosing money on making crappy headsets

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Design is all about focus. What to focus on, what to disregard. There is limited time and no designer has the time to make anything perfect. Apple is sublime in making the 90% mostly used parts of the user experience near perfect. Except one thing.

You have an iPod, what do you listen with? You have an iPhone, what do you listen and make calls from? Apple's headset and/or head phones.

In the 2002 article Mind your language, by Game Developer Ben Cousins, Cousins explains what to focus on to make a successful product. In short: whatever the user spends most time with. Apple is usually great at this but seem to be missing the headsets.

It's not that the headsets / head phones are bad per se. They just aren't really good. And the quality is awful, I'm on my 6th pair this year and mad as a hat when the sound goes in one ear.

Apple should really look into making a better headset, ensuring that customers are using headsets with the intended functions.

Why can't my Mac run iPhone apps?

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

When the iPhone opened the app store to third party developers and basically anyone who could afford the $99 SDK we we're all amazed at the enormous success. Thousands upon thousands of great apps have been launched transforming the mobile marketplace forever as it can now compete with laptops on the go. So, I ask, why the hell can't I run my apps on my mac?! I know that the iPhone OS, while based on OS X technology, isn't the same operating system. But as a consumer I don't care. Sure, most apps are just boiled down versions of larger applications for Mac or the web. But some of them are not, games especially are available only on the iPhone in that form.

Well I want to use some of them on my Mac! And it shouldn't be that hard, the SDK for developing apps can already emulate apps directly in OS X. But I want to run them from iTunes or, better yet, directly from my dock. I already own them and they're already stored on my Mac from constant syncing.

Please Apple, let me run my Apps on my Mac as well.

If you agree with this, retweet as far as you can!

Why design matters to me

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

All design matters. But design that is functional matters to me for a specific reason. Function is an embodiment of an idea. And when the function is used the designer and user share that same idea. Not a diluted idea, reshaped by subjective language, but a perfect one. Captured in the form of the function.

If you think this sounds like mumbo jumbo consider mathematics, algorithms and functions that describe how something happens. Most people never realize just how exact the representations are until they program games for computers. All of a sudden all the dull math creates engaging experiences of movement colors and transformations.

A design can be just as exact. Consider how you use scissors, the designer of the original function had an idea about how cutting surfaces and how the movement of the hand could work together. The idea is perfectly translated in the function.

This is why design is so inspiring for me.

Why do people use Twitter?

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

[youtube fThk4x61DYY]

Why I know playstation Move won't be a game changer

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Excited about the Playstation Move?I'm not.

And the reason for it is simple: Sony isn't completely behind the product.

Just compare this commercial Playstation Move

To these two Apple iPod Touch Nintendo Wii

Which is all about a new interface and a new way for consumers to have fun? And which is just a marketing scheme to cram another accessory down your throat?

PlayStation Move seems to be a very qualitative device for 3D manipulation. It's well designed and the interface seems robust.

But Sony should either go full out and place it's bets with the Move or just stop. Accessories might be a large source of income for the company but PlayStation is already behind the competition and diversifying the platform further with even less support is not going to help.

Why I tweet

Thu, 13 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Tired of telling people why you are active on Twitter? So am I. So we've started a little project, me @heidi and @dcarlbom is aggregating tweets about why we tweet and will be using them to make the definitive explanation to why Twitter is so great. Help us out! Just add #whyItweet to your tweet and explain why you tweet. We'll be posting more about the project and following up on the results.

Why I will buy the iPad

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

After the pre launch hype exploded into a million voices screaming in rage or intoxication one argument about the iPad seems to remain; why would I need one if I have a laptop? Last week I didn't have an answer to this question. I figured I might buy one for my mom as she has no use for the extra complexity of a full laptop, but I presumed I would hold off until tablets had evolved a couple of generations.

But yesterday I realized I will buy the iPad. Possibly even the first generation machine.

I have an avid interest in gaming and game design. But I rarely play games anymore, it's just to time consuming to start up machines and and load save games. I don't have two hours without interruption to play games. I have many short periods interspersed throughout the day. Today I fill these periods with gaming, reading and twittering from my iPhone. Only one thing could make this more enjoyable, a larger screen.

The iPad is the perfect casual media machine. A tad expensive perhaps, but still worth it. I'm getting one.

Why indeed

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

RT @durietz: "Why does Dropbox rock but Apple's iDisk suck balls? How hard can it be to copy an existing service?" [link]

Good question.

And how come some Apple products are so amazing while others, as @durietz put it, suck balls? What's the difference in the pipeline at Cupertino?

Why native apps wont go away

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

With the release of the iPhone even Apple itself claimed that Apps we're not important because the web would take over. Since then I hear this same argument regurgitated from time to time. Web apps are the future. Native apps will never be flexible enough. Well, this argument is correct. But most of the people using it are really wrong and they don't always understand the argument itself.

Web applications will, for the foreseeable future, be the most cutting edge and flexible way to develop functionality. They will surpass anything native clients do very soon. This is because cloud computing will make computing a lot more flexible and less reliant on hardware.

But these web apps will only be functionality. User interfaces in the web will lag behind tremendously. With HTML 5 and faster browsers UI's will become more responsive and more complex. But user interfaces online, just like native app user interfaces, must be disconnected from the functions themselves so that errors or problems do not interfere with the users experience of the application. In other words, if your Internet connection times out the user interface can't just stop. That would be similar to a Windows 95 blue screen and user would never be able to rely on the applications.

The solution, which is commonly used today, is to separate the user interface from the functions and simply run them asynchronously with user interfaces providing feedback while waiting for the servers to respond. No matter the issue with functions the user interface can keep users in the loop and provide them with the feeling of control.

Why is this different from native apps? It's not. Native apps on devices such as the iPhone are quite often just interfaces for online services. And as such they are not different from online user interfaces. This is why native apps will not go away. native interfaces will continue to be much more responsive for years to come, providing the user the sense of control we all want from our apps.

Why patents don't work

Mon, 24 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT

This is a short presentation I made to prove a point about the defunct state of patents, hope you enjoy it! It's all made in Keynote on my 13" MacBook Pro.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCA5KVaqXao]

A new iOS notification design

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Something I don't get about most current design is that designers adding features always add layers of complexity. Never add things unnecessarily.

This is my design for a new Notification system. The notification counter on top will ping in color and sound/vibration when new notifications drop in. The user can set which service does what in settings.

The entire notification list is under the spotlight window. If you use spotlight, it'll disappear until you remove your search.

UPDATE:

iOS5 has been unveiled and while I'm not shocked to find I wasn't spot on, I am a bit shocked by their adding another menu just for notifications. If you have no idea what I'm talking about check em out here.

Elisabet Grétarsdóttir explains Gamification at SIME 2011

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

The last day at SIME, Sweden's largest digital/web conference in Stockholm, a panel of guests took to the stage to have a panel discussion about gamification. Gamification is the latest and greatest buzz word in a long line of hype from digital marketing companies. But gamification is different because unlike social media and the like the Gamification concept is loaned from the hugely profitable games industry.

At SIME this year the panel consisted of representatives from World of Horses Online, CCP games and an associate professor from the Stockholm School of Economics. The topic was gamification and was simply introduced as the concept of using mechanics and design from the games industry to market products and services in non entertainment industries.

Elisabet, from CCP games, really gave a show with clear and consice ideas about gamification. She started off by describing the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. An extrinsic motivator, which are mostly used in gamification today, are external rewards given to the player for achieving certain tasks. Such as points to shoot a bird accurately or a badge to check in at a location An intrinsic motivator is an internal reward the player experiences because he/she achieves something in the context of the game. Internal rewards are feelings based on. Social recognition or completing a challenge.

One of her most memorable quotes was saying she'd like to Gamify the games industry by moving from extrinsic to intrinsic motivators.

Another one was a sharp critique to enforced seriousness while stating a point about humans being playful creatures:

why can we hug at a soccer game but not in the board room?

Elisabet also rocked the end of the panel by giving an example of how she would revolutionize boutique shopping by gamifying a H&M shop into a "minecraft retail experience" to, in her own words, "create a platform for creativity and self expression".

The audience and the panel alike seemed almost shocked by the simple truths laid out by Elisabet on gamification. I bet that if she has any say, gamification will be less of a buzz word and more of a business strategy from now on. One can only hope.

PS I'm writing this on an iPad balanced on my knee while I'm eating so if this post is in shambles, please check back in an hour or so and I'll try to polish the turd.

Update 1 Robin from the Stockholm School of Economics mailed me an update, apparently I got both her school and her title wrong.. Sorry Robin, keep up the great work!

Engineers not smart enough to make decisions at Nokia

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Directly quoted from Daring Fireball: Adam Greenfield on his tenure at Nokia:

As it happens, the value-engineering mindset that’s so crucial to profitability as a commodity trader is fatal as a purveyor of experiences. Of course you still want to produce your offering for the lowest achievable cost — but that cost is bound up in intangible, nondeterministic dimensions of design, in ways that are only partially-at-best quantifiable. It’s just not particularly wise to allow engineers to make decisions about things like product and service nomenclature, interface typography and the graphic design of icons: they’re, I daresay, not even neurocognitively equipped to do so. And yet this is what happened when I was at Nokia and, I would imagine, is happening still.

This is really interesting, not neurocognitively equipped? This is of course a bold and non-scientific statement but basically this would mean that engineers aren't biologically capable of understanding a users experience.

That would explain a lot. ;)

Facebook Messenger for iPhone and poor user experience

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Some time ago Facebook launched it's cross platform messaging app: Facebook Messenger; the mobile stand alone app that fully integrates Facebook messaging with your cell phone. Sounds awesome right? Sadly, it's badly broken. I recently tweeted a designer at Facebook to ask why the UX of the app is so bad, in turn he asked me to describe what's wrong so they can fix it. So are you listening Facebook? Great. Here's what's wrong with the iOS version:

Starting the app Takes time. A lot of time. Why? There is no large graphics in use. Why does it start slower than some third party messaging or twitter apps? Short messaging on mobile devices is supposed to be fast. Loading the app for over a full second is bad user experience.

If I'd have to guess what's wrong I'd say Facebook Messenger is loading the entire message database at startup when all the user really needs is something like the last 5 messages.

Loading and responsiveness So the app is now loaded. Let's start messaging! No? Unresponsive?! But why? Why is there a second load time?

This second load becomes even weirder when I start the app from a notification. The app should be loading the message I was notified about but instead it seems to load for several full seconds. Even on WiFi.

If I'd have to guess what's wrong I'd say you're syncing ALL the messaging data with the server...

Don't, do, that. Ever.

Always smart load, download only the essential information to start using the app. Then download the rest in the background while the user is happily messaging away. This is critical on mobile devices.

Feedback If even Apple, that clearly doesn't get social at all, get's the importance of user feedback in short messaging. And the Facebook web interface clearly shows when the other party is writing something to you... Why do you not show this information in the Messenger app? If someone starts typing, send that information. Show an indication of this in the app.

And please, don't make my phone vibrate with every new messages when the thread is open on the screen.

**Notifications ** Notifications on iOS are a bit strange. They don't sync between iPhone and iPad and the app can't receive any data from the notification. So some odd behavior is simply inescapable. However, most of the odd behavior with notifications from Facebook's Messenger app have nothing to do with that.

The main problem is that notifications aren't consistent between mobile app and web. As a matter of fact I haven't even been able to understand what triggers mobile notifications. In my tests some messenges have triggered notifications on both web and mobile while other, identical tests, have triggered only one of them. Once I even received a mobile notification while typing a response in that very thread on the web.

Notifications are hard. Really hard. But a few simple basics should at least get you of out this mess:

If the thread open on web and the page is active (focused some time the last minute or so) - don't send a notification at all.
If the thread not open and the page is not active - send a notification.
If the thread minimized in the web browser but the page is active - send only a web notification.

Do I realize that these features are more complex than I have described them here? Yes. But they're not very complex for a product team such as the one behind Facebook.

Do I realize that Facebook usually releases features and then iterates on them to improve the user experience? Yes. But this is a web strategy. A mobile app is often, like in this case, just a good interface on top of a web service. If the interface is bad, the service is bad. Iterate all you want on the service. But "release early, release often" is not a viable strategy for a mobile interface.

So why am I taking time to complain write all this? Because Facebook Messages, and Facebook Messenger, is a great product. It will help me organize my communication even better and have faster communications with my friends. No longer will discussions be spread through WhatsApp, iMessages, SMS, Email etc etc.

And the reason I can't do that today is the Facebook Messenger interface. With god damn enourmous amounts of some luck this post might help Facebook create a really good Messenger app faster. Fingers crossed. Also, I'm available for hire.

Thanks to @MagnusEngdal and Sara Öhman for helping me with the testing.

Update: Ben from the Facebook Messenger team replies with some information about the upcoming version 1.5 of the app. Early the next morning I had it and started using it. And I must say it's a big improvement. I'll write a follow up shortly about this new version.

Gamification at SIME 2011

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Second day of SIME 2011 coming up and today, finally, we'll get into the nitty and gritty of gamification with a talk from CCP's Elísabet Grétarsdóttiroi, global strategist for marketing. Hopefully this will be awesome. I'll be live tweeting the event all day and half the night and writing about what she and the other speakers had to say as soon as possible.

So visit again soon for updates.

update CCP link works now! Sorry about that.

Google+ review: Why Google+ will fail

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Google+ is the new social network launched by Google. Despite having a track record of broken dreams and train wrecks in the social space, Google has actually managed to put together a quite compelling product. A lot of the tech industry is claiming it really is a Facebook killer.

Here's why it's not

Google+ is basically a clone of Facebook. So much of the service is nearly identical that it would be silly to claim otherwise. Now this might be because Google is lazy, or it might be that Facebook has found a good way to view social information. I'm more inclined to the latter.

But similarity won't get new users, they'll understand Google+ easier (an important argument) but they won't stay for that. So what stands out?

Circles, Sparks, Huddles and Hangouts

Circles are central to the Google+ experience. To share or follow anyone you have to assign them to a circle or group. The idea is that if all your friends are in groups from the start, having more control of what you share to whom is a lot simpler.

That's a great idea. Sadly it's really annoying and adds work for the users. Every time you post something you have to choose which circles to share with. The ones you shared with last are offered as a default. I'll bet that most people will add most if not all their circles and then never change. The reason for this is that we don't share if sharing is to much work. That's why social networking took off in the first place, they made it easier to share stuff we liked. Google+ is making it harder than on Facebook. Not a compelling argument for most people.

Sparks

Sparks are topics of interest that you can follow and get all the new information on right inside Google+. This is a great idea. Having content in the social network, ready to be shared.

There is a problem. It's basically just a Google search. So there's very little filtration of content and hardly ever anything new. Google+ is still a beta so this could evolve to a killer feature. But for Google to invent a new type of search just for content in Google+... I don't think that'll happen.

Huddles

Huddles are group messaging. Yeah. Another one... And for some reason it only works on mobile devices, they don't show up in the web interface. So basically a bit less useable than Facebook chat.

Hangout

Hangouts are amazing. Hangouts are video chatroom that you can start at any time and than jump in and out of and just talk to people. Amazing tech.

But a stupid idea. Why? I don't understand why companies keep dragging the video-calling, video-chatting ideas out every time they get more tech. The trend in general is moving from voice to text because it is less intrusive.

Intrusive is basically the definition of having friends looking at you while you work.

"But chat roulette was a hit!?" I hear you desperately cry. Yes it was. Because it's for fun it was quick to just spend a half hour jumping in and out of conversations or charades with dicks random people. But do you want to do that with just your friends? Probably not.

It is however an even simpler way to have video conferencing, which inside Google must seem like the thing everyone wants to do. I've never met someone who would like that. But I'm sure those people will be thrilled. I'll use it to have drinking nights with my buddies in the UK no doubt.

Summing up

So far Google+ looks like a great, clean, new social network. With absolutely nothing to make it more useable than Facebook.

The only reason people loves this product is because it says Google right there on the logo.

But we should give it the benefit of a doubt, it's still just a beta, it might be missing features or showing us features that are far from finished.

Don't get me wrong, I'll still be on it. It's just that I don't use it at all.

How to change scrolling direction in Lion; and why you shouldn't

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT

To change back from Lion's default natural scrolling open Settings -> Trackpad -> Scroll & Zoom and uncheck the natural scrolling checkbox. All done.

Why shouldn't you?

It's annoying right? Why should you have to relearn how scrolling works?

Because it makes no sense in Lion, and I'll bet you anything it'll make less and less sense going forward. This is the new paradigm, learn it now or later.

But why?

In the beginning of Graphic User Interfaces scrolling was done by clicking the scrollbars on the side of an application window.

Since this wasn't a very efficient way to do it many weird solutions for simpler scrolling popped up here and there. It soon became standard for Mice to have scroll wheels on them. Making the entire representation of scroll bars a bit redundant. They take up a lot of screen real estate just to show you where in a window you are looking at any one time. It's not like you didn't scroll there in the first place right?

When touch pads started becoming standard, this design thought was transplanted over from mice and scroll bars. Nothing wrong with that, reinventing the wheel isn't always a good thing.

Except when it is.

In this case it made no sense. The mouse and it's scroll wheel use two different controls to achieve two different things. You move the mouse to point. And you scroll the wheel to.. eh.. scroll.

But on a touch pad you use the same control. Your poking the touchpad to move the pointer and then poking the touchpad in the opposite direction to scroll. The only reason this feels "natural" is because we, as the ingrained PC users we are, are so used to scrollbars. We know that what we're scrolling isn't the content but the scrollbar. Which in turn scrolls the content...

See where the design falls apart?

The metaphor is broken. The scrollbar no longer makes sense when you scroll using the pointing device to move the content, instead of the scrollbar.

Alright. That makes sense, but why relearn? Why fix what ain't broken?

In two words: Cognitive load.

Lion's natural scrolling (directly scrolling the content instead of the scroll bar) will become the standard, like it or not, because the average PC user doesn't change default settings and certainly don't understand why scrolling should be inverse to the screen. The cognitive load of thinking about how to scroll will simply become to much as more computers are delivered with touch pads and more of our PCs become touch based (as tablets become more widely spread).

To clarify; on a mouse the scrolling direction won't change. Because the scroll wheel isn't directly linked to the content anyway. But a touch pad is directly linked. Update: For some reason, Apple has changed the scrolling direction on the mouse wheel for non-apple mice. This is weird. Thanks to Dan in the comments for reporting!

It takes a little time to get used to, though less than you might think, but it will be worth it. And you won't have to relearn later on which will get increasingly frustrating.

Not convinced? Check out MG Siegler's excellent pre-lion post The iPad Has Broken My Brain; OS X Lion Will Help Fix It.

Defining A Principle of Quality that works

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Quality was what set the good craftsmen apart form the bad ones. It was why some brands became more revered than others. The illusive idea is why Apple sells so well, why some artists are better than others. But what the hell is quality? Does it change from artist to artist? Does it mean something different for cars than for software? No. I don't think so. I think there's a common feature for all types of good quality.

Using Cognitive Psychology to reveal quality

In academic circles scholars of cognitive psychology have been debating and hacking the human perception for a very long time. One of my favorite tidbits of knowledge from my student days is that negatives are worth twice as much as positives. That means if I give you $100 and then take it back, you'll feel as if you've lost more money than you felt you gained in at first. Put another way: if you spend $50 and earn $100 dollars you'll feel you made about even. Losing something is negative, and is therefore twice as important to you perception.

This gives us valuable clue to Quality. Let's see how far that can bring us.

If negative values, and negative experiences, create stronger reactions in users we should look at minimizing these as much as possible. If we get close to no negative values we'll have a really solid product experience regardless of the products positive values.

For example, if you create an app where every action gives clear feedback it will feel great. Even if the UX design isn't all that great from the start.

Getting the values right

But wait, let's back up a bit. What is a negative value? And what is a positive value? We're talking about products here! What is a negative in a web app?

Happily, another branch of cognitive psychology has dealt with what value is. This is the theory: there is no "real" value. Only subjective, or perceived, value. That is to say: water to a man dying of thirst has a lot of value, while water to a man at a cocktail bar in NY is worth very little. This sounds really basic right? But if all value is relative to experience that also means that we determine reasonable prices from prices around us. We distinguish beauty not by their own beauty but by how much less beautiful the other people around us are. Dan Ariely has some great examples of this in his book Predictably Irrational.

The good part starts 12 minutes in.

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

So all value is interpreted relative to similar experiences by each individual. How does that help us? That means every experience is valued compared to other, similar, experiences.

So?

Well if people experience negative values much stronger than positive ones, we need to focus harder on making our apps perform at least as well as other apps the users are using instead of trying to one-up our competitors. This will make out UX more positive than focusing on making the positive experiences better. Most Human Computer Interaction studies are actually based on this. They're often studies to define how consistency works. And consistency is exactly what I'm talking about here. But not internal consistency, while that to is extremely important, but experience consistance for the user. No matter what that use might look like, spanning over machines, apps, platforms and use cases.

Summing up

A principle of quality, a rule of thumb that works for all products and services, is not making something really well. It's minimizing the negative impact of shortcomings.

So how do we use this principle?

Don't show the user experiences that aren't finished. Release early release often as much as you want, but don't release half baked.
Polish one feature instead of making two features.
Make sure other apps aren't making your experience feel broken by creating an experience gap that will feel negative for example the pull-down-to-refresh UI of iPhone apps.
Look at the platform. Look at the most popular uses. Look at the environment it will be used in. Then try to be consistent.
Make your marketing consistant with your experience, or you might end up making your product feel worse than it is

The perfect example of not understanding quality is the Nokia N97, enjoy!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJpEuMidcSU&w=560&h=315]

Another great example of achieving quality, not by adding features, but by managing your negatives is the iPhone and iPad operating system. Just compare these transition effects from iOS to the Android counter parts:

[vimeo 32704624 w=320 h=356] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNyVXIEG3gg&w=480&h=360]

iPad 3 without buttons

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT

The iPad three will probably have a button, but you'll never use it. Before the iPad 2 was announced there were rumors that Apple were preparing an iPad without a home button. There was much debate and the rumor seemed drastic. But the rumors are actually true. [youtube a52zu-ocAd0]

New interface gestures for iOS 4.3 which shipped on the iPad2 lets you multitask without using the home button. Pinch to homescreen let's you close apps without the button and swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar let's you exit apps that are running in the background. Effectively making the home button a relic of the past.

So from the release of iOS5 (probably with the iPhone 5 this june) you might never need to use a button on an iOS device again. Some of you might think that's a great thing, I for one would love it since I rarely double click fast enough, and others might think it's useless.

The tail end of this effect is that you could, theoretically, controll all the interactions with apps running on an Apple TV with a Magic Trackpad...

Let the rumor mills run wild! ;)

New iOS notification system

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Notifications on the iPhone and the iPad are broken. They distract us and get us away from our work flow or Angry Birds and if you, like me, get a lot of them they stack most annoyingly.

So why haven't Apple already solved this? We can't know that for sure, secretive as Apple is. But I'll bet it has something to do with the new iteration of OS X.

Lion In Lion Apple is bringing iOS features back to the Mac. Specifically, for notifications, applications are now encouraged to be full screen. Full screen apps can't use badges or jumping icons in the dock to notify users of what's going on.

Lion has to redesign notifications. And Lion has to make notifications work with full screen apps, exactly the same problem that Apple faces on the iPhone and iPad.

Unified notification system I believe the new notification system will be the same, or very similar, across all Apple platforms. It just makes to much sense not to, all their devices need new notifications and they face the same constraints... Except input. iOS handles touch, OS X has a mouse/keyboard. Both of them handle gestures however.

Universal Gestures? In the new beta of iOS, 4.3, Apple has released a set of gestures to do multitasking making the feature a lot more powerful and easy to use.

[youtube wvxSSGUtTYA]

These gestures don't translate all that well to the iPhone (five fingers on a 3" screen?) but I dare say Apple can solve that. But I also notice there's one gesture missing: down. Right and left swipes change app, swipe up to show active apps, why not swipe down to show a notification app/menu?

Notification app/menu/dock Gathers all notifications, only needs to make a sound or visual cue for new notifications and users can come back to it at will. It would work on all Apple devices and could be accessed by gesture or from the icon.

Sounds pretty Apple-y to me. What are your thoughts?

Nokia N9 slogan - Just Swipe, dumbass!

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

All screen No home button Just swipe Nokia N9 No way to know how to use it without reading a manual or being taught how Just swipe, DUMBASS!

Nokia must really love being different. Or at least love patenting interaction models, so they can differentiate from iPhone.

To bad different isn't the same as good.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBd3bFKXeRo&w=640&h=360]

Path 2.0 UX review

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Path was a weird app when it launched about a year ago. It was a photo sharing app with checkins, directly competing with Instagram and Foursquare but without the simplicity. It also had the really weird USP that you could "only share with 50 of your closest friends!"... Now, most people don't have more close friends than that. Hell, most people don't come close to that. But the early adopter crowd that usually takes these new apps for a spin were appalled. But Path was beautiful.

It didn't work.

But Path is back! Path 2.0 is better, faster, turbo, everything you could possibly want. But is it good enough?

Path first impressions

Path is incredibly beautiful. No other mobile experience comes close. Seriously, it's not just pretty graphics, all the animations and interactions, the structure of information, the loading bars and even the damned typing experience is just plain better than in other apps. It's amazing.

So what is Path?

Path is a digital diary for your life. Everyone on Path has a feed. And at any time you can add stuff to your own: where you are, a piture, who you're with, music you're listening to or when you go to sleep.

Using Path

Is lonely. Sure it launched today but that's not the main issue. Path is clearly going for the same feature set as Facebook Timeline (which is tied up in court and has yet to launch) but there's no way you'll get all your friends to come over. I'm an early adopter. I talk to a lot of other early adopters. And I'm still lonely on Path.

Still, it's an amazing experience. Enough to make me want to use it. Maybe that's enought? I'll update in a few days and let you know.

[vimeo 32856179 w=686 h=386]

Quora - win or fail? A User Experience study

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

I recently was asked to check out Quora again. This time from a UX standpoint. I found a lot of strange design decisions and an almost crazy implementation of "Gamification" so I thought I had to share it:

First Impression

What does this do? Quora is a mess of questions. That's a good thing. But it's also a mess of features. There is no real overview to how the service is supposed to be used nor how the features fit together to create a whole. It feel like a mess of somewhat related features that have been randomly added to a wiki.

User feedback loops

All services and products intended to be used more than once work because their is a loop in user interaction. After we've done what we came for we're back at the start and can do it again.

Feedback loops is a way to look at how feedback is introduced in the loop to keep users going forward and using the product. Quora does this really strangely.

There are two ways to understand what happens in a loop, one is to look at emotional impact or internal steps in the process from the point of view of the user. This is called the intrinsic loop. The other is to look at the service's constructed steps from the point of the user. This is called the extrinsic loop.

Intrinsic

The value in looking at both of these is to see where they meet and reinforce each other. So how does the intrinsic loop look?

answer questions -> gain social proof in form of replies, votes and followers -> answer ranks higher on lists of answers -> return

This loop works well. Interacting with the site gives you a sense of communicating with other users. Though notifications are bad and it's hard to really understand what is happening, there is a definite sense of activity spawned from other users interacting with your content.

Extrinsic

So how does the extrinsic feedback loop look?

Add information (unidentified) -> earn points -> use points to request answers -> no return

Basically it adds points but not to obvious steps in the loop. In fact, Quora only seems to add points for adding information. But Quora doesn't tell us why, how much or for what we earn these points.

This is an extrinsic loop set up to give users rewards for interacting that doesn't reward user for interacting. What went wrong here? Quora is giving out points for interacting with Quora, but not with other users.

The problem is humans don't think of services as i_ndependent entities_ and don't expect to interact with services, humans expect to interact through services. Another problem is that these rewards aren't reinforcing the intrinsic loop but instead starts rewarding an entirely different behavior. And last but not least, there is no clear end or way to start again from when you receive rewards. Rewards are doled out in the middle of the intrinsic feedback loop.

Gamification or What Bumblebees feel about Bicycles

Points. Just add points and it's a game. Just add points and the weird statistical exercise has miraculously turned into "fun"! Right? No. That's not how it works, you can read all about how to add the fun here. But Quora doesn't care about that, you get points for adding content but aren't told when or how much. There doesn't seem to be a differentiation between how you add content, you simply receive an arbitrary amount of points.

There's only one way to use points. You can pay others to answer questions. That's it. You can't even compare your points to another users.

Summing up

Quora is awesome. What makes it awesome is the high level of interest from other users. The problem is, Quora does little of anything to enhance this. More often it gets in the way.

The service quickly became famous for supplying answers from high level CEOs and business savvy high performers. Sadly though, it took me hours to find any such answer. It took me hours just to find some interesting questions.

The random points thrown in just increases perception of randomness. Quora is a great idea, close to a good product. Over designed and under thought. It's confusing as hell and weird to use. But if you're lucky you can at least get some answers. Just don't expect the question to be the same one you had in mind from the start...

Roman philosopher explains Twitter

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMT

In a letter to his friend Lucilius the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca reflects on how having friends means you are never truly alone. And when you are, communicating with them makes you connected to them. He writes:

I see you, my dear Lucilius, I hear you at this very moment. I feel so very much with you that I wonder whether I shouldn't start writing you notes rather than letters!

Writing a friend notes of events and thoughts and feelings instead of letter. This is how I use twitter. I share these things with my friends and anyone who wants to follow me. A quite futuristic idea for a Roman born over two thousand years ago.

SIME Stockholm day 1

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

A week ago I was contacted by Bloggbyrån to be a theme blogger for SIME, Sweden's largest web/tech conference. I would write about how the conference talked about and around gamification. I've been talking gamification since I started studying game design, long before it became a buzzword, so how could I refuse? My first day here and I'm amazed Normally the Swedish conferences are timid and partly boring events as the swedes are quite reserved and the production values are quite low. Not so at SIME. The production values are through the roof and people are talking fast to get around the room. None of them make it.

The topics are wide but the theme is central The speakers here at SIME are varied and well drilled, no slow moments for the audience. From representatives of the BBC to new web startups to multinational investors playing the piano somehow it all ties in neatly with our moderator Ola Ahlvarsson's set theme: "Passion Wins!".

My head is buzzing Not from the champagne but from the pace. The comedian wrapping up spotted my tweet and made me a bit and none of us can move more than 3 feet without talking to someone. This is not the usual environment for a Swede and for anyone interested in entrepreneurship it's amazing.

Tomorrow is another day Of SIME and with the schedule ahead of me it seems to be even more packed than today. Right now this rundown is the best I can do. Now I'm off to the bar to find out if there is more champagne and anyone interested in discussing gamification.

One more thing I was apparently the most active twitterer today, even after the comedian made fun of me, and my tweets were picked up by a Swedish newspaper and retweeted widely. Dagens media - de leder SIME twittrandet

The awesome new Google Mobile site - Google Mobile goes Local

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 00:00:00 GMT

When I roam around a city (which rarely happens I promise think) I often find myself wishing there was a good way to search for local services (coffee shops, bars, restaurants). This unicorn has never appeared though. Local seemed to be impossible with current tech.

Then I was on the subway this morning. And a tweet lead me to Google Mobile, below the search bar I found something odd...

It said log in. And it asked for my location (sorry about the Swedish btw, I'm in Sweden so Google assumes I prefer the deprecated language over English).

Now I've used Google Places before and I was not impressed. There simply isn't enough aggregated data in Stockholm for it to work. Well that's what I thought.

I logged in and pressed the icon marked "Cafe's". Lo and behold! Google quickly returned Coffee shops close to my location, on a map even!

Now this is impressive. But what is a lot more impressive is what happened next. I scroll down the list and instead of just finding aggregated information, which I come to expect from Google, I'm shown an impressive interface of detailed information and functions for each location.

Not only can I call the location directly from the app, I can also find reviews directly. But this is the most impressive part: the item on top of the list is shown on the map (which stays at the top as you scroll) and an overlay button appears letting me find Directions to the location...

This post is quite probably the worst I've ever written, and that is because I'm completely blown away by the UX of this SERP.

Google has really understood what I want out of a local search and given me the tools I need to use the information they present me with. A level of user experience I've never seen from Google and would only expect from the very best Apple products.

Google, I salute you. Keep this up!

The death of console games and the rise of mobile games

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT

At a panel at south by southwest Peter Vesterbacka of Rovio (Angry Birds) said that the console market is dead. Basically because people won't want to pay $40-$50 for a game that is hard to upgrade. I agree.

But Nokia's Tero Ojanpera countered on the same panel that there is still a place for consoles and console games because people won't want to plug their tablet devices into their TV's.

I don't agree. In fact, I think Tero Ojanpera is missing a major trend in user behavior:

We've seen a trend for many years now that people are spending more of their time in front of computer screens. Most people aren't actively turning off their TVs yet but the trend towards being online is clear. More and more people sitting in front of their TV but with a laptop on their lap. At the same time mobile devices and tablet devices are skyrocketing in use.

So why, dear Nokia, would people want to plug their tablet devices into their TVs? People are already choosing mobile screens at their primary consumption device. What Ojanpera is thinking of here is probably the block buster cinematic experiences that home consoles connected to the TV can offer. Titles such as God of War and Assasins Creed.

What he doesn't realize is that while these titles take up most of the marketing budget for game companies they don't sell all that well. A game of the year blockbuster hit still only sells close to 20 million copies. That's a huge pile of money. But Angry Birds has sold over 150 million... The price makes the winnings less dramatic but the demographic implications are clear. More people are choosing mobile games.

Consoles are dead.

The future of the Internet: The Internet of Things

Thu, 12 May 2011 00:00:00 GMT

It's easy to make thousands of predictions about what will happen with the internet over the next few years. But some predictions can be made with a degree of certainty. None are so certain as the arrival of the Internet of things.

In the 90's tech evangelists started selling us this idea when they touted the imminent arrival of fridges that know when you're out of milk and automatically add it to your grocery list. This was just before the bubble burst and they all went away to eventually become social media strategists.

Today though the tables have turned. We might be entering a second internet bubble but no one debates whether the internet is important or financially sound anymore. With the recent arrival of mobile devices that people really want to use, the iPhone and iPad still forerunners in the field, we're seeing the beginnings of the internet of things.

Things that just a few years ago only made calls now measure how many steps we take, what route we walk and how close to the screen we are. Sensors are invading our lives at an ever increasing pace to fill our information hunger. So far this is happening to our high tech gear. But since tech is still improving exponentially, according to Moore's law, in just a few years there will be no point in having electronics that don't have processors, sensors and wifi connections. With budding technologies waiting to take over such as IPv6 and NFC all these devices will be able to come online and stay online for basically no cost.

And that is just the start. When every lamp, machine and key in your house has sensors the prices will drop even further. Making sensors even more ubiquitous. There's a tag on the apples you buy, why not add a sensor and check how ripe it is? There's a stamp on that envelope, the sensors on it can make sure it hasn't been shaken about to much.

Of course there will be issues with who controls all this data and not least what to do with it. But like all new technology the positive effects outweigh the negative as soon as we get over the fart-app stage.

The possibilities of this vast network of smart sensors are endless.

Left the door unlocked? Lock it from your phone. Did your son eat the last of the cheese? You will always know. The lamps will turn off when you step away from them to save electricity and you'll never forget your keys again. Ever.

But all these are only just from the tip of the iceberg, the real magic happens when these everyday objects start communicating with each other. We're not talking about intelligent conversation here, just mere cooperation between systems. No risk of sentient toasters attacking us just yet.

Let's say you're at work planning a dinner with your spouse. You agree on a certain meal over the phone, video call, messaging service or whatever. Immediately your things at home spring into action. Your house butler service, a server the size of a doorbell, sees your conversation and finds the recipe. The fridge checks what you have at home and orders the missing ingredients. The ingredients arrive and your cleaning robot, vacuum and arm for moving things, lays out the ingredients on your kitchen counter. The oven heats itself. As you open the door the butler starts playing the appropriate music based on your preferences and earlier conversation. The bottle of wine is open. You only need to wash your hands and cut those cheeseburgers in half.

Every single one of these services exist today. Some are expensive. Some still a bit rudimentary. But the essential differences today is that they lack information from sensors and the processing power to do something with it. And they can't communicate without you acting as a translator.

The internet of things is almost upon us, and while we can't say exactly what it will be like. Two things are certain: it will truly change everything forever, much like the internet already has. And it will be awesome!

Orginially guest blogged for www.saraohman.com

The Gamification of SIME

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Orginially posted on the official SIME blog SIME is a Swedish Conference on web, tech and startups. Where great speakers entertain for two days and investors and entrepreneurs mingle over coffee and champagne.

SIME 2011 was a flurry of great speaker on a wide area of subjects. While the set theme for SIME was "Passion Wins" another theme running through the conference was going mobile. Gamification was subtly introduced to the SIME audience in a panel on Gamification and marketing. Possibly to set the stage for a larger presence next year.

But what exactly is Gamification and how does it tie in with SIME 2011? Gamification is the process of using game mechanics in non-game products and services. I am not talking about 3D characters or scoring points here however. Games have matured in relative obscurity thought the years to become one of the worlds largest entertainment forms, aimed mostly at adults. The foundations of_what makes a good game_ are similar and equally complex as what makes a great brand. The psychology or rewards have been used in training and products over the years, but only games have really delved deep and explored the territory. Pacing and storytelling in a product where there is no story is also only really explored in the games industry. Science and design based on concepts like these are migrating from games into "normal" products.

This is Gamification. And oddly, ties in excellently to SIMEs central theme.

The Passion of Gamification Passion Wins. That theme was presented by Ola in his welcoming speech and it was central to almost all the talks at SIME. From presentations from promising startups, among them iZettle - the mobile payment solution, to using brain scans for better marketing there was not a presenter on stage that lacked passion. But how do we reach passion in our users or customers? While every panel spoke of the importance to engage users and inspire passion there was only one that talked about how thats done.

Panel on Gamificiation A panel consisting of Elísabet Grétarsdóttir, Eve Online, Johan Sjöberg, founder Starstable, and Robin Teigland, Stockholm School of Economics, joined Ola on stage to discuss the most popular buzzword of the day.

The panel wasn't that impressed with the term Gamification for starters. Elisabet described it as working with motivation in marketing to engage the audience, hopefully getting them to participate. Johan joined in saying that the term might be a misnomer, that the term Playification might be more appropriate. Since the focus is on engagement but not at all games.

"we are playful creatures" - Elísabet Grétarsdóttir, SIME 2011

The panel was in agreement that playfulness was important for humans, adding fun to anything should be possible. The panel highlighted experiments with gamification in education and Elisabet even made a pitch to add creative interaction in the fashion industry.

If we are playful creatures, play should be a great way to engage our users. Right?

Going mobile with gamification As I mentioned earlier another trend runnings through the entire conference was going mobile. Google spoke of being a mobile first company, Ericsson spoke about communicating in a world where every device is interconnected. But what does this have to do with gamification?

Throughout SIME we heard speakers talk about new paradigms and the web/app divide. Essentially mobile web is taking over and has a different set or boundaries than the desktop web. So how to we make sure our mobile interfaces are good enough and engaging users? You know where I'm going with this aren't you?

Mobile interfaces is a perfect place to start adding the fun.

Summing up gamification at SIME 2011 The passion at SIME was amazing. The energy was great. The game we played at the conference, bad. Basically we're all looking into how to engage and interact with people through digital mediums. The only industry that has really done it is the games industry. Moving their knowledge to the rest of the web is gamification. Elisabet doesn't think it's through external motivation. Ola thinks it might have something to do with horses.

The only thing we know is: however it's done, it's going mobile.

Jesper Bylund is a Game Designer / Interaction Designer who blogs about Gamification on Adding the Fun.com

UPDATE: Added a short explanation of what SIME is, thanks to @kenneth_aa for making me realize it was needed.

The Verge video and Lenovo Ultrabook

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

The Verge does amazing video reviews. Short, snappy, all the info, great shots and great narration. Lenovo has really made a beautiful notebook with the u300. I have no idea why no one else has tried the book design but it looks great!

The video is after the jump.

Twitter is the Twitter-killer

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Twitter, the micro blogging service, has taken the world by storm. While there are only a few hundred million users compared to Facebook's massive near Billion, the service has become the place to share real time updates and is often used to gauge peoples reactions by news and analytic firms because the platform is open. But Twitter is about to face it's doom While Google struggle to reproduce the viral effect of micro blogging services Facebook's grab for the real time feed was hampered by the need to privacy. Twitter has already gained wide acceptance and was never intended for private information in the first place. But a series of ominous events are slowly hollowing out the foundations of Twitter.

Twitter is being killed by... Twitter has never been the most stable of tech startups. The service used to be plagued by downtime which became so frequent the Fail Whale error page became as famous as the service. The company itself is also changing management again, and again. Not a great trend this early in a one product company. The lack of leadership is clear to see.

Twitter UX Twitter (the company) is constantly changing and evolving it's product. Which is a great way to organically fit the needs of their users. But Twitter (the company) is doing this in a somewhat odd way. It started when Retweeting (passing on another users tweet as a sign of encouragement while marking it with their name and RT) was made a part of the product, after it's wide adoption by users, Twitter (the company) decided to implement it differently than the usual Retweets. This lead to better statistics, but also a fractured UX as apps now had to implement both ways to RT because users didn't like the new one. Eventually Twitter (the company) incorporated the old style Retweets but called the function Quote Tweet instead. And the problems were just getting started.

Twitter app insanity Twitter apps were almost a category on their own in the beginning of the Appstore. Twitter has become so important to mobile phone manufacturers they always showcase a twitter app with their new flagship phones. But Twitter wanted to control the experience, like Apple. Maybe a good idea. But really bad execution. They bought Atebits, the developers behind the most popular Twitter apps for iOS and Mac. Have you ever pulled down a list to refresh? Atebits invented that. So why was this a problem? Sounds great, right?

After being purchased by Twitter (the company), the newly renamed Twitter for Mac and Twitter for iPhone started being updated less frequently... Let me make that clear, having the developer of the apps work closer with the Twitter development team made them update the apps less often.

Then shit really hit the fan. Twitter (the company) redesigned all their interfaces to be similar across platforms. Starting with a roll out on iPad, then web then the rest, Twitter (the company) streamlined their interface development.. in theory. What really happened? The interfaces now looked the same, but they didn't work the same. In fact, certain features only exist on certain platforms even though the interfaces look the same. Which makes it really hard as a user to remember what you can do where.

Later on the developers behind Atebits have left Twitter (the company), possibly in raging despair. And Twitter (the service) is fracturing into a mess. Not just between interfaces but functions as well. For example with the roll out of the activity tab you can follow some of the things people are doing through Twitter, following, unfollowing, making lists and so on. These features, which btw totally contradict the extreme simplicity of the core product, are weirdly integrated into the web interface as the afterthought they are. And it's only available on the web.

Summery Twitter (the company) is destroying Twitter (the services) with some sort of odd design-by-committee culture. No matter if you like or dislike these new features, the case is clear that teams behind Twitter (the service) definitely aren't working towards the same goal.

This is sad. Because I love Twitter (the service). And I don't like that it's being killed by Twitter (the company). Please RT this if you agree.

Update:

Apparently the sentiment is echoed by people leaving Twitter (the company).

Update 2:

In December 2011 Twitter updated their entire line of interfaces. The design changes were clearly aimed at making Twitter a lot more interesting for new users.

Twitter divided itself into different parts, seemingly with different uses:

Sounds great right? What could possibly be the problem!

Twitter didn't actually change. And Twitter (the service) does not actually have these different areas of interest. So any user checking them out will quickly get confounded. What is the difference between "Home" and "Me"? I have no idea. But to make this obvious, Twitter (the company) has removed Me and Tweet from the web interface which basically means they have these left: Home (My feed), Connect (replies, RTs and follows) and Discover (search damnit, it's just search!).

To make things better worse, the UI is even more fragmented. Twitter no longer has updated clients for iPad and Mac. Apparently the job previously done by one single guy is just to much for an organization of 300 or so.

But it get's even better worse. The UI of the web and iPhone version, while both being updated simultaneously for this new paradigm, still do not follow the same UI standards and are structured differently. Don't ask about Android. Twitter (the company) must really, really, hate Android.

Anyone want to build a Twitter killer, possibly built upon the API of Twitter to simplify the transfer of users? I'm available right now.

What is HTML5? A short explanation

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Everyone seems to know everything about HTML5. But there is just so much information out there I thought I'd make a shorthand for everyone not already up to speed. HTML5 is a common term for the upgrade of all the basic web technologies. That tech that let's you build web sites (HTML, CSS and JS to be exact).

HTML5 can be used live today, but it won't become really wide spread until Internet Explorer 9 takes over the leading browser marketshare from IE 8. All modern browsers, including IE 9, handle almost everything that makes HTML5 so cool.

HTML5 was created to take the internet to the next level. Basically from Information sites to Functional Services more like apps. Basically people don't just want information these days but they want simple functions that give them access to _the right_information. This is what apps do; give users the function and the bite sized chunk of information needed to use that function. In the same easy to use interface.

There is a huge difference between this paradigm and the earlier paradigm of the web. The change won't be very fast but it will come. The reason is that Mobile Web use is on the rise and the old paradigm of information heavy sites is simply really bad for that use. Already HTML5 is the norm for Mobile Devices, PCs are actually lagging behind.

I've listed some of my favorite examples of HTML5 apps below, please be aware that you'll need Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or at least IE 9 to use them:

http://www.html5rocks.com/

http://www.chromeexperiments.com/

http://www.apple.com/html5/

http://mugtug.com/sketchpad/

http://www.web3mantra.com/2011/04/20/best-html5-applications/

http://data-arts.appspot.com/globe-search

What to use the iPad for

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 GMT

When the iPad was announced a lot of people wondered what it was for. Why carry a giant iPod touch with you instead of a small laptop? When Apple later unveiled the updated MacBook Air a lot of people asked the same thing. But the iPad is still flying off the shelves and people love the machine.

But if you're still wondering why the iPad is good I did some snooping. Actually I've asked non-leading, weird, questions to every iPad user near me for close to two years just to understand the behavior. And I think I've solved it.

Why the iPad feels wrong for real work Some people will tell you the iPad does multitasking and that it works great. That's just not true. It does uni-tasking and great app switching.

The difference is it really forces you to focus on one thing at a time. I have no problem switching between apps to get stuff I need to send or reply to that email with facts from simplenote etc. But you can't have all that on the screen at the same time like you are used to.

This makes people believe it's hard to use for work. Simply because they have to relearn their entire workflow. The desktop experience simply doesn't translate to the tablet and it makes people feel less efficient.

Why the iPad is awesomee The iPad actually makes you more effective. Not efficient. You won't be doing things at the same speed as you do on a desktop, and that might frustrate you. But it'll also force you to think about what is most important. Usually, in both my experience and my sneaky interviews, making the end result better.

The iPad really does almost everything a desktop computer does. So far I've found two things it doesn't do as well as a desktop:

Create graphics, the iPad simply cannot compete with Adobe Photoshop and a mouse.
Formatting text. Yes I'm serious. You can do it. But it takes forever.

The second thing the iPad doesn't to really do highlights the efficiency vs effectiveness problem. It doesn't format text well. But is that really what you should be doing? Yes a well formated document looks a lot more professional than a poorly formatted one. But the content is really the important thing, right? And seriously, you could've made a template for those visual documents years ago.

Don't worry though, there's probably an app for that.

The ending was intended as sarcasm and not rampant fanboyism. Though I probably am a rampant fanboy of Apple's take on design.

Why in-house development never works

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT

So your company is starting a new project and you need a piece of software. There are similar third party apps out there but they don't do exactly what you need.

So what do you do? Develop a new one in-house right? DON'T!

All software needs to develop over time, much like business or science, not only because the demands on them change but because the users change. As the world moves forward people learn new things and develop, if your app, tool, function or software does not it will become less usable even if it still performs the necessary function.

Third party developers work full time to make sure their software is good. Your in-house team does not. If you're lucky or experienced enough to know that everything has to be updated from time to time you'll schedule development time from time to time to update your app. But it's still lagging behind the third party version. It might do exactly what you need, but that need will probably change faster than your app is updated.

Many companies grow into this problem and than takes it to it's logical extreme. Make the team a dedicated department of your company.

But now you've basically created a company. And this team will get more and more out of touch with the goals and difficulties of the original company. Not to mention that to grow they'll need to meet demands from outside the parent company.

There is another way to do it. Use third party apps. If the software takes over a function in your company, so that you can't change it, you were in a lot of trouble before the software fails you anyway.

UPDATE: After some constructive criticism from Christopher McCann I'm forced to admit that the post is rather Utopian since it depends on not having to replace legacy systems that already lock you in to a certain way to handle data. I still prefer the idea that data should be more important than system, but it is Utopian, anyway thanks Christopher!

UPDATE2: After even more criticism, this time from Magnus Engdal, I must concede the point that while my slightly Utopian post might be true for LAMP software it doesn't really work for MS systems because of the size of the community and availability of solutions.

Why the music industry wont stream music

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:00:00 GMT

More and more services are popping up that solve the music industries decade long plight of piracy; Streaming music.

Services like Spotify and Rdio are making music instantaneously available for everyone at affordable rates that seem to make everyone happy... Except the music industry wont go along in North America. "Why not?" I hear you sigh ask. Let's examine the models.

Traditional Music Industry model Expensive music recording and talent finding or talent creating organisations made money off hits that had main stream appeal and sold records. Thus subsidizing less popular songs recorded and making tons and tons of cash.
New Music Industry Model Dirt cheap music recording and no large organisation needed leaves music execs without jobs, making them scramble for larger marketing budgets trying to push out hits to people who've largely turned to youtube for their music finding needs. Streaming services pay music creators and labels for plays, not purchases, making income gradual over time instead of in chunks.

So basically, now we have the entire label org, music marketing and exec structures working against the change. At the same time pay is coming in in smaller doses over longer periods of time making hits less important. And very importantly, lowering quarterly income for the first years of change. Most probably lowering stock martet value. This is a most extreme case of the long tail economic model.

But in this new situation, the organisations that formerly cultivated talent are now cannibalizing off talent to fuel their inefficient cost structure of organisations that no longer work. How do they deal with this problem? Sue pirates. Legislate against sharing music people own. And worst case: deny new working models the right to use already popular music.

Great idea msuic industry! What do you think?

Why we need to define our lives

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Life is not a chance eventYou make choices - spend your time - to create substance. Instead of just dreaming about what might be. But once in a while, you need a time-out. Peace and relaxation that give you time to think. To define substance...

-unknown

Writing a Children's Novel - part 1 writing

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT

I've had plans on writing a book since... forever. And right now I have 30 days of vacation so I thought it was about time to do something about it.

Over the next few weeks I'll be trying to write, layout and publish my own kindle book. Of course I'll share everything about the process right here.

First off: Writing I decided to try to tackle Ayn Rand's Objectivism as a moral for the story. That set the stakes high enough. Over the next few days I'll flesh out a plot and write a first draft.

Of course you can follow me actually writing the document LIVE right here.

Writing a children's novel - part 2 still writing

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Fleshing out the plot line and main characters is taking more time than expected. I believe this is for two reasons:

1 I have no experience doing projects like this.
2 I'm procrastinating to dream about having a finished book.

I'll leave you with a few photos from my workspace:

A UX review of Clear, todo list manager of the future

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Meet Clear, the todolist manager that does everything right. [vimeo 35693267 w=400 h=225]

Clear for iPhone from Realmac Software on Vimeo.

Intuitive interface

Clear has no interface. It just uses swipes pinches and touches in a list the same as you would on an image. While there is no such thing as intuitive, this is as close as I've ever seen.

But the best part about clear is it's use of color and sounds.

Use of color for information

Colors are used in the lists to show priority. The more saturated the color, the more important the task. Now the tasks are already in a list, so one could argue that adding colors to it is redundant. But this is not true. Any human scanning a list will see each item as equally important. Most of us tend to try and put the most important thing at the top of the list but every time we look at the list we still browse more than one item.

Making the list colored gives a subtle hint that you don't need to look at other tasks. This is the one.

It also gives the user a reason to order the list properly. While the app never tell the user they have to, just creating a rule that says the top is higher priority will make users want to use the rule. Think of it like a hidden keyboard shortcut. Once you learn it, if it's a valuable shortcut, you stick with it.

Sounds that make it fun

Audio feedback has been used to great effect in games for decades. Which is why I've always found it odd that it's had such little attention in software tool design. Until now.

Clear has a sound effect for every function.

New item? Pop.

Finished item? Ping!

Delete item? Swoosh

But I really mean sound effect. These aren't just midi notes annoyingly stacked to make an awful racket. These are effects that sound great by themselves and stack neatly. What do I mean by stack? If you complete several tasks in a row, you don't just get an annoying amount of pings. You'd hate that. Instead you get a rising scale of pings that together seem to form a rising crescendo. Which incidentally is exactly like the normal sound design to gaining point in video games (remember picking up coins in Mario?)

UPDATE: The awesome sound design was done by Josh Mobley.

Getting out of the way

The reason the design of Clear is so impressive is that, while the UI reinforces the users positive emotions of using a todo list, it get's out of the way to let the users focus on thinking about tasks.

There's simply nothing else to think about. And you won't get those soothing sounds of completion if you don't complete some tasks.

Summary, or: is it awesome?

Clear is the best interface for getting things done I've seen so far. On any platform. It's also responsive like few apps on iOS.

It does gamification right by letting the user learn it's features intuitively and reinforcing the actual use of the product instead of showering them in useless badges.

Sadly however, it also really doesn't have a use. At least not for a todo-list power user such as myself. Enter a 100 tasks into Clear and you'll be looking at an infinite list with no overview. There's no search, there are no smart lists. But these features would not improve the product. In fact, I think including more features could destroy the product.

If you use lists often but don't have 1000 tasks in them. This app will make you smile on your way.

If you use really long lists, this app will be nice to play with but not useable.

Should you buy it? YES. If only to support good design.

As usual, the Verge has the best video first look:

An example of interactive UI design, the future of web design

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

HTML5 is a name we give the next level of web technology, it's just simpler to remember. All the web is built using HTML, CSS and Javascript and with HTML5 new and better ways of using these languages are being made available everywhere.

The revolution started with the iPhone.

With the launch of their breakthrough device they didn't intend for developers to be making Apps. Apple instead believed that developers would make web apps using HTML5 and save the web app as an icon of their phone. Surprisingly open by Apple's standards the strategy soon changed to native apps because web apps simply didn't feel quick enough.

Web technology is getting better

However, as HTML5 becomes a standard on PCs everywhere web apps are approaching the same sophistication as native applications. The hardest step now is for developers to take the plunge and create these great new interfaces and not get stuck in the old way of thinking and just pushing out another blog.

One of my favorite designers, Dustin Curtis, is leading the way with this new UI element on his site; the Kudos button.

It looks great. It's fun to use and it's a really simple way to add some life to a site. It doesn't work on touch interfaces for obvious reasons. Sadly Dustin hasn't made the code available yet, but most programmers could probably copy the concept. It's that easy. We just have to make sure we starting thinking less about static web and more about user interaction.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pgz9RhgUlQ&w=560&h=315]

Don't translate your catch phrase

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

From time to time I see big brands betting heavily on a phrase or a named function. The Windows Start button, the Facebook Like button etc. But time and time again I see these same big brands translating the phrase... Somewhere, some person at these companies missed a fundamental part of branding: don't change names all the time!

It doesn't matter if these phrases are verbs such as in the "Like" button. It's a part of your brand. If you translate your brand, you're starting a new brand.

(image via Techcrunch)

How the Apple iTV will work

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Most journalists now believe Apple will be releasing a TV this year. Speculating over Apple's plans is close to impossible, but if we look closely at what Apple have been releasing over the last few years I think we can predict what an Apple iTV would be like. There are a lot of problems. All of which would be solved by taking the problems out of the TV set and instead making it a much more connected device.

Go to market problem

When asked what he thought about set top boxes a few years ago Steve Jobs famously replied that there was no good go to market strategy.

http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/main.swf

The TV market is very different from Apple's usual markets in that consumers tend to buy new TVs close to 10 years apart. While Apple prefers to update their products every year.

"What is remarkable is how Apple can use iOS devices as wireless set top boxes for the Apple iTV."

The Apple iTV though, won't need to be updated every year. I believe Apple will release basically a huge monitor with some inputs and a decoding chip. The chip will easily be able to push 1080p or maybe even higher quality video in crisp quality. But in itself that is not remarkable. What is remarkable is how Apple can use iOS devices as wireless set top boxes for the Apple iTV.

User interface

Apple has always been famous for their interfaces. From the mouse to the click-wheel to the touch screen, Apple has always tried to create intuitive and immersive user interfaces. For the Apple iTV they have just released a UI that seems perfect for a TV set. Siri.

Using natural language to control your TV could be spectacular. Of course they'll probably throw in an Apple remote just to make everyone comfortable. But I will bet we will all be telling our TVs to turn on and off in the near future. And all iOS devices would also control the iTV, of course.

Content

Think of all your content from your Mac, your iOS device and your iTunes account seamlessly streamed through iCloud. The Apple iTV hardly even needs any local storage.

Some exclusive deals with production companies are sure to come. But if we look in the Apple media library they already have a really good offering. What they lack is real time programming. Most real time broadcasting is already available for iOS devices however. Which brings us to apps.

Apps

The Apple iTV doesn't need apps. Don't get me wrong, I want apps. But here's the magic sauce in my prediction. Apple won't make the iTV a stand alone device. The market doesn't update their TVs often enough for that. Instead the iTV will be an insanely great screen on which to project your content. From iOS devices. From iCloud. From Mac. Where you find AirPlay, you'll be able to push content to your iTV.

Want to play a game? Use your iPad or iPhone for controls and they'll sync the games graphics onto your iTV screen.

Want to see a movie? Start it on any device and just click AirPlay to show it on your iTV.

Want to listen to music? You get the point.

This might sound underwhelming. Apple's announcements often seem so at first glance. But then you realize what a profound change in the way you use technology it offers. Think about having a monitor at home that can play all your digital content. No matter what it is. Playing a game on your Mac? Watching a movie on your iPad? How about doing both side by side. Since the devices steam it to the iTV, it can handle anything you throw at it. Why not let your kids play games while you watch the news? Someone walks in with some photos to show? Put them up there with everything else.

"The best thing about it is that it doesn't need updates."

The best thing about it is that it doesn't need updates. Siri will get smarter through iCloud. More and more content will be available through iTunes. And every time you buy a new phone or tablet the iTV get's a major bump in features and power.

All wireless. All simple. A perfect Apple strategy. Or is it?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxj1QuKebdQ&w=560&h=315]

Sharing locally has been solved, Chirp review

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 00:00:00 GMT

"Hey could you email me that picture you just took?"

While sharing online has taken the web by storm and has since become old news. Sharing digital information locally has always been a hassle away from out computers and high speed internet connections. Not any more.

Say hello to Chirp

Chirp is the little mobile app that let's you share anything that has an URL or can be uploaded and given an url locally. All you need is the app. It's free. It's tiny, takes seconds to download and starts instantly and you're set. No, you don't need an account (though you can get one) no you don't need to connect it with facebook. You just start it. And now you're receiving anything being shared.

How does it share? This is the other brilliant part of this app. It sends the URL (everything is shared through their servers so an internet connection is needed, albeit not a fast one) through a short sound clip.

That's right, you hear a short blip-blop message as if R2-D2 really needs to pee, and there's the photo on your screen. It's cute. But i's also really smart. Since it shares through sound you can share messages with someone over the phone. I myself got a picture from the host of a Podcast I listen to. He just told me to open Chirp and I got to see what he was talking about.

#block-561b50f6e4b068581e679de6 .sqs-gallery-block-grid .sqs-gallery-design-grid { margin-right: -20px; } #block-561b50f6e4b068581e679de6 .sqs-gallery-block-grid .sqs-gallery-design-grid-slide .margin-wrapper { margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; }

Business model suggestion

Since I hate to see great services like this go away, usually because it's hard to figure out a business model. I thought I'd share a suggestion. Chirp, you listening? Great. Here's one way to monetize.

Providing the app for without an account is absolutely crucial to grow. If users need to jump through any hurdles at all Chirp will become another Bump. But without the first-mover-on-new-platform-hype. Keep it simple to share.

Instead charge for feature where a cost is tangible for the user: Access and Storage.

Access

Later access to the files. Keep the latest 3-5 shared things be available. Let the users purchase access to the rest. One advantage to this is that it's obvious to users. There's an understandable cost benefit. It's also just on the front end which makes it easy to implement (until you've got an open API).

Storage

In short: Huge. Ass. Files. Trying to share a 500MB HD movie clip? "Sorry this file is so large you need to pay 99 cents to cover the bandwidth costs". No problem.

Summing up

Chirp is awesome. Go get it.

And please Chirp, add support for all platforms. Open up an API and let developers go crazy with the free service. I'd love to Chirp stuff to my Mac or my friends PC / Android.

The mobile revolution at sime

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The first day of SIME, the European tech/startup conference, was a vivid circus of great speakers with great production values. This time in Stockholm. Sime is a special sort of conference because it is focused on marketing entrepreneurship and creating a forum for entrepreneurs and investors. While similar conferences might slog through technical details while zombie hordes of coffee ingesting listeners try to stay awake, SIME is more about showmanship. Almost every session is 20 minutes or less, even for the big players, and our host, Ola Ahlvarsson, is always on stage pushing things along.

The first day was a back to back parade of speakers from the tech business, talking about where we are and where we're going as a business. The message was unanimous: > The customer is already mobile. Where is your business? - Facebook, Microsoft, Google, etc

It's an important lesson that really can't be repeated enough. I Sweden, around 40 percent of all Internet connections are through a mobile network. Some are computers but most are other sorts of devices. Around the world there is s landslide increase in mobile use, smartphones are almost half the world market of phones, there are over 100 million tablets sold, and everyone is expecting information to be ubiquitous. But companies are holding out.

Companies everywhere are waiting for others to lead, they hope to see hard numbers on why they should move to mobile before they take the plunge. There are of course a lot of really bad agencies out there, simply not able to deliver responsive web, but for the most part statistics are holding us back.

While the large players show us statistics on mobile usage. Companies have become affected by tracking blindness and can't act before the users are mobile on their sites. The problem of course, is a classic chicken and egg problem. If the site doesn't work on mobile, customers will just use other sites, and since the companies can't see mobile usage increasing they won't rebuild their sites.

SIME is all focused on pushing the message of where tech is to everyone, making sure that the users, developers and companies are all looking in the same direction. And I hope that this years focus on mobile hit the spot. Because I really don't want to be tied to my laptop.

The Psychologist’s View of UX Design

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The Psychologist’s View of UX Design I've always been constantly surprised more interaction and UX designers don't think in these terms.

Tracking, the flawed belief in statistics

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Tracking is the basis for everything online these days. We track what content gets the most clicks to make sure we create better content. We track the ads we run to make sure our ads are targeted to the right people and that they convert well. We use tracking in all aspects of our lives to make better decisions and take the right action. But it's not working, is it. No matter how long you stare at those numbers they don't give you a golden bullet. So what's wrong with this theory? Everything.

While tracking makes our decisions gradually better, tracking does not make any new connections. Do you think RedBull is tracking any direct ROI on sponsoring Felix Baumgartner's record breaking sky dive from the edge of space? No. But I think few people would argue that they didn't get more than their share of media coverage. Very few marketing schemes get that kind of eye-ball-action, but the important thing is that tracking would never lead you to invest in such a venture.

Neither would tracking lead you to think that a generous return policy could generate profits. Yet every single report tell us that it does.

In the 50's a young designer made a nondescript electronics company a house hold name by creating memorable and user friendly designs for their products. The company was Braun, and the designer was Dieter Rams. Rams, who've since been credited as an inspiration for designers behind cars and even Apple, didn't do it by tracking.

There is nothing wrong with tracking. In fact, without tracking it's extremely hard to reach a goal, once it's set. But tracking is quite probably holding you back. If tracking is the basis for your strategy, you're probably not seeing the full market. That light at the end of the tunnel might turn out to be a train.

Strategy is taking the broad view of a business and aiming your organization. Tactics are how we get there. Tactics make great use of tracking and statistics. Strategy does not. Depending on strategy will keep you constantly running to catch up with the world, because the numbers can only really show you what used to happen. And only in a very specific situation at that. It's harder to argue without numbers. Which is why most people eventually stop trying. Next time you are in a meeting and someone offers a contrary view of a situation you might want to think about it a few minutes. Don't throw out your innovation because of the result of a skewed question asked by bored data miners.

ux review of chrome for iOS

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Google services have been a long time coming for iOS users. While most people's immediate response to that is to say "of course, they have android" I think it's weird for google to neglect 400 million customers of their services just because they want to promote another mobile platform. Android already has a majority market share after all.

Oddly enough, Chrome became the first really native iOS app by google. Odd because Apple is severely restricting apps that compete with iOS native functionality, and the browser could be said to be more important for iOS than the actual phone app...

Chrome launched with a slew of welcome mobile optimizations for a browser that apple has since copied to their own app, safari. Syncing not only accounts, but history, tabs and even sessions didn't exist on iOS before chrome. But for all it's glory, such as less browser chrome and actually useful tabs, Chrome also has a number of weaknesses.

Tab refresh

When I switch between tabs in chrome, something goes terribly wrong. For all the fast loading and fast tab switching goes straight out the window as I am forced to wait for a page refresh. This might sound like it makes sense as first, most pages need to be refreshed before I can see any new content after all? But I often switch between apps, while reading, looking something up or for any other reason. The several clicks and wait that safari makes me do to access my other tab is bad enough. Forcing me to wait for a full refresh, and especially on a mobile network, just breaks the experience. Why would I keep waiting? F this. I'll be on Facebook.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels the same way, but I haven't gotten any word from google on whether they are working on this or not.

The dark UI

Google has always had a light, cheerful, design aesthetic. It might not fit everyone but its google. With recent android generations they've stepped back from this to offer a darkes, softer, design. Chrome fits perfectly into this. Except of course, that its on iOS where nothing is dark.

Not only does the app look like android rather than google, but it doesn't fit into its environment at all. It's I'd just a plain bad design decision. With the reasons why painfully obvious.

Summery

Just a few days ago Google released new, native, apps for gmail and YouTube on iOS. Both of these apps show a lot of promise, especially for design. So I'm hopeful that google will get around to fixing these issues with chrome soon.

Though I still wonder why google feels its services are worth more to customers on android? Int google all about the services? Why deny iOS users google now? I'm a google ecosystem user since 2007, nothing so far has made me change my mind. I'm also an apple device user since years back. Apple allows me to use google services, why won't google?

UX trend predictions of 2012 A:

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Whenever likeminded creative people try to innovate trends emerge. Ideas give birth to ideas. As ideas keep combining in the heads of creative people everywhere some ideas become more sticky than others. I'll document some of the trends in user experience design I predict will become the norm in 2012. An example trend from previous years is the scroll down to refresh design. Created by Loren Brichter for his famous Tweetie iphone app it has since become the standard for refreshing feeds and lists in apps everywhere.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js_EjlH-UbQ]

Example from mobile webKit build

Related function Panels

You've seen them already. Open your Facebook app and look at the button in the top left corner. Tapping the button or swiping the interface from left to right opens the menu:

This background panel is always there. Neatly integrated in iOS navigation panel.

The iOS navigation panel? At the top of all iOS apps with many views is a bar that usually has two buttons on it. This bar is called the navigation bar in the iOS SDK and intended to be used like this:

the left side button steps you back in the app. Just like the back button in your browser.
the right side button steps you forward. Showing the next step or function in the app.

Related function panels will become a trend become complex apps need menus, and no one wants to start the app in a menu. Instead starting the app smack in the middle of activity giving the user an option of accessing the menu by "stepping back".

Why is this different from a menu

But the reason I call the panels related function and not menu panels is that when a menu is that as soon as we have this paradigm, panels on either side that are "behind" our current view in chronological order. We can show the user all sorts of related information and functions, regardless of the apps functions.

Take for instance Path 2.0, a beautiful example of UI design. It too uses the left side menu, but to the right it shows your friends list. In the Facebook app this right side button opens sorting options and not a panel at all. This doesn't matter. As long as the paradigm is in place, panels will start showing up with the most important related functions in apps of all sorts.

Is this good or bad

The design works great in the Facebook app, in the Gmail app and in Path 2.0. But if it will work when lots of apps join the trend? We can't know beforehand.

The design is solid from a perception and usability perspective. It also looks great. So I'm hoping to see some innovative use of it shortly!

UX trend predictions of 2012 B:

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Whenever likeminded creative people try to innovate trends emerge. Ideas give birth to ideas. As ideas keep combining in the heads of creative people everywhere some ideas become more sticky than others. I’ll document some of the trends in user experience design I predict will become the norm in 2012. You can find my first post on the subject here. Another example from a 2011 app is the amazing full screen representation in Wren.

White space apps

When I first saw Wren I was amazed. It was focused and minimalist. Therefore I was shocked to see the full-screen button in the top right corner of the app, "Wouldn't that completely wreck the experience" was my knee-jerk reaction. Then I tried it and another trend was obvious, apps that scale without bloating their feature sets, or White space apps.

Why are White space apps different? Mobile.

The mobile revolution has some interaction and UI designers scratching their heads or pulling their hair trying to fit all the usual information. The current computing paradigm has relied on massive amounts of text and information tags for a long long time. Even programs that have really tried to rid themselves of rarely used functions or unnecessary amounts of help information have sometimes been stuck in contextual help hell due to the modus operandi of desktop interface design.

No more. Mobile has rid us of all these things. And some designers are provocative enough to realize that less really is more and simply scale their apps without adding more information or complexity.

Is this good or bad?

Only time will tell. But the dominance of mobile design today tells us a lot about what people like. I think it is less about the iPhone being a must-have product and a lot more about really smart and beautiful apps that are just complex piles of engineering on other platforms.

Simple is better. And using white space to focus the users attention on a sparingly chosen set of functions beautifully designed makes this clear. I believe these minimal products will in the future continue to trump the feature behemoths of yesteryear.

Why great customer service is the best marketing

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Customer service is often a necessary evil. Something companies must do to wheel out stats from when there's a PR crisis. But usually it's costly and no one really wants to do it.

Ye Old Way

I'm starting to think all PR education begins with the creed "keep the customer as far away from the company as possible" since most companies I contact have elaborate systems in place to "streamline" the communication out of existence.

Enter a new marketplace: The social web. Suddenly recommendations are worth double their weight in gold, but companies are still struggling keeping up. They start Facebook pages with no idea of what to do there. They start Twitter accounts that only tells tweeps to call customer service.

The new way

But then there are the other companies. Companies that have embraced the tribal culture online and depend upon customer interaction for their business. They are no less motivated by profit than the other sort of company, but their strategy makes them a very different sort of animal.

Yesterday I downloaded an app to my iPhone. The app was supposed to show me my Google Analytics numbers quickly and beautifully. I was thrilled I finally found an app that looked like I might use it. But it didn't work. I couldn't log in.

I immediately browsed over to the company's site and looked for any information of the problem. When I couldn't find any I emailed them a question, expecting to never hear from them again.

Within ten minutes I had a response.

Someone from the company read my message and sent me a quick response. Short, to the point. Solving my problem. Apparently the guys and gals at Google had changed the API and while the app had been updated the new version wasn't in the AppStore just yet.

They even offered to buy me coffee while I waited:

Sorry about that. It sucks. We can buy you a coffee while waiting for the new version ( we'll PayPal you the money for Starbucks if you want).

Since it was late at night in Sweden I declined. But I was also a surprised and happy customer, not only had they solved my problem (or at least, explained what the problem was and had fixed it), but they had given me relevant information, a schedule, and a coffee!

When was the last time a bank or a telephone company did that?

The result

Because of this short communication, not only am I inclined to tell people about my experience. I'm also more inclined to recommend the product. The cost of this interaction for the company is negligible but the worth of a happy customer advocating the product is huge.

The take away

Invest in communication. Realize that all interactions with the customers are chances to turn them from faceless consumers to happy ambassadors of your company. Keep them close. Keep them communicating with you. The costs might be high, but compared to losing those customers to the competitor this should be a no-brainer. If you're in a huge corporation, try finding customers who became ambassadors and use them as arguments that the model does work.

And also, download Analytiks right now. It's awesome. And Blatt Labs does a great job.

Why telecom companies are so far behind the times

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

To people in the tech industry, telecom operators seem helplessly behind the times. To most people however, telecom companies are their only real connection to tech. So why are they so far behind?

Telecom companies still don't sell most computers on the market. But they do sell the internet connections, the smartphones that are increasingly like computers, the minutes and text messages we plow through every day to communicate.

I used to work for one of the largest telecom companies in Sweden. I started my carrier there with the hope I would help them transition from the "minutes/texts" model to the content distribution model. Because eventually, all the services a telecom company offers today will be software only. Based on open internet technology. How do I know? Because it already happened. Delivering content could've been a profit model that outlasted the current model by decades. Then the iPhone launched.

At the telecom company I worked for there was no uproar. In fact, I remember walking around in stunned surprise because of the lack of reaction. They didn't get it. Or got it but didn't let it show. Needless to say, the iPhone took the content market out of our hands. The App Store was now the de facto content distribution system. Then Apple launched iMessages.

I came in at work wild eyed and excited. Apple's iMessages work by sending text messages through their notification system. Telecom operators usually charge per text message iMessages are not distinguishable from other notifications making them impossible to count and impossible to stop. Even if the telecom operators would like to stop iMessages they can't. Not without breaking the notifications on the iPhone, making millions of customers complain and even worse; the CEO's mail would stop working on the golf course. Now I knew there was only one way out, telecom operators would have to step back, and start charging for network bandwidth. A lot like the internet connections pre-broadband. But that isn't happening.

Telecom operators take in most of their profits from text messages. The rest from voice and contracts etc. They generally take in very little profit from charging for data. On the other hand most of a telecom operators costs, except building the network, come from counting and billing for minutes and texts. It's a hard and advanced process. Billing for data traffic is very easy. The future is clear, telecom operators will sell data plans and earn their profits form that. So why are telecom operators all over the world still bundling minutes and trying to block Skype?

I looked for answers at my company. I talked to everyone around me, no one cared very much. After weeks of this I started to realize that the middle managers didn't care but the executives understood. But were stalling. For what? The same reason the music industry doesn't embrace digital distribution.; the income model will change so drastically that the market will become instantly competitive and changing again. This is frightening.

Every manager and executive in the telecom industry today have basically made it their policy to stall for change. Until the market has evolved so far that they can not hold it back any longer telecom operators will continue to wish for the music industries dream: Not in my lifetime.

This is what they hope for. That the change will come after they quit. That the drop in profits during a turbulent shift will not be on their resume. That the scandal of firing hundreds of employees to pivot a large company does not land their name in the press.

This is why telecom operators are holding back progress, and trying to stifle products that run through their network. This, almost insane, way of doing business is helped by the fact that telecom operators are large enough to nudge law makers in their direction.

The next time you wonder why the network isn't faster, why video calls are still no where to be seen and why your iPhone doesn't do something amazing. Know that this is why. There are no technological hurdles to overcome. There is no law making it harder than it needs to be.

There is just a bunch of scared old men who have become scared of the inevitable. Who fear change.

Why touch works

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The reason touch works is often cited, it's because it's "intuitive". But there is little talk about what makes touch devices more intuitive. We're supposed to just believe that the finger is better. But discussing with my partner Sara this morning, I think I've understood why.

The mouse

As a tech savvy person it's easy to forget all the knowledge we take for granted for using our devices. I uncovered one this I had been taking for granted, short commands. A someone who spends most of his waking time in front of a computer I started memorizing short commands and gestures many years ago. But most people don't. For most people, short commands just don't feel all that necessary. Using the mouse to point and click the bold button is simple enough. To me, it's a huge waste of time.

The touch device

On touch devices however, this problem isn't there. Either you touch the bold icon, or you don't. The only short commands that are available are gestures which, while not always intuitive, always tend to work the same way. There are only about three gestures to learn on iOS for example. This is annoying to me, because my normal power-user habits need to change. But for the market at large, it's the same interaction but finally without a mouse to get in the way.

Intuitive

The touch panel is intuitive because what you see is what you get. But what we, the power users, tend to forget that it's more intuitive than we believe. Because all the hidden extras that we use on older devices just aren't there.

Touch devices are leveling the playing field. And that's why we feel we still need our old devices to get real work done.

Designing in-app purchases that work

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

With the rise of mobile, more and more people are looking at in-app purchases to monetize their products and services. But, as usual, there are design aspects to think about. I this article I intend to explain two of the most important things to think about when designing for in-app purchases: Relevance, and Access.

In-app purchases are really nothing new. It's just the name for how to buy extras in apps. We've been buying extras for decades already: "cheaper rims with the car", "buy two jumbo sized bags of spam for the price of one!" and the list goes on.

What is different this time around is that these extras are virtual. You're more or less buying the use of a few more lines of code. This makes the value proposition for the customer very different from the real world extras we're used to. Which makes relevance and access more important than they would be for fuzzy dice.

Relevance

Relevance is the most important aspect for an in-app purchase. If the extra on sale isn't relevant, why would you care? But if the fuzzy dice at the car dealership are exactly what your wardrobe needs, perfect!

Take Punch Quest for example. Punch quest is one of the most popular games to hit the AppStore in late 2012. But despite having millions of downloads and tons of active players, Punch Quest didn't make much money. It's was a free app, and great game, but the in-app purchases lacked relevance.

The extras you could buy for Punch Quest were... Odd. They either didn't have impact on gameplay, being visual gimmicks, or they did but had strange, nondescript, names. I even bought some to support the developer, and I still have no idea how what I bought impacts the game. Without relevance, your in-app purchase is doomed to fail.

Compare that to Analytiks, my favorite iOS web statistics app. While popular, it's nowhere near as popular as Punch Quest. Yet it's much more successful. The in-app purchases in Analytiks are very relevant. Analytiks shows you a screen for every site in your google analytics account. Just swipe for the next site. But it's limited to 8 sites. After 8 sites instead you find a screen offering another access to neither 8 sites for a small sum. Brilliant. Instant purchase when needed. If you don't want to pay extra, you still have full control of which 8 sites are shown.

Access

The other important aspect for in-app purchases is access, which loosely translates to "ease of use". Ever found a business that seemed to not want to take your money? They had poor access.

Punch Quest has in-app purchases, but they are not a part of the actual game. You can play for hours without having any idea there is anything to buy in the app. Worse, when you navigate through the menu structure it's still hard to find.

The customer first needs to want upgrades for the game, most of which are quite hard to understand if you haven't played extensively. Then the customer has to run out of coins collected in the game with which to buy upgrades. Then, finally, they need to find a small call to action hidden in the navigation bar. Not very accessible even for advanced users. Terrible for casual players looking for an advantage in the game.

Analytiks does it right. In the main app, after your sites, you are presented with the upgrade where the content ends. The screen is uncluttered and has only one message and call to action, the cta is clearly labeled with the price. Making it a simple few clicks to make the purchase, there is no lack of information, not ambiguity, about the product that makes the customer want to think it over.

Summary

If people are already using your product or service. Chances are they might be open to extras or upgrades.But by making them relevant to the use case, and making them accessible for the user, they become useful extensions to the app. Which are much more likely to sell.

Relevant:
expands the product
solves specific problems
not removing artificial limitations in the product
Access:
clear and understandable purchase information
presented well for the use case
not a "bolted on" design or user flow

Don’t live week by week

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Don’t get stuck living week to week, every day is a chance to do something. Even Mondays.

Approach every day like you’d approach a week. Set up a schedule, make sure you plan for rest, and execute.

Everything you want to know about Facebook Graph Search

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

A week ago Mark Zuckerberg was on stage talking about the future of Facebook and unveiling Facebook Graph Search. Since then thousands upon thousands of articles have been written on the subject, so why write another one? Every single piece I've read, seem to either misunderstand, or not care about what makes Graph Search different. So here I go, trying to explain what Graph Search really is.

What it isn't

The first thing Graph Search is not, is finished. The beta available to people know is basically a really smart search for content you can already find on Facebook. Not very different from the old search, though it looks a lot nicer and is easier to use. No need to update your settings or anything. People might find older pictures of you more easily, but it's already very easy.

In the future though, Graph Search will expand to with more information. Every Like outside from sites other than Facebook as well as the pictures and comments from Instagram. This is the real treasure of Graph Search, and we've yet to see it.

The second, perhaps more important thing, that Graph Search is not, is web search. This has confused a lot of people. Possibly because of the name, Graph Search. Sounds a lot like Google Search. So what is the difference?

Let's say I make a search for "cats that look like hitler", as one does. On Google, which is a keyword search designed to give you an answer, I'll get tons and tons of hits. Cat's with moustaches everywhere. But on Facebook Graph Search, I'll find nothing. Nothing.

In fact, Graph Search will realize that this is not a search it was designed for and bring up Bing instead. Which returns whatever Microsoft thinks is right. Which has nothing to do with Graph Search. So why did Graph Search disregard my question about Cats?

What it is

Facebook Graph Search is designed to return related things. Think of it like a Thesaurus to Google Dictionary. You can search for what your friends have done, thought, took pictures of etc. But it has to be in relation to something else to matter:

Friends near Berlin with cats that look like hitler

Might actually return a few pictures. Facebook is building a search for really massive amounts of data. So massive, that we only remember them as sort of related stuff: "Remember that place we where at about a year ago? With the monkey? What song was playing?"

Facebook will return an answer to that while Google is still figuring out whether you meant an Orangutan or a Gorilla. So why are so many people confused?

What's missing?

When you do a Graph Search today most of the information it can bring up is photos and if people are friends or have worked together. In a word, it's limited. Which has made a lot of reporters and bloggers believe that it is just another keyword search.

The reason it's so limited is that Facebook is still adding the Open Graph and Instagram to its search. Instagram you know, is a photo sharing service, no different from Facebook photos except that most photos have location data. Open Graph is more exciting, Open Graph is all those Like buttons you've clicked on sites other than Facebook. When the information is in, you'll probably be able to make searches like:

Article I got from Sara that I liked

And actually get the answer you're looking for. This is very different from what Google is doing. In fact, it's very different from anything else on the market.

When is it coming and Who's this for?

I have no idea when these features will be added in. It seems like Facebook is a long way out before Graph Search finally done. Maybe it will never be done, like Google products, it might stay in beta for years while Facebook engineers keep tuning it. It doesn't really matter though, as Facebook evolves, so will Graph Search.

An interesting point to make is that this beta really is for everyone. It's not a technical beta. It's more of a social one. If Facebook had released all this information through search the tech journalists would have all went crazy for privacy. Even in its limited form today, most articles I've seen are about how scary Facebook search is. No mention of the fact that nothing has changed, it's just the pictures you're already sharing showing up.

I believe this beta is here to make people comfortable with the idea of having a powerful search tool on Facebook before they open the floodgates of the Open Graph. Because that is where the new information is. Information that people might have forgotten about or buried in a slew of updates over the years.

Friends that liked articles about George W Bush winning the election? ...oops...

What Facebook Graph Search really is, is the Siri for information on Facebook. It won't compete with Google directly. But it will serve you information about people that you can't find anywhere else. If anyone is still confused, think about is like this: Graph Search is a Thesaurus, Google is a Dictionary.

How design is killing Google

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Google was not known for it’s visual design in the early years, in fact it was known for having horrible visuals. But Google products worked, often working so much better than it’s competitors that Google seemed to really understand it’s users. Google may have had bad visuals, but their user experiences where great.

Now Google has become a power house of great visual design. But Google products no longer has their sheen of great usability. Something has been missing from a lot of their later products.

Whats happening? Google is becoming a corporation. And yes, it’s a bad thing.

The Obvious

The latest generation of Google products have something very specific in common; they only show the most obvious use:

Google glass? Jumping out of an aeroplane!
Google now? On your way to the airport!
Android? It’s open! And therefore better!

See a trend? This is marketing speak. Dumbing the products down for a wide audience. Designers don’t stop at the obvious, because the obvious is always wrong.

No longer the subtle use cases that, right when you need them, solve all your problems. Because Google understands the use of Email or a Calendar.

Instead we get beautiful apps, and great videos, showing the obvious bragging rights but no real use.

Google, where did you go? Come back down to us. Stop thinking like a corporation.

How to design rules that work

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Rules are ever present in our daily lives. We follow social rules, laws. We create organizations by making rules, we create deals and contracts all defined by rules. But very few people learn how to create rules. Most rules, don't work. As a former game designer, I've studied rules academically and tried and tested rule sets thousands of times. This is what I've learnt so far. ## Rules always create side effects

All rules are limitations on a persons actions (a rule says you can't design your text a certain way). But since people are surprisingly intelligent, they always find ways around rules (the rule creates a counter culture and suddenly hipster typographical posters abound!). We smile at this behavior in kids, always looking for ways to get around bedtimes. Bt we fail to see that every human does this, it's so ingrained in the human condition it even has a name in game design and economics: emergent behavior.

Emergent behavior means the behavior that arrives as an unforeseen consequence to a situation. Rebellion is an emergent behavior. Cheating is an emergent behavior.

Rules always , without exception, create these unforeseen behaviors because rules are *fractal*. Meaning that rules can never cover every single situation or twist in the language.

Did you brush your teeth? Yes. Did you brush them with the toothbrush? Yes. Did you put toothpaste on the toothbrush? Yss. Before you brushed your teeth? No...

When I create rules I always have to take emergent behavior into account, *where is it likely to happen*? *How will the rule affect situations that aren't exactly the same*? How often does your management or project manager take emergent behavior into account when creating rules? If the answer is never, the rules aren't really working.

## The softest touch works, while hard rules fail

Surprisingly, the rules that do work aren't the simple and direct ones. In fact the simpler and more direct the rule is, the more emergent behavior it creates. Let me show you why. If you set a rule for yourself that **you must turn left at every intersection** you'll soon find yourself in conflict with the rule. You might quite quickly arrive at the workaround that the rule doesn't say how many times to turn left, and from then on you'll be turning left several times to turn right. I bet you're thinking of other rules you're breaking in this way?

But if the rule says **you can only turn left at intersections** it is much more open to interpretation, and oddly we're more inclined to follow it. Maybe I'll turn right somewhere that's not an intersection? Or maybe taking a turn around the block will be interesting? The more open version of the rule makes the rule more interesting and less annoying. What's happening is that activating individuals minds, asking people to judge for themselves, makes them more inclined to work with the system. Asking individuals to simply follow a rule is more likely to make them bored and opposed to the rule.

## Rules limit what people think

How to design rules that work

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Emergent behavior means the behavior that arrives as an unforeseen consequence to a situation. Rebellion is an emergent behavior. Cheating is an emergent behavior.

Rules always , without exception, create these unforeseen behaviors because rules are *fractal*. Meaning that rules can never cover every single situation or twist in the language.

Did you brush your teeth? Yes. Did you brush them with the toothbrush? Yes. Did you put toothpaste on the toothbrush? Yss. Before you brushed your teeth? No...

## The softest touch works, while hard rules fail

## Rules limit what people think

How to design rules that work

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Rules are ever present in our daily lives. We follow social rules, company rules, and laws. We create organizations by making sets of rules, we create deals and contracts all defined by rules. But very few people learn how to create rules. Most rules, don't work. As a former game designer, I've studied rules academically and tried and tested rules by the thousands. This is what I've learnt so far about creating rules that work.

Rules always create side effects

All rules are limitations on an individuals actions (a rule says you can't design text a certain way). But since people are surprisingly intelligent, they always find ways around rules (the rule creates a counter culture and suddenly hipster typographical posters abound!). We smile at this behaviour in kids, always looking for ways to get around bedtimes, but we fail to see that every human does this. It's so ingrained in the human condition it even has a name in both game design and economics: emergent behaviour.

Emergent behaviour means the behaviour that arrives as an unforeseen consequence to a situation. Cheating at games is an emergent behaviour. Rebellion is an extreme emergent behaviour.

Rules always - without exception - create these unforeseen behaviours because rules are *fractal*. Meaning that rules can never cover every single situation or twist in the language. There will always be new situations the rule should apply to.

- Did you brush your teeth? - Yes. - Did you brush them with the toothbrush? - Yes. - Did you put toothpaste on the toothbrush? - Yes. - Before you brushed your teeth? - No...

When I create rules I try to take emergent behaviour into account, where and how is it likely to happen?, How will the rule affect situations that are slightly different from the normal situation? How often does your management or project manager take emergent behaviour into account when creating rules? If the answer is never, the rules are probably not working.

The softest touch works, while hard rules fail

Surprisingly, the rules that do work aren't the simple and direct ones. In fact the simpler and more direct the rule is, the more emergent behaviour it creates.

Let me explain how by giving an example. If you set a rule for yourself that you must turn left at every intersection you'll soon find yourself in conflict with the rule. You might quite quickly arrive at the workaround that the rule doesn't say how many times to turn left, and from then on you'll be turning left several times to turn right. I bet you're thinking of other rules you're breaking in this way?

But if the rule says you can only turn left at intersections it is much more open to interpretation, and oddly individuals are more inclined to follow it. Maybe I'll turn right somewhere that's not an intersection? Or maybe taking a route around the block will be interesting? The more open version of the rule makes the rule more interesting and less annoying.

What's happening is that activating individuals minds, asking people to judge for themselves, is making them more inclined to work with the system instead of around it. Asking individuals to just follow a rule is more likely to make them bored, frustrated, and opposed to the rule. No matter how normal and simple the rule might seem.

This is why companies like to talk about corporate culture. A culture is simple a set of rules that are not defined, instead the individuals in a culture make it up or pass it along as they go. Culture is a very soft set of social rules, and a great way to lead a group of people in the same direction. It is also very hard to create, because it is soft and made up by the individuals in the culture. And as soon as someone puts pen to paper, the culture is dead. The air of cooperation will be replaced by bored people following the rules.

(Creating cultures is also a part of designing games, and deconstructing culture is essential to economics, so I'll probably revisit culture in a later post.)

Rules limit what people think

The absolutely worst part of a rule is when it's followed. Beware of people following hard rules, it never amounts to any good.

If a hard rule is enforced, or socially frowned upon to break, it swiftly becomes a dogma. A rule that is set so hard in individuals minds that they can not break it. Not only are they unable to break the rule, they might even be unable to think about breaking the rule.

We see this happening at all times, all around us. Ever wonder why senior citizens are more often against change? It's because they have lived with an unquestioned rule for so long, it has become impossible for them to see a world without the rule. The same thing happen with middle managers, unable to alter a rule themselves, and unable to see the effects of them, they stay with rules long after the intended purpose has become irrelevant.

The really worrying part comes from cognitive psychology. Studies seem to indicate that living with the same thoughts for to long actually create rigid structures in your physical brain. Yes, I'm serious. The brain is a huge network of neurons, always making new connections. But living with the same connections, thoughts, for long enough might physically inhibit new connections being made. That's right, hard rules might actually be shutting down small parts of our brains!

No wonder change comes so slowly right? (For more on the subject, google "Neuro plasticity")

Creating rules that work

From my years in games and economics I've learned a lot of ways not to make rules. But at times we need them, no matter how hard they may be to create. If we're aware of the pitfalls and careful, we can create rules that work.

Here's a list of rules that I follow when creating rules (rule-ception?):

Communicate the outcome of your rule, not the limitations (the rule itself).
Think up situations that might warp the rules, and take it to extremes.
Think about how the rule will affect things when it's purpose is no longer relevant.
Remember that rules are used by at least two groups of people: individuals, and groups.
Never punish rule breaking. If you must punish, punish for outcomes.
Try to be vague. Trust people to interpret rules intelligently.

How to plan UX, the right way

Tue, 15 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMT

The most common gripe I hear from UX designers is that they're not invited into the process early enough. This is absolutely a problem. If you get on board when the code is done and time is running out, there's only so much you can do. But there's another common problem, rarely talked about. Getting on board too early.

Many companies I talk to today want to plan their UX in advance. Basically they want sketches of how the end user will interact with the finished project. Several things can go wrong with this approach:

You get locked into what the project was supposed to be and you can no longer change it for the better.
The sketches might not be technically sound. Small details can often be the largest technical hurdles.
There might not be enough time to realize the planned UX, but it's just so tasty that your iterative process becomes a linear project doomed to miss the deadline.
The designer(s) fall in love with an ideal, and are less open to change.

All of these issues, and all the ones I did not list, can be summed up in this sentence:

Premature UX is like masturbating before sex

No one is satisfied, it doesn't help you with the actual project and worst of all: The people involved in the pre-production process feel they've done some real work. Worst case they might feel that their job is already done. Just as the real work starts.

When and how to plan UX

Instead of trying to plan out a theoretical product of a project, find the parameters:

Define a problem that the project is trying to solve, without actually proposing the solution.
LIst the key issues and responsibilities the project must adhere to.
Set measurable targets for the project, then divide by half.

This way the problem solving is a part of the project, and the project may run more smoothly. It also forces UX to be a part of the project process instead of just something to check off before the project starts.

As always, the key to great UX and design is iteration. Having UX as a part of the development process, without the limitations of a set goal, makes a vast difference.

Sneak Peek of Event Monitor

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Working long and hard hours, one deserves a hobby. So what does a UX developer do when there's an hour a night to spare? Create something.

My latest project is Event Monitor. A dashboard for events and happenings showing beautiful statistics all rendered in SVG (so it works great on any platform).

Please check it out and let me know what you think!

The definitive guide to value creation

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT

In my youth I dabbled with dark arts. I thought experimenting wouldn't hurt, so I tried a little, but little became a lot. My addiction took up all my spare time and heavily impacted my social life. I became alienated by friends and had a hard time talking to people close to me.That's how I spent six years studying economics.

Creating value is tossed around these days as the way for startups and freelancers to contribute to the marketplace. So why is no one talking about what that really means, or how to do it? The short answer is because they don't know. The long answer is that the ones that do know think it's so obvious they don't the need to explain it.

What is value, and how do we get it

I'll just touch upon the economics of Value first, but don't worry, it'll be short and painless: All value is derived from trade. That's what value IS.

The idea works like this; if I have a ton of gold, but no one wants it, it is worth nothing. Literally nothing. Because I can't get anything for it. If someone would give me a loaf of bread for it, it'd be worth a loaf of bread.

Thank god we have money (an abstract form of value, think of it as shares in the work you've done) so we don't need to slog around with all that stuff all the time.

The interesting thing about this idea is that it implies that everyone gets richer all the time. You wouldn't trade for something you didn't want would you? We all trade what we think is worthy, which makes us better off. So in every trade there are two winners. Not one. Everyone is better off. If they aren't, the trade has been forced or is certainly the last trade between them.

How do startups and freelancers get value? They trade with their customers (and everyone you trade with is a customer). If the customers are better off after the trade they are likely to keep being customers.

Seems abstract? Let's get all practical with examples.

How to Create Value

The question of how to create value is now a lot easier to answer; we need to create stuff to trade. By stuff I mean anything that people are willing to trade for. It can be a product, or a service, but whatever we create we must have a clear definition of what it is before we trade. Otherwise customers might get impossible expectations or simple refuse the trade.

But the main point here is create. We must be constantly creating to add value, and to show our customers what we can create.

Defining a product

A product is anything that can stand alone is a product. A book, a play, and a website are all products.

Defining a service

A service is anything that can not stand alone, anything that only exists while you do it. Cleaning, making a website, and acting in a play are all services. Seem of them create products, others just create value either by saving the customer time or lending them expertise.

The good sale and the bad sale.

Good salesmen focus on adding value to their customers, which is why they often have good relationships with their customers.

Poor salesmen are just trying to sell whatever is the flavor of the week, which is why poor salesmen often have high spikes in sales but rarely recurring customers.

Summary

The only way to create value is to trade something. Making your product or your service easier to understand by defining, simply, what the customer gets is a great way to increase your trade.

Creating stuff is the only to add value. So never stop creating.

The next step for Apple

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT

With the launch of the iPhone Apple changed the world of computing forever. Since then Apple has fought a war against Samsung, Google and others over the dominance of the mobile market. But not a lot has really changed.

Apple introduced the high pixel density display, Samsung launched larger displays. All the companies have introduced all sorts of bells and whistles to try to catch the interest of the consumer, but to little real effect. The basic model hasn't changed all that much from the original iPhone.

Many people are thinking about and desperately trying to predict the next step. Google is launching Glass, a smartphone-like display that sits in the corner of your eye and is controlled by your voice. Most companies are working on watch-like devices based on the rumour that Apple is making one.

That got me thinking, this is an odd assumption. Why should reinventing the market require a new device? The iPhone was certainly not the first phone, nor smartphone. It was just radically smarter then the competition. Instead of launching a new type of device, what if Apple would drastically improve the devices they already have? What could they do?

The next generation: Real Touch

The central feature of the iPhone, and the iPad, is the screen. When Apple added the Retina screen the other companies scoffed and smirked claiming it would only decrease battery life. But after they got their hands on it, the entire market rapidly went with high pixel density displays.

What if Apple would add high density touch displays next? You can still use your finger as a primary pointing device. But also a stylus without lag or stutter. Maybe several people could draw and sketch together on an iPad.

The scoffs and smirks

Very few people will read this and go "wow! What an amazing and novel idea!". Most will remember the failed styluses of yester-year and think I've fallen off the wagon. But what if, just like with the retina screen, there would be no down side to these screens? What if they simple worked as magic paper?

Wacom has the technology already. Now it is just a question of price and if Apple believes the market wants this. I say Apple, because even if Samsung and Microsoft could also do this I think their implementation of it would be lacking.

The problem with people without problems

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 00:00:00 GMT

You've worked with them. Perhaps you've even been them. The people who claim "there are no problems, only opportunities". This needs to stop. Putting your head in the sand doesn't make the tiger go away.

Problems are the interesting bits. Where the plans collide with reality. Solving problems is what we do. Solving problems is the only fun part about our jobs! Issues don't solve themselves because we reframe them. But they might if we talk about them.

Fuck all the people who tell you there are no problems.

If the connotations of the word makes them wet their bed, they have bigger problems than language in the workplace.

I'm not saying that the connotations of words have no power. Words have great power and choosing the right ones is very important. But if your organisation is stumped by the connotations of one word accurately describing reality, than there is a severe lack of direction.

If you trade a swearword for "sugar", you've only moved the angry connotation about. You haven't stopped swearing. You'll find yourself sounding crazy instead of mad.

We need to stop recoiling from the realities of the world, and of our work. Words have power. But so do actions. Deal with it. Learn to work with problems.

What makes a product good

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Sit up straight, I'm about to explain the secret sauce behind exceptional products. There is a difference between products that perform poorly and products that perform well that is hard to put your finger on. Designers have been struggling to tell you about it for years. But it turns out it's not the answer that is the problem, it's the question. The question is: Is it enjoyable? It's the difference between functional and great.

For a long time now the tech industry has been struggling with paradigms. Is your product technology driven or design driven? Are your most important people engineers or designers? The pendulum swings every five years or so.

Google is a company driven by engineers, they solve problems. Apple is a company driven by designers, they make experiences. Which company makes the better product? Android or iPhone? For years, journalists and salesmen have been asking the wrong questions, and coming to all the wrong conclusions.

Customers buy products for their features. But they keep them for the experience.

No one doubts that features are important. Every retail box is crammed with specs and every review seems to compare products on feature lists. But features are not what makes customers buy. When you buy a kitchen knife, you probably just grab a cheap one to get the job done, right? But the next time you buy one, you'll be more likely to invest in quality because it feels better to use, the old one became dull quickly or chipped. Your enjoyment of the product starts to make an impact in your purchase.

What is that enjoyment worth? If your first knife cost $5, would you buy a better one for $50?

Android phones were crappy when Android was first released. Mostly because Android was crap. Google spent millions making sure Android had every feature that the iPhone had. Every function was matched. Every look that could be copied was copied. Samsung even went so far as to make extremely similar phones and UI-skins. But oddly, the consumers were not using Android phones like they did iPhones. App sales were low, internet usage was non-existant.

Only then did the engineers at Google realize that the secret sauce in the iPhone wasn't so much features, but the experience. Still they couldn't put their finger on what they lacked. They had to hire a new manager, a designer, to tell them what to do. Now Android is becoming enjoyable to use, app sales are skyrocketing and internet usage is on the rise. People are using their Android phones for the first times.

Enjoyment is hard to bottle. It can't be checked off on a scrum board or a todo list. It's the sum of all the parts. And even worse, it costs money. You can't just finish a feature, you have to iterate on all the parts until they fit together. (To read more about enjoyment or fun, visit my blog on Gamification: Adding the Fun.)

The sooner we start asking the right question the better. What if startups focused on making their features enjoyable instead of just functional? It'd cost more, but their churn would be less and they would get more interest.

Right now the market is focusing on design. Designers are in high regard and design is the measuring stick of the tech industry. But because most companies and organisations still don't understand this crucial piece of secret sauce, designers will become another checklist on the project management chart. Is it designed? Yes. Tick the box.

If the question had been: is it enjoyable? The answer would have been different. The product would end up different and the market reaction would as well. Next time you read a review, don't look at the feature list or the score. Find the sentence where the author says if he/she liked it or not.

It's time to make sure we start asking the right questions and stop looking at features or design as checkboxes.

This list of questions can help you start:

Does the feature work?
Does it work every time and in every circumstance?
Is it enjoyable?
Is it enjoyable even when you're in a hurry?

If the answer to any of the questions is no, you need to start over.

Like Steve Jobs so eloquently put it "Design is how it works". Sadly, he didn't stick around to explain how anyone could check for that emotion.

Ask the question: Is it enjoyable?

What's keeping the Apple TV

Mon, 30 Dec 2013 00:00:00 GMT

A fully fledged Television or a very updated Apple TV box, the rumors about Apples entry into the living room has been growing steadily since the introduction of the iPad. I recently saw a concept for a user interface of the Apple TV, and to me it clearly showed just why Apple is not in this market yet. Apple is missing a core piece of technology.

The missing piece

Apple clearly puts a lot of thought into their User Interfaces. The iPod, the iPhone and the iPad all changed how we interact with these types of devices. The same has been true for OS X, their PC operating system. But in classic Apple fashion, one of the hardest problems to solve has been delegated to the future by working around it. User Management on all of Apples devices is still pretty poor.

On the Mac it works fine, log out of your account and log into another. But sharing apps and files across accounts is a nightmare. Accounts work almost as completely separate repositories. Which might be good from a security perspective, but is crazy for usability.

On iOS accounts simply are not available. The machines are made to be so personal you can't really hand around an iPad for fear of people messing up your settings.

A lot of families work around this issue by simply sharing an account. But this makes iMessages and many other Apple features difficult or impossible to use. Clearly there's something missing here.

On the concept at the top of this post the Apple TV is shown receiving a notification. Who for? The person that set up the Apple TV probably. But that would cause no end of problems for most users. A TV simply is not a single user device.

Apple won't chance an entire new market without some solution to this problem. But this means their entire infrastructure needs to be upgraded to support group accounts.

Think about the problem of making a family login for iTunes. How will the rights be managed for a shared account? How will movie execs be sure we're not all sharing a single iTunes accounts?

Today, rentals are locked to the device they are rented on. This might be a short time solution, but with AirPlay and the increasing amount of TVs in a single home it becomes restrictive and hard to manage.

Apple needs an entirely new way to manage users and material rights. And they need it in place before they can launch a full living room device.

Personally, I can't wait. My Netflix account on my Apple TV is overrun by my partners odd choice of shows to watch.

WordPress och den responsiva webben (Internetdagarna 2013)

Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMT

I was at one of the largest conferences in Sweden talking about the future being mobile.

http://iis-internetdagarna-arkiv.s3-website.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/arkiv/2013/internetdagarna.se/talare/jesper-bylund/index.html

Building web apps with WordPress and BackBone.js

Fri, 25 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Gave a talk today at WordCamp Norrköping on how to build web apps using WordPress, JetPacks REST API and BackBone.js. A short presentation on the why and how to use BackBone.js and WordPress to build interactive web, apps or otherwise. My slides are available below and you can find the demo app on GitHub.

http://www.slideshare.net/raelmiu/wordcamp-2014-norrkping

Ello - the good, the bad, and the ugly

Sun, 05 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Ello is a new social network, aimed to take on Facebook by not selling peoples information. It's invite only, and has a very sparse set of features. The good:

Follow people like Twitter
usernames like Twitter
focus on posting like Twitter / Tumblr
posts are re-shareable, full of media, more like Tumblr than FB.

The bad:

Execution is really bad.
It's really strange to navigate and use.
Doesn't work on mobile at all.
While the team seems to be scrambling, nothing seems to be happening.

The ugly:

VC funded with no business model. This is worse that Twitters year over year fail to turn a profit.

Let's add some ethics to design

Sun, 15 Jun 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Why? Because we can.

A playful answer, but more often true than not. If something works, why not keep doing it? Marketing and sales are areas where this attitude is so entrenched that some people never question it. "Always be closing", "sell sell sell". Why are we pushing this grandmother to buy an android device she'll never use? Because we can.

We put all the responsibility in the hands of the recipient, the buyer, or the clicker of ads. Often rightfully so, in my opinion. As good balance to douchy sales tactics is that if people simply don't buy, the salesmen will quickly stop and try something else instead. Other fields are not so clear cut though.

As designer we believe it is our mission to delight users. To make the product easier to use, more entertaining, and always more sticky. Last week my favorite gamification researcher, Sebastian Deterding, posted a keynote where he questioned this idea; Why is it our job to make things more sticky? I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly. No matter if work with web or apps, you are providing either tools or entertainment. There really is nothing else. Entertainment should of course be entertaining, and I wont rant about game design in this post. But should tools be fun? Should they be sticky?

Steve Jobs once described the computer as a "bicycle for the mind". A tool to reach farther and faster than a human could without it. But are computers living up to this promise? I would argue no, and it's because of us. As designers, we've perverted the idea of tools. Creating hammers people really like to use instead of ones that gets the job done. We're not looking for the best way to solve a problem any more, we're debating how to make our users engage more with the product. Again something which is fine, if it's entertainment. But if it's a tool, this is a douchy sales tactic.

I think we need to stop talking about delighting our users and get back to trying to build the best tools for the purpose. No matter how good we dazzle our clients, eventually the sales pitch will end and the users are left holding chocolate hammers.

Medium's new embed feature

Mon, 17 Mar 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Medium.com is quickly shaping up to a great reading and writing experience. A recent surprise feature is their story/collection/user embeds which let you bring medium with you anywhere. https://static.medium.com/embed.js JesperBylund

Odd to see what is basically an iFrame experience from such a design focused company. One can only conclude that they see some great experience behind this. Can't wait to find out what it could be.

The continuing decline of Twitter

Thu, 23 Oct 2014 00:00:00 GMT

As I've written about before I love Twitter, the service, but I'm not very impressed by Twitter the company. Twitter wants to change that, Twitters claims they have changed. This time things will be different. The problem is that Twitter seems to have become even less likeable. A few days ago Twitter launched Digits, a service completely unrelated to their core product. Possibly because they don't like the whole micro-blogging thing. Digits is a service to help people log in without emails or passwords (in detail over on the Verge).

The interesting part, to me, is how Twitter deals with developers.

Twitter now wants to reach out to developers, to tell us they've changed, by inviting us to a conference about what sounds like dev tools:

As a peace offering, Twitter on Wednesday is expected to announce a suite of tools that aim to make it easier for programmers to build apps, according to people familiar with the matter. - WSJ

But Twitter already burned developers severely a few years ago by closing down APIs. They burned developers so much that Marco Arment just wrote a scathing blog post arguing that we can't trust them. And I think he's right.

Responding to Marcos comments a Kevin Weil ("vice president of product for revenue") tells the Verge:

He (Weil) named a few companies that have made millions of dollars developing on Twitter’s platform, including TweetDeck, Hootsuite, and the social-media monitoring company Radian6, which sold to Salesforce for $340 million. The changes in 2012 were intended only to ensure Twitter had control over its core service, he says. "Our API was so open that we allowed people to compete with us, and so there were changes we had to make."

Wait. What is Weil saying here? That Twitter as a platform should only be available to companies who don't make money? Or just the companies Twitter would like to make money? Or is Twitter NOT a platform at all, but a closed service that has an API just to taunt developers?

None of the services mentioned compete with Twitter as a platform or service. One could argue they had competitive UIs though. But shouldn't all that traffic made it easy for Twitter to monetize? Perhaps sell higher volumes of API access? It's hard to understand just what Weil intends to say with this strange answer. My only possible takeaway is that Twitter prefers its partners to not actually succeed.

I think this proves Marco's point wonderfully. Twitter doesn't want developers. Twitter is not a platform. And they want those meddling coder kids to stay off their lawn.

The surprising effect of boredom

Mon, 27 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

I've spent years trying out all the tools and tips for increasing productivity I could lay my hands on. Hundreds of apps, and services. Tips for sleeping. Hacks for staying focused. They all worked.

Each one increased the number of todos I checked off my lists. At least for a day or two. After that the search was on for whatever could help me improve more. I'm not even sure now if the methods failed as novelty wore off, or if I just got bored and started looking for my next fix.

The problem is that time went by and I wasn't actually getting anywhere. My todos were demolished but poured in ever faster,and I never really achieved what I wanted.

I had become an efficiency junky.

I'm not sure when the turning point came. But over the last few years my projects are reaching further, quicker. My todo lists shrank, as did my working hours, but my output increased.

What did I spend the rest of my time on? Being bored. Nothing I've ever tried has increased my output or my mood as much as being bored. Boredom has a bad reputation, but it seems to focus my mind.

I've come to enjoy being bored. Even try to find time to be bored. Not that I enjoy the actual boredom, but I do enjoy the simplicity that comes after it.

Like meditation but without the training. Being bored for a few minutes, by yourself, can make all the difference in a stressful day.

Try it. It's free.

WordPress And BackBone – The Dawn Of Web Apps (WORDCAMP 2014)

Fri, 25 Apr 2014 00:00:00 GMT

I gave a talk about using Wordpress and BackBone to create Single page Apps in 2014.

https://wordpress.tv/2014/05/22/jesper-bylund-wordpress-and-backbone-the-dawn-of-web-apps/

Lifestyle design: iteration one

Wed, 06 May 2015 00:00:00 GMT

View fullsize

Like most beginnings, this one has been rocky for me. But the foundation is now in place. My economy is in the black again. My home slightly redesigned. So now what? Oh yes. It's time to tackle the big step. Time to redefine how I wish to live.

This took me quite a few days pondering and procrastinating, even though the result looks simple enough. But I view this as a first iteration, my first test, and I expect it to have rough edges or even gaping flaws.

I think any lifestyle redesign needs to be different enough from ones old life to create a different outcome. But like diets, have enough margin for the occasional slip up. So I based this on three goals:

I want to create extraordinary things.
I want to play more.
My health must be in balance to create fertile ground for the first two.

The first one is not that difficult. I need focused time to work. And limits on that time so I don't burn out.

The second one is hard. Play is not something you can really plan for. But hopefully meditation will help me here.

The third one is really hard. I work out quite a lot, and eat well. Have done for the last few years. But I also have onset insomnia making me sick and tired often. Creating a balance where this affects me less will be very difficult indeed.

To achieve these goals I plan to structure 80% of my time. Laid out weekly, that means following this schedule for 5.6 days and leaving the rest unplanned.

Every day I will try to live like this:

8+1 hours of sleep (the 1 is for getting into and out of bed)
8 hours of focused work, probably in chunks of 4+2+2
2 hours for food preparation and eating.
2 hours spent at the gym, or on off days learning something new (I'll try Italian and the guitar)
Which leaves 3 hours for play.

Now I'm sure this doesn't take everything into account. There's no time for grocery shopping or just cleaning my apartment. But it's interesting to write it all down like this.

Also, it doesn't really look that different from a "normal life" does it? To test this I'll be using the Hours app on my iPhone to track the amount of time I'm putting into each segment.

[

](https://jesperbylundblog.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/4ad9c-img_8239.png)

I'm on my second day now. Sadly with really poor sleep. But hey, at least I've started.

Lifestyle design: iteration two

Wed, 27 May 2015 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve spent 20 days trying to follow the routine I set up in iteration one. It didn’t work.

Well maybe that is a bit dramatic. It didn’t work as expected, but I learned a lot about how time tracking an entire life really works. As usual, I’ve been slightly too enthusiastic. So I need to tweak my formulea based on what I’ve learned.

What I learned one: Sleep is hard

I planned to sleep 8 hours and spend an aditional 1 hour per day in bed to relax.
I mananged an average 6 hours of sleep and I felt like shit. I was lucky if I spent more than ten minutes relaxing before I needed to sleep.
This isn’t really a fault in planning, just an observation that I’m not disciplined enough. I need that sleep. It’s the foundation of everything else.

What I learned two: No one works 8 hours a day

Now when I say work I mean active time being productive. Since all my work is digital I’ve been able to track every minute of work. And let me tell you, whenever someone says they work more than 40 hours a week, what they really mean is they spend that time in proximity to work.

At 4 hours a day I work great. A lot of things get done and I’m nice to collegues.
At 6 hours a day I work sporadically. Some things get done but I get easily distracted and I’m a bit of a grouch.
At 8 hours a day I don’t work well. Little things get under my skin. My solutions are equally brilliant and idiotic. I’m easily angered and everything stresses me out.
At 10 hours a day I’m mad. Everything pushes my blood pressure through the roof, and little real work gets done.

Thankfully I also tracked the number of tasks that got done. I’ve edited out the small stuff and most of these tasks were about as much work.

At 10 hours: average of 4 tasks.
At 8 hours: average of 6-8 tasks.
At 6 hours: average of 12 tasks.
At 4 hours: average of 15-25 tasks...

Working less apparently forces me to focus better. A lot better. In fact I’m slightly shocked at the difference.

What I learned three: Media is not rest

I had 3 hours of play, or rest, planned per day. But after 8 hours of focused work, I ried watching a movie or reading a book. Both of which made me even more tired. Media, it turns out, is not really that restful.

We spend a lot of time with media, as relaxation, as a social event. So much time we take it for granted that we should. But at least for me, I’ve found that media doesn’t relax me at all. On the contrary, it keeps me focused and alert, spending more of my energy.

Perhaps more media is not the answer.

What I learned four: This is going to take forever

I can’t keep testing this slowly. Or I will never find a balance that works. Thankfully a tip from my friend Michael gave me an alterantive strategy.

From now on I will try to plan only the next day, and evaluate how it went each night. I’ll keep tracking my time and use Day One to plan and evaluate my days.

Lifestyle design: procrastination and fear

Sun, 05 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMT

As soon as I had decided to redesign my life. All my creativity left me. All the ideas and opportunities dried up instantly from my mind.

It's odd how much we're dependent on a sense of normalcy, of having routine, to help us act.

This is fear, a resistance we feel to change. I've never felt it this clearly.

But it's time to get comfortable with change. Not as a single event, something that happens every once in a while. But something that is constantly ongoing.

Nothing is ever the same. Not even us.

This week I've spent time discussing what it is I want to change with my life. And I've realized I feel trapped. By debt, and by living in the same place for 6 years.

So the coming week, I hope to significantly change that state.

Lifestyle design: beginning somewhere

Tue, 24 Mar 2015 00:00:00 GMT

This december my life changed dramatically. I transitioned from being a partner of the worlds best web agencies to what is essentially a normal, though mostly remote, developer job.
Then suddenly, my intended life partner left me. We came to terms again but after months of tears, talks and moments of happiness we finally parted ways.

So now I find myself in a situation usually refered to as a life crisis. But I’m not sure I would call it that.

I’m not crushed. Just a bit sad.

I am not powerless, but more empowered than ever before.

So what now?

Lifestyle design

I’ve always wanted to design my own lifestyle. To try and define how parts of my life fit together. And I’ve had some success creating an unorthodox daily routine already. But now is the perfect time to try something a bit more interesting.

I’m looking into every area of my life, to try to change basically everything, into something that is more me. I will post a step by step log here with my ideas, and my outcomes.

I have no idea where this is going.

But here’s my initial plan: Over the coming year, I will try to tackle one aspect of my life per week. Some might take many weeks. Some might take days. I expect most of these experiments to fail, but to be interesting nonetheless.

If you have any ideas, I’d love to read them. I have a few already and will post about the first one shortly.

Lifestyle design: the plunge

Sun, 12 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Getting started was much harder than expected. After I got past the first wave of fear & procrastination actual problems reared their ugly heads.

"Problems"

Now there are a lot of people who complain about this word; problems. They seem to believe that by admitting there is such a thing, we stop and give up.

I’ve never believed that. I think we need to clearly state and define every problem and complication before we can do anything about them.

In my experience, the people complaining about this word are the same people who are least likely to solve anything. I might be wrong about this, but it is interesting to note that the larger and more sluggish an organisation, the fewer problems they seem to communicate.

Problems solved

I have things I need to deal with to really get going. The first of these major hurdles I’ve just left in the dust. I’ve managed to clean up my debt and I’m back in the black. It took some radical action, but I’m actually better off now than I have been in years.

Happy celebrations

I also managed to celebrate my 31st birthday with a few of my dearest friends. We drank sparkling wine far into the night and both laughed and cries. There was also chocolate cake that might haunt me forever.

Thank you everyone, I really needed that.

Massimo Vignelli on focus groups

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT

It is one thing to believe something, and an entirely different animal to put that belief into an articulate argument for that belief. This quote by Vignelli explains the true issues of trusting focus groups and market testing.

"I don’t believe in market research. I don’t believe in marketing the way it’s done in America. The American way of marketing is to answer to the wants of the customer instead of answering to the needs of the customer. The purpose of marketing should be to find needs — not to find wants.

People do not know what they want. They barely know what they need, but they definitely do not know what they want. They’re conditioned by the limited imagination of what is possible. … Most of the time, focus groups are built on the pressure of ignorance." via BrainPickings

Whenever someone asks me to do a focus group, I usually begin with asking that person what they want the focus group to answer. It is usually quite easy to guess the normal responses. Especially if the product or service is entirely new.

It's not that the focus group isn't observant or brilliant, they quite often are. The problem stems from them not having enough time with the product or service to really give us the important information. And sadly we can't observe a tester for weeks.

Don't confused with testing for quality assurance purposes, I've never seen a project without a few rough corners left, and that sort of testing is essential.

The anti-conspiracy theory

Mon, 19 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT

In literature and movies there's an archetype, a certain type of character, that I enjoy; the antihero.

An antihero or antiheroine is a protagonist who lacks conventional heroic qualities such as idealism, courage, and morality. (Wikipedia)

The antihero usually portrays how a slightly more realistic person would react in situations in need of heroism.

These days conspiracy theories are both abundant and constantly heckled. Something about great mysterious behind-the-curtain players who try to mastermind humanity into their evil machinations speak to us. It probably makes us feel like the underdogs, or heroes, of our daily situations.

The anti-conspiracy theory would, like the antihero, explain all the same facts and results as the conspiracy theory. But instead of grand masterminds hiding in the shadows, the antagonists world be plodding middle managers doing a series of dumb things to further their immediate, and often political, claims. With little or no thought about the actual results their actions have.

Basically, the road to hell paved with good intentions.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
(Hanlon's razor)

A perfect example of this story arc would be Ayn Rands much debated Atlas Shrugged. The story is often ridiculed for over-the-top heroes and a utopian view of rationalism. While most of those criticisms are pot shots at an author that never really mastered the English language, they completely miss the main plot of the story; in Atlas Shrugged the world is ruined by a series of bumbling idiots trying to pursue their own political power and ideals. To effects all to common in our own world. It's an alternative narrative to why things are so messed up, taken to an extreme.

It doesn't really matter if you think Atlas Shrugged is a good book or a terrible one (I love the book for it's contrarian world view, but the author was not a very good writer). But the way the story is built up, the narrative, is a perfect anti-conspiracy theory.

The next time you hear a conspiracy theory, try turning it into an anti-conspiracy theory and see if that story doesn't work a little bit better.

What TV executives believe about their audience

Tue, 28 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMT

A few years back I was involved in redesigning a website for a TV channel in Sweden. What they told me gave me a profound insight into the minds of the networks. To bait your click, you won't believe what they believe. We met in a conference room in the networks main building. He was in charge of communications for several channels that belonged to the network. I was a junior employee at a highly regarded marketing agency.

We sat down, three of us from the firm, and the TV exec, to discuss what we would be doing. We began by offering a series of ideas about how they could communicate their unique brands and shows, but the exec stopped us half way though.

"No, no. You've got it all wrong." he said "this isn't why people watch our channel at all".

We all leaned in. The exec launched into a vague pitch about what made them truly unique, summing it up in a phrase that is forever etched in my mind:

"People stay with our channel, for our programming"

I was confused. I didn't think he meant any coding was going on, but didn't understand the term, thankfully he explained it. In the view of the network, people tuned into to a channel, and stayed with that channel, because of their unique arrangement of shows and commercials. The programming, is their term for the schedule of material broadcast. Each show, each commercial break and even the ads themselves, are scheduled to reflect the overall feel of the TV channel. This is, according to him, why people like one channel over another.

I was stunned by this. Not the information itself, I've always expected every media form to think like this to some degree, but by the thought that these executives actually believed that in the age of the internet.

This was prior to Netflix launch in Sweden, but anyone who had seen any statistics about video usage online, or seen anyone using youtube or torrenting a movie knew that this was completely false. Not just ignorant, but incorrect almost to the point of lunacy. People find and watch specific content because they like that content. They might endure everything else, only if there's no easier way. But they do not choose their content by association.

I walked away from that meeting in a stunned silence.

Recently I think I have realized how this idea took shape. TV usage is measured by putting a box near your TV that records audio cues from the programs and commercials. This recorded data is later collected and aggregated to find statistically interesting patterns.

The problem, like with most statistics, is of course that this collection method cannot measure intent. So if you were to turn on your TV while you do the dishes, and talk on the phone, and then see one program before you go to bed, you will be measured as staying with one channel for quite some time before jumping to a specific show and then turning off.

Even though your intent was background noise while you do something else, the measurement is easily interpreted as you enjoying the channel and sticking to the programming.

For that network, or at least that executive, the numbers were clear. Their unique programming was what kept people glued to the TV screen five hours every night.

This is not a jab at TV, though they are aging rather badly, but a warning to all of us not to get caught forcing what we want users to think onto statistics, just because we believe our work to be important. Let's never become so arrogant we start believing our brand is more important than our product. In the end, every business is about creating value for your customer.

(If anyone has similar insights into the TV industry, I'd LOVE to hear it. Please post in the comments below.)

Getting rid of wish lists

Tue, 05 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT

I've been practicing minimalism for years. Slowly getting rid of things that I don't need. But I realized only yesterday that I'm hoarding clutter in my own head. Getting stressed for no reason. So I've decided to get rid of that stuff.

Yesterday I was talking to my friend Magnus about how he managed his reading list. You know, that list of books and articles you keep in three different places that always seems to grow? Those amazon wish lists that never seems to have a thing you want to read right now?

Well Magnus didn't have one, and that got me thinking.

I've been bookmarking all these books, articles, movies and TV-shows all over the place. But how much time am I actually spending enjoying things from these lists? To be honest, most of the time I stress about them and maybe once in a while I prune. So what is the point of keeping a list of musts when they were supposed to be entertaining?

This is the essence of minimalism. Your stuff ends up owning you. When you spend more time on upkeep of your stuff than on enjoying them. It becomes a ridiculous waste of lifetime.

So I'm getting rid of my lists. I will no longer store articles, I'll read them or disregard them. I'll no longer add books to lists. Either I want to read it now, or I'll come back when I feel like it. I'm not about to stop consuming media. Instead I'm going to consume what I want, instead of what I should want.

The goal is to get down to one or two things I'm reading. One thing I want to see next. The rest can wait.

There's never enough time as it is. Why the hell keep holding on to distraction?

Listening to the body

Tue, 27 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT

I am deeply suspicious of cross fit. While I work out with heavy weight, all the classic compound lifts, I’m deeply suspicious of any training that makes people needlessly tired. Now all training differs depending on your intended goal. So my own might be clouding my vision of other forms of training.

But we should always listen to our bodies. And inflammation, which all my runner and cross fit friends are so proud of constantly having, is a sign of doing something wrong.

Inflammation is the body’s response to an injury or unnatural wear and tear. If you are regularly getting inflammation due to working out... it might be time to rethink your goals.

Motivation and leadership are passive qualities.

Sun, 15 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Sometimes I come across quotes and ideas by people that resonate so intimately I can't help myself but share them:

"You can’t motivate people. The best you can hope for is to inspire them with your actions. People who think they can use behavioral “science” or management techniques have not spent enough time on the receiving end of either."
— Leo Babauta (Zen Habits)

The science of motivation, and of fun, is quite clear on the subject. It's very easy to motivate someone who wants to do something. It's near impossible to motivate someone who doesn't want to. Which is why leisure and luxury sells well, while real fitness and learning looks stuffy and boring.

This is a moral question for designers. Because the easy design, the quick sell, will be motivating. It will also, quite probably, be the wrong thing to do.

People who are mean

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

The worse we feel. The meaner we tend to be.

While we shouldn't accept any sort of behavior. It's important to remember this might be the cause.

Productivity porn

Fri, 22 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Conferences have interested me less and less over the last five years or so, and I just realized why. It’s because so much of it is inspirational instead of educational.

Inspiration is basically productivity porn. It’s entertaining and feels like you’re leaning, but it’s just another distraction. It’s the “busy work” of learning.

Stuff to keep you busy from doing what you really want to be doing.

You don’t need more inspiration. You need to do the work. Because doing things inspire us.

Secret advantages to being lean

Fri, 28 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Over the last few years I've transformed my body through weight lifting. I'm proud to say I've never been this fit and healthy.

Being strong and fit has a lot of advantages. But I would never have guessed being lean would make me enjoy shopping. As a very tall man most clothes still don't even nearly fit, but even clothes that don't fit look ok on me.

This is not a humble brag, but a post about my genuine surprise.

I wonder if the past decades general weight increases might not be behind a lot of the mental anguish people today feel. Being lean removes a lot of problems, and saves you a lot of time.

Typographic design trends

Wed, 28 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Most typographic design today, especially on the web, is very modernistic. It's all blocks at angles with neo-grotesque fonts like Helvetica. I love it, but it's also strangely uniform and boring. Looking forward to the Jugend backlash that should appear soon. I wonder what font's will be popular?

2018 in review

Wed, 02 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

2018 was a life changing year for me. In the last days of 2017 I met Agnes, whom I instantly fell hopelessly in love with. Something I’ve never experienced before.

I quickly changed my plans for 2018, cancelled trips, got a year long consultancy. I’d be staying in Sweden for 2018. And I haven’t regretted it, though I dislike the cold intensely.

A year is hard to boil down, so I’ve split this review into three sections, enjoy.

Timeline of Events

What I learned

Fitness & Health

Timeline of Events

Spring

January was a blur of rapid changes. Setting myself up to be with Agnes. I also gave a talk on the Ethics of Design at a major networks offices in Stockholm. It was well received.

February was spent celebrated my mothers 70th birthday and working like mad to put my own projects on hold, while getting to grips on my client project.

In March I was the sole witness to my friends wedding, they wanted a small one, and I’m incredibly grateful to have been there.

April my client took off to Rome for a conference, Agnes joined us for the last day and a half. It’s my second time in Rome and I love it. The history nut in me is excited about everything, and the food is fabulous.

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Summer

The summer of 2018 was generally considered to be the best summer in Sweden for a hundred years. I’ve certainly never experienced anything like it. For a solid four months we had sun and warmth. It was epic, but it also lead to overheating offices and a lot of summer colds. Agnes spent our two week vacation in a fever.

In May some friends from 500 startups visited Stockholm, it was great to reconnect and hear about life inside the US startup world again.

In June Sweden is never really dark, it’s a magical time. I did a lot of great work when everyone else was trying to find refuge from the heat, and we even managed to go sailing. Something I’ve been yearning to get back to.

July was a furnace of heat, which we spent living on the balcony. Walking the dog as early and late possible so he wouldn’t over heat, and visiting the archipelago.

When August rolled in and the evenings started darkening again I could hardly believe how much fun I’d had over the summer. We lived on that balcony until it was cool enough to go to sleep for almost two months. it was beautiful.

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Fall

As the shadows lengthened work picked up speed again in Sweden. The fall was a lovely cavalcade of colors, and in September we spent some time in the archipelago enjoying autumn and feeding the little dog too many hotdogs. I did a Netcast about the Future with a couple of friends of mine.

On our first date, we talked about Oktober Fest in Munich. So when oktober rolled around, we went and had an absolute blast. We made sure to visit Neuschwanstein when we were in the area. If you haven’t seen Bavaria in the late summer or early fall… You should. It’s like a fairytale.

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Winter

I don’t like the cold and the dark. In fact I get colds easily and slightly depressed. Thankfully Agnes kept me awake and excited about Christmas. Which was amazing (the dog did not like it though). I also had the opportunity inn November to visit Marbella for a workshop with a Swedish startup. That was a very welcome respit from the dark.

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What I learned

Over the year I’ve discovered many ideas and had several insights that I’d like to share. Some of them are rediscoveries, which is both amusing and slightly worrying. I’ve detailed most of them on my life strategies page. This is the broad strokes summary:

Consumption and wasting time is extremely comfortable. But mostly time we will regret spending. Most consumption will not create memories for life, but rather just tick some minutes away. Stepping back from consumption completely can show which is which. And give you time to create, which is my next point.

Creating is always scary. More than anything else, I spend a ton of time trying to prepare myself for the real work. This is simply just procrastination. You cannot be prepared to create, or do real work. You just have to do it. I’m going to try to be aware of this during 2019, and really ship work.

Learning is fun. And anything that is fun can be used to distract yourself from the real work. Are you sure you need to learn more before doing the thing you’re putting off? More often than not, the answer is no. Just do it.

Love is rare so enjoy it. Beauty is not, so enjoy that too. Life does not need to be a grind. Anything can be beautiful and we can even learn to love the hardest work.

Fitness & Health

If you’ve followed me over the years, you’ve probably noticed that I spend a lot of time and energy on fitness. I used to be heavily overweight in my teens and have had problems with food and health ever since. But in 2018 I can proudly say I’ve been both healthier and fitter than ever before. The journey is never over, and I’m excited about 2019 in this regard too.

Jesper Bylund at 34 years old

2018 Setup

Mon, 19 Feb 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve always been impressed by people detailing their setups for activity. It’s part inspiring and part a treasure trove of tips. So with a head nod to Thord who inspired this one, here’s my setup going into 2018.

What I do

I mostly do consultant work, front end development and UX design. But I also do some product development, which means writing and creating content. So my time is split pretty unevenly between: Design, Development, Entertainment and Creativity. I figured these might be good categories.

Devices

Design & Development

MacBook Pro 13” (space gray, touch bar edition) — I spend 90% of my time on this machine. I wish I didn’t, but until I finish KodApp I can’t properly work on my iPad Pro. The MBP is great though, it’s no longer as overwhelmingly better than the compition that MBPs used to be. But this is still a fantastic machine.
iPad Pro 10.5” (silver) — my favorite device by far. I use it with two external keyboards, the Apple Smart Keyboard an Apple Keyboard in a Canvas cover, and the Apple Pencil. Can’t get enough of it! Everything I can do, I do better on the iPad. It’s just a much more limited device. And strangely, those limitations create both focus and creativity.
iPhone X (space gray) — I’ve had an iPhone since the iPhone 3G so you can imagine how well integrated into the ecosystem I am. The iPhone has captured more memories and facilitated more opportunities in my life than anything else (except maybe the internet itself). I could not be happier. And th X is simply the most iPhone of any iPhone so far.
Apple Watch (series zero) — I’m forever greatful to the Apple Watch for helping me catch my ex cheating, it had gone on for a long time and might’ve gone on a lot longer without the Apple Watch. But truth be told, I don’t use it that much. I wear it every day but I read the time, temperature and measure my sleep. That’s about it. When there’s a nicer watch available with these featres (there are some already but none have caught my eye) I’ll switch to that.

Creativity

iPad Pro 10.5” — Already wrote about this device, but couldn’t list creative tools without it. That’s how good it is.
Notebooks and pens — I’ve always carried around a ton of notebooks and pencils to draw and sketch on. While I’ve been trimming these down over the last year I’ve also added a new habit: Every morning I journal in my Field Notes with my 0.7mm black Muji pen. It helps me stay acountable and learning.

Entertainment

Kindle Oasis — I read. A lot. And this is the best reading device I've ever had.
Nintendo Swith — I've always loved gaming, even used to work with game design, and this magical console has completely rekindled my sense of childlike wonder for gaming.
Apple TV — Netflix machine.

Apps

Design

Paper by 53 — Probably the best sketching app ever. Use it with my Apple Pencil every time I start fleshing out ideas.
Figma — This is collaborative Sketch, in the browser. It's amazing, and allows you to prototype directly.
Keynote — Sometimes I have to present design, and I usually use keynote for that. Why? It's free and beautiful and easy to use.

Development

Atom — Fantastic text editor for all your coding needs.
Zeit Now — The best collection of cloud tools for developers I've ever used. Check out everything Zeit does, and never use anything but Now as a dev environment.
Digital Ocean — If, and it's increasingly rare, Zeit's environments aren't configurable enough.

Creativity

Field Notes — Great looking notebooks, for sketching and journaling.
Paper by 53 — Like I wrote above. Everything starts in Paper.

Entertainment

Spotify — For music, tried Apple Music, but I just missed curated playlists way to much. Before you say it, no, Apple Musics playlists are not even close.
Podcasts / Overcast — I try to live with defaults to understand users in all situations. But Apple Podcast app is just so bad I keep coming back to Overcast.
Audible / Kindle — I listen to books as much or even more than I read.
Twitter — The only social media I've ever truly loved. The company is doing everything wrong now a days, but I still love the free exchange of ideas. Wish someone could build a next generation of this.

Productivity

Bear — My note taking app of choice.
Things — All my todos organised in a GTD system. Beautiful app that's a pleasure to use, all day every day.

Stuff

Fjällräven G-1000 — my daily laptop bag. This is basically my office.
AirPods — The best headphones I've ever owned. Always with me, always in use, always work.

That's it! That's all the stuff I use on a daily basis.

A collection of buttons and dials on instagram

Thu, 24 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I've always loved buttons and dials. When I was a kid, the flashing consoles of Star Trek and Star Wars were the height of sci fi cool. Stereos and electrical panels were exciting, I kept wondering "what do these do?"

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A handfull of great ideas for a better life

Fri, 31 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Some time ago Tynan wrote a list of life rules for Zen Habits. Perfectly in line with my current project of trying to discover what strategies or principles I should live by. This is a great post in it's entirety, just see this excerpt:

“1. When you say you’re going to do something, do it. I believe that without his word, a man is nothing. This rule applies to things I tell others I will do as well as things I tell myself I’ll do.

[...]

5. Walk out of movies, stop reading books, leave parties. If I’m participating in some sort of entertainment and I realize that it’s not going to be worth the additional time spent, I leave. The fact that I paid $10 and watched half of the movie is irrelevant. The real decision at hand is: how do I want to spend the next hour of my life.”

— Tynan

Bastiats petition for the candlemakers

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I had never read Bastiats Candlemakers Petition before today. I had heard it described, but reading the original I'm struck by how insane protection politics really are. Take three minutes and read it yourself.

Being too serious will stifle your creativity

Thu, 24 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

“Joy isn’t a signal that you’re not serious. It’s a sign that you’re curious and engaged.”

— Ingrid Fetell

There's nothing important enough to be serious about. Only things that are seriously boring.

Define and execute - managing my energy like a resource

Tue, 11 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve used the Getting Things Done method of organising my tasks and projects for years. While I admit that it has, more than once, become a distracting hobby of optimisation instead of helping, it has also freed up a lot of mental energy.

In my work I’m constantly switching between creative problem solving and mechanically grinding something out. Normally I just do a task from start to finish, but quite often it’s hard to start being creative when I’m already in a grinding out mindset.

The great people at Basecamp has an idea to solve this issue, they call it a Hill Chart, and it represents how well defined a task is and how far along execution it is. This could really help with picking the right thing to work on depending on mood and energy levels.

To apply this strategy in my GTD setup I’ve created a new context I call Definition, which has two tags Define and Execute. I label all my tasks with one of these, and depending on which state I’m in I sort my tasks accordingly. I’ve only been doing this for a week so far, but I really enjoy the difference.

What do you think? Any better tips on how to manage your energy?

Don't let pride guide your focus

Wed, 25 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT

“Whenever you create something you’re proud of, there’s a natural tendency to want to tell everybody about your success. Look at me. I am so great! The more you share, the more addicted you become to the attention and the less you focus on the work that made you proud in the first place.”

— Sam Dogen

Started the day of with this great read. It's important to remember that ego isn't something you have, or that some people were born with, it slips in whenever we're not watching.

Egocentrism is the lazy default, the black hole inside every human that we need to constantly struggle away from.

Etching patterns into your mind

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

From Playboy's interview with Steve Jobs:

“Playboy: Why is the computer field dominated people so young? The average age of Apple employees is 29.

Jobs: It’s often the same with any new, revolutionary thing. People get stuck as they get older. Our minds are sort of electrochemical computers. Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them. It’s a rare person who etches grooves that are other than a specific way of looking at things, a specific way of questioning things. It’s rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing. Of course, there are some people who are innately curious, forever little kids in their awe of life, but they’re rare.”

We have to actively work on etching effective patterns. And we can never stop.

Example of modern grid web design

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I just found this, a web design agency clearly on to something. Exploring the possibilities of design with the much improved technologies we have today. Clearly thinking like I do, that web design needs to change.

Five day media fast

Thu, 27 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT

The week before Christmas I decided to try a radical experiment. I was rereading an old book on productivity that recommended a week long total media fast. And for some reason, I put the book down and did it.

The fast is designed like a media diet. For 5 days, you are only allowed to consume music and less than one hour of fiction in book form (perfect for me as I read when going to bed). That is no TV, no shows, no podcasts, no audiobooks, no Facebook nor Twitter. Nothing readable at all, except directly related to any work you are doing right at that moment. No research. No distractions. The idea is to force yourself to completely give up mindless consumption of information.

I honestly didn’t think this would be very difficult since I didn’t consume much TV, don’t really listen to music all that much, and see very few shows. Turned out I was massively underestimating how much media I consumed.

The first few days felt… wierd (for want of a better word). I had to stop myself putting on my headphones several times, there was nothing to listen to. I spent many long minutes just looking at people while waiting. Waiting for the subway. Waiting for my coffee. Waiting for some website to load.

On day three it started becoming difficult. I went home that night and didn’t do anything.
Nothing.
For hours.
Eventually I started reciting lines from old movies and books just to distract myself. I wrote down thoughts like I was pitching someone. And I’m pretty sure I started to stress my girlfriend out. In a phrase, I was bored. Incredibly bored, but not tired. Which came as a huge surprise!

I was more productive than usual. I got more done in less time. But the interesting thing is that was less mentally drained from work. Even doing taxes took less willpower than it ever has before.

I’m not sure I can continue living without media. And I am pretty sure the benefits will wear off if this was to become the new normal. But having experienced the difference has been eye opening.

I recommend you try this media diet. It’s only 5 days. And you might learn a lot about how you spend your mental energy.

Giving ideas a second chance

Mon, 21 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Last year I read a book that seemingly everyone was raving about. I made it about 60% through it when the author took a sudden turn from logically progressing an argument to stating a badly formed rhetoric idea as truth. I put the book down and in a sigh resigned myself to reevaluate everything I had just read.

A few weeks ago, I was inspired to give the book a second chance. And I'm glad I did.

It turns our the rhetoric idea was a several pages long example of fuzzy logic, that the author deconstructed, without judging the idea. Just logically laid out. If it hadn't been for my automatic revulsion to the idea itself, I would've noticed that a year ago.

Skeptically questioning everything is essential to progress. But cynicism has a tendency to creep in. I'm glad I let go of this cynicism and explored more.

How to achieving something

Thu, 15 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

You have dreams right? Things you want to do, stuff you want to create or complete? We all do. But then life gets in the way. Maybe we're finding it hard to find the time? Maybe we keep getting interrupted? Maybe we're just to afraid to act.

The truth is that's all bullshit. The reason you haven't achieved what you're dreaming about is that is requires growth, and growth hurts. Specifically it hurts your ego. In this fantastic article, Amy Hoy pokes you right in the ego and tells it like it is.

“If you want to make something of your skills, yourself, your life…the worst truth is better than the best lie. Reality is your friend. Your ego, on the other hand, is your worst enemy. When you fail to give your ego what it wants, it throws a tantrum and makes you hurt. That’s the only way the ego knows to communicate: caresses…and punches.”

— Amy Hoy

...So what's your dream again?

How to plan well

Thu, 16 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Today there are so many things to do that most of us are running just to keep up. So many obligations and so many things we want to do. There's just never enough time.

Minimalism and Stoicism has the answers apparently. But it's hard to find the time to get around to them.

This way to live our lives isn't working. Not really. We're constantly breaking plans and coming up late on deadlines. The truth is that we can't do it all. We can do anything, but not everything.

It's time to apply that knowledge to planning:

“Don’t plan more than you have the energy for on your worst day. Stop trying to make it your best day.”

Is it that easy? I think it may be. I've added it to my set of life strategies, and will try it out for 6 months.

I wonder if engagement killed social media?

Thu, 31 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

There’s no way to miss the frustration about social media all around us. Algorithmic feeds, allegations of Facebook manipulating the media. It never seems to end.

in the middle of this storm Andy Baio, the former CTO at Kickstarter, put up a link that shows you what your twitter feed was like ten years ago. It went viral.

Today were bombarded by snide comments and jokes at everyone’s expense, but ten years ago people mostly observed and shared things.

I wonder why?

What happened that made the social landscape change this drastically? Was is the influx of new people that swamped the established culture? Possible, but I believe in humanity way more than that. was is the hardening social climate all around us? Doubtful, the only place it seems to get rougher is in the the media.

I think there’s a piece of evidence right there in what social posts look like today.

It’s a megaphone.

All these posts are broadcasts. They’re mostly snide, satirical or cynical posts at someone’s expense.

There’s another sort of content that’s experiencing the same development in parallel. News is growing worse and more snide by the minute in the race for faster and cheaper clickbait.

Can it be that social media turned bad because we all strive for short term engagement? We know that measuring engagement shortsightedly has left Facebook with the massive undertaking to redesign their feed. So it’s not a big leap of the imagination to think that perhaps social media was killed by the like button. And twitter by the heart icon.

An entire form of media. Possibly killed because of a bad design choice.

...or am I reading to much into this?

It's time for a radical rethink of web design paradigms

Fri, 17 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I love the current state of visual design online, don’t get me wrong. There’s so many beautiful apps and services that I’m constantly feeling the pressure to up my own game. Oddly though, in this sea of great design, there’s a strange aspect of conservative conformity. I’ve only started to wrestle with this myself, but this article will detail why I think web design needs a reboot.

There’s no reason for the web to look like the 90s

Most design today is based, at least in part, on context from the 90s. At that time design was constrained by bad browsers, small screens with poor contrast and bad system font typography. The results were frankly fantastic. Since then most of these constraints have changed radically, but design trends still closely resemble their forerunners.

Screen size and layout metaphor

Screen size should have little to no impact on design. In the early days of the internet, screens were terribly expensive and for the first couple of decades they were more or less standardised into a handful of sizes. TV and Cinema did the same thing, it was a great way to ensure affordable cost and mass market.

Today there are _hundreds_of screen sizes being used in large numbers. So many that simply testing a design on the most common screen sizes becomes an exercise in futility. Instead we tend to settle for flagship devices. An iMac Pro and Google Pixel Phone? Then we’re all set. Never mind the other 89 screen sizes that are used in more than a million visits per week...

Designers all over the world try to adapt to this by padding their layouts as if they were cinema screens. Just like Hollywood in the 60s we show the same things in almost the same size and then add white space fill the full width of the screen. Making sure the proper elements align above the "fold" (whatever that is on screens today).

This is nonsense. Screen size actually affects user behavior. The iPad technically _is_just a large iPhone, but people sure don’t use it as such. Windows 10 does work on mobile devices, but no one would use software designed for a 4k monitor on their cellphone.

I believe that the only useful metaphor left over from the early days is scrolling. Scrolling is arguably more useful than ever because it is the _main user input_on the most common type of device used online today — the touch screen phone.

Instead of seeing web pages as a full width scrolling sheets, there are two other metaphors in use that are more useful with todays technology:

Specifically sized cards.

Possibly made famous by the failed Palm OS. Look at any mobile app today and you will see cards everywhere. Usually they are made to be one size, and are then stacked horizontally or vertically depending on the available screen real-estate.

Infinite canvas

Facebooks infinite scroll is probably the most commonly used one. But infinite canvases are everywhere just like Cards. Presentations zoom and pan, web pages scroll, app windows show only part of the document. The use cases go on.

User Interface Inputs

The web is primarily used through graphical user interfaces, and mostly on mobile devices. Based on this premise isn’t it strange that so many designs still use the desktop hunt-and-peck-with-your-mouse style of elements?

Why do we right click links and chose to bookmark or open in a new tab? Why don't we drag the link to the side of the screen for a new tab, and to the bookmark icon to store it?

Despite huge success on mobile apps, the web still fails to recognise touch as a first class user input. Mouse clicks are already optional on many laptops. Ten years after the touch device started it's rise to power it is time for us to make the web reflect that.

Grid & Typography

In the last few years typography has turned the web from computer science book into a beautiful print poster. Finally we have access to technology like CSS grid that allows us to recreate any print layout. But why print?

Print design is all based on a set of constraints that have no value on the web. Most typography is created to fit fixed size sheets of paper. Worse still, fonts are set in rows with fixed heights. Do we really always need to scroll?

In stark contrast with layouts, why aren't we type setting based on screen size instead? Imagine if the font size was set to 80 characters across the screen. Or 200 characters vertically? What sort of grid could that produce?

So where do we go from here?

I don’t really know. The situation is extremely interesting. I’ll keep working on this, and post everything I think of right here. If you’d like to join in the fun, please contact me! Honestly, I'd love your help.

Your next steps

Try things that are not like classic web and print design.
Discuss this with me and others on twitter.

Jonathan Fields on a Good Life

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

“People matter. Meaning matters. A good life is not a place at which you arrive, it’s a lens through which you see and create your world.”

— Jonathan Fields

Fantastic quote from Design Matters.

Jony Ive's wisdom about design problems

Thu, 08 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Speaking with the Independent Jony Ive, chief design officer of Apple, gave us this insight into design. I think it’s one of the most wise things I’ve read about design problems in a very long time.

“I think that is a huge part, a fundamental part, of my job. When you’re talking about the future, and as a designer that’s where my head is, then it’s extremely rare that I feel that I’m working in response to an articulated problem.

I could count the occasions that I’ve done that in the last 25 years on the fingers of one hand. It’s extremely rare that what we do is a response to somebody articulating a problem. By definition, you didn’t know it was a problem until you were aware of a better way of doing it. The tremendous challenge here is that when you have been solving a problem a certain way for a long time, so many things convince you that, of course, that’s the best way of doing it, not least habit.

When you have been solving a problem a certain way for a long time, the very idea that there could be a better way of doing it, can seem almost sacrilegious. It can seem extremely unlikely, so what you have to do is work by taking a leap of faith. That faith is based on the thought, ‘I’ve been here many times before and many times before we have found a better way of doing this’. And you just have to believe that’s the case and you keep on.

Sometimes, the vast majority of times, we are able to find a better way of solving a problem.”

— Jony Ive

It’s extremely rare to solve articulated problems. Because normal users don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what the real problem is, they simply discover annoying details. And most often, the habit of how things are done, is not the best way of doing things.

Learning is not a recent trend

Mon, 07 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I came across this quote via Farnam Street's newsletter, and it both resonates with me trying to improve myself, and shows just how long people have struggled with learning:

"Intelligent individuals learn from every thing and every one; average people, from their experiences. The stupid already have all the answers."
— Socrates

Magazines are coming back in a big way

Wed, 07 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I noticed this trend for the first time while visiting Berlin a few years ago. Hipsters love print, and are growing bored with short form "journalism" and blogs. So magazines are coming back.

I love Monocle for their magazine, but I'll keep spending time in Soda Books and Under The Cover to find new things to read. Truthfully though, even in these sublimely designed magazines, most of the articles are just filler. Just like in "journalism" in general.

New favorite expression; Fata Morgana

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Fata Morgana is the Italian word for a mirage on the horizon, one of those mirror images you might see on hot days. But it also refers to subjective mirages such as castles in the sky or a pipe dream.

Newsletters are the new Blog

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMT

We’ve come full circle. The 2000 era internet is back! Newsletters are now The way people publish content online. They’ve replaced blogs almost perfectly after the short blip of social media became a garbage pile of algorithmic ads.

Just like blogs they’re trending each other’s content, intermittently updated, and completely distributed. There no one newsletter service.

Why?

Because the Pull Behavior (go out and find information, spread it by creating more information, making it easier for others to find when they search) we so loved about the web is over. It’s been replaced through lazy social media with Push Behavior (I want something now, just keep gushing everything to me and I will “curate” what I want.

It’s a brave new world.

Notebooks and bullet journals

Wed, 07 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I've had a love for notebooks since I was a kid. I've always doodled, sketched and written on paper with relish. But since collage the habit has waned because it's just not efficient enough.

Bullet Journaling is a trendy todo list idea that is getting people back on paper. And I love it. Check out this amazing journal, and my current favourite notebooks.

Now I just need to figure out if writing on paper is worth the lack of search and tags and get journaling, or if I'll just build a digital tool for the same.

Optimisation your life away

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I've thought a lot about optimisation of the last decade, always looking for better tools, productivity systems, and efficient ways of doing many, many, things. Until a few years ago when I started thinking about over-optimisation instead.

I now believe I've been using optimisation as a crutch, to procrastinate from doing the important, but scary, things in life.

Optimising up front is usually a bad idea, it's a worse idea for every day life. Optimising should have a clear outcome of freeing up time. If it doesn't, maybe you shouldn't be spending your time on that?
Maybe that time is better spent on the real work, or life?

Leo said it better.

(Update: This is a life strategy worthy idea.)

Participation medals for moral panic

Tue, 25 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve always wondered about why some words are deemed to be more dangerous than other. I’m not referring to offensive language here, that’s an entirely different conversation. But words that are simply shunned for their perceived power. Words like “problem”.

A problem is a complication in your way. Something to be solved, worked around or on. In engineering and design a problem is not a negative word, it’s what you’re there to straighten out. Not exactly the focus of your work, but an important part.

In other fields, like politics, a words power comes from the perceived effect it might have. So Problems get renamed into Challanges, and recently I saw the next logical step; Opportunities.

The problem with this second way of working with language is that we’re shooting the messenger. We’re reframing and retooling language instead of working on the problem.

Instead of doing PR about a crash we’re pretending new words can achieve less crashes.

Language has power, and choosing the right words is important. We should continue to do so. But not to absurd extremes.

Fear of problems will not diminish because we change the vocabulary every five minutes. Showing that problems can be worked on and overcome might diminish that fear.

Perfect archipelago home by nordic design studio

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Perfect home by Claesson Koivisto Rune This is just a dream home. Imagine sitting there reading or planning out a new project.

[

](http://www.claessonkoivistorune.se/#/projects/krakmora-holmar/)

Personal style for the minimalist

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I'm a tall white 34 year old man from Sweden. I've never been able to purchase clothes that really fit. I've bought custom tailored shirts for years.

Is it too early to just go old school, and wear suits the entire time? I've always been comfortable in classic outfits. It fits my personality quite well. And I've basically been using a personal uniform for ten years (blue jeans, white shirt, leather jacket).

I'd like to pair down. My wardrobe as much as the time I spend on outfits. Are suits a smart way to go, or will I be spending too much and drearily wearing the same thing every day?

Classic style for gentlemen — or boring wage slave old farts?

Poetry tips from the late Christopher Hitchens

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I'm currently reading Hitch22, the amazing writer Christopher Hitchens self biography. And when such a great write refers to W.H Auden as the best writer of his generation, I had to read him. Well Auden touched my like little poetry ever has. Simply amazing prose.

I recommend you grab some tea and read Autumn Song, and if you can live with the bittersweet sadness of loss, take a look at Stop all the Clocks.

Product mechanics

Fri, 16 Feb 2018 00:00:00 GMT

In Games there’s a focus of design called Game Mechanics. It works like this: Mario jumps, that’s a mechanic. The player is pushing buttons, but that’s just how they interact with the game mechanics. In this word where Mario jumps there enemies, enemies move and have behaviors, all of these things are not game mechanics. Mario can jump on enemies, that’s a game mechanic.

Game mechanics could be said to be mental models for how your activity works.

There isn’t really anything like it for the tech industry. There’s no product mechanic for a Todo list. Just an interface, and some actions.

We design UI. Not activity. UX is trying to change this, but often lacks the understanding and even the language to do that. Maybe we should take a page out of the game design playbook and start designing Product Mechanics.

Reaching any goal

Thu, 16 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Have you reached every goal you have? No? Than something isn't working, and that something is you. To do something you've never done before, you have to do things differently than you have before.

Losing weight, starting a business, being creative, everything demands a change of routines and lifestyle. You have to change.

Don't be afraid to throw out who you are. When something doesn't get us what we want, change is the only way we can get it, so embrace it fearlessly. Here's how:

Disregard how you usually do something (or how you are, that's nonsense).
Read about or talk to people who have done something.
Try it.
Do it all over until you succeed, or want to do something else.

This post is a part of my 6 month experiment of discovering strategies for life.

Reading news is pointless and you shouldn't do it.

Wed, 07 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I've seen studies on this before. But never heard the argument quite so coherently stated as in this post from Farnam Street.

“Being well informed isn’t regurgitating the opinion of some twenty-two-year-old with no life experience telling me what to think or how outraged to be. Your first thought on something is usually not yours but someone else’s. When all you do is consume, you are not only letting someone else hijack and direct your attention; you are also letting them think for you.”

— Farnam Street

Staying awake to life

Fri, 09 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Call it mindfulness, call it happiness. Staying awake to the world is crucial to live a full life. Here are 5 excellent life tips by Sara Hendren.

“Here is the hardest thing for many people about adulthood: Staying awake. That is, resisting the somnambulance that will grow like weeds over any state of habitual life, excepting acute crises. You have to actively invite experiences into your life that will interrupt the smallness of your story and the calcifying generalizations you make about the world based on your own private universe.”

— Sara Hendren

Stories are taking over, as a media format

Tue, 15 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I loved when Snapchat introduced the Stories format. It suited the platform perfectly and became a sort of passive social channel that I used to enjoy when social media was new. But I haven't given much thought to what the rise of Stories means, both as a platform, and as a media format.

Thankfully, better people have:

Stories is not a technology, nor is it a feature. It is a media format, or even a genre, in the way that a magazine or a murder mystery or a 30-minute television program is.

Strategies for a successful life

Mon, 06 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

If you are anything like me, you've read a ton of great books and articles about how to live well. Learned tips and tricks from masters about how to achieve what you want in life. But honestly, I've probably forgotten more good ideas than I remember. Some idea I've had to relearn more than once. Some would've made my life much easier if I had just remembered them. Which is why I'm so inspired by Derek Sivers idea of Directives.

Derek takes notes while he reads, when he finishes something, he summaries it. Then he takes what he's learnt and adds it to a Do's and Dont's list. The list becomes an ever evolving set of strategies to live a better life. I think this is a great idea.

As one his directives is to shamelessly imitate, I'll take that advice and start doing the same thing. Starting today, I'll post everything I learn and keep a running list of Do's and Dont's. I'll tell you how it pans out in 6 months.

The arrogance of a media empire

Thu, 24 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

“While there was a tremendous amount of prestige and fulfillment that came with working there, there was also quite a bit of arrogance. We viewed Time magazine as this vehicle that basically taught the American public what was important and what you needed to know over the course of the previous week’s news events in a way that is impossible to conceive of now, when the news cycle is five minutes instead of five days.”

— The Last Days of Time Inc

The entire article is definitely worth a read. I find it incredibly analogous to tech startups at the peak of bubbles. All arrogant "bro-culture" playing around. If this really is what journalism looks like from behind the scenes, it's not pretty. I'm glad I don't consume much "news" anymore.

The Cult of Enthusiasm

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 00:00:00 GMT

We live in age of overwhelming optimism. Everyone’s life is maical, and every experience awesome. You can’t buy cereal without being promised a soul uplifting and life affirming spiritual experience of purest joy. And yet, people are unhappy. Why is this?

Optimists are right in being wary of negativity. Most negativity simply hides fear, it creates barriers where there are none, making sure we don’t try something because it can’t be done or because what would people think? Negativity is a sneaky way for us to make ourselves victims. Pessimism is useless, we should never be victims.

But at the other end of the spectrum is the almost maniacal optimist. The person who’s so enthusiastic at all times it’s is simply beyond reason. Well, what’s wrong with that?

Forcing enthusiasm has two major issues, as the journalist Oliver Burkeman outlines in his excellent best seller The Antidote.

Fail at Life

Firstly it sets you up to fail. How we talk to ourselves about things has a very real influence on how we feel. It sets expectations on the situations we find ourselves in, and life will simply never be a barrage of awesome and amazing experiences. It can not be, because the human mind isn’t made to handle that. It would simply stop registering the good things. How many times have you been reminded to count your blessings, only to realize life isn’t so bad? By expecting daily life to be amazing, we’ll constantly face being let down or surrounded by haters. Not because the world is actually like that, but because we‘ve created an impossible expectation.

Use it or lose it

Secondly it seems we actually lose the ability to experience real joy and happiness when we’re constantly forcing the simulacrum of those emotions. According to burkeman “fake it til you make it” is not just incorrect, but is actually the opposite of how your mind is built to work. Counter-intuitively looking at things from a negative point of view, a bit sceptically or even critically, you’ll set yourself up to be positively surprised often. And prepared for the situations when you’re not.

We should never limit ourselves with artificial barriers of negativity and fear. But if we want to experience real happiness, we also shouldn’t buy into the cult of enthusiasm. Don’t force enthusiasm, look critically at the world and enjoy the ride.

The only way to live your life — according to Gallop

Thu, 23 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

“The only way to live your life is not to give a damn what anybody thinks. Decide what your values are, and then operate according to them. When you do that, it makes life so much easier.”

— Cindy Gallop

By way of swissmiss, thinking about how to live my life.

The real reason diversity makes better companies

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Here in Sweden it's common, maybe even mandatory, to say that diverse companies are more innovative and even more profitable. But why are they?

Normally when something as good as this is being discussed, people are so afraid of looking like idiots they avoid discussing the reasons. Or better yet, just shout loudly about how good it is. I don't think this is good for society. Not only are we shaming smart people into silence, but we're also spreading ignorance by not discussing why good ideas are good.

Therefore here is the reason, as I've understood it, that diverse companies are better than no- diverse companies.

To make sure we're on the same page I need to explain how a company works: Companies are the sum of the people working at them. A company culture is just the accepted behaviour of individuals at the company. The profits of a company is the margin between the value the people at the company delivers, and the effort they have to put in.

This is why a company can do more than individuals. Cooperation leverages the employees efforts and smarts.

This is really - really - hard to do well, and the larger the group, the harder it is. The reason for that is that every individual has biases and points of ignorance, putting them all together you might start leveraging stupidity instead of smarts.

This is where diversity comes in

One really simple way to make sure you're not leveraging stupidity is to make sure you have a wide range of ideas floating around at the company. Having different points of view does not stop a company from having a culture. It does demand more communication between employees though.

The easiest way to make sure you have many points of view is to put people from many different backgrounds in the process.

Diversity limits the risk of taking stupid actions, and it can push people to communicate more instead of leaving things unsaid.

So the next time you hear diversity is great, now you at least know one concrete reason why.

The truth about our shortening attention spans

Sat, 08 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Attention spans are rapidly shortening. Social media, texting and the always-online lifestyle is destroying our ability to focus for more than seconds at a time!

You’ve probably heard this a hundred times, maybe experienced it yourself on occasion? The strange thing is, it isn’t true.

How do I know? While we’re reading about shortening attention spans the same sources also report new trends like binge watching shows on Netflix, long form articles, and the popularity of book long podcast episodes the likes of Hardcore History. These two ideas contradict each. Both can’t be true.

The truth is that media consumption is changing radically. We are so inundated with content that we simply have no tolerance for things we don’t like. At the same time we will put in every effort to indulge in the things we love.

If your content needs to be trivially short to catch your audience attention, chances are your content just isn’t that great. On the other hand, it might just be suited for very short consumption?

Time to challenge the internets visual conformity

Fri, 02 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I wrote a few weeks back about the fact that the internet doesn’t need to be quite as bland as it is. The prerequisites have changed which opens up a lot more choice in design. This idea seems to be becoming a trend, this morning I found another great article on the topic: “Why do all websites look the same?”.

How will you break the mould?

Twitter reinvents the web comment

Mon, 30 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMT

If you’ve read my posts before you’ve probably heard me complain about Twitter before, and I’ve thought about it some more:

I loved Twitter when it was in its infancy, the distributed social asynchronous communication let me learn from and get into contact with people who shared my interests from all over the world. It was empowering.

But Twitter is changing. It's no longer designed as a platform for discussion, but as one for publication.

This new Twitter feels way-to familiar. It looks like Twitter have reinvented the web comment. Same format, same bad tone, same bad social grace. Good job Twitter.

View fullsize

The only real difference between a blog, twitter, and a news site is interface. That's how powerful design is in informing behaviour.

Wake up and stop wasting time

Fri, 16 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Sometimes you just need a swift kick in the ass. Sometimes, you need some brutal truth:

“You need to have one of those moments where you stop justifying time-wasters. Where you stop justifying playing small. Where you stop justifying spending time with the wrong people. Where you stop doing business with the wrong people. Where you stop being immature with your money and your relationships.”

So how to we do this? This is how:

“Research has clearly shown that the avoidance of failure undermines intrinsic motivation. Put bluntly, if you’re trying to avoid failure, you’re focused on the wrong things. And you can’t win long-term in life this way.”

Stop avoiding failure. Stop focusing on the outcomes, but instead focus on the work itself. If you're interested, this is the research referenced.

What's so ethical about design anyway? (Designers in Stockholm)

Fri, 09 Feb 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I gave a rousing 5 minute pitch about why design should consider ethics, and how and where evil comes into being.

Thanks to Bonnier Broadcasting for hosting the event!

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/4RcEMUDGuSU7C4?wmode=opaque

Ethics in design (8 feb 2018)* from *Jesper Bylund

Why minimalism is a meta skill

Fri, 09 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Cultivating a selective focus is the only way to make real progress towards your goals in life. This is an excellent article by James Clear based around investment advice by Warren Buffet. Advice doesn't get much better than this.

“The key point is this:
Your odds of success improve when you are forced to direct all of your energy and attention to fewer tasks.”

— James Clear

Why social media is dying

Mon, 09 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve witnessed and anguished over the decline of my favorite social media, Twitter, for years. Now it seems everyone is talking about the implosion of Facebook and all the algorithmic feed platforms like Instagram.

Today I realized just how much people crave chronological feeds of what people wish to say. I’m sure you’ve seen stories like this:

It’s the traditional social media feed. The chronological text update from someone. reinvented in the “disappearing story’s” popularized by Snapchat.

It turns out that while social media is dying. The reason it exists in the first place is still just as valid:

“Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation...” — Oscar Wilde

Whatever made these companies think it was ever about anything else?

You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

“The key thing to remember about me is that I’m still a student. I’m still in boot camp. If anyone is reading any of my thoughts, I’d keep that in mind. Don’t take it all too seriously. If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away. What are we, anyway? Most of what we think we are is just a collection of likes and dislikes, habits, patterns. At the core of what we are is our values, and what decisions and actions we make reflect those values. ”

— Steve Jobs

That's one hell of a quote to think about today.

2019 in review

Sun, 05 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

2019 promised to be a year of celebration and positive change. It turned out to be tumultuous in the extreme. This has .been among the hardest, if not the hardest, year I’ve even experienced. Strangely, it also contained some fo the happiest moments of my life.

I’ve never cancelled so many trips. I’ve never had so much cause to celebrate. And I’ve never been this close to death, both literally and figuratively.

Timeline of Events

What I learned

Fitness & Health

Timeline of Events

Spring

January started with the most extreme event. I was rushed to the emergency room, diagnosed with a blood cot around 30cm (a foot) long. And I don’t believe I would’ve gone to the emergency room if Agnes had not insisted. I tell her she saved my life, but she doesn’t believe me.

February was uneventful and a bit scary.

March disappeared in prepping for the years big adventure.

April we went to Tokyo for 10 days. To see the cherry blossom, celebrate my birthday, and fulfil our shared lifelong dream of visiting Japan. I also took the chance to propose. Luckily she said yes. And suddenly the year didn’t seem so bleak any more.

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Summer

May brought the first wave of summer northern Europe, we hung out on the balcony. Took extra long walks with the dogs. Saw more friends and even visited Berlin together for the first time!

June was spent working hard, visiting outdoor bars, and rushing up to the northern parts of Sweden to prep and then celebrate Swedish midsummer. Despite a lot of bad planning, we had a great time!

July was vacation time. Desperate to rest up from a stressful first half of the year, we tried to do too much and ended up tired like never before. We also spent a ton of time watching old movies on our balcony and people watching on rooftop bars. So it was not a bad time.

August already started turning cold. Spiff, our dog, had a terrible month health wise. We spent a lot of time in the archipelago, enjoying the last of summer.

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Fall

September turned out beautiful. So we spent more time in the archipelago, with Agnes’ parents and their new puppy. I also joined the bachelor party for my dear old friend Douglas. Sadly, we also had to say goodbye to our little dog.

October was mostly about work, Stockholm was already cold, but beautiful. Oh and Douglas got married, which we celebrated in style.

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Winter

November went by in a blur. Tons of work. We did manage to hang out with my parents a bit though. And on the tail end, we saw the years first snow.

December was a month of celebration this year. Agnes turned thirty, which we celebrated at least three times. We also went full on Christmas mode and loved every moment of it. Oh and I published my first book.

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What I Learned

It’s hard to even know where to start after a year like this. With so much death, and so much celebration, I should’ve learned a ton of things I guess.

Truthfully. I haven’t had much time to think deeply about things. So I think I learned less this year, than last year.

I did relearn, or unlearn, a few things of note:

Life really is short. Every time you talk to someone, it may well be the last. So don’t rush it, brush it off, or force yourself through it. Every Christmas is the last Christmas like it. Really listen. Do the thing properly or not at all. And hug your loved ones.

Focus means doing the boring thing. Fun and stress are distracting, and yourself is the easiest person to distract. Do the boring thing. The slog. What is meaningful long term is what you’ll look back at as meaningful.

Take risks. This is the only way we grow. Rest, yes. But don’t get comfortable. Nothing happens when you’re comfortable.

Health & Fitness

No photo this year. Because of the blood clot I’ve trained a lot less this year than I would’ve liked to. I’m also the fattest I’ve been for many years (which is stil pretty thin). And this is affecting my mental state way more than I like to admit. It’s strange how discretely vanity builds up in ones own self image.

I have on the other hand started drinking way less, and slowly becoming more mindful of how I’m dealing with stress. So the year is not all wasted. And I’m looking forward to training harder in 2020.

Alcohol

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Ever since I was a student I’ve been slowly cutting down on drinking. Cutting because I can recognise adverse effects, but slowly because I’m not quite willing to stop the social lubrication.

This fall has given me a lot to think about though. As usual I’ve been frustrated and depressed as the sunlight has left Sweden, this happens every fall, but this year I’ve also noticed that alcohol is making all the negatives worse.

I’m tired, and a few drinks with friends will make me more tired in a couple of days following (yes days, plural, come back and scoff when you’re closer to 40).

I’m frustrated because my energy is low, and having a drink will make me more easily frustrated.

Still not quite ready to give alcohol up completely. But planning to limit myself at 2-3 drinks per week seems ever more exciting.

Don't work on the wrong thing — doing quick research

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I was invited to Aspiring Founders meetup #4 to talk about how I did rapid research at n8n and Volocopter. Only aobut a hundred people came to my talk, but it was fun to share!

I shared my main learnings from a decade of research. Which can be boiled down to:

Talk to the right people
Ask good research questions
Disprove your hypothesis
Do NOT validate

Download presentation

Back to work

Mon, 15 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

It’s a crisp and lovely morning. It’s the first day back to work, I’m jet lagged and slept badly, and it’s also the first day in two weeks when I’m not constantly with my life partner.

This will be interesting! Still super excited about doing work, which I really enjoy.

Blood clot watch

Tue, 16 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

In January on 2019 I was shocked to find myself with a foot long blood clot in my upper thigh to lower abdomen. Deep vein thrombosis usually affects people in their senior years, and correlates pretty well with being overweight and smoking.

I’m fitness athlete thin and I’ve never smoked. I was 34.

I’ve been on blood thinners ever since, and my body is supposed to solve the issue without any direct intervention. Since the blood clot is a partial blockage of a vein, we apparently don’t measure the clot itself, that would be too costly for the free healthcare system of Sweden. Instead we measure the circumference of the leg. The swelling should correlate pretty accurately with the remaining size of the clot.

Being the person I am, I naturally measured my leg every morning to track any progress. I figured it’s worth sharing. This is my blod clot watch, updated daily. When the blue line hits the bottom of the chart, I should be back to normal. The red line is a trailing average of 7 days to help show the progress.

Blood clot

Sat, 12 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

During Christmas break I ate too much and drank too much. Like most people in Sweden, Christmas is a time for gluttony. And being a recovering compulsive eater, I’m not exactly holding back.

To counter the unhealthily lifestyle I hit the gym a lot as well. Nothing makes extra room for cookies and chocolate like a few sets of heavy deadlifts.

This year though, I felt over exerted. I felt drained come New Years. And when I woke up on New Year’s Day with a throbbing right hip and thigh I sort of shrugged it off and knew I’d get back to normal in a few days. Coming back to healthy food and rest would solve it. It always had.

Only this time. It didn’t.

This time, my right leg swelled up to cartoonish proportions. I still assumed this was due to over exertion, and just did a bit of stretching and took it easy. Three days in though, my life partner Agnes started getting worried. She convinced me to call the health hotline, and in less than an hour we were waiting at the emergency room. A blood test later and I was injected with blood thinners, told to take a taxi home for the night and be back early for an ultra sound of my thigh.

Turns out I have a 20-25cm blood clot through my thigh into my hip, and possibly a malformed vein in my hip. I’m now on blood thinners and trying to come to terms with the fact that this will change my short term life dramatically.

Normally blood clots affect people at 60 to 80 years of age, with more risk if they smoke and are over weight.

Not really that common in 34 years olds who eat fitness diets and lift heavy weights as a lifestyle.

But I guess I beat the odds on that one.

Breaking habits

Sun, 04 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I recently read a blog post about tracking ones habits to identify what sort of behaviors and triggers are present in a normal day. Usually I read these, and like everyone else, think I’ll do that some other day. Only this time I started right away.

I’ve just had a two week vacation and noticed that I kept doing things I wasn’t really hoping to do. I guess this triggered me into action. Well, that and the resting.

It took me less than 5 minutes to find an app to ask me what I was doing at random intervals during the day (Mind Jogger) and I then struggled to actually answer the question for a week. Of course I ignored the question plenty of times, but today I had a decent 22 answers to go through and analyze.

It turns out, big surprise, that I’m interrupted by notifications. And much more prone to bad moods, procrastination, and destructive behavior when I’m tired or hungover.

Not really much of a surprise. Having a clear picture of just how much this affects me though, is an eye opener.

Time to break som bad habits.

Charles Handy on education

Sat, 10 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Weekend mornings usually finds me sitting down with a cup of coffee and reading. This morning I’ve been listening to Beatles Revolver on vinyl, drinking my espresso (always doubles), and reading last weeks The Economist. In which I found an interesting piece on Charles Handy, apparently some sort of business guru. Not only did it spark inspiration in me to update my “Where does evil come from” talk, it also gave me this quote to ponder:

“education is an experience understood in tranquility. You look back and see where you went wrong.”

Charles Handy

Creative time experiment result

Wed, 18 Dec 2019 00:00:00 GMT

In this post I outlined how I wanted to schedule creative time periods in which to work on projects instead of doing more goal oriented todo lists. The idea was that hopefully this would allow me to use my current excitement to get further instead of forcing myself to work on an old project.

Well it turns out that it is incredibly difficult to schedule creative time periods. I didn’t use the period once since I wrote that post. The times the period was allocated I was tired or similarly distracted.

Instead I find myself thinking about problems in exciting projects and writing down solutions to test when I have the time to test them. So maybe this is how I’ll work from now on.

Creative Time instead of ToDo lists

Mon, 19 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Even though I’ve managed to ship quite a few things in recent years I struggle to find the time for my personal projects. It’s not that I’m unorganised, I have an ordered list of things to do next. It’s not that there’s no time, I’ve been a minimalist for many years and I’ve cut our most time thieves from my life. But I still struggle.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and Charbel, a designer I admire and was fortunate enough to have as a mentor through 500 startups, shared this insight with me:

https://twitter.com/charbeljsimon/status/1161705899926253568

I spent a day or so thinking about this before I realised that I might not be able to do my creative work when I’m blasting through todos while low on energy.

That’s why I’m testing out a new thing. Starting this week I’m no longer planning out my personal projects too much. Instead I’m planning Creative Time, and picking any project that excites me, and I’m working on that. The focus is going to be on always shipping something, but since excitement often wanes, the things I ship will probably be small.

I’ll try this strategy for a month and let you know.

Dugges Tap Takeover

Sun, 28 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Together with Agnes, I run a social media influencers account call Stout Empire where we test, review, and recommend stouts and dark beers. It’s a lot of fun. And yesterday was a bonanza.

Our current favorite brewery, Dugges, had a tap takeover/beer crawl event where they premiered and revisited some very exciting Dessert Stouts. We tried all of them.

Thankfully we also met the founder of Dugges. So it wasn’t just a stout fueled night, but also a bit of an investment.

Easter again

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

It’s the last day of Easter weekend. And spiff is getting tired of having us home. I on the other hand feel invigorated and psyched about work and investment!

Easter beginning

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Spiff the menace (our cute, but evil, dog) woke me up early. I don’t mind much, the jet lag is still not quite over so I was already sleeping lightly.

Today we’re celebrating Easter with my family and new nephew. It’ll be great to see the family after Tokyo and the engagement. Though I’d be surprised if we talked about anything but renovations.

Easter Dinner with the inlaws

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Had easter dinner with Agnes family yesterday. Barbecued lamb, which was absolutely amazing. With an excellent chilean red, and a ton of strange candies mostly from Tokyo.

It was a great night.

"Ego Is the Enemy" by Ryan Holiday

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I wish I’d read Ego earlier. In fact I wish I’d read Ego back in school, even before collage. I wish I’d read it every time a relationship started going sour, and every time a project failed.

I didn’t realise I had an ego problem. I thought egotism was something extraordinary assholes were occupied with. It turns out everyone has an ego problem. And this book really helps you work through it.

This is one of those books that I will reread, and keep thinking about for years. Here are just a few gems:

““It is impossible to learn that which one thinks one already knows,” Epictetus says. You can’t learn if you think you already know. You will not find the answers if you’re too conceited and self-assured to ask the questions. You cannot get better if you’re convinced you are the best.
”

— Ryan Holiday

“According to Greene, there are two types of time in our lives: dead time, when people are passive and waiting, and alive time, when people are learning and acting and utilizing every second.
[...]
But what if we said: This is an opportunity for me. I am using it for my purposes. I will not let this be dead time for me. The dead time was when we were controlled by ego. Now—now we can live.”

— Ryan Holiday

“In failure or adversity, it’s so easy to hate. Hate defers blame. It makes someone else responsible. It’s a distraction too; we don’t do much else when we’re busy getting revenge or investigating the wrongs that have supposedly been done to us. Does this get us any closer to where we want to be? No. It just keeps us where we are—or worse, arrests our development entirely. If we are already successful, as Hearst was, it tarnishes our legacy and turns sour what should be our golden years.”

— Ryan Holiday

Ethics in design revamp

Mon, 12 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Had a brainwave this weekend and started rewriting a presentation I did on the ethics of design last year. When I fired up keynote this evening I realized the original talk wasn’t streamed, and I haven’t shared the slides before. So I thought I’d do that first.

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/4RcEMUDGuSU7C4

Ethics in design (8 feb 2018) from Jesper Bylund

Finding patterns in randomness.

Mon, 29 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I recently saw season three of Stranger Things on Netflix with my partner, and at one point we both wanted to pause the episode just to learn a word the nerdy professor used: Apophenia.

Apophenia is the tendency for us to find patterns in random noise. Like seeing faces in clouds, or believing we can predict a coin toss.

Originally the word was intended to denote the more extreme behaviours of finding patterns, for instance delusions in connections with schizophrenia. But I think it’s useful in all sorts of situations. Especially for me, as a designer, when I track and observe human behaviour.

Finding tranquility

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 00:00:00 GMT

“If you seek tranquillity, do less.” Or (more accurately) do what’s essential—what the logos of a social being requires, and in the requisite way. Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better. Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?” But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.”

Marcus Aurelius, (translated by Gregory Hays)

If you seek tranquility, do less. Always ask yourself, is this necessary.

Words to live by.

First day of spring in Stockholm

Wed, 17 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Just before Easter, we got a warm sunny day. The leaves almost burst. And Swedes took to the streets wearing way to little and probably all getting colds. It’s a tradition in this nation after a winter that seems to last forever.

My little family even had a drink and a smoke on the balcony. It was grand.

All the things that go wrong developing products (at sthlmJS)

Fri, 26 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I spoke about text input in Js and all the things that can go wrong. Most of it was what I learned making BlankPage over the last few years.

It was a ton of fun talking in front of people again. I wish I had spent a little more time preparing, some of my delivery fell flat. And the audience knew a lot more tech than I had expected.

We live and learn. Thanks to @sthlmjs for inviting me!

Great day

Mon, 06 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Today was a really great day. Can’t put my finger on why, as I was tired, did some but not great work. And generally just had a normal Monday.

But it was great. It’s important to pause and enjoy that when it happens. Like Neil Gaiman says, the greatest piece of advice he ever got was; “ ‘...this is great. You should enjoy this.’ And I didn’t.”

Take a deep breath. Let things be as they are a moment. And enjoy it. I am.

Have an easter

Sat, 20 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Spiff wishes you an Easter. Not much of a happy one, for him. But me and Agnes are spending it in the best of ways. Chilling out, reading, having a drink, and walking around in the sun.

Hemingway quote

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT

This is an amazing quote by Ernest Hemingway. I wanted to make a poster that strengthens the message without distracting from the words. I don't think I nailed it. But I sort of like it, it's almost like the text is breathing.
Probably inspired by the QlockTwo typographic clocks (https://qlocktwo.com). See it on dribbble here.

How does Focus work?

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 00:00:00 GMT

If you’re interested in personal performance like me, no doubt you’ve read a lot about focus and energy management the last few years. New Studies claim that focus and willpower is like a tank of gas that runs dry if you use it to much during the day. Other New Studies shows that meditation (the practice of focusing and refocusing for short periods of time) increases focus.

So which is it? How does focus work? I think their both right.

Focus seems to work very much like a muscle, if you deliberately practice it, you can focus deeper and with more control (i.e. it gets easier to start and stop focusing). But it also seems to work a lot like endurance, the more time you spend focused, the less mental energy you’ll have at the end of the day.

Which is why I try to focus deliberately, constantly nudging myself when I get distracted, and take resting very seriously. You can’t work with perfect focus forever. You might be able to effect how much you can focus, but always be aware of your limits. When I step beyond my limits, I get annoyed, cranky, feel frustrated about not getting anywhere, and spend even more energy that I don’t have. It’s a slippery slope.

How do you manage your focus?

How to trust someone

Wed, 25 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT

“The best way to find out if you can trust someone is to trust them.”
— Ernest Hemingway

How to work with remote employees

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I ran a remote agency a few years ago, but I didn’t understand how difficult remote work was to manage until I spent a few years as a consultant.

Most of the companies I’ve worked with in the last few years would have profited from a remote work structure. But a lack of information about how they could work remote made it difficult for them. I only realised this the other day while talking to a Project Manager I know. He shared several fears about managing remote work that didn’t have any obvious solutions.

This got me thinking, maybe most information online today is aimed at remote workers, and not remote managers?

So here is my first attempt at trying to share what I’ve learned managing remote workers over the past 10 years.

We are all remote

This is the most important insight I’ve had about remote work. At any office people are coming and going at different hours. Picking up kids or running a quick errand during lunch. Just try to book a meeting at the end of a work day and see how your mailbox fills up with counter proposals!

Every organisation is already remote. Not in the sense that your colleagues are sitting on a beach in a different timezone, but in the sense that you are not always in the same building at the same time.

That’s why a remote work process will help you communicate more effectively.

Remote communication is more effective

If people are not in the same room. You need to start writing things down, in a clear, chronological, and distributed manner. This allows people to work at different hours from yours, but it also cuts down the follow ups and syncing between people. As an added benefit it also makes it easier to track how things are progressing, and what has worked or not before.

It does require a bit more effort from the communicator. So naturally we are all a bit sceptical about this at first, we’re busy people. But writing down decisions and meeting notes publicly makes communication much more effective for all receivers. Including you. Which makes writing it down publicly a net benefit for everyone, not in the future, but right now.

Imagine having less email to deal with and fewer meetings. That’s the side effect of writing things down.

Remote meetings are much more effective

Meetings are important. Really important. Despite that we all dread seeing our calendars fill up. Deep down we know that a lot of those meetings, while important, are not very important for us.

If someone is not in the same office as you, meetings need to be held via a phone or video call, and these are magic.

Again it takes some effort to get everyone set up for issue-free video meetings (I’ll explain how in the next part) but when you have issue free video meetings there are a lot of benefits. No more need to book a room, find the damn room, get the projector working, wait for everyone to get coffee, etc etc. Instead you’re left talking about what needs to be talked about, and can even take notes while you do it. Without hiding behind a screen.

Remote tools are really the only option today

Last but not least I want to talk about tools. Most of us already use remote tools. But we rarely think about it.

Tools like Slack, Word, Excel, DropBox, GitHub… you name it. Pretty much every digital tool stores its information in the cloud. Which makes it a remote work friendly.

If you are still bouncing files back and forth in email threads, shame on you. Not only is it bad from a security perspective, but versioning is nearly impossible, and mistakes are very easy to make.

Stop sending files, use a remote tool. Most apps already do this.

That’s it, you are now managing remotely

Of course there are a lot more things to say about how to manage people working remotely. But get these things in order and you’ve covered all the basics. With a proper process for remote meetings, public decisions, and tools you are already remote.

It no longer matters where you work, and you can start getting more done with colleagues who might not share your exact office hours. Enjoy!

Extra — curious about how to handle remote meetings? this is how:

I’ve met a lot of people complaining about conference calls and video meetings. But most problems I’ve seen are not related to the tools or tech. They mostly work fine. The problems are most often related to people being uncomfortable or unused to the format.

Here’s how I have held literally hundreds of solid remote meetings:

Video. Seeing someone makes it a lot easier to stay focused and to listen. Always use video. I recommend Zoom. It’s excellent.
Headsets. Almost every bad remote meeting I’ve been part of has had a small group of people shouting into a cheap laptop. The problem is microphones on laptops aren’t very good, and those conference call mikes are usually worse. Everyone received a headset with their phone. Get everyone to plug in with their own headset and you will be surprised at how much better the sound quality is. Added benefit: no more echo.
Agenda. Have one before the meeting, follow it, remote meetings actually make faffing about harder. Enjoy the time saved.
Speak in turns. In face to face meetings the person a lot of people talk over each other. In video meetings two people can’t speak at the same time, which is a good thing. Use the video calling softwares “raise hand” function, or chat, to let the other participants know you want to speak next. Then hand it over to the next speaker. It might feel a bit stiff, but damn the meetings get productive.
Save the video. Most meeting software offers this, Zoom actually auto generates a transcript for you when you save the meeting. This is a great way of letting people who could not attend get up to speed. And you can refer back to a meeting without having to try to remember it. Costs practically nothing, will cut down the amount of unnecessary meetings by half, at least.

There you go, my 5 steps to a great remote meeting. Try it out, be adamant about the rules, and you will love it.

Humanising phone calls and Twitter

Thu, 05 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I only just discovered this article on Wired where the author tweets out her phone number and rediscovers humanity by talking to people. So far I loved it. She portrayed twitter as the dehumanizing force that it is usually portrayed as these days, and I was feeling convinced.

At the end, she wrote:

I’ve always loved talking on the phone. I adore the subtle ways a phone call can evoke intimacy. You hear the cracks in a voice, the sound of breath, and the patience of thinking.

Which at first made me nostalgic for long phone calls and my teenage years. Then I recognised the very human trait she was describing. I think Douglas Adams said it best:

I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

The wired author isn’t wrong. I recognise the feeling, and now I’m interested in tweeting out my own number… But I would guess that we are of the same generation. As usual, the medium is not the message.

Improve or enjoy

Thu, 05 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

— E. B. White

Saw this amazing quote on Swiss Miss blog. I find it both inspiring, and a real common problem.

Leaving Tokyo

Thu, 11 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

A chilly bright morning we left our hotel in Kinshicho to settle into a shitty run down replacement business class flight back to Stockholm.

Tokyo has been amazing, but also overwhelming. I’m not sure if I’m sad to leave or happy to get back into a productive routine. Time will tell I’m sure.

Until then, I’ll try to drink enough champagne to make these tickets worth the price. This is an 80s quality flight. #shudder

Massive jet lag

Tue, 16 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

It’s usually easier for me to fly west. Something about staying awake and syncing up the day of travel helps me adapt to the new time zone.

Today I’m feeling incredibly jet lagged though. And I must’ve been completely gone for most of the day yesterday. So here’s to hoping this is the peak, and I’ll start syncing back tomorrow.

Very sad to hear about Notre Dame burning. It’s hard to imagine landmarks like that disappearing. But I guess that’s just fuzzy logic. All thing change. All things end. Hoc Etiam Transibit.

May the 4th be with you

Sat, 04 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Saw endgame today with Agnes. Really great end to an era. Not really psyched about marvel movies anymore. This was a worthy end.

Also, we had a beer and celebrated the Fourth.

Media fast again

Sun, 05 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

This summer I had a two week vacation, most of which I spent stressed out or tired. So naturally, I spent the two following weeks thinking about why.

One of the main reasons, I think, is that I’m procrastinating from resting by constantly feeding myself media. I guess it’s time for another media fast. Try it, can’t promise it will work wonders, but I venture to think most people could benefit.

Minding my zen

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMT

There’s a wonderful quote by Blaise Pascal:

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Blaise Pascal

While I’m not sure how much thermo nuclear war is solved by twiddling your thumbs, I’ve certainly noticed that I seem to have more problems when I’m unable to just be still and think.

The strange thing is that by just sitting still and thinking my mood lightens and the problems tend to disappear.

So when I’m so stressed that I’m unable to sit still. Simply sitting alone by myself is will cure me from said stress. It’s a quirky solution, and damned hard to do. But it works magic.

My 35th Birthday

Wed, 10 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I just woke up in a rainy Kinshicho, Tokyo. It’s my 35th birthday and I’m happily spending it doing weird things with my favorite person.

I love celebrating, but I don’t like growing old. Being old I don’t mind, but the scope of what is possible in life grows smaller with every year, and that I don’t like.

I know theoretically that the shortness of life is meaningful, and triggers us to act. But I don’t always feel it. Which is why today, on the best vacation I’ve ever had, I’m sad to be reminded that this too shall pass.

I’ll hug Agnes a little tighter today. This moment is worth celebrating.

What are you optimizing for?

Mon, 11 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

A thought struck me today while rushing from the my doctors appointment to my office. I was listening to a podcast and checking out the stock market. I was distracting myself from a pretty dreary subway ride. But I was also using the time to be productive, plan out my tasks for the afternoon so that I could optimise my time.

Todo lists. Email. Quick meetings. Lunch at your desk. 6 minute abs. Fast Food. It’s all about optimising our time. Finding a way to cram more stuff into our days.

The thought that struck me was; what am we optimizing for?

One day you will be scanning the headlines and listening to a podcast in 2x the speed, and that will be it. That was life. Optimised to the extreme. Forcedly pushed into ever longer caffeinated days. But optimised for what?

I think I’ll take my dog for a slow walk. After that I might have a glass of wine with the love of my life. Maybe call my mom. But whatever I do tonight, it will be because I wanted to, and unoptimised.

Pain and stickers

Thu, 09 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Had a couple of great lunches the last couple of days. They were more or less over shadowed by a sudden pain in my shoulder, neck, and brain yesterday when I was at the gym. I’ve never worried about having a stroke before, but that really felt... serious.

It wasn’t though, thankfully. Probably just my body stiffening up from lack of movement since the blood clot is stopping me from working out.

Today I got a package with Stout Empire stickers, so there’s light at the end of the tunnel I guess.

"Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less" by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Mon, 04 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I was recommended this book by my friend Annelie, while discussing how to effectively rest. I wasn’t very impressed though. The book has some interesting ideas, and some good practical tips. But sadly they are hidden under a layer of personal anecdotes that so many American self help books are infested with.

““It is too easy, when rather tired, to fritter a whole day away with the intention of working but never getting properly down to it,” Littlewood said. “This is pure waste, nothing is done, and you have had no rest or relaxation.””

— Rest

I recommend getting the cliff’s notes or Blinkist version instead.

There was this gem though:

“beautifully empty hours that stretch out, untouchable by clients or colleagues or (especially) children.”

— Rest

Shocked at how little is online

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve spent quite a few hours in the last months trying to find some specific things online: stuff to build a sliding door for our bedroom, and vintage designer clothes for men.

I’m forced to conclude that a lot of the world is still offline, unindexed, and hard to find. We have a lot more work to do. And there are tons of opportunities in the old school internet business cases like “putting stuff online”.

"Siddhartha" by Hermann Hesse

Mon, 04 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Over ten years ago I fell in love with Herrmann Hesse because of his amazing poem Allein. I actually made a print and had it on my wall for years. So I was excited to read one of his novels. Siddhartha is the story of an indian man living in parallel with the Buddha. Much like The Alchemist it tells a story of personal enlightenment from the perspective of a young man travelling.

It’s a short read and thought provoking. Beautiful prose. But I think I’m more likely to recommend The Alchemist to friends.

“Wisdom that a wise man attempts to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness.””

— Hermann Hesse in Siddhartha

Simply Sunday

Sun, 05 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

A little work. A lot of reading, and spent a few hours in the sun on the balcony. We did blankets but damn it feels good to be in the sun again. Spiff likes it too.

Something I keep learning over and over again

Fri, 13 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday I read my journal from two years ago. I was looking for clues to what I did that had made me so much more productive during that time. I was surprised to learn that it wasn’t something I did, but something I avoided.

When I browser through my journal, I kept finding thoughts and projects that I was recently working on or thinking about just a few months ago. This shocked me. Was I stuck in a rut? Just rehashing the same ideas over and over again, never shipping and moving on?

For the past two years I’ve been working full time as a consultant. I’ve done some good work, but I’ve also worked with big corporate customers and apparently, that has rubbed off on me. I’ve been so caught up in the stressful day to day, that I haven’t made much real progress. Comparing to my journal, I’ve made maybe 3 months worth of progress in the past 24 months…

This must change. Life is too short.

So borrowing some ideas from Julian Shapiro’s excellent kick in the ass Mental Models article, I will apply some real strategy and discipline to my work. Starting yesterday. I sincerely hope I don’t need to learn this again.

Spring cleaning

Sun, 21 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Today is all about clearing out. Todo lists, old trash, and dust bunnies.

Strangely satisfied by cleaning our windows. The light is twice as nice now.

Staying consistent

Mon, 20 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I think the main obstacle to staying consistent is lack of feedback. When there’s no feedback, I start thinking about other things. And suddenly that project is neglected, or my health plan is out the window.

But we can create systems of feedback. The easiest way is just to ask a friend “mind if bounce my progress off you?” Or “would you be my accountability partner?”

I might start experimenting with that.

Sick today, but not so much I couldn’t get to work. Still annoying.

Still “today”

Sat, 13 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

It’s now 20 hours since I started this morning. Almost home, but it’s still “today”. And we’re still on the road.

We’re tired. We’re ragged. But we’re happy. And Stockholm greeted us from its best side, with some long evening spring sunshine.

Text Editing & Input Conflicts (SthlmJS #54)

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

It was about text inputs and merging conflicts. A short journey through the many, and varied, stupid solutions one designer/developer could come up with in the course of just a few years:

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/hZ20mC6JAuQhdj?wmode=opaque

Text Editing & Input Conflicts from Jesper Bylund

The best advice

Fri, 16 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

This is a full blogpost from JSomers, I found it so valueable, I wanted to both store it here for my memory’s sake, as well as share it:

These are excerpts (emphasis mine) from William James’s 1890 classic, Principles of Psychology, Chapter IV, “Habit”:

The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund.
For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.
Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain. It is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspirations communicate the new ‘set’ to the brain.
No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.
As a final practical maxim, relative to these habits of the will, we may, then, offer something like this: Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved.

Original post here.

The end of a product

Sat, 04 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Today I closed BlankPage. My main project for the last five years. It was a hell of a ride, but never made enough money to live on. And the boring admin just kept growing.

Thank you everyone who wrote on my little project. My life will never be the same.

The How

Sat, 31 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I’m always looking for ways to be better at doing things. Recently I’ve been think a lot about Basecamp’s “hill charts”. The idea is a progress displayed on a bell curve, where the first half is Defining the project, and the second half Executing on the project. Normally only the executing is taken into account.

This morning I realized that a lot of my procrastination with important tasks is about not knowing How I should do the task. It took me a few minutes before I realized; this is the problem that hill charts are solving for projects. I should apply this to smaller tasks, or projects, as well.

I’m slowly learning that understanding takes a while to happen. Merely thinking through an idea is only the first step.

The last sunny day of Tokyo

Thu, 11 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday we finished up the last of our plans for Tokyo, and today is the last day of our vacation that is sunny and warm. So we’re spending it walking around an area of the city we really liked; Shimokitazawa.

Here’s for some vintage shops, and hipster cafes. Hopefully some shaved ice as well.

Tired or Bored?

Wed, 14 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

SometImes I find myself completely drained. Devoid of any initiative or sense of purpose, I struggle to do even the fun things. I’m not talking about depression, just evenings or parts of days where I have no energy.

I’ve always thought that this means I’m tired. That I need to rest more, or better, and allow myself to come back naturally. I am, after all, not getting any younger.

But a thought hit me earlier. This never happens when I’m doing stuff and actually completing things. And as a former cognitive psychology student I know that motivation comes after action, not the other way around..

So I have this vague suspicion that maybe I’m not tired. Maybe I’m just bored. Not bored as “in need of entertainment”, but bored as in “my life is on rails”.

Maybe I need to do more challenging things. Or maybe I just need to sleep more. How do you tell the difference?

Tranquility, growth, and curiosity

Tue, 24 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT

From @craigmod 's Roden newsletter:

"benefit (ideally: tranquility, growth, curiosity)"

I quote it out of context because I think it captures an idea of Mental Benefit so well. Isn’t that what we all want from our time spent? Tranquility, growth, and curiosity?

Unpacking and realigning

Sun, 14 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

The Surprising Link Between Jet Lag and Intermittent Fasting - GuavaPass | The Daily Guava

We went to bed on time and got up on time. This is the first crucial step to fighting jetlag, and so far so good. We also need sunlight and to eat at proper times, that's going to be harder.

Other than that, we unpacked all our stuff from the trip. I called my parents, and it's almost time to set off for the gym. A productive day. Still a bit worried there might be an impending jetlag hangover around the corner.

Worry is pointless though, so let's get on with it!

Vacation & Proposals in Tokyo

Tue, 09 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I’m in Tokyo for a couple of weeks with Agnes, and I’m having a wonderful adventure, but also the first proper vacation I’ve ever had. No real work for the entire period. A few calls, a few drinks, and a few emails. But no planning, no deadlines to keep, nothing. Besides feeling weird, it’s also making me spontaneously bubble with ideas. Can’t wait to start working again. But I’m also really happy to see what a little rest does to me.

Also took the time to propose to Agnes. It was a surprise to her, but a 6 month long plan for me. It all worked out amazingly, because she said yes.

We found Bubble Tea & the good life

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Possibly my favorite discovery from Tokyo was Tapioca Bubble Tea. It’s a strange concoction of flavored milk tea, soft tapioca pearls, and ice. But it’s both very refreshing and tasty.

We found a place that sells this in Stockholm, and we’re both irritated by the terrible service (the line was 30 minutes long) and surprised by how good it was (almost on par with Tokyo!). Cha Talk bear Rådmansgatan, check it out!

Then we spent the night rewatching Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Always the hopeful and dark classic.

What happens after React? (SthlmJS #58)

Sun, 10 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I gave another talk at SthlmJS (#58). This time hosted at Developers Bay, whom I work with quite a lot.

The talk was about “What happens after React?” and posits that non-shadow dom frameworks, like Svelte, might take over in the future because they are just so much more performant. Not to mention nice to work with!

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/3oZ7BYxxKIbiIP?wmode=opaque

What happens after react? from Jesper Bylund

What's so Ethical about Design anyway?

Sun, 08 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Last year I gave a talk at Designers in Stockholm about where evil comes from and how to avoid it. I called it “What’s so ethical about design anyway?” as a joke about the raging debate on ethics of design.

This debate has only grown since I gave the talk, but I’ve heard very little of substance on the topic. So to contribute I thought I’d update my talk and make it available online.

Here are my thoughts on how evil happens in large organisations, and how to avoid becoming evil.

[slideshare id=3IJTrL8KQvkE8Z?wmode=opaque&w=427&h=356&fb=0&mw=0&mh=0&style=border:1px solid #CCC; border-width:1px; margin-bottom:5px; max-width: 100%;&sc=no]

What is so Ethical about Design? from Jesper Bylund

This talk is 5 to 30 minutes long. Email me if you’d like me to present it for your organisation or meetup.

Who you travel with

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT

“In life, it’s not where you go - It’s who you travel with.”

— Charles Schulz

I’m starting to realise this is true more and more. Not only does this apply to my own ideas about applying minimalism in relationships (keep the ones that spark joy perhaps?), but also to what sort of person I want to be.

I will be a part of hundreds of lives during my time, some shortly for a dinner or a smile in a store, some deeply, it’s worth really thinking deeply about what sort of person I want to be in those lives.

2020 in review

Sat, 30 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

2020 looked like it was going to be an amazing year. I was expecting to make a lot of money, start at least one business, and travel a LOT...

Well you know what happened. Covid.

So instead, I got a job. Worked from home. And headed into what might've been a short depression. The year turned out really well in the end. But man, what a roller coaster it has been.

Timeline of Events

Spring

January I was working hard as hell, trying to keep it together running a small product team at a video infrastructure company.

February I was looking for new gigs and starting to worry about acquaintances getting increasingly hysterical online about this virus spreading around Asia. We still went out and saw friends.

March the lockdowns started. Now Sweden never locked down, but we were asked to keep their distance and wash their hands often. Well everyone not only did that, but most people went full on prepping mode, and quarantined at home. The capitol of Sweden even ran out of toilet paper, for some reason I still can't understand. The place was a ghost town. I was really worried how this would hit the economy (people don't have savings in socialist Sweden) so we did cautiously go out a few times and were shouted at by close friends... Despite following all recommendations from the public health authority. It was a strange month.

April was pretty much all closed. We were both working from home, which we usually do anyway, but the city was deserted. We did check into a luxury hotel for my birthday since all the hotel chains dumped their prices.

Summer

May finally brought the light back. We had some lovely sunny days during April, but in May it was finally getting Luke warm. I think the entire country celebrated finally being able to be outside, even being able to socialise (at a distance). I also started a job at a huge grocery chain, working on the in-house toolset to manage grocery stores. Turns out there was some confusion about what my role was supposed to be, more designer or more developer. But I didn't know that until much later.

June was unusually warm, a wonderful summer month! I even went swimming on my lunch hour. We met friends outside, had a champagne tasting and spent some time in the archipelago. Oh, and I bought a hat.

July was full on summer. Since we can't travel anywhere we took Mondays and Fridays off all of July and hung out with every friend that dared, and ate a lot of gelato.

August was unusually cold. We were at a couple of cray fish parties and I got very tired of video meetings. Actually it's not the video that I had issues with, just unproductive meetings in general.

Fall

September was beautiful. But for us it was terribly sad, as Agnes father passed away suddenly. We spent as much time as we could with her family, but life can never be the same.

October had the last few warm days of the year. I tried to soak it all up. But it's never enough. We had a beautiful, corona safe, funeral for Agnes father. I also had a health issue, with another blood clot appearing, despite eating blood thinners. Which isn't great. And required some radical rethinking of my situation.

Winter

November was the month of change. To make time to work on my health, and my entrepreneurial things, I quit my job I only just started in May. It was a good job, with a good team. But I didn't have my mind in a long term change process, and I needed something else. As if on cue, my friend Annelie asks me to join her company for a period to help out with some big technical projects. So I jump in at 80% time. Keeping 20% time to work on my own.

December became the cosiest month since my nephews discovered xmas. We celebrated Agnes' birthday, every advent Sunday, and Christmas twice. The entire month was a blur of cozy Christmas celebrations.

What I Learned

Like every year, I've learned a lot. Too much to summarise effectively. But a few things have really stood out to me.

Alcohol is bullshit. I drink too much. Actually everybody does. We've had two sober months this year and I've always known I feel better without alcohol, but I didn't know how big the difference was... It's huge. So I've cut down to nearly nothing, and I'm really happy about it.

I'm old, and scared of success. I've been working on building my own projects and products since around the start of the millennium. But I've learned this year that I'm spending most of my time preparing and researching action instead of trying things. Well it's time to change that. I want to create things, and life is ticking away.

How much risk is reasonable? My friend Annelie has a great mental model: how much risk would I take, if I were a Chinese entrepreneur? This really brings me clarity. I'm very under-leveraged. I should take on a lot more risk, and worry a lot less.

Sweden bores me. My best friends are international, I don't like the climate here, not the natural one nor the intellectual one. So we've decided we're moving to Berlin when the lockdowns end.

Health & Fitness

I put my money where my mouth is and paid an excellent trainer, and it has helped, but I'm also uncomfortably fat right now. I have nothing to blame but boredom.

My health is sadly not perfect. I've been getting more blood clots and I'm not a permanent high dose of blood thinners. It's hard to know what this means. The doctors don't really want to talk about what happens after something like this.

I'm probably not dying right now. Which is good. But I think this will kill me. And probably much earlier than I would have otherwise died. I need to act accordingly.

"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand

Thu, 21 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Very few books achieve notoriety and devotion in the magnitude of Atlas Shrugged. And it really isn’t surprising. It’s a massive over thousand pages book with little plot, and very little character development. Instead it’s crammed full on philosophical monologues from said characters.

Most criticism seems to fall into one of two camps:
The first thinks the book is literarily dreary and clearly didn’t read more than the first third of the book. These are most reviews and critiques I’ve found, as they claim characters say and do things that are changed later or turn out to be false.
The second thinks Ayn Rand is an insane egotist, who clearly doesn’t care about human beings or the arts. And this second group is more interesting. They should indeed complain, as they are the complainers & looters that Rand is painting as the most terrible of criminals in Atlas.

Regardless of your political opinion. The book is interesting as a historical work, this is a strong female author who’s clearly a hard core feminist, writing a book with plenty of sex in the 50s… It is also a book that has had a lot of influence. And is still selling surprisingly well. I don’t recommend this to everyone, it’s a bit of a slog. But it’s also genuinely thought provoking. Especially if you’ve been nurtured into the liberal norm (in the modern sense of the word liberal) as I had.

“She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To hell with that, she thought-and never worried about it again.”

— Ayn Rand

“What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing?
Every living thing must grow. It can’t stand still. It must grow or perish.”

— Ayn Rand

"Competing Against Luck" by Clayton M. Christensen

Tue, 28 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve wanted to learn about the “Jobs to be Done” theory and how to applies to design for a long time. As usual these days I follow Naval’s advise and go to the source, Clayton Christensen’s book Competing Against Luck. I want to love this book, I really do. But it’s a typical American paperback; over-stuffed with examples and anecdotes. This could have been an article, and probably more gripping if it had been.

If you’re interested in “Jobs to be Done”, by all means pick it up. But only read a third of it. At most. Skim the rest.

“After decades of watching great companies fail over and over again, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is, indeed, a better question to ask: What job did you hire that product to do?”

— Clayton Christensen, Competing Against Luck

“One of the fundamental mistakes that many marketers make is to collect a handful of data points from a huge sample of respondents when what they really need—and this interview illustrates—is a huge number of data points from a smaller sample size. Great innovation insights have more to do with depth than breadth.”

— Clayton Christensen, Competing Against Luck

Derek Sivers on creativity

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Derek Sivers is a very interesting thinker, which is why I was not surprised when I heard this amazing insight on an episode of the Yo! podcast.

“I think creativity is overrated. I almost don’t believe in it. Because what’s obvious to you, is amazing to others. All right, like, other people’s creations always seem so impressive. They seem like genius. We think like, how did they do that? How did they come up with that? That’s brilliant. The thing is, those creators know the source of their inspiration. They know that they nicked a color from here, a shape from there, an idea from this and that. And they just mixed it together in some way that’s maybe unique, maybe not.

So to them, it’s not that impressive. If you don’t feel creative, welcome to the club. Nobody is. They’re just spitting out combinations of things they’ve taken in. And other people are the ones who call it creative. So my advice to people to unlock creativity is really just go put things out into the world. Like, any old things. Not impressive things, just anything. [...] So just go copy things and other people will call it original and will call it creative.”

— Derek Sivers

This is a clear case of "truth staring you in the face”. When you actually know all the sources, all the combinations and edits, nothing feels creative. There’s no point in trying to be original. Because what is creative, or original, will never be obvious from the perspective of the creator. Only from the outside.

How to move from Squarespace to Eleventy

Mon, 07 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

A personal blog isn't worth $100 a year. That's the thought that struck me when it was time to renew my squarespace subscription a few months ago. Instead I decided to move to something more light weight.

I didn't want WordPress, I've used WP a lot over the years and I've increasingly felt it's old school to the point of being annoying. So I went with simple text files, and used Eleventy to render those into web pages (thanks to TDH for the tips about Eleventy).

Then it just became a struggle of finding out how to move from Squarespace to Elventy. This is how.

Export your stuff from Squarespace

Squarespace has a lot of special features. And they haven't spent a lot of time making sure you can export it. Instead we'll have to rely on the standard: Wordpress. All your pages and blogs will be exported properly. I have no idea about anything else.

This only works before you cancel your subscription!

Log into your squarespace account
Click the site you want to move.
Click Settings, then Advanced, then Import/Export.
Choose which blog should be your main one, this correlates to what WP knows as the post type "post". The others will get custom post types based on their URL format, in my case "journal" and "talks".
Click export again
Wait while Squarespace creates the export XML file. This can take quite a while, since they seem to batch these export jobs in the background.
Hit the download button and save your export.xml file.

Now comes the tricky part. If you want to import this site into a new Wordpress installation, it works just like a normal Wordpress import: 8. Open your Wordpress admin 9. You might need to add support for custom post types corresponding with any blog feed you exported before you run the import. If you need to, here's a guide. 10. Go to tools and click import 11. If needed, install the plugin for importing wordpress xml files. 12. Find your export.xml file and import. 13. Done!

But if you're not interested in Wordpress, and like me would like to move to a flat file cms like eleventy?

Import your stuff into Eleventy

Download this brilliant Wordpress to Markdown script by Will Boyd.
Install Node.js so you can run the script.
Move your export.xml into the script folder
Open a terminal and navigate to the script folder and run the following command: npx wordpress-export-to-markdown. For advanced choices see the script guide on Will's GitHub repo.
Make sure to use the --save-attached-imagesoption so you download all the images from your old site. Otherwise these will be lost when you close your Squarespace subscription.
The /output folder created is your entire site, exported as flat files.
Run npx degit 11ty/eleventy-base-blog my-11ty-project && cd my-11ty-projectfrom the terminal to set up a new blog using eleventy.
Copy the /output folder over into /posts in your eleventy folder.
Navigate your terminal to the eleventy folder and run npm install and then npx eleventy --serve and that's it! Your Eleventy export is done!

That's it! Hope this quick guide helps you get started.

I'd also recommend using Vercel to host it. Here's the guide for taking it live with their excellent Now service.

How to use Google Optimize with NextJS

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

This guide will show you how I've gotten Google Optimize experiments to run properly on a NextJS site, without doing any advanced implementation.

(Update on 1 November 2021: Vercel just released a new version of NextJS with an example fix for this, read more a the bottom of this post.)

Google Optimize can help you test improvements to your site, but it's most effective when you don't need to interrupt developers to add new scripts to your site codebase for every test. Unfortunately creating tests using Optimize's editor for a site that uses reactive frameworks can create errors.

I've found two common categories of errors that pop up when you run Optimize tests on a NextJS site:

Error crashes your site

When your test is previewed you can either see your test blink, or not show up at all, or the site crashes.

Why does this happen?

Your test is probably editing HTML on the page. Causing the reactive framework to develop errors when it rerenders that part of the screen.

How to work around it:

To work around this problem you can constrain yourself to adding HTML, moving HTML, or adding CSS, but not changing or removing HTML.

Error where a test never starts, or gets zero traffic

When you preview tour test it either never starts, or it's shown on every page regardless of URL or trigger. When published the test either never starts of the alternative get's no traffic.

Why does this happen?

NextJS, and other JS frameworks, can send new pages from the server (server side rendered, or first page draw), or render new pages with new URLs directly in the browser. Unfortunately, rendering new pages in the browser does not trigger the same window events as server render, specifically Page Load.

How to work around it:

Add a specific event to your site Router. There are tons of examples on how to setup Routers for every framework our there, a good developer should solve it in an hour, and you only have to do this once.

Specifically we add an event on navigation in your Router, we call one using Google DataLayer to specifically support Google Tag Manager. This is the code we run: window.dataLayer.push({'event': 'pageView'});

Then trigger your experiments on Custom Event: pageView instead of PageLoad and they'll all work like you intended.

Good luck, and let me know if you have any problems with this!

NextJS 12 update: middleware

Vercel just launched a new version of NextJS with a new level of javascript functions they refer to as "middleware". These functions sit in between NextJS and the users browsers, but at the edge node instead of the server. This gives us a new solution to test out!

Edge nodes are basically the Content Delivery Networks closest server to the customer, allowing the fastest load times. Vercel, Cloudflare and some other CDN providers have started running serverless JS functions at these edge nodes, allowing really quick server side updates without slowing down your main server.

In this example Vercel shows how to use middleware to check if the browser has a correct cookie set for that specific URL, and if it hasn't get the correct experiment and set that cookie. This fixes the issue where an experiment isn't loaded properly because you're using client side routing, and the cookie is never set properly!

I hope that update helps! I can't wait to experiment more with middleware.

Improve your thinking with a Cognitive Behavioral Journal

Mon, 13 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I strive to be less wrong, and I think I’ve discovered a tool that makes the process a bit more measurable.

I recently finished The Coddling of the American Mind, an interesting book I’ll post about later. In the Coddling the authors outline the general process of how Cognitive Behavioral Therapy works, and it was much simpler than I had thought.

This surprised me because while I’ve never participated in CBT, I studied Cognitive Psychology in collage. Which I guess just contrasts the difference between learning about something, and experiencing that something.

So I started using it to consciously improve my thinking. It’s a very simple practice, and I encourage you to try it as you read:

Identify when you’re feeling anxious or overwhelmed, write down which thoughts are anxiety inducing or overwhelming.
Example: I had a blood clot recently and I’m afraid it’s limiting my lifestyle permanently.
Think about what emotions underlie your anxiety or overwhelm, write it down. There’s always some emotion behind the thoughts. Always.
Ex: I’m afraid of being Limited.
Write down a score of how strong that emotion is between 0 and 100. Ex: 80
Identify any common cognitive distortions that are present in your current thinking.
Ex: Overgeneralization.
Now restate the original thoughts without those cognitive distortions.
Ex: I will have to learn how to live with the ramifications of a blood clot. As far as I know, I’ll just be on weak blood thinners for life. I can still do anything I want.
Finally put down a new score of how strong the emotional impact is now, after you restated the thought.
Ex: 20.

That’s it.

Repeating this 6 step process should make a noticeable difference in how one reacts to emotional triggers.

More importantly, to me, it’s a measurable way to improve my own thought process. I can revisit my journal and consciously learn from the errors I make. Practically see how often I find specific mistakes in my thinking, and how should be thinking. Practicing more accurate ways of thought instead of unknowingly repeat the same mistakes.

If this interests you, try it! And let me know what your experience was.

"Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

My future wife has inspired me to read the classics, in the past two years I’ve experienced Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and many more. It was still with a bit of trepidation I picked up Lolita. One of my favourite authors, Christopher Hitchens, recommended Nabokov as one of the greatest english writers despite english being Nabokovs second or third language, which intrigued me.

Lolita is in many ways a horrific story, the main character clearly a monster. It is redeemed however by the quality of the language, and the depictions of horror Nabokov relates. This is quite simply some of the best writing I’ve ever come across. Far beyond most authors.

Apparently, if you wish to expand your English, read a Russian author.

I won’t talk more about the actual topic of the book, instead I’ll let Nabokov explain why worrying about fiction is childish:

“That my novel does contain various allusions to the physiological urges of a pervert is quite true. But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual romps have to endure the peradox of reading the Ancients in expurgated versions.
It is childish to ody a work of fiction in order to gain information about a country or about a social class or about the author.”

— Vladimir Nabokov

“Although everybody should know that I detest symbols and allegories (which is due partly to my old feud with Freudian voodooism and partly to my loathing of generalizations devised by literary mythists and sociologists)...”

— Vladimir Nabokov

Malthusian’s never learn

Wed, 26 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

In 1798 Malthus wrote a famous essay where he explains the argument that has since become legendary.

The argument is simple enough to explain. Malthus observed that population increases exponentially while food supply increased only linearly. Therefore in any given year a society with a population of 100, and food for 100, would increase to a population of 200 and only food for 110. Obviously heading for disaster.

Malthus realised that this would lead to the end of western civilisation in the 1800s. We know Malthus was wrong, because we’re still here, and even slightly overweight. But that hasn’t stopped people making this mistake over and over again.

Rarely a month goes by without a news outlet publishing some claim that one resource or another is about to end. If we don’t cut back on consumption and radically change our ways, this time our civilisation will end…

Except it wont. The mistake that leads to all this alarmism is one based on an incorrect assumption about the world, namely that resources are natural. This is not accurate.

Let’s return to Malthus for a concrete example. Malthus expected food supply to increase linearly based on historical evidence that showed how much time it took to plant new fields and grow new crops. His math was accurate.

What Malthus got wrong was that it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s no reason only those fields can be planted, and only in that way. Humans can learn how to change these limitations. Knowledge is the limiting factor, not land. And knowledge can be created, by humans. Most of the things commonly referred to as resources would be more accurately described as “resources currently made available by human knowledge”. The actual foundational resource is not scarce at all.

Just look at the amount of oil we have now compared to in the oil crisis of the 70s. The amount oil available as a resource is actually increasing. Despite “peak oil” being an alarmist trend every few months since the 70s.

Knowledge is a very interesting resource. Because humans couldn’t live anywhere in the world without it. There is no natural state for a human without knowledge. It is our only real limiting factor, and we create it ourselves.

Knowledge is not a process of random chance discoveries. But simply the result of a lot of humans trying to tinker and conjecture about how to do something. As long as there are creative humans with free time, there will be new knowledge.

The only humans who don’t seem to learn, are the prophets of doom in the guise of Malthus. How many times will they need to be proved wrong? How many times before we can simply tell every new person crying wolf about a scarce resource; you are wrong.

Problems are not barriers, which is why they are good things to have.

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Something I’m thinking about today. Paraphrased from David Deutsch’samazing book [The Beginning of Infinity](Problems are not barriers, which is why they are good things to have.).

Barriers are unimportant. Because they cannot be changed, we need to change. Problems allow us to create solutions.

Splitting the web in two?

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I just read Tom MacWright's excellent post Clean starts for the web which argues that the web stack has gotten so convoluted, so expensive to maintain browsers for, that it might be time for a clean start.

At one point Tom mentions:

My first thought is that there are two webs:
The document web
/.../
The “application” web

The document being the old school web; wikipedia and news sites, and the application web being all the JS heavy SPAs like Facebook and Netflix.

I think this is an excellent point. There really is a difference between creating documents on the web, and creating interactive tools. One should be simple, one can be allowed to be complex. But I think we're failing as web developers to imagine tools for creating documents. It's so much easier to post a tweet, publish a tiktok video or send a snap, than it is to publish a document online.
Which is madness. If we want a living, thriving, open, web and not a series of walled gardens I think it's time to start taking this seriously.

Starting something new

Sun, 16 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

It's almost a year since I closed down BlankPage, the writing service I ran for several years as a side project, and I think it's finally time to start something new. Picking what to work on, has turned out to be a surprisingly hard problem.

When I started BlankPage is was just one of those excited moments when something life changing felt within reach, and I set about making it a reality immediately. This time I have more experience, and I know how important it is to work on things that are achievable.

That sounds a bit dark, but what I mean to say is that I have some idea of how much time, energy, and money I can spend on a project. So there's no reason for me to pick a project that is far beyond those limitations in scope. I can't build a new type of nuclear power plant by myself, with my savings. Understanding that and picking something a bit more viable is actually a freeing and exciting idea. Because it makes my next project so much more real, even in the idea stage.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Above “product-market fit” is “founder-product-market fit.”</p>— Naval (@naval) <a href="https://twitter.com/naval/status/946276788111470592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 28, 2017</a></blockquote>https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Derrick Reimer wrote about finding product founder fit a while back, and I like the idea of picking a project that suits you as the creator. That should increase the likelihood of success.
So which are my criteria?
These are my thoughts, off the top of my head while writing this post:

The project needs to be small enough that a single full stack dev can easily build it.
An MVP can't take more than a few days to implement. Otherwise I won't iterate fast enough.
The project cannot be production critical for the customers.
I simply cannot guarantee seven 9's uptime.
**The Project's competitive advantage should be based on a clear understanding of the users needs and wants.
**Not technology. It doesn't have to be unique, it would be ok to just be different.
The Project should "give back" to the free and open web some how. The internet is important, and I think it's up to all of us to strive to keep it open.
So whatever I build, it should take cues from the IndieWeb movement somehow.
The Project shouldn't aim to become a "scale-up".
If I end up taking on VC money, it will consume my life.

Alright, that's enough for today I think. Back to work.

"The Beginning of Infinity" by David Deutsch

Thu, 21 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

There are two books I’ve read in the last handful of years that I haven’t stopped thinking about, or quoting. “Enlightenment Now!” by Stephen Pinker and “The Beginning of Infinity”. The books are very different, the former being a collection of distilled and referenced facts about complicated topics. While the latter is a long form argument about the nature of knowledge. But they share the result of expanding my thinking, and at least from inside my qualia broadening my world view.

The Beginning teaches you the difference between bad philosophy and sound philosophy. Thought it is never as easy as that sentence sounds to distinguish between the two. Deutsch has made a significant work of philosophy into a series of easily understood examples, anecdotes, and discussions about reality.

This is not an easy read, not because of the text, but because it challenges your ability to think. I’d recommend this to anyone.

“Progress that is both rapid enough to be noticed and stable enough to continue over many generations has been achieved only once in the history of our species.”

— David Deutsch

“Whenever there has been progress, there have been influential thinkers who denied that it was genuine, that it was desirable, or even that the concept was meaningful. They should have known better.”

— David Deutsch

“The ‘passengers’ metaphor is a misconception in another sense too. It implies that there was a time when humans lived unproblematically: when they were provided for, like passengers, without themselves having to solve a stream of problems in order to survive and to thrive. But in fact, even with the benefit of their cultural knowledge, our ancestors continually faced desperate problems, such as where the next meal was coming from, and typically they barely solved these problems or they died. There are very few fossils of old people.”

— David Deutsch

The Game Changers & Fake News

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday I watched an episode of “The Game Changers” on Netflix, after a friend of mine recommended it to me. I was shocked by what I saw.

The show is a “documentary” about athletes discovering that plant based diets are better than meat based diets. But that’s not the shocking part.

The show was so full of scientism (thank you Taleb) and false information that it got me angry. Then when I thought about it, I realised that this is linked to why I don’t watch the news anymore.

It’s not that shows like “The Game Changers” and Fox News are fake news that are publishing lies, even though they are. The problem stems from the fact that most of what we consume today as information sources is really entertainment. Heavily dramatised, and simplified past the point falsehood.

Without getting into the weeds of nutrition, The Game Changers claimed such absurdities that there’s no difference between plant and animal protein (true to a degree, but different plants have different levels of the essential amino acids) but also that animal protein gives you cancer. Which would be quite a big difference.

(It also showed a trained athlete going from a max of 10 minutes doing a workout to over 60 minutes just from switching to a plant based diet. That would make these plants much more powerful than steroids. Is this a documentary or the home shopping network?)

Almost everything we watch, read, or listen to today is a dramatisation of some information. Even the news is trying to find the edge to make you sit up and pay attention. That’s no different from marketing. The news tries to work from fact, but since dramatisation requires simplification, it makes no real difference if you are watching CNN, the WHO briefing, or listening to some celebrity’s podcast.

It’s all fake news. We must view it critically, which means never believing it at face value.

(Please don’t watch The Game Changers, it is total crap, no athletes know that little about nutrition.)

The right project for the right time

Sun, 23 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

"People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work."

Marcus Aurelius

This is something I’m thinking about today. I’m currently in the start of a new project, trying out ideas and looking for something sticky. And honestly, it’s getting me down. I’m worried, bordering on cynical.

What I’m building is interesting, bordering on fantastic, but is it the right thing?

Is this the important work? Is this the effort that will shape my life in the direction I want to go?

It’s hard to connect the dots looking forward. It’s easily looking back. Does that mean we can plot our course based on our recent history?

The top down planning problem

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I recently came across a fantastic, but sadly unattributed, quote in an article about design:

“A design system is like public transportation: it’s a good idea, for other people”

— unattributed designer

I think this is a great turn of phrase. Top down planning is always a good idea, for other people. I haven’t met any individuals, or heads of departments, yet that want to be top down planned. They want to be bottom up contributing.

Using herd mentality to your benefit

Tue, 25 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

You notice it every week; how suddenly everyone seems to be talking about that same thing. A new trend. A new thing, having its moment. But how often are these trendy topics valuable?

Now I don't know this for a fact, but over the years I've noticed that trendy things are rarely, if ever, very useful. The trend usually preempts the usefulness. The real work begins when the trend is at its peak. Only after that do people discover, through trial and error, how to actually do the thing.

It will probably take a year or so until they turn around and can teach the rest of us how to use this, no longer trendy, topic in our own work.

This is good news. I think we can use this for our advantage. When I see something interesting I'll simply write it down, and then google it a year later. By then the experiments will have been run and I can learn from the results. All that time I'm not wasting keeping up with the trend I can use to study and experiment on my own stuff.

Watching films

Sat, 13 Jun 2020 00:00:00 GMT

For the last two years I have been trying to be mindful about what media I consume. I’ve been trying to only watch, and listen to, what I want to. Not because I should keep up, or because it’s routine, or because I need the distraction.

This has resulted in less podcasts, turning off my Netflix subscription, and instead coming back to classics. Or sometimes, simply not doing anything.

I’ve seen more black & white films these last two years than I’ve seen Netflix shows. And I think it’s been good a thing

Yesterday we couldn’t find “Blood and Sand” with Rita Hayworth. While searching we realized we hadn’t seen “Parasite”, the Korean film that took the word by storm in 2019. So we saw it. And I’m extremely happy we did. It’s an amazing film, and work of art.

Time is a great judge of what is worth your attention, and what isn’t. But the Lindy-effect can’t filter out what is great today.
I think I might need to sample a bit more current culture.

What are we consuming that broadens our minds?

Sun, 17 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Something the Farnam Street newsletter got me thinking about today. Read the whole thing here.

““[M]y worry is that ... you won’t put enough really excellent stuff into your brain. I’m talking about what you might call the “theory of maximum taste.” This theory is based on the idea that exposure to genius has the power to expand your consciousness. If you spend a lot of time with genius, your mind will end up bigger and broader than if you spend your time only with run-of-the-mill stuff. The theory of maximum taste says that each person’s mind is defined by its upper limit—the best that it habitually consumes and is capable of consuming. ... In college, you get assigned hard things. You’re taught to look at paintings and think about science in challenging ways. After college, most of us resolve to keep doing this kind of thing, but we’re busy and our brains are tired at the end of the day. Months and years go by. We get caught up in stuff, settle for consuming Twitter and, frankly, journalism. Our maximum taste shrinks. Have you ever noticed that 70 percent of the people you know are more boring at 30 than they were at 20?.””

— A Commencement Address Too Honest to Deliver in Person

What happens after React? Svelte. (SthlmJs #64)

Tue, 03 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

This is the second time I gave my talk about what the future of JS frameworks might look like. My thinking is still that Svelte, and it’s compiled JS idea will take over the internet in the coming 2-3 years.

Here’s my Svelte demo.

Still looking to use Svelte in production myself!

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/faqj4LkiI4hK8S?wmode=opaque

What happens after react? (second edition) from Jesper Bylund

2021 in review (a little late)

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I don't know why I've procrastinated doing this review for 10 months. But I have. So here it is, last years review, very late to the game!

Timeline of events

Jan to Mar

I struggled with winter. As I always do. But with covid making visits to stores and cafes awkward, I struggled more than usual. Super happy I was in Sweden, where we at least still could go out.

Went on a road trip to the other side of Sweden to visit other old friends. It was hard both from a covid perspective (many people were still afraid) and because so many people have retreated into doom & gloom over the last two years.

Thankfully, we had an early spring. And a new strain of Covid that no one in Sweden could take too seriously anymore.

Apr to Jun

Hung out with a group of really interesting thinkers and builders. Left a job. And the fear finally dissipated from society in general. We celebrated old friends, and had a proper midsummers.

Most importantly my old friend Elisabeth got married! I was asked to hold one of the ceremonies, to my great pride, and a bit of nerves. 😅

Jul to Sep

Rushed around to visit old friends in both Gnesta, and Berlin. Started working with Volocopter who were in dire need of design help. And also started a Sommelier course!

Oct to Dec

Ended the year with a lot of beautiful morning walks. Celebrated birthdays and Christmas with family. Actually joined Volocopter as an employee, which will help us to move to Berlin next year! Finally we celebrated New Years with my god daughter and her wonderful parents.

Projects

I started, built, shipped, and closed Ting. Still dreaming of making a better zettelkasten app. But Ting was unfortunately built on the wrong tech stack, and couldn't be saved.

Started and finished a Sommelier training. Very excited to have a broader understanding of wine and drinks!

Started to additional projects: Sponsorpost and an unnamed Hubspot project.

Books I read

I read at least 21 books (according to Goodreads). Most of them fiction, which makes me think I was a little depressed. But a couple of classics, and a small number of business books.

I would recommend two of them:

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn by Richard Hamming, which is an engineering book that focuses more on how to think to do better work than actual engineering.

And The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, this is a Soviet era classic that is full of crazy stuff. Almost reads like a Discworld book. Except that it's a critique of the Soviet system that was allowed to be published.

Things I learned

This is always the hardest part to write. But since the middle of 2021 I started using zettelkasten (currently using LogSeq) and I now have notes about everything I've learned. So this year, this part is hard to write because I have too much stuff, not too little.

I've realised I need to practice being bored.

It's so easy to be lead by dopamine and never sit idle. No deep thinking, or work, will happen unless you give yourself time to be bored. Kerouac says it well, except he's talking about doing mindless work, while in our generation mindless consumption is probably a worse problem:

Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.

Jack Kerouac

Make small commitments, and deliver on them

During 2021 I lost some confidence and started having a hard time believing I could do important things. The answer was to make really tiny commitments with myself, and with others, and fulfil them. Clean the house. Take out the trash. Just commit first, and then do it. And suddenly I had trained my confidence back up to big projects.

Trying to understand leadership

This quote made me think a lot about what it means to lead.

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

Colin Powell

Mindfulness isn't a todo

During the year I've had dips and lulls in my mindfulness and my strength training. Both of them I attribute to going through the motions.

Mindfulness isn't a todo to check off. If you're not putting all your attention into it, you're not really doing it. The same is true with most things, but so very obvious in mindfulness.

I'm wasting a lot of time

Most of my wasted time looks like fulfilling social obligations I don't really want to do. Or spending time doing boring or trivial things, because I feel resistance towards doing the important things I want to do.

These quotes help me think about it. But the main issue is having too many things going on. I hide behind tasks instead of spending my time deliberately.

At one low point I wrote this down: "I also realised that I’ve been tricking myself into thinking I’ve been focused, while at the same time committing to 9 projects". Which probably means it's time to focus my attention.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.

Annie Dillard

You have to live on this 24 hours of time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use … is a matter of the highest urgency.

Arnold Bennet

https://twitter.com/naval/status/1476429230640533504

I've also come to the conclusion that next year will be all about avoiding vices. Alcohol yes, but also stress, overwork, and mental sleuth.

2021 was a bit of a placeholder year. Which is sad, because it was a year of my life.

Adding creativity like Nintendo

Sun, 18 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I read this wonderful article by Matthew Ball about Nintendo and how they differ from Disney in their approach to leveraging IPs. It's an interesting read and if you have half an hour to spare I recommend it. But in the middle of the article was with wonderful tidbit:

Creator Shigeru Miyamoto actively requires development teams to reinvent the franchise. Following the success of the first entry, a top-down action adventure game, Kotaku reports that Miyamoto-san told “the team—not the Zelda 1 team, but an entirely different team—that he wanted to make a side-scrolling action game where the player had to attack with, and defend against, high and low attacks.”

To be clear, this approach is why Nintendo is so spectacular.

Matthew Ball

If you don't already know Mr Miyamoto is the legendary creator behind both the Mario and Zelda franchises, his creative works are second too none. I find this little legend especially interesting because Miyamoto is deliberately adding constraints instead of reusing the same tried and true pattern. Even though this is a huge financial risk.

When was the last time you did something deliberately harder?

I don't think I've deliberately thrown away working patterns in my designs at any time. Definitely not in the last five years. I'm intrigued to find out what happens if I try it.

Being more creative, by being lazy

Tue, 10 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I recently re-read Show Your Work and noticed something I had missed on the first read, and I've been trying it out this week.

In order to be creative, we need to give our minds space to work. This is why you get so many new ideas while walking. New ideas and solutions can't be forced, your brain is not a muscle, but your mind can offer up ideas when you give it space.

When you take a break, let your mind drift without input. Just like while taking a walk, just let it do it's thing. Organising and synthesising the information we've consumed.

I've been trying this for a few days, and it's surprisingly enjoyable. I take a break every 25 minutes to stretch my legs (I work sitting on the floor), and I'm not allowed to consume media on those breaks. Automatically reaching for my cellphone is a problem, my discipline has been far from perfect, but I've had great results.

I may be slightly more creative, but a lot more relaxed. I've put in more focused hours according to Rize and yet spent more quality time with my fiancé.

Try it, and let me know how it went.

Clear thinking about performance

Mon, 19 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Logged on to Twitter and saw this mind blowingly clear thinking on how to avoid the pitfalls of ego and pride. I hope to one day be as focused as the 26 year old NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo.

https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1416642821663035396

Delegate or Do It Right?

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Have you ever thought "It'll be faster if I do it myself, I'll do it the right way the first time"? Or maybe you've recognised this thought appearing in your managers mind when you asked too many questions?

I think this idea is a obstacle to delegating effectively. We instinctively feel that we can do it correctly ourselves. But someone else might need a few tries, or the result might not even be as good.

I think this thought is a self delusion. The truth is that the process of doing the work often defines the intended result. We're exploring just as much as executing. We know what "good enough" is when we see it.

Whenever this thought appears in our minds, we probably haven't defined the outcome well enough. If I can't instruct someone to do it, I probably don't know what needs to be done.

Do it

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I don't know how much time I waste preparing to act, if you're anything like me, you probably spend a lot of time on busy work that looks like action.

It's even harder to break away from when everyone wants to sell you tactics on moving forward, but that's just more busywork.

Here's my new mantra, feel free to email me more examples and I'll add them to the list:

You can try to learn about the thing you want to do, but then you need to do it.
You can prepare to do the work, but then you do it.
You can research forever, or you can do it.
You can theorise, or do it.
You can do practice, but then you do it.
You can plan all you want, but you need to do it.
You can do the routine, incite the muse, and pray to god. But then you still need to do it.

Taking action is the goal. The rest is decoration.

Let's not get suckered in by everyone selling us another ten step plan, quick action guide, checklist for success. Let's just do it.

Get focused with interstitial journaling

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

If you are like me you've struggled with focus during the work day. Maybe tried a bunch of tools to keep track of your tasks and notes but nothing seems to stick over time. Eventually things just pile up and you either clear it out and pray, or work nights with a knot in your stomach.

Interstitial Journaling can probably help with that. It won't miraculously give you any more time, and it's not gonna clear out your inbox for you. But it will give you the breathing room you need to spend your time wisely.

I learned this about six months ago from the brilliant community over at Ness Labs and it has really helped me. My clients and colleagues are noticing my new strategic use of time, and I'm delivering a lot more.

Here's how you do it

Pick a tool.

Pick a note taking tool. It can be anything, but it has to be with you in all situations. Paper works, your phones note app will also work. I use Roam Research but the tool doesn't matter, it's all about the process.

Your action trigger

It's called interstitial because it happens between all your other tasks. Every time you stop doing anything, anything at all, you take a short note in your journal. It's ok if you forget in the beginning, just take a note as soon as you notice. The important thing is you're building a habit that will save you time.

What to do

Add a new line in your journal with three things:
The time. What you just did. And what you will do next.

That's it.

What might this look like?

I usually start off my days quite organised and then suddenly there's a four hour gap and I restart writing something like "2:15 oh no, I'm on YouTube again". But that's ok. The goal here is to create the habit, not to be perfect. You'll start noticing patterns quickly regardless.

08:20 Finished meditating. Time to clear out my inbox.
08:58 Done with email. Gonna look at my todo list, and pick our the important things.
09:12 Started sorting my todos but I had forgotten my meeting with Annelie, omw now!
13:30 Meeting went well, but then I spent 2 hours "inspiration" browsing on Pinterest... Now I'm gonna cross of my first todos.
13:37 Planned next steps from meeting. Time to prep a presentation.

A fictional, but normal, piece of journal

Why does this work?

We all get distracted. Sometimes it's simply tired brains wandering, but often it's priorities changing, ad hoc meetings or calls. We can't stop being interrupted. So we have to work with the interruptions.

Interstitial Journaling uses this fact by writing down what's going on at every interruption, or every time we finish something. This way we can learn from the patterns in our lives, and it makes us consciously pick the next thing we're gonna work on.

This is the core benefit of this form of journaling. Making how we spend our time explicit we become our own personal coaches. Checking that we do our reps, and advising us on what to do next, without the shouting.

A nice side effect is that we can start to notice patterns in how we spend our time. Helping us learn how much time certain tasks really take, and automatically becoming strategic.

It was just my second day journaling this way when I exited a meeting and was just about to resume a project, when updated my journal and realised that there wasn't enough time before my next appointment. Instead I scheduled time with myself for the project later in the week and did some smaller tasks.

I was being strategic with my time, as a side effect of knowing what I was doing! It blew my mind.

This method has helped me a lot, and I hope it helps you too! Either way, please [let me know your thoughts](mailto:mail@jesperbylund.com?subject=Interstitial Journaling)!

Getting started with Hubspot Development

Mon, 05 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT

As a developer, Hubspot allows you to create Themes, Modules, Email templates, etc. Each of these different projects are initialized in the same way.

Unfortunately Hubspot’s documentation changes rapidly, and is mostly geared towards non-developers. So I wrote this guide to help you get up and running, building tools for Hubspot in no time!

1. Set up a developer account

First step is to make sure you have a Hubspot account. Head over to hubspot.com and set up an account if you don't already have one.

Next you need a developer account because Hubspot accounts only have one environment, and since you can’t run Hubspot code locally we need a personal developer account to serve as a dev environment.

Click this link to set one up.

2. Set up a local development pipeline

Now we're ready to start. Open up your terminal and/or favourite code editor. I'm assuming you have NPM installed. If not, find the instructions here.

2.1 Install the hubspot CLI tools

Run this command from your terminal. npm install -g @hubspot/cli

If you need more help or it doesn't work follow these instructions.

2.2 Setting up your local environments

Run hs init to create a hubspot.config.yml. This file holds all your environment configurations, (similar to AWS credentials, if you've worked with AWS).

Run hs auth to populate your hubspot.config.yml with account information. This will bounce you out to the browser and back. Make sure you name your environments strategically. These names are only for your local use, and are never used anywhere else.

Update your hubspot.config.yml so that the dev environment we set up above is used by default, this will make accidentally updating your production environment a lot less likely:

defaultPortal: DEV
portals:
  - name: PROD
    portalId: 123
    authType: personalaccesskey
    personalAccessKey: >-
      xxxxx-xxxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx
    auth:
      tokenInfo:
        accessToken: >-
          xxxxx-xxxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx
        expiresAt: '2020-01-01T00:00:00.000Z'
  - name: DEV
    portalId: 456
    authType: personalaccesskey
    personalAccessKey: >-
      xxxxx-xxxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx
    auth:
      tokenInfo:
        accessToken: >-
          xxxxx-xxxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx
        expiresAt: '2020-01-01T00:00:00.000Z'

When you work with a specific Hubspot account, make sure you add --account=dev or --portal=dev with the account name you want to target. As far as I can tell, --account and --portal are synonymous and can be used interchangeably.

3. The work process

Now everything is set up, and we’re ready to get to work. But first we need to talk about the process of how to work with Hubspot.

3.1 Using HS CLI to create things

Always start new themes or modules from the hs cli. There's a bunch of boilerplate and structural limitations that Hubspot changes over time, and you do not want track these manually.

Run hs create [type] [name] [dest] to create new items. There are 7 different types of things you can create on Hubspot: function, module, template, website-theme, react-app, vue-app, and webpack-serverless.

The Hubspot cli tool always uses the hs [method] [source dir] [destination dir] format. The destination starts from the root of the account you're working with. See

The Design Manager Mess

for more.

3.2 Fetch, upload, and watch

When you're working with Hubspot, you need to use the Hubspot CLI tools to download and upload files to your account. There's no SSH, or FTP, and I'll talk about GIT later.

Hubspot uses some sort of version management system on their file system that we cannot access and they seem to have inherited an odd pairing of phrases from this:

hs fetch [source] [destination] will download the files from any directory in your account.

hs upload [source] [destination] will upload any directory to (and overwrite any files already present in) the destination directory.

hs watch [source] [destination] will listen to changes in your source folder and upload those files on save.

This is what you'll want to use while developing, and also the reason you need a personal dev environment.

Just remember that this watch doesn't do a diff or "upload changes since X". Initial files or batch changes will need to be uploaded using the above upload method.

3.x What about GIT pipelines?

If you've worked with other platforms you're probably wondering how the continuous integration pipeline works? How does Hubspot use modern pipelines like GitHub to version changes to prod? The answer is: it doesn't.

There's an official guide to setting up a GitHub action to run hs upload when your main branch is updated. But that's it. It works exactly like it would on a local machine.

I do recommend you set this up if you work with a team, since version management without CI opens the door to all sorts of issues. But it's not worth it in a one dev or two dev shop.

4. The Design Tools mess

Alright, we need to talk about one more thing.

Central to how code items (themes, modules, etc) in Hubspot work is the Design Tools. So called because it's the file manager and has nothing to do with design.

The design tools are probably where Hubspot originally thought developers would work, before they talked to any actual developers. It's a bit of a mess, and it doesn't follow common development patterns. Often mixing things like settings and config files.

This is where you can see all the files you upload to your hubspot account, in addition to all the defaults. Which is great.

When you create new items, like modules, this is also where you need to mark them as available so they can be used within Hubspot.

If you need to use third party files, like JS libs or fonts, you also need to upload them and then get a relative path to that file from the Design Manager to be able to reach the file from within your project. Even if the files are in the same directory.

And you can do all sorts of advanced settings and defaults in here.

Wrap up

That's it! Let me know if you have any additional questions or suggestions for how to improve this guide.

Hard work is not the solution

Fri, 03 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I listened to the Tropical MBA podcast a few weeks ago and one idea made me drop everything and question my process. I wrote about it at the time, but since then my thinking has moved on a bit, and I want to share what I'm currently exploring.

So I truly believe, especially when you’re stuck, which is I’m sure a problem all of us have, it’s much better to experiment and play that gets you much further along than hard work. Now disagree with me if you want to. But the biggest breakthroughs in my business, and my personal life, they’ve all come through experimentation. Not hard work.

Darren Joe

This is frighteningly true in my case.

The best work I've done was the result of experimenting and stepping outside my comfort zone. But daring to experiment and follow the results requires an open mindset, and relaxed schedule. In other words experimenting with a sense of play. Not at all the structured process I usually apply to work.

A little later in the same episode the host, Dan, connected another thought to this powerful idea:

essentially practice based learning. You can’t read or listen to this podcast your way into being a great entrepreneur, you really have to kind of like monkey see monkey do

Dan Andrews

I believe this to be true. In fact it was the first topic we discussed when I studied pedagogics at University. Somehow I've forgotten this over the years.

The Idea

These two ideas paint a vivid picture for me, that make me want to change my approach to work. I'll try to summarise this thought here:

You won't learn the important things without trying them out. Reading, listening, taking notes, can only give you ideas you need to experiment with. Not the actual knowledge.
You won't get much done if you're only working hard. You can do linear, mechanical, work. But not the creative work that will really truly leverage your time. For that you need to experiment, and playfully.
So to improve your output and learning, you should maximise the amount of time you spend playing around with experiments. In short, follow your inspiration and explore.
Here's the awkward part; it follows logically that hard work and formal learning might actually slow you down. So you should avoid them at all costs.

The Work

I'm excited to experiment with this. Though since this is a big change of direction, I'm not sure how. To make time to play and experiment, I need time, without the pressure of goals. So I need to stop working on a lot of the projects I've started.

I also need to follow my curiosity, but inspiration wanes, so I probably need to make smaller experiments profitable. One way of doing that is to publish the work.

I'm excited about trying this out. I will try to share my progress, but I'm also really interested in hearing other ideas on this topic. Drop me a message, or tweet. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

How to learn through failure

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT

"Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."

George Bernard Shaw

I recently read this blog post by Jim Nielsen where I learned how to notice if I’m actually learning or not.

Like everyone else I’ve read ad nauseam about how important failing is to the learning progress. I’ve become convinced that this is true, but I find myself unable to explain how does that work?

I can’t just attempt to fail, fail repeatedly, and magically improve?

So when I read Jim Nielsens piece Learning and Being Wrong I was ecstatic to find a description for what failure and learning feels like in practice.

The post is based on notes from Adam Grant's book Think Again, which I haven’t read (yet).

In a series of quotes and notes Jim describes what it feels like to learn.

“If you don’t look back at yourself and think, ‘Wow, how stupid I was a year ago,’ then you must not have learned much in the last year.”

All that time we spend regretting past choices and missed chances are actually a proof that we’re making progress. How wonderful! And it doesn’t stop there.

He's also found this amazing quote that describes what learning looks like in practice.

"Being actively open minded means “searching for reasons why we might be wrong—not for reasons why we must be right” because “the purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s to evolve our beliefs.”"

This quote is almost a step by step instruction on how to learn. Whenever I learn something new, I should actively look for ways to be wrong. This seems counter intuitive. But doing it this way I will much quicker understand if I am mistaken, or end up not being able to find anything wrong, and proceed knowing it's true enough.

This process lets me trust what I know a lot more, as well as gives the right kind of attitude about knowledge: it's never absolute truth.

A thought that struck me when I got this far was: Would that process work for new knowledge as well? Things where there is no one to ask, or no existing reference material?

Let's say I do some test or look at something and formulate some naive idea about how it works. I write that down and then start looking for ways I might be wrong. I will probably keep discovering edge cases and ways my theory is incorrect. But iterating on that process, I could end up discovering completely new knowledge.

So here's a three step process for learning anything through failure, based on the above insights:

Form a hypothesis based on your observations. Ex: React is the most popular framework for new digital businesses.
Actively look for ways to be wrong. Ex: Ask around for startups looking to hire for alternative tech stacks. Check google trends and news trends for competing frameworks.
Either reform your hypothesis based on new information. Ex: React is the most popular framework in new VC backed digital businesses.
Or realise that you can't invalidate it, and act as if it's true.

I have no idea if this is true or not. But I'm mightily excited to try and disprove it!

I'll end this post with another brilliant insight from this post, what knowledge feels like:

“being wrong is the only way I feel sure I’ve learned anything.”

Let me know if I'm wrong, please. And enjoy being wrong!

How to reach props via this using Typescript with Vue 2x

Thu, 26 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

This article only describes this specific case, if you want to know how to set up Typescript for Vue this is a good source.

On a recent client project I had wanted to reach prop values of my component and needed to use this, but that causes errors:

// example
mounted(): void {
  this.interval = setInterval(() => {
    doSomething()
  }, 1000)
},

// error
Property 'interval' does not exist on type 'CombinedVueInstance<vue, {}, unknown, Readonly<{poll: Poll; radius: string;}>>'

This caused quite a bit of annoyance before I realised the simply fix.

The solution is just to add a placeholder in data so the Vue instance has this value on initialisation. This allows Typescript to know that the value does indeed exist on the instance.

export default Vue.extend({
  name: 'PollingComponent',
  data() {
    return {
      interval: 0 as any,
    }
  },
  mounted(): void {
    this.interval = setInterval(() => {
      doSomething()
    }, 1000)
  },
})

Now there's some interesting browser compatibility problems regarding the type of an Interval. I found that it could be both a Timer or a Number depending on the browser. So in the end I just ended up using any. I can't see any hard in that since it's a Javascript function.

Happy coding!

How to use Typescript with props in Vue 2x

Wed, 25 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

This article only describes this specific case, if you want to know how to set up Typescript for Vue this is a good source.

I recently had this issue in a client project. I wanted to use component properties with a shared Interface model, but using it directly as a type results in the error:

'Poll' only refers to a type, but is being used as a value here.

So how do you use a Typescript interface with your Vue component?

You make your type a function that returns the interface. Why this works I'm not quite sure of. But it does work.

Interface Poll {
  question: String,
}

export default Vue.extend({
  name: 'PollCard',
  props: {
    poll: {
      type: Object as () => Poll,
      default: {} as Poll
    }
  }
});

Happy coding!

Incomplete things drain you

Sun, 15 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Things you didn’t say. Tasks that haven’t been completed. Open tabs with things you want to look at.

Everything we don’t finish cost a little bit of mental energy. Just a tiny amount. But over time these things will drain all the energy you have.

Do you think I’m exaggerating? Try this: close all your tabs, and delete all your tasks, then ask yourself, how do you feel?

Increasing your output by saying No

Sun, 18 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I don't always agree with Ryan, but sometimes he comes up with golden insights, and this was one:

if you’re unhappy with your output, say “no” to things that don’t increase productivity.

Ryan Kulp

Brilliant in its simplicity. It's so much easier to remove distractions, than to increase discipline. So much easier to try to do less things well, than to become a master at them all.

Learning faster through play

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I spend a lot of time trying to learn new things, so I was a bit flustered yesterday when I heard the following (paraphrased) on the TopicalMBA podcast:

Hard work and learning from reading is not the key to real growth. You have to experiment and play, to try out new ways of being to get different results.

I had to stop my deadlift set and re-listen to this a few times. Because this feels like an obvious truth that I've just neglected for a long time.

We all know instinctively that we can't learn to ride a bike or skateboard by reading a book about it. At some point we have to get on the wobbly board and crash over and over again. We even know that this is normal, and while it might be a bit embarrassing it's obvious that if we just try crashing and falling off a bunch of times we'll learn.

So why do we retreat into books, podcasts, and listening to others when we're learning about things like entrepreneurship? Shouldn't the obvious step be to get on the wobbly board and expect to fall?

I think this ties nicely into the idea of Resistance from Stephen Pressfield's The War of Art, which if you haven't read you should. When we're doing things that are important to us, that importance increases our nervousness about the unknown. So we struggle to control the unknown future by basically procrastinating.

Avoiding to actually do the thing we instead prepare infinitely. There's always another important book to read, another google search for the answer, another conference where we'll learn the true way of doing the thing.

The insidious truth is that we do learn from others. It actually does help us get closer to the goal. Just not as fast as if we just experiment and play. And fall off.

This insight was profound for me, and I hope it might help you also. How much time do you spend researching, and how much of that time might you spend simply selling or building or playing around with new tools instead?

https://www.tropicalmba.com/solopreneur-darren-joe/

Learning from others: principles for founders

Sat, 21 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Fabrizio Rinaldi is a fascinating guy, but his recent post on Principles for Founders is one of the more distilled pieces of advice I've ever seen.

If you're bootstrapping, founding, or starting some creative project, you'll profit from this simple list of things to think about.

Life commitment exercise

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I happened upon this amazing motivational speech by Stelli Efti earlier today. It's a short video about what committing really looks and feels like, ending with a short exercise. Listening to it I felt inspired and shared it on twitter. To my great surprise Steli actually replied:

https://twitter.com/Steli/status/1417433888226529284

After someone as busy as Steli took the time to kick me towards better prioritisation, I felt like I needed to try the exercise. And you should do it with me!

1. Write down what you're doing

List your commitments and projects. All the areas of life where you spend your time. Don't get into the details, but list them out. Start with family and occupation. Stop when you get to that instrument you haven't touched in a year.

2. Sort into two categories: commit, or participate

Commit is where you are really commit. Where there's no plan B, you're gonna do it or fail. Not failing slow, not letting things fizzle out. Commit is where you need to do it.

Participate is where you're going through the motions a bit. You're showing up but there's always a side track, always an escape route. Maybe it's something that doesn't crash if you stop for a week. Maybe it's more of an intention than a must?

3. Ask yourself the hard question

Are you really committing to what you want out of life?

My result was, just like Steli said, really insightful. In short I'm not truly committed to anything except my family.

All of my projects right now are all full of plan Bs and safety nets. I'm not committing, failing, and learning. I'm more wandering around and exploring safely. Lazily drifting from interest to interest...

Now that I know this. I should just pick one, and commit. Making hard choices is a lot easier when you've got some perspective on why you need to make them.

Thanks Steli.

Living fully committed

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Listening to Steli Efti talk about avoiding having a half-assed life by committing fully to whatever we're doing. Being ready to give it our all, not hedging the bet, and letting something fail if it doesn't work out.

It's a powerful message, and I'm feeling very inspired to be less distracted and hedge less. The idea ties together really well with Derek Siver's axiom Hell yeah or no.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XA8SeJ5zfg&list=WL&index=3&t=1s

Here's the original tweet Steli is talking about:

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1350540823868411913

My typical day

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Inspired by Anton Sten's post on the same topic I wanted to share what my day looks like. Seems it's a twitter trend originally, and I think it's a valuable exercise. Both thinking about one's own day and learning from others.

Because I lift heavy weights and have a history of insomnia I have quite a strict schedule for routine things like eating and sleeping. My days looks mostly like below, but I only work out 3 days per week.

07:00 - I wake up from my Apple Watch buzzing. I stretch and get out of bed. You can't snooze and sleep well with insomnia, so I haven't since I was a teenager.

07:00 - 09:00 After I get up I weigh myself on my WiThings scale. I've done this for years now, and it's a good way to track if I'm eating and sleeping right. I only care about the body fay percentage.

After that I have coffee, maybe walk around the block, and if I'm not exercising I have a shower, ending with 30s of cold water. Final step of my morning process: meditating 15 minutes.

Then I catch up on notifications and read if anything catches my eye, which something usually does...

09:00 - 12:00 This is my main work block. I try to avoid meetings during this time, but my current client has a bunch of checkins so there's at least a morning standup. I usually check my calendar, make sure I haven't planned too many todo's, and simply start whatever is most pressing.

12:00 - 12:45ish Lunch break, this is my first meal of the day. I try to keep it light as I tend to get really drowsy in the early afternoons, but since this is a workout day, I eat about 800kcal. Carb and protein split at around 50/50.

This is also when I have my last coffee. Can't drink coffee in the afternoons and still get a good nights sleep sadly.

13:00 - 15:00 My second work block. This is usually meeting time, or email time, or both.

If I'm not cautious and get to sedentary during lunch, there's a risk I get drowsy and end up doom scrolling twitter at this point. I'm not proud of it, I just haven't found a solid fix for this yet.

15:00 - 17:00 It's time to head to the gym before it gets too crowded! I used to go later in the day, but the pandemic imposed severe restrictions on people per square meter, so I learned to leave early. 15:00 has been my approximate time the past few months. Though I expect meetings in the fall will start pushing this later in the day.

17:00 - 17:45 Time to eat again, and then shower. This meal is usually quite obscene, as I need to eat 160g of protein in a day (which is a lot). I eat something like 1000kcal in this meal. Unless we're not having popcorn later, because if we don't I need to push it into at least 1500kcal.

18:00 - 19:00 My final work block. I finish up lose threads, or replan the things I didn't get to. Usually I'm quite tired at this point, so I'll do less creative things and focus on simple tasks.

19:00 - 21:00 My life partner and I will relax together. Usually eating a ton of popcorn and watching something, or listening to a podcast.

Lately we've been exploring classic cinema, and I'm happy we're no longer participating in the gotta watch all the latest shows frenzy.

21:00 Time to get ready for bed. My sleep schedule is really strict, as a slight deviation can leave me with several days of bad sleep.

21:30 I read for about an hour before falling sleep. I tend to become really into either fiction or non-fiction for periods. Currently I want to read all the Harvard Business School strategy books, but because I'm on "vacation" I'm forcing myself to read fiction. Loving Bonjour Tristesse and A Moveable Feast though.

22:30 Lights out.

Not a marathon, not a mountain

Tue, 23 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

When I was 7 years old I was invited to run a 400m race (approximately 440yards). I had no idea how long that was. I remember thinking I needed to pace myself. I was prepared to get injured, and persevere, to breathe until my lungs burned. But I was gonna make it. These other kids probably didn’t even prepare!

The day was overcast and chilly when we finally toed the starting line. Then it was over in a few measly seconds. It turned out everyone in my class could run 400m full out. In fact you could run the race several times a day without getting very tired.

In my mind it had been a marathon. But in reality, it wasn’t. A lot of problems we struggle with are like this.

It looked like a marathon to me because I lacked perspective, and I expected this new thing to be difficult. I didn't know it back then, but I was exhibiting learned helplessness.

"Learned helplessness is behavior exhibited by a subject after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control."

wikipedia

The term was popular for a long time before it was discovered that this definition is actually backwards. We are born helpless, and our default mode of being is helplessness. What we need to learn is that more things are within our power to than we believe. Problems are solvable. We are not fated by birth, nor doomed by our situation.

We start learning this as children, but most of us stop after a certain point. Where that point is, can define your world view.

Most problems in life are like my race. Even many mental issues are like this. The situation might be hard, or the emotion overwhelming, but the actual issue is our lack of experience. We haven't learned that we can change them.

Popular media portrays some people as having been through tough times, down on their luck, burned out. While other people are portrayed as if nothing bad ever happens in their lives, like they were born with a surplus of luck. And there are real differences – especially at a young age – that shape us in ways that are hard to undo. But this world view is mostly wrong.

It's more likely that person A with infinite luck has seen more adversity than person B who's down on their luck. In fact that's the main reason why person A has better tools to handle problems. This portrayal and world view is holding us back. It's helping us stay in the comfort zone, full of anxiety about the marathon of hurdles between us and our goals.

Of course we need appropriate amounts of adversity to grow instead of burning out, but most of us probably need more adversity, not less. And the only way to truly know is to try it.

That huge problems that's currently stopping you? It's not a marathon, it just feels like it. At the finish line, you'll look back and wonder why you spent all that time waiting to run. You can do this.

Paradise on earth

Thu, 02 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT

An old friend of mine, a journalist, once said that paradise on earth was to work all day alone in anticipation of an evening in interesting company.

Ian McEwan

I don't remember where I found this. But it resonates really well with me.

Revisiting life strategies two years later

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

At the end of my Life strategies post I promised to follow it up after 6 months and reflect on what worked and what didn't. That was over two years ago, so today's the day.

Did having explicit do's and don'ts help me shape my life? Not at all, is the short answer.

I think the reason is that I didn't spend any time reflecting on these strategies. There wasn't a way for me to stumble across them in my day to day. Despite being tremendously powerful ideas to me when I wrote them down, I forgot about them after a few weeks.

Since then I've started using Roam, designed a competitive reflection journal with Ting, even practiced interstitial journaling for 6 months or so and I'd love to brag that I'm much better at revisiting ideas. But in all honestly I'm still not great at it.

I do weekly reviews of all my commitments and tasks. I journal every day. I do a monthly summary of everything I've learned and noted down. But there's very little discovery of my old thoughts, and usually not a lot of time for reflection when I do reviews.

This could be my failure of priority. Basically a not taking the time. Or it could be I simply prefer to keep thinking forwards instead of backwards. Who knows?

What I do know is that I hope I can figure out a way to learn better from my own experiences. ([If you have any strategies I would love to hear them?](mailto:mail@jesperbylund.com?subject=learning strategies)) Because what is the point of doing things, learning things, and taking notes, if we don't take the time to reflect and learn from them? And how can we learn from our thoughts if we don't revisit them from time to time?

Show your work

Tue, 13 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I wish I could remember who tipped me off. It was a podcast I listened to 2-3 weeks ago on which on of the hosts said Show your Work by Austin Kleon had helped them start showing off their work. I'm only half way through, and I feel inspired to say the same!

If you struggle with publishing your work, this is the book for you. It only takes two hours or so to read.

Show your work

Ten days without coffee

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Last year my fiancé Agnes lived without caffeine for 10 days to see how it would affect her, I wanted to try it myself.

Her research showed that 10 days should be enough to go completely off caffeine, including withdrawals.
This intrigued me, as an avid coffee drinker since high school. I've never thought of giving coffee up, I haven't seen the point. But I have to ask myself, am I really enjoying coffee, or is it an addiction? Can I even function as a human without caffeine, or will I get terrible withdrawals? Time to find out.

I'm doing this during the darkest months of the year in Stockholm (Sweden), so we only get a few hours of light every day. Will I stop being productive? Will I snap at people? I'm a little worried to be honest, but also excited to find out!

Day one, Monday 2021.01.18

Almost lunchtime and so far so good. The morning wasn't bad at all but I'm feel a little drowsy and slow.

To be clear, I'm not naturally a morning person, but I am really strict with my sleep schedule because I had insomnia growing up.

Afternoon meetings were really hard to focus on. Felt oddly warm and comfortable, and almost dozed off more than once.

Day two, Tuesday 2021.01.19

Morning felt fine. Felt sluggish at lunch, but that could just be my normal lunch time coma.

Feeling some slight headache coming and going. And warmer than usual. I'm naturally always cold. Temperatures under 25C is just not for me. But I don't know if caffeine withdrawal can have this effect?

The headache persisted the entire day. Just getting slowly worse until I went to bed.

Day three, Wednesday 2021.01.20

Not a great day. I woke up at 4am from a headache and couldn't fall back asleep. Felt ok all morning, but then after lunch something strange happened...

I feel great. I feel awake. Like I've just had a pot of coffee without the jitters. This is really odd.

Day four, Thursday 2021.01.21

I feel great! Not what I'd call energetic, but I'm not tired at all. I feel calmer, and warmer, than usual. This is actually quite great, though I do miss drinking coffee.

I can't believe how many drinks have caffeine in them. The only warm drink without caffeine I've found was some fancy red tea that smells and tastes like bubble gum. They haven't been a great substitute... Also its warmer today which helps.

Day five, Friday 2021.01.22

I don't feel as good as yesterday. But I still feel surprisingly springy in the morning. I discovered they serve decaf espresso at a local coffee shop, which really helps still the hunger for drinking something warm.

Day six & seven, weekend

I felt great. Energetic, focused, and calm. Woke up hungover one morning and that was annoying but still no real craving for coffee.

Day eight, Monday 2021.01.25

I slept well. Woke up early and had a massively productive day. Was focused without hardly a break from 8am to 9pm. And I felt great!

Day nine, Tuesday 2021.01.26

Slept badly and really feeling like I need a coffee. But oddly, as the days goes on, I need it less and less. Actually feeling pretty springy and energetic now at 2pm. This was rarely the case when I was drinking coffee.

Day ten, Wednesday 2021.01.27

That's it, this is the last day. I did it! And it's strange.

Feels like this wasn't as hard as I had thought it would be. Almost like I wanted there to be more problems? Which is a strange thing to want.

I feel great though. I feel rested, and despite a few bad nights I'm not very tired during the day.
When I do get tired, it feels more like a calm sleepiness rather than the abrupt mental cliffs I experienced before.

I'm excited about having coffee again. But also kind of worried how it will make me feel. I'll have to follow this up with a post about going back on coffee.

The Fairytale of eternal economic growth

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

“Fairytales of eternal economic growth.” is how Greta Thunberg depicted the mindset at the United Nations in 2019.

This echoes a famous quote by the cherished natural historian David Attenborough:
"Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a planet with finite resources is either a madman or an economist."

Doubtless you've heard many variations of this apparent truism.
It's catchy, and for good reason. It seems to capture the core problem in a pithy phrase.

It's a perfect summary of an incorrect world view, leading to all sorts of problems. But it's the world view of these two lovely people that is incorrect. To understand why, we need to become a little bit economically literate. Bear with me!

Economic growth does mean we create more stuff to consume. This is the issue as Greta and David understand it, and so far they're right. But if we create stuff at outrageous expense we're not achieving economic growth. That's where this pithy phrase breaks down completely.

If you pay someone $200 to build you a chair, that you then sell for $100, you are $100 worse off. The economy shrank, not grew. That's what economic growth means. Creating more value than you put in. The world economy is a lot more complex than this example, but it still works the same way.

Economic Growth means doing more, with less.

Greta and David are not entirely wrong. But their world view is incorrect. Infinite economic growth can indeed take place in a finite world. In fact you could say that it must take place. That if we do not create infinite economic growth, we will run out of resources.

This doesn't mean there's anything wrong with working for a better environment, or any other public good. These are laudable goals. But it does mean that we need to work for these things economically. We can't save one acre of the Amazon at the expense of two acres. This is obvious.

Less obvious but equally true is that we can't save one acre of the Amazon at a greater monetary expense than it's worth. Because the end result would be the same; we'd run out of resources and lose the Amazon as well. So necessarily environmentalism must also create economic growth, otherwise it's unsustainable.

The faulty truism Greta and David are selling is a self fulfilling prophesy. Resources are only finite if they succeed in slowing down economic growth.

This outdated worldview is holding back the internet

Thu, 14 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

If you're born before 1990 you probably tend to believe a computer is a laptop (or a desktop, but that's so retro...).

Walking around the average office you might think that's correct. But there are two issues with this world view. The first one is that the numbers don't agree, I'll get back to that. And the second one is that it gives us a bad explanation to understand our users or clients with.

What we believe are computers is just the shape that was popular for computing devices between the early 80s and 2007. They used to be beige boxes, but the use case was the same: they sit on our desk or table, and they let us peck at spreadsheets with our mice.

That's not what the world looks like anymore. More and more people were introduced to computers that looked like the iPhone. They know what laptops are, sure. But to them that's not what a computer is. For them the computer is a screen you use for internet services.

In fact most computing is already done on iphone-like devices:

Most devices connected to the internet are mobile devices, over 6.4 billion of them. Compared to an estimate measly 2.4 traditional computers.
The majority of e-commerce traffic are on mobile.
I'd bet that most work happens on mobile devices, can you remember a day when you didn't read email or use slack or teams on your phone?

"In terms of computing, no one now questions the shift that took place from desktops and laptops to mobile devices. However, reality was messier as it took nearly a decade for consensus to view the smartphone as a laptop or desktop alternative. For years, smartphones were viewed as merely laptop and desktop extensions. What was initially viewed as a superior email machine for executives marked the start of a paradigm shift in the making."

Above Avalon

The world looked confusedly at us kids who understood the internet. Now we're in danger of doing the same. We're probably already moving towards computation that is even less like a traditional computer like watches and headphones.

Most companies still lag the mobile paradigm shift, partly — I think — because we who were born before 1990 still think a computer is a box with a keyboard.

It's time to abandon the idea of the traditional computer. It had it's day, I still love it. But that's no longer a model of the world that makes sense.

The only useful distinction today is online or offline. And online is touch first.

Vacation from consumption

Fri, 08 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

In a conversation with a friend he explained that he takes weeks off consuming in order to focus on creation. That sounds amazing.

He has, like me, the idea that he wants to create more than he consumes. Regardless of if it's published or not, simply create for the joy of making things. That's why I was excited about this concept.

My friend picks a week with few meetings and blocks off time for creative work. He writes down a handful of things he'd like to work on, and makes a commitment to not consume anything during the week. This sounds a lot like Taleb's via negativa to me, which is an idea I like.

I asked him about the process during the week; his response was simply that he works on his list, and often he finds that he creates something quite quickly, after which he can spend the rest of the time blocked off exploring the offshoots of what he created. But he doesn't start consuming.

Sounds like a perfect vacation to me. I can't wait to try it.

Why smart people come up with bad ideas

Sat, 15 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I recently made an observation, a very smart person I know blurted out an idea in a meeting and was convinced the idea ended the conversation.

The person who blurted out the idea is very smart, but the idea was not very good. I've seen great organisations implement bad ideas many — many — times. But this time I asked myself: why does this happen? What causes brilliant people to jump on bad ideas, and take decisive actions that are clearly not great?

My hypothesis was that stress causes us to believe that the real linchpin in a situation is having an idea, any idea, of what to do next. As if an idea was all it took to solve problems.

I wrote a Twitter thread about it to see if anyone else had similar experience. It turns out a lot of people do.

I’ve made an observation recently, and I’d love to hear if you’ve seen the same? People who are stressed (very busy) tend to believe ideas are more valuable than they really are.

Jesper Bylund

https://twitter.com/JesperBylund/status/1392503280480264193

Turns out a most people see this behaviour

Some very smart people chimed in with their own experiences and it seemed like I had stumbled upon an important insight. Then my friend Fredrik offered this insightful reframe of the behaviour:

https://twitter.com/FredrikPaulin/status/1392559224006266884

It could be rephrased like this, people who are very busy think in basics. Speed at the cost of depths and I wholly agree with your observations

Fredrik Paulin

This reframe is powerful because it removes the emotional component from the idea completely. This behaviour is not something that some people do. It's not an error that pops up as the side effect of fuzzy thinking. It's a classic error that is innate to humans, black and white thinking.

To avoid this behaviour myself in the future I want to define this problem as follows.

Tl;Dr

Stress causes humans to think in basics. Which means we're grasping for straws, and an idea that seems to solve the problem, no matter how badly, is preferable to not making a decision.

A side effect of this behaviour is a tendency to believe ideas are more valuable than execution. Because by choosing an idea, the stressed human believes they have taken action.

Write it down

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I've been practicing documenting every decision and piece of information that might be of interest for the last few years with clients. It has lead to increasingly asymmetric impact just because the stuff I work on stays around for longer. And is therefore valuable to the organisation for longer, even when I'm not there anymore.

But I have just found the best example of how powerful it is when people write down institutional knowledge: The GitLab Handbook... It's a mind-blowing tome, some 13000 pages of highly actionable insights and information tid bits like this:

Don’t wait. When you have something of value like a potential blog post or a small fix, implement it straight away. Right now, everything is fresh in your head and you have the motivation. Inspiration is perishable. Don’t wait until you have a better version. Don’t wait until you record a better video. Don’t wait for an event (like Contribute). Inventory that isn’t released is a liability since it has to be managed, becomes outdated, and you miss out on the feedback you would have received had you implemented it straight away.

The GitLab Handbook

Do you realise how powerful this is? How much time just writing things down could save you in the aggregate?

Don't wait. Start writing things down today.

(incidentally, I've been working on a service for networked thought specifically to solve the issue of taking more valuable notes. It's not ready yet, but if you're interested you can find it here.)

2022 in review

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Every year I do a big yearly review, go through all my notes, all my photos and my calendar. Usually it's a lot, and brings a lot of insight. 2022 was the most eventful year yet I think. In no small part due to the fact that I moved to Berlin.

Timeline of events
Projects
Books I read
Things I learned

Timeline of events

January to March

We found a temporary apartment in Berlin. Packed all our things in Stockholm. Rented out our home since 5 years, and flew south. Berlin welcomed us with more sunlight than we were expecting and an early spring in February!

We also had some visits from Agnes's family and our friend Laura flew in from England.

April to June

In April we visited Zurich for the first time to celebrate Benjamin and Sara's wedding. We celebrated my birthday at Monocle cafe. Fredrik visited Berlin for an our recurring sessions of Arts & Crafts. May we explored the city, and I did conferences in Germany. June was all about midsummers! Which Laura joined this year!

July to September

In July we finally found an apartment in Berlin. It really is hard to find a place to live here. I did another conference. We accidentally joined a techno parade/protest. In August we visited some parks and I think this was when we saw the Pride festival? Even if my timing is wrong, Pride was a mess on broken bottles. August had more conferences for us both, and a lot of apartment fixes. Then in September Agnes mom swung by, closely followed by Laura again who flew in from Scotland this time.

October to December

October started with covid instead of Oktoberfest. Then we enjoyed the fall despite the unusual early cold. Our heating also broke down in October giving us three days of heavy winter gear indoors... November I spent more time on trains and conferences. Then my parents visited. We onboarded a new designer to my team, and had a Xmas party. Then we flew to Sweden for a 10 day Xmas bonanza. visiting friends and family.

Projects

I proudly set out this year to be more focused. But I significantly underestimated how much time it takes to set up a home here.

I did launch a beta of Sponsorpost. But all my other plans simply ran out of time.

Books I read

According to Goodreads I've read 19 books this year.
I want to especially recommend three of them:

Quite Leadership by David Rock
This management book gave me a lot of insights into self management and personal growth. Highly recommended. It's a quick and easy read.

How to survive on 24h per day by Arnold Bennet
This classic self help book only takes about an hour to read. But it is packed with interesting ways of thinking about how to spend your time. It really helped me rethink what I'm doing on a daily and weekly basis.

Open Society and it's Enemies by Karl Popper
Popper is a strong contestant for most important thinker of all time in my opinion. And this giant book is his steel manning and total refutation of the philosophies that underpin totalitarian regimes, from Plato to German National Socialism. It's not hard to read, but the scope and detail makes it very long, and very dense. Might be the most notes I've ever taken from a book, and I suspect I will take years to fully digest it.

Some things I learned

There's no speed limit
I've had to relearn this again this year. Most of the time we limit ourselves by doing things slowly. And doing them slow brings with it a lot of problems and mental friction that wouldn't otherwise appear. Fight this. Fight this with every fibre of your being.

"Going fast makes you focus on what's important; there's no time for bullshit"
...
"You learn more per unit time because you make contact with reality more frequently"

Nat Friedman

You can learn soft skills from people around you
This shouldn't be a shock. But I find it strangely counterintuitive. We've all heard from a young age that personality is something you're born with. But you can learn to be charming and easy going. You can simply listen to people who are easily talkative and think about what they said and how they said it, and then you can do the same.

Yes it takes practice. But all things do.

Being stubborn is usually a sign of being dumb
Whenever you are stubborn, it's likely that you are because you've closed yourself off to improving something about yourself. Smart people try, evaluate, and move on. They don't cling to old thoughts. You probably do this in some areas, but not others? Why not?

This year I learned a few areas where I'm stubborn simply because I'm resisting change.
Time to change that.

The world really is abundant
We live in an age of abundance. And opportunities are all around us. But this isn't the common view. And thoughts are shaped by habit even faster than our bodies. So if you don't practice thinking about opportunities, and looking at the world as abundant, you won't see it.
This is the year I actively start practicing thinking in certain ways.

If you want more time, go slower
Val Sopi nailed it. I completely agree:

This article might sound like I will go head first and as fast as possible. On the contrary, I have learned that if you want to slow down time, go slower, which is precisely what I need right now: Slowing down time! I will rest more. Stay organized. Execute. Reflect. Plan ahead slowly.

Val Sopi

A quote to end on

your growth comes first be
intentional with your time
forcing things does not work
being kind supports your peace
hang out with revitalizing people
let consistency help your flourishing
remember the progress you have made
slow things down when your mood is low
people pleasing hurts your mental health
seeking perfection hinders your progress
you cannot make everyone understand you

yung pueblo

A theory of design - what design does

Sun, 30 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Design is a widely used term. But unfortunately it's a bit vague. This is my attempt to explain what design is, and what it does. Hopefully in a way that makes the term a little more useful.

We experience the world through our senses. Which are quite blunt as instruments. What your senses pick up depends to an uncomfortably large degree on what we already think about the world. Theory comes first.

Here's a simple example to illustrate what I mean:

When a magician performs a card trick your eyes are telling you that cards appear out of thin air. Of course you know that is not what is happening. When the magician performs, we know it's a trick. But we still can't see how it's done.

Unless we learn to do the trick ourselves, then suddenly we can see how it's done. You have to know how it works first, to perceive what is really happening.

A part of magic is the deliberate attempt to confuse our senses, but this is true for all observation. If you don't know what you're looking at, you don't perceive how it really is.

Another good example is seeing faces in the clouds. We all know they are not there. With a quick glance in a shady neighbourhood, a moving shadow can easily scare us.

You can quite literally not trust your own two eyes. You need to know what to look for.

"All observation is theory laden"

Karl Popper

Design works at an even more fundamental level. We are not just perceiving the world around us, but also trying to predict what happens next. What does this button do? What happens when I push or pull this door? Our brains are constantly occupied trying to predict the future, moment to moment.

These predictions or expectations are guesses that the brain is making on what will happen next. (I almost used the word bets, which might be even more descriptive, because you might make more than one.)

In pop science they're called mental models, but the term is overused and carries a lot of preconceptions, so I will stick to guesses.

When we see faces in the clouds, we are projecting our guesses onto the world. Humans love seeing faces, so most random patterns will look like one.

These guesses in your mind are what we as designers are trying to shape.

Not the object, or software, your perceive. That is just the medium of communication. But the guess you're making in your head. The layout, the color, the architecture, all of that is just a means to an end.

We want you to experience the world with a specific guess in your mind. With most design, we want you to guess so specifically that you can see how the card trick is done.

The thing you're reading this on. The steering wheel in your car. The pattern of class or plastic on your phone. They are designed to communicate a way of thinking. They are designed to shape the guess inside your mind.

If the guess is right, your expectation is fulfilled, and it feel like something works.

If the guess is wrong, you have to rethink, which costs a little bit of effort. A little bit of friction. And it will feel strained, or awkward.

The art of design, like choosing vivid colors and fonts. And the craft of design process, like researching jobs-to-be-done or user context. Is all done to design the right guesses in the minds of the users.

This is what design does: we're shaping guesses.

This is why it looks easy, or obvious, when it's done well. Your mind is helped to make the right guess every step of the way.

But when it's not done well, or rushed, it's feels awkward or not quite right. Or worse, you make errors and blame yourself.

“Good design looks easy. Like great athletes, great designers make it look easy. Mostly this is an illusion. The easy, conversational tone of good writing comes only on the eighth rewrite.”

Paul Graham

Addiction and balance

Mon, 09 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I've started thinking more and more about addiction. I am not, in the classic sense, in any way an addict. But I think my addictions are taking up too much of my life.

I first realised how common addiction can be compared to the classic idea of drug abuse when I read Andrew Wilkinsons startling introspection:

Dr. Lembke explained that most addictions arise from substances or activities that release dopamine.

[...]

Things like video games. Food. Social networks. Porn. Email. Exercise.
Even romance novels. Yes, romance novels.

[...]

People can be addicted to ANYTHING that releases dopamine. And we are all doing it constantly in an unnatural way.

Andrew Wilkinson on Twitter

This means that everything that triggers in you an excited, focused, joyful moment can be addicting. And wow does that mean the normal world we live in is full of addictive things and addicts.

Here is Scott Alexander talking about how even eating could be viewed as an addiction cycle.

Everyone always says you should “eat mindfully”. I tried this once and it was weird. For example, I noticed that only the first few bites of a tasty food actually tasted good. After that I habituated and lost it. Not only that, but there was a brief period when I finished eating the food which was below hedonic baseline.

[...]

This seems pretty analogous to addiction, tolerance, and withdrawal. If you use eg heroin, I’m told it feels very good the first few times. After that it gets gradually less euphoric, until eventually you need it to feel okay at all. If you quit, you feel much worse than normal (withdrawal) for a while until you even out. I claim I went through this whole process in the space of a twenty minute dinner.

Scott Alexander in Astral Codex Ten

I think he's right. Addiction is not a digital state, but an analogue gradual scale, and everything we indulge in slides around on that scale. Which means that life is full of addictive traps. Paul Graham says it well in this tweet:

Which means we will increasingly have to make a conscious effort to avoid addictions — to stand outside ourselves and ask "is this how I want to be spending my time?"

Paul Graham in Life is short

The hardest things to avoid are the ones that feel personal, without actually being personal. Things that trigger fear:

Things that lure you into wasting your time have to be really good at tricking you. An example that will be familiar to a lot of people is arguing online. When someone contradicts you, they're in a sense attacking you. Sometimes pretty overtly. Your instinct when attacked is to defend yourself. But like a lot of instincts, this one wasn't designed for the world we now live in. Counterintuitive as it feels, it's better most of the time not to defend yourself. Otherwise these people are literally taking your life.

Paul Graham in Life is short

Graham is as usual a vivid observer of life, and I think he nails it when he says:

The things that matter aren't necessarily the ones people would call "important." Having coffee with a friend matters. You won't feel later like that was a waste of time.

Paul Graham in Life is short

To take it back to Wilkinson, he echoes a similar observation:

After a month of this, I came home and had coffee with a friend.

I felt like a new man. Whereas before NOTHING made me happy, a month of quiet had flipped things on their head.

Suddenly the muzak playing in a cafe sounded like the best song I’d ever heard.

Andrew Wilkinson

What can we learn from these interesting people?

I think addiction is a slippery slope of immediate responses to emotions, enjoyment, stress, fear. The trick is to decide if this is really how you want to spend your time. Your life.

To do that, we have to look at things at a longer timescale. Is this an activity you will remember fondly, or time passed in a blur?

It's easy to let the days rush by. The "flow" that imaginative people love so much has a darker cousin that prevents you from pausing to savor life amid the daily slurry of errands and alarms.

Paul Graham in Life is short

How do you want to spend your life? Is that notification really worth 10 minutes of your day? Is that extra drink worth being sluggish tomorrow?

Here's Mario Merz explaining how intensity of living might be a better way to frame it:

It’s clear to me that in some moments we feel more purely alive than others: years unfold in minutes. The most popular refrain when someone is in the first flush of love, after all is, I’ve never felt more alive. Intensity is the pursuit of aliveness.

Mario Mera in Permitting Intensity

All addiction starts out as vivid examples of being alive. But we can't chase the high like addicts. Because every experience quickly stops being rewarding and instead turns into the pain of withdrawal.

We need to be aware of this, and continue to explore vidid experiences of aliveness. But not chase the high.

Balance intensity of action with reflection and rest. Balance addictive input with boredom.

If you have any good ideas about how to do this, please let me know. Because I'm definitely not bored enough.

Advice on turning 38

Sun, 10 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Like Patrick Collison describes so well in "Advice" all advice is unfortunately lost in translation. You'll have to experience it yourself to truly internalise.

Today I became 38, so here are a few pieces of advice I wish I could give to my 28 year old self.

Jesper Bylund celebrating turning 38 at Monocle Zürich Switzerland. Photo by Agnes Haverling.

It takes time to learn ideas. When you read it once and think you understand it, you’ve not even begun to learn the idea. And that is ok.
All progress is progress. Any increment is valuable. Because making progress is the only thing that matters. Progress makes you richer, smarter, stronger, but we can never stop. There is no final truth or form.
Being intellectually honest takes a lot of effort and discipline. But if you aren’t, why would you spend the time to learn? Why would you repeat an argument? If you don’t live the way it says is best.
Every time you do anything, is the last time you do that. So enjoy it. This is the last meal you prepare, that was the last what with that friend. Because it really is like Heraclitus says. The earlier you can internalise that. The better you will spend your life.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's no the same man.

Heraclitus

Everything is addictive. And we have to beware of addiction, because it makes us to invest time, energy, and money in things that do not align with our long time goals. Instant gratification kills your long term dreams.

Aspire to be less wrong - Elon Musk

Sat, 14 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

A few years ago I was inspired by my love of David Deutsch work and this quote by Elon Musk:

Aspire to be less wrong

Elon Musk

I couldn't say it better myself. So cold winter morning I found some rights free space images from NASA and I put together this poster. Never printed it, but since then it has been becoming increasingly popular on the Figma community. So I figured I would offer some good exports for sale.

I hope you like it!

https://jesperbylund.gumroad.com/l/aspire-to-elon

BlankPage

Thu, 26 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

BlankPage was a SaaS that tried to help people stay motivated to write works of fiction. Using motivational psychology I borrowed from games I tried to help people create the habit of writing daily.

The project started late 2012 and was killed after living at least a year as a zombie in spring 2019. BlankPage was featured on Product Hunt a week before PH officially launched in 2014, and I was one of the early interviews on Indie Hackers.

Should I talk about the tech stack?

Should I talk about the income and costs?

Should I talk about the strategies I tried?

Reviews

Screens from 2015

Screens from 2017

Inspirational posters and media material

Building a blog with Neon serverless database and both NextJS 13 and Sveltekit

Mon, 26 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

This has to be my longest headline ever.

Ever since I learned about Neon I've wanted to try it out. A serverless, infinitely scalable Postgres install?!?? How could that not solve all my problems? Today I finally had the time, so let's do this.

What is Neon, and why should we care?

Neon is serverless, which in this case means that storage and compute (I/O of the db) is separate and scales independently. This means that when you're not using it, cost goes to almost zero. But also when you need to scale, it can do so automatically. No more splitting databases, or manually spinning up or down database nodes!

Neon also allows us to branch and merge database schemas. So whenever we need to update what your database looks like, you can easily do so, and even test all the way to production (by letting some accounts reach the new branch probably) before rolling out the change.

This means neon is especially suited for apps that rapidly change their datasets. Startups with rapid product iterations should benefit tremendously!

Setup your Neon account

Head over to neon.tech and click sign in. Chose your preferred auth path and you're done!

Click through the intro-carousel and hit create new project.

Pick a witty web2.0 name, something like Peachforce. Here's a generator to help you.

Download your .env file to access your database from your web app.

Test the database

Now let's try out the database. Head over to your Neon project and open up the SQL editor. The Db exists, but it's totally empty. So we will want to create a few tables and add an extension for generating UUIDs. Neon has a growing list of Postgres extensions you can use, but we'll have to activate them first.

# activates the uuid extension
CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS "uuid-ossp";

# creates the Author table with an ID and Name
create author(
id uuid PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT uuid_generate_v4(),
name TEXT
)

# creates the Post table with an ID, Content text, Created timestamp, and foreign key link to an Author
create post(
id uuid PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT uuid_generate_v4(),
content TEXT,
created TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT NOW(),
author uuid REFERENCES author (id)
)

Why text? Why not varchar?

According to this discussion there's basically no point in using varchar anymore. It was the text type of choice when the length of input mattered. But since postgres 9-10 or so, it really doesn't. So unless you really know what you're doing, just use TEXT.

Add a test author and post to your database to see if it works:

INSERT INTO author(name) VALUES ('your name') RETURNING id // returns the new authors UUID

INSERT INTO post(content, athor) VALUES ( 'Hello World!', '<add the UUID from your author>');

Then head over to the Tables tab on Neon and click each table in turn to check that your rows are added correctly.

That's it! Your scalable database is ready to go.

Setup your Nextjs app

Why Nextjs?

If you do any development that touches javascript you probably have heard about Vercel at some point. The company is doing amazing stuff for developer experience and helping us all ship faster with their OSS projects, one of which is the most used React Boilerplate framework: Nextjs. There are already hundreds of tutorials about how to use it though, but they recently released a major change in their structure with Nextjs 13 and I wanted to give it a try.

Create a local folder for our new Nextjs project

mkdir neon-next

Even if you've used Nextjs previously, you'll need to update to the experimental version. So pay attention to this next step:

// Installs or updates to the latest version of NextJS
npm i next@latest react@latest react-dom@latest eslint-config-next@latest

Now create your Nextjs install by running the following command, if you need additional help here with npx etc, please see this guide.

npx create-next-app@latest --typescript

Pick a name for your project or leave it blank to install in the current folder. Not actually sure why it does this, as all other np+ installs are in the current dir. I'm a little surprised both Next and Svelte attempt to create subdirectories. (If you know why they do this, please let me know.)

Go through the installation guide, I recommend using ESLINT. But it's up to you!

Test the install by running npm run dev

Add a .env file to the root of your project folder with the following string:

// you can copy this URL from the .env file we downloaded from Neon earlier!
DATABASE_URL=postgres://<user>:<password>@<endpoint_hostname>:<port>/<database>

You also have to add ?options=project=my-endpoint-123456 to this url string to support SSL mode in the client connection later. Remember to change "my-endpoint-123456" to your own project ID. Which you can find on the settings page of your neon project!

Add the following to your next.config.js to activate their experimental /app folder, which is what I want to test!

/** @type {import('next').NextConfig} */
const nextConfig = {
  reactStrictMode: true,
  experimental: {
    appDir: true,
  },
}

module.exports = nextConfig

Add a /app directory in your project root, so we can use the new easier-to-use data fetching in Nextjs 13.

Add a layout.tsx to the /app directory, this file is required and used to render the html and body blocks of your site. If you've used Nextjs before this file practically replaces the _app.js and _document.js files in earlier Nextjs projects.

There are a bunch of special purpose files in Nextjs 13 that speed up development significantly. Learn about them in detail here.

Here is my layout.tsx

export default function RootLayout({
  // Layouts must accept a children prop.
  // This will be populated with nested layouts or pages
  children,
}: {
  children: React.ReactNode;
}) {
  return (
    <html lang="en">
      <body>{children}</body>
    </html>
  );
}

After adding your layout.tsx you can remove the /pages directory which we won't use.

Now add a page.ts to the /app directory, with the following code:

import postgres from "postgres";
import { Suspense } from "react";
import Link from "next/link";

async function getData(query: any) {
  //@ts-ignore
  const sql = postgres(process.env.DATABASE_URL, {
    ssl: require,
  });

  const result = await sql.unsafe(query);

  // The return value is *not* serialized
  console.log("backend result", result);
  // You can return Date, Map, Set, etc.
  return result;
}

// This is an async Server Component
export default async function StartPage() {
  const data = await getData("select * from post");

  return (
    <div>
      <h2>Testing SQL</h2>
      <Suspense fallback={<div>Loading...</div>}>
        <ul>
          {data.map((item: any) => (
              <li key={item.id}>{item.content}</li>
          ))}
        </ul>
      </Suspense>
    </div>
  );
}

This might seem strange. But Nextjs leverages the power of serverless edge functions to run "server side" code right in your component. Magic for developer overview!

And that's it! Run npm run dev to test the database connection locally and print the list of posts. If your database has hibernated (fallen asleep because no one was using it) the first call might take 2s to complete. I had no timeout issues with this, and if your app is being used regularly, I don't think you'll ever notice.

Setup your Sveltekit app

Nextjs is amazing. But if you don't believe [React](https://reactjs.org) will be the future of the internet (it's still developed by Facebook, so who knows), perhaps you're more interested in [Svelte](https://kit.svelte.dev)?

Svelte is an amazing reactive framework created to show that staying close to web standards and not reinventing the wheel with custom javascript rendering can be, not just a really nice developer experience, but also faster than react!

Sveltekit is the latest release by the Svelte group to create a framework similar to Nextjs, to speed up development. I've wanted to try it for a while, so I'm excited to to do this test!

Create a new local directory for our Sveltekit project, if you need more instructions follow this guide.

mkdir neon-svelte

Install sveltekit

// the "." means current directory, you can also add a name to create a subdirectory
npm create svelte@latest .

Svelte offers a lot more guidance on what you want to install with your project than Nextjs does. Choose according to your preference, but I went all defaults.

Choose the skeleton project template and then pick whichever options you prefer. I used Typescript and then all defaults.

Now we install the dependencies we need

// installs all the general dependencies svelte and svelte kit needs
npm install

// also install the Postgres library that we need to communicate with Neon
npm install --save postgres

Test the install by running npm run dev

Add a .env file to your project folder with the following string, just like we did for Nextjs

// you can copy this URL from the .env file we downloaded from Neon earlier!
DATABASE_URL=postgres://<user>:<password>@<endpoint_hostname>:<port>/<database>

Now replace the content of /routes/+page.svelte with

<script>
  /** @type {import('./$types').PageData} */
  export let data;
</script>

<h2>Testing postgres</h2>
  <ul>
    {#each data.post as post}
      <li>
          {post.content}
      </li>
    {/each}
  </ul>

Add the file /routes/+page.server.ts to automatically handle serverside calls for this route. What this means is that the code in this file will be run "server side" each time this route is called.

//@ts-ignore - some type error happens in the import that I didn't have time to look into
import * as db from '$lib/server/database.js';

/** @type {import('./$types').PageServerLoad} */
export async function load() {
	return {
		post: await db.getPosts()
	};
}

And finally add the general purpose db connector to a completely serverside function to keep environment variables secure etc in /lib/server/database.js

import { DATABASE_URL } from '$env/static/private';
import postgres from 'postgres';

const sql = postgres(DATABASE_URL, {
	ssl: 'require'
});

export async function getPosts() {
	const posts = await sql`SELECT * FROM post`;
	return posts;
}

Everything file in the /lib/server directory creates serverless functions on your host that can be used for internal or even public APIs.

That's it! Now we have the same app up and running with sveltekit. Compared to Nextjs it's a little more verbose with the extra server-files. But it also makes it that much harder to accidentally publish server side code to the client. Something that is already difficult with Nextjs and more so in Nextjs 13's magic /app directory.

Publish your app

Nextjs is amazing. But I think Vercel's hosting service might be even more amazing. If you don't already have a Vercel account set one up.

After which you can either install their CLI tool or connect your GIT repository to easily publish our project. I recommend the CLI tool for development.

After installing, just run this command and follow the guide.

vercel

In a few seconds your project is live and the URL is shown in the terminal window. Clicking it should show you the list of posts in your completely serverless new blog!

My thoughts

This is a really quick guide, so please let me know if I've missed steps or you're wondering about anything.

Neon

Neon seems amazing. It's way too powerful for this measly test though. I have a hunch what I would use it for but I am blown away by how much time and money we would have saved at some of my previous startups.

Nextjs 13

Nextjs was already amazing. The new structure of Nextjs is even more amazing. But you really have to double check you're not publishing any secrets to the browser.

Sveltekit

Svelte has been my preferred language of choice ever since I discovered it. I've long thought it would gather momentum and overtake React, at least for developer side projects, just because it's easier to use.

Sveltekit really solves the last issues with using Svelte by giving you all the infrastructure for a project right out of the box.

That said, I think I prefer the flavour of the code and file structure of Nextjs... Maybe it's just that I'm more used to React? I will have to try some other experiment before I feel comfortable saying what I would choose.

Making failure a way to win

Sun, 27 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Embracing failure has become a trope. Like a lot of important observations about life, there is something to this, it's just badly explained. As a society we rush through ideas expecting others to "just get it".

Which is why when I posted this tweet the other day I was surprised by the amount of response. Was this thought a piece of embracing failure uncovered in a practical method?

https://twitter.com/JesperBylund/status/1507259872550731776?s=20&t=tU3z-R3n0I-ribDiFfsovQ

The fear of failure keeps people, you and I included, from doing the things that are important to us. You might call it worry, or anxiety, but those are synonyms in regards to failure. Things that we think are important, exciting, or worthwhile are always lacquered with fear.

Important things are simply too exposing. What if you start to write that book, climb that mountain, but don't finish it? Maybe others will laugh? Maybe everyone will remember the failure and not the important goal? Maybe we'll lose all our money, and safety?

Trying to avoid failure will not minimise the risks of these things. When we avoid risk we step away from rewards, both monetary and personal. Eventually we end up where there is little opportunity left to compete over. In lives that are so small, so safe, that they look laughable from the outside. You've probably wondered why your grandmothers world seems so small, now you know. And you are probably on the same path.

The way out of this trap is to stop avoiding failure, and minimise the loss from failure instead. That may sound like word play, but if we limit the loss we can make, trying isn't expensive. With limited losses, a big possible wins, success is guaranteed if we just keep trying.

Risk = chance of failure * cost of failure

Mattis Larsson on Twitter

When you can try for the important things in your life, but the possible failure is not complete, there is always more opportunity.
What if you write the outline, and then start on something else? You still wrote the outline.
What if you start climbing that mountain, but don't reach the top? You still climbed the mountain.

We can never remove the chance of failure. To live full lives we want to accept failing, and even aspire to fail more often. But if we minimise the cost, we can try and try again. Failing feels less scary when it's no big deal. The laughs of worried spectators will grow ever weaker as your life grows larger.

We can continue failing forever, while winning at life.

Making maps of reality

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT

A map explains the territory it shows, but the map is not the territory. The same is true will all explanations and ideas.

Science is drawing maps of the world. We’re looking for facts that don’t match, like that hill over there, so we can improve the maps. So we can make better explanations.

The better the maps are, the less they will change as we discover new facts.

But the maps will never be perfect, because reality contains a surprising level of detail. Reality is fractal.

A map that is a perfect match to the territory must therefore be the territory. If all the details are the same, they have to share the same attributes, and take up the same amount of space, and energy.

If we simplify our explanation in any way, we're simulating reality. We're making a map again. But if we want to do easy things, a simple map will do. If we want to do harder things, we need better maps.

So we can’t make a perfect map, but we can improve the ones we have forever. Because there's always more detail to discover. We can make many different maps to understand reality in different ways. One top down, one from the side, and so on for ever.

Every time we make a map more accurate we make it easier for humans to live, thrive, and make better maps.

That sounds like a great endeavour to me, let's make some maps!

My favourite definition of art

Sun, 04 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Ask around among the art crowd and I bet you most will say that art cannot be defined. There's even famous art trying to explore what art is, that is highly debated if it should be called art of not.

Art is one of those topics where we say you'll know it when you see it. I think we fall back on that parental get-out-of-jail-free card because it's hard to define. Hard to even think about. Harder still to nail down with words.

I think this is the case because it's one of these topics where we need to zoom out, or zoom in, to really understand what it is. But I think this definition nails it:

Artists create meaning where there is none.

That is what art is. Uncovering, or creating, meaning.

Art can make you feel, or think, something new. Art has no specific form, or shape, but it can create a sense of wonder, or dread, or even anger, in the viewer.

Art is in the eye of the beholder. Which means that art creates meaning, for you, the beholder. And I think that is a beautiful, dare I say artful, definition.

I learned this definition from Bret Hall who in turn learned it from David Deutsch.

Practical mindful productivity

Mon, 03 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Picture a perfect leisurely Sunday morning: You wake up. Think about your breakfast or brunch. Get up, get ready, and then go enjoy it.

Now picture every stressful morning: You wake up. You're thinking about the 15 things you need to do that day. You're brushing your teeth while listening to a podcast and get stressed about a call you have to make later.

What's the difference between these two days? For a long time I've tried all sorts of experiments to figure out how I can live in a majority of calm Sunday mornings. Because I don't think it's time off is what I'm really looking for. I think it's the calm, clear, mindful way to go about a day.

Based on that thoughts I naturally started my experiments around mindfulness. I started meditating daily. While it helps but was not the magic ingredient. I did cold showers, daily pages, journalling… Name any mindfulness strategy, I probably tried it.

The experiments that worked best for me were:

media fasting, not taking in any media input at all except music.

single tasking, meaning you limit yourself to doing one thing at a time.

Both of them are impractical though, and even with all that effort my success rate was still less than my 80% goal.

I had started giving up on this idea, thinking that maybe I was just too hard on myself, maybe I should accept that most days are not filled with clarity and get on with it, when I saw this clip on youtube:

It's Andrew Huberman, of Huberman Labs fame, talking about resetting your dopamine in the mornings. And something clicked for me. Be warned however, this is a productivity porn video.

What Huberman is saying in this video is that by explicitly setting a single goal for yourself in the morning, and then achieving that goal, you've started the day by practicing rewarding yourself for doing work. And I think there's a deep truth to take from this.

Dopamine, which I've written about before, is a neuro transmitter that gives you drive in the form of anticipation, and a rewarding sense of achievement when you've done something. It's the reason you can't stop scrolling dumb stuff on the internet, because each new small discovery gives you a little dopamine hit.

What Huberman is saying in this video is that in the morning you are naturally a bit dopamine low, and your mind will be craving stimulation. If you give it that with social media, or news, you've just set your mind up for short term quick wins of consumption.

This matters because our brains adapt to repetition. The mechanics of brain plasticity mean that anything we do get's easier with each time we do it.

So getting a dopamine kick from consumption in the morning is training our brains to seek distraction, to seek stress.

Instead if we set a goal and achieve it, like making our beds, putting away our clothes before getting breakfast, whatever it is, we're training our brains to get rewarded by conscious action. To seek clear goals.

This effect is probably quite small day to day, but large over decades. After 20 years of morning news, you will probably find it really hard to start a day without a jolt of worry and anger.

But I believe this also works on a psychological level.

When we start the day with consumption, or reacting to events, we're getting into the autopilot mode of living. We're reacting to events, maybe a little behind schedule, a little short on time, thinking about the 17 things we need to do before lunch. We're in the anxious closed mode, or system 0, depending on which schools of thought you like.

If we instead start with extremely specific goals, even though they're small, we are putting ourselves in the active mode of living. We're proactive about spending our time. We act instead of react. We're in the relaxed open mode, or system 1.

This mode is, I believe, the "calm Sunday morning" lifestyle I've been chasing for the last 20 years.

When we are in the relaxed and open state, we're also more present. Because we're focused on the specific short term goal of what we're doing. We're not daydreaming about that time we made a friend uncomfortable, or the stressful meeting planned for later.

I think there's one more layer to this worth thinking about. When we are overwhelmed and react, we're constantly letting ourselves down. We're beating ourselves up with thoughts like "I should do X more" "I really should do Y today".

When we're completing specific tasks, we're basically setting short deadlines with ourselves and keeping them. So we're building self reliance. We're showing ourselves that we can get things done.

Instead of reminding ourselves that we're not going to the gym more. We made the bed. Had a coffee. Read the keeping-up-with-newsletter. Called the landlord. We're building up a chain of small successes.

I'm not sure I'm explaining this well. But I think I've found a key to live a more focused, mindful, and calm life.

The method is really simple:

Before you start doing things in the morning, tell yourself what you will do, and then only do that. Keep it simple enough that you can't fail. And be specific, intentional, about what you're doing.

The people who judge you

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

We often imagine how people will react when we make decisions in life. Should I stay at my job? Start a risky new company? Even the most hardened individualist among us imagine the reaction of our parents, or friends, when we think about big decisions.

A life coach I recently listened to offered the idea that we carry with us the image of people we wanted to impress growing up. It's probably your parents, but also others like your first boss, the cool kids from high school, or more mature friends of your siblings. Then when we decide on taking a new job, or doing a new project, we imagine how they would react. Will they be impressed? Will they call me a dweeb?

I think he's right. We do carry around imagined panels of critics, made up from people who are maybe not even in our lives any longer. Perhaps setting limits for our lives based on people who are no longer around isn't a good strategy?

The coach then proposed we write down an explicit list of people who's opinion we still value, and the next time we have a decision to make, we can think of those people. Or even better, we can ask their opinions. Completely getting rid of the imaginary audience might be difficult, or even impossible. But switching them out for an audience that makes sense could be practical.

My own list turned out to be surprisingly short.

What I learned week 46 2022

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I keep forgetting and rediscovering how easy it is to contribute. Simply sharing what I learn, and what I'm excited about can be a meaningful contribution. So here I go, sharing what I learned.

The post by Jakob Greenfeld that convinced me to share my weekly notes. Every time your learn something new and exciting, why not share your work?

The world is hard to predict, so doing something beats doing things well. Oddly enough my weight lifting coach tipped me off about this classic article from the early days of software development.

The lesson to be learned from this is that it is often undesirable to go for the right thing first. It is better to get half of the right thing available so that it spreads like a virus. Once people are hooked on it, take the time to improve it to 90% of the right thing.

The Rise of Worse is Better by Richard P. Gabriel

Starting with an example is the most efficient way to explain a concept, or teach someone something.

One of the saddest things about the human condition is how underpowered your working memory is. Your brain has 100B neurons and is the smartest thing in the known universe, but remembering a seven-digit phone number is a struggle — are you kidding me?

Liron, via LessWrong

What I learned week 47 2022

Sun, 27 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I spent half this week showing my parents around Berlin, turns out that Christmas markets is a big thing in Germany. But it's quite hard for me to understand why? Maybe if I was drinking, it would make more sense.

Erik Torenberg has this interesting theory There's Just Too Many Damn Elites. The core idea is that we have created a lot of cushy jobs for people who are socially performing, but economically don't do much. And we ran out of money for these jobs.

Val Sopi is taking investing in yourself to a whole new level by taking out a bank loan to finance himself working on his own products... This is so brave and amazing I don't know where to start. Thankfully he's sharing all of it online! I find myself agreeing with most of his philosophy:

This article might sound like I will go head first and as fast as possible. On the contrary, I have learned that if you want to slow down time, go slower, which is precisely what I need right now: Slowing down time! I will rest more. Stay organized. Execute. Reflect. Plan ahead slowly.

Val Sopi

Lifestyle magazine Konfekt had this epic quote to share:

“Without wine we eat; with wine we dine.”

Irena Kirshman

Apparently we're all supposed to hate Elon Musk now. Not sure why to be honest. But I think Paul Graham sums it up best:

It's remarkable how many people who've never run any kind of company think they know how to run a tech company better than someone who's run Tesla and SpaceX.

Paul Graham

What I learned week 48 2022

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

This was a stressful week for me. While the entire internet was talking about OpenAI's new chatbot, I was onboarding a new designer on my team and learning a few new things:

To slow down time, go slower.

This article might sound like I will go head first and as fast as possible. On the contrary, I have learned that if you want to slow down time, go slower, which is precisely what I need right now: Slowing down time! I will rest more. Stay organized. Execute. Reflect. Plan ahead slowly.

A fresh new start: Investing in myself towards financial freedom and sharing my personal and business finances publicly! — Val Sopi

We really shouldn't know our limits. Or rather, we shouldn't believe in limits until we bump against them several times.

It’s tempting to say that it’s good to have a reasonable sense of your abilities. But if a one-year-old stuck to what they knew they could do, they would never walk. What if life-changing breakthroughs are lurking behind the goals we’re too afraid to chase?

The Childlike Love of Challenge — Nat Eliason

Getting distracted by meetings and busywork is really having a negative impact on me. So my current strategy for beating the internal resistance is a strangely simple one: just do one hour of productive work per day.

Odds are, the latest office debate or family squabble isn't worth winning. Most arguments are only tangentially related to your end goal. What outcomes are you actually trying to create? What type of life are you actually trying to cultivate? Stay focused.

Arguments, staying young, and the pain of truth — James Clear

Speed is important for many reasons. Some of them less obvious.

You learn more per unit time because you make contact with reality more frequently.
...
Going fast makes you focus on what's important; there's no time for bullshit

Nat Friedman

What I learned week 49 2022

Sat, 10 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Being prepared

A few years ago I signed up for a cruise from Colombia to Portugal. I wanted to cross the Atlantic. There was just a couple of things stopping me: I was in Sweden. I was unemployed. I had no savings.

But it all turned out fine. Partly I think it's because we are capable of so much more than we think. And partly things are so much easier with clarity of focus.

“The ultimate form of preparation is not planning for a specific scenario, but a mindset that can handle uncertainty.”

James Clear

I miss having that mindset. To rely on myself to solve it. Whatever it is.

Making progress

Making progress is difficult. Sometimes progress means finishing a project. Sometimes it means starting something. It might be worth asking yourself which sort your next task is before starting. After reading this, I know I need to.

“In some areas of life, value is unlocked by starting. Even a five-minute workout or a short walk can reset your mood and benefit your body. In other areas, value is unlocked by finishing. It does you no good to build a bridge halfway across the river. You need to complete the project to realize the value. Do you need to start or finish? Are you building a body or building a bridge?”

James Clear

Being someone worth remembering

Being someone people remember means doing things that stick out. Dare to take more space. Be more of whatever you want to be. It will be scary, but the world needs more individuals.

When people say that a movie has a great character, they mean it was someone especially shocking, funny, or honest. To be a great entertainer, you need to be larger than life. Push your outer boundaries. Show your weirdness. Bring out all your quirks. The world needs that.

Derek Sivers

What I learned week 50 2022

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Becoming more productive increases the amount of work to be done. This is a counter intuitive effect called Jevons Paradox.

"In the 1800s, most people thought a more efficient coal engine would lead to less coal burning; an economist called Willam Stanley Jevons argued the opposite. As the cost of using coal drops—because of the increased efficiency—he expected demand to increase. Jevons observation turned out to be correct and has since turned into a formal theory called Jevons Paradox."

https://getmatter.com/email/16276741/?token=16276741%3AKQscdXA6jA9kA08mODIeNzwl2Ec

This effect applies to our day to day as well. If you work more efficiently, you'll end up having more work. Once we know this, we can use it to our advantage: add a little friction to working too much, and remove friction from whatever you want more of in life. Want more family time? Remove friction from that, and add it to anything else.

Example from my own life: I want to spend more time doing experiments. So I'm gonna block time to do experiments in my calendar, and go to a coffee shop for that time without my work laptop. Making it much harder for anyone to interrupt me, including myself.

What I learned week 51 2022

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

There are two ideas in this weeks review:

Creating supply can actually create demand. And that leads to a moral imperative.
Reading alone won't teach you much. Here's a strategy for getting more out of your reading.

Enjoy!

Creating supply can actually create demand

Last week I discovered Jenova's Paradox which states that increasing the supply of some thing (for example energy) creates more demand (people will find more ways of using energy).

Why is this so interesting?

Because it means that creating some products actually increases the demand for those products.

Juan David's explores this idea in his newsletter and comes up with two inspiring effects:

The main reason one must do what one loves doing is that supply creates its own demand. Therefore, we have a moral obligation to ourselves and to the world to create and be what we can only achieve. Neglecting that is the greatest disservice and dishonor to you, your name, and your entire existence.

Juan David

Mind. Blown.

Scratching your own itch might actually be creating the very demand you need to build the project or life you want to lead.

He also shares this provocative statement:

This is also the reason why market research is bullshit. When you’re doing what you want, the demand will be created.

Juan David

Which I think has at least a kernel of truth, but I'll have to explore it further.

Reading alone won't teach you much

Recently I read How to live on 24 hours a day (and I highly recommend it) which has a few good ideas about how to manage your time and energy. This week I was surprised to realise that current entrepreneurs are discovering the same ideas as Arnold Bennet.

The second suggestion is to think as well as to read. I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as well cut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to drink. They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole object being motion. They will tell you how many books they have read in a year.

Arnold Bennet - How to live on 24 hours a day

Basically, do not just plow through books unless you're doing it for fun. If you want to learn, you need to reflect. Or even better:

When I’m consuming non-fiction content, I try to write down specific experiments I can try that put the things I “learned” into practice.

Jakob Greenfeld

A genius way to make sure you're doing something actionable with what you're reading.

Isn't it fascinating how we as a society keep rediscovering some ideas? I find this happening a lot personally as well.

That's it for this week, thanks for reading!

What if we had No Code on MacOS

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Why are there no No Code tools for MacOS? How cool would it be to open an app, and be able to check all the APIs of MacOS.

I wish I had the time to start working on this. But I don't.

Here's what I imagine: it's a native app that you launch super quickly (because it does nothing at launch).

The app lists all the APIs available in MacOS. One after another. With a specification of what parameters it accepts and requires, a short description and a button that reads from or posts to it.

The app also allows you to build your own function by taking inputs, writing small packets of swift maybe, and sending the result to outputs.

No Code has already shown the way online. Why isn't there any No Code tools on native platforms?

2023 in review

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

At the end of every year I do a big yearly review. I go through all my notes, look through all my photos, check my calendar and try to list out everything I did and learned. It takes a while, and it's always hard to finish. But it gives me a sense of control about what I am doing in life.

Like so many other important things, I don't love doing it, but I love to have done it.

2023 was a strange year. Following up a very big 22, 23 was filled with important things, but still felt like a bit of a transition year.

Timeline of events
Projects
Books
Things I learned

Timeline of events

January to March

Started the year strong on a rooftop over Berlin we saw the pent up fireworks form the pandemic years light up the sky for almost an hour. By sheer luck it was warm enough to stand outside without jackets on.

Had several work trips in Germany, visited the town of Bruchsal, and the cities of Karlsruhe and Hamburg. Work trips are never fun. But seeing a bit of Germany was very interesting.

Saw the first buds on the bushes in mid feb, and was so happy we're no longer in Sweden.

April to June

Celebrated easter in style! Living away from family we've both found diving into traditions to be surprisingly important and fun. So our easter was a traditional swedish one with egg hunt and way too much sugar. Even though it overlapped with my birthday.

A handful of amazing friends came to visit as a stand-in for a bachelors party. And it was amazing to hang out, to show them Berlin, and to carouse through the night without thought of our normal adult responsibilites.

We finally went on our long overdue trip to the US. It was cancelled 3 times. But we finally made it. San Fransisco is still amazing, though the zombie apocalypse we witnessed there really made us despair about how goverments treat people. We also met up with my brother and his wife in Las Vegas, which was amazing despite Vegas being just as overwhelming as always.

I also signed a new contract, and had to negotiate a way to not start the new jov just as we were getting married!

We ended the quarter with one of the best midsummers we've ever had in Sweden, with friends from Edinburgh, family and a surprising amount of sun!

July to September

Just a week past midsummers we finally got married. Everything went as planned, and while we were limited by not living in the same city, it turned our incredibly well.

Big projects for the year done, we explored Berlin and enjoyed late summer. We even saw a bit of Babylon, one of the most ancient cities in human history.

We visited Stockholm again to sign wedding papers. Do some kareoke with Thord and Helena, and accept the role of a guide for Levi a close friends son.

Back in Berlin more Kareoke happened, and we played the original German version of Bowling.

October to December

My first visit to Edinburgh was in the middle of a storm. And poor planning on our part had us at airports almost as much as in the city. It was still an amazing trip, and I can't wait to go back!

Visited Ericeira in Portugal with my new company. And learned that portugal was closing applications for their immigration tax rebate. We immediately applied.

Saw Little Big live in Berlin! Little Big is a hilarious band, and Berlin sure knows how to stage concerts.

We celebrated Agnes birthday with her mom visiting, visited plenty of christmas markets, and even made gingerbread houses. Before we flew to Stockholm for a very traditional Christmas, and a swanky New Years feast.

Projects

The big project for the year was of course our Wedding. So everything else had to wait.

I still launched a new version of BlankPage. Started the process to move to portugal, joined a new startup, and started building little apps using AI.

Far from a productive year. But a good one.

Books

These are some of the books I read in 2023, both the most interesting, and the least interesting. All the links are amazon affiliate links, please use them if you are interested in the books.

Where is my flying car? Another surprisingly insightful read via the Stripe Press. Our culture has slowed innovation by being too cautious. Objectively so, since in many examples our caution is have a documented negative effect. I was completely unaware.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It I was so ready to love this book. But it fell absolutely flat. Don't read it. It's pretty near useless. Jakob Greenfeld has a good review if you are not already convinced to skip it.

Make Something Wonderful A collection of Steve Jobs sayings and correspondance that inspired. I too want to make something wonderful.

Remembrance of Things Past (book 1) The first book in Prousts magnum opus. It was quite difficult to get through because it's so long, and the sentences are sometimes pages long. But it was also a meditative lull into the feelings of nostalgia. I really liked it. But I'm not sure I will pick up book 2.

Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide John Cleese has taught me more about creativity than anyone, or anything, else. This book summarises that knowledge. And it's a great little read.

Measure What Matters Excellent on the why and how of using OKRs. A little long though, so get it on audio and listen while working out.

Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making Wonderfully inspiring book. No actionable advice.

Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work Very actionable advice on leadership, dovetails nicely with Non Violent Communication. Also quite long.

Things I learned

I learned a lot 2023. But more than ever before I spent time deeply integrating what I learned, instead of just plowing through cocktail knowledge tidbits.

These are some of my favorite topics form 2023:

Very much looking forward to a dynamic and more aggressively productive 2024!

A framework for managing focus on side projects

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

You probably have a few side projects or ideas you've been poking at, but not quite finishing. They tend to pile up, don't they?

In my last yearly review I realised that I've started a lot more projects than I've completed in the last few years. And I still have a long list of projects I'd like to work on some day. But when do you start a new project, if the last one still isn't finished?

Recently I read a tweet that reminded me of the excellent book: Show your work. And how that book actually has a solution for this problem.

You can start a new project, after you show the work you did on the last one.

Regardless of how far I came in the process, or how "finished" a project ends up being. As long as I publish what I did, or what I learned, that's the end of it.

I can restart the work, or continue on the same idea at a later point. But that is a new project. And I get to chose which new project I want to work on.

This framework not only creates a lot more opportunities for me to start projects I'm exciting about, it also gives me incentive to stop projects I'm no longer inspired by.

Show your work, throw away all the old todos, and start something new.

A simple framework for making decisions easier

Sun, 13 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Last weekend I was discussing life goals with my wife, and she asked me "What would your 60 year old self tell your current self to do?"

It was a great question. Decisions are our highest leverage activity. But we too often rely on our current emotional state when making them. This question pushed me out that, and into taking a longer term view. Almost immediately, I knew the answer was "take more risks, try more stuff".

This connected in my mind with a similar mental tool provided by Victor Frankl in his legendary memoir:

I live as if I were living already for the second time and as if I had acted the first time as wrongly as I am about to act now.

Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Pick something your worried about, or a decision you need to make, and apply these two models. Let me know if they worked, and which one you preferred.

AI User Interfaces - follow the input

Sat, 09 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I'm exploring a few ideas about how AI might be used in the near future. Currently we're all interacting with LLMs through chats pretending to write text slowly, but I don't believe this metaphor will stay around. While chat was incredibly effective in communicating why LLMs are different from non-generative algorithms, it's not very efficient for every day use.

So how else would AI be used?

My first idea: what if AI followed your focus?

The simplest way I could think of showing this would be using a mouse pointer. Let's assume you have a local LLM installed and it's following your mouse pointer as input.

When you hover something it can describe what you're hovering, or offer contextual information.

Examples

Hovering a folder would give you context about the folder.

Hovering an image would describe the image for you.

And selecting something, like a piece of text, the LLM would offer you local actions it could take for you. Everything from copy text to rent on AppleTV.

Summary

In this world your personal LLM would act as a local assistant, making interacting with your computer a lot easier.

It could guide a novice user by using natural language to explain what to do next.

It could also take natural language commands, spoken to written, to perform shortcuts to actions that today might require memorising complicated commands.

Natural language as the interaction layer is an interesting ideas. And I have no doubt we will see this from Apple or Samsung in the near future.

My App Defaults 2023

Sat, 18 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Inspired by Manuel Moreale I wanted to share a list of my go-to apps:

Mail Client: Apple Mail
Mail Server: Google Workspace
Notes: Tana currently, though I want to go back to LogSeq or maybe roll my own...
To-Do: Things
Photo Shooting: Apple Camera
Photo Management: Apple Photos
Calendar: Cron
Cloud File Storage: iCloud & GitHub
RSS: don't have one
Contacts: Card Hop on top of Apple Contacts
Browser: Arc + Safari
Chat: Telegram
Bookmarks: Don't do bookmarks
Read It Later: Reader by Readwise
Word Processing: iA Writer
Spreadsheets: Google Sheets
Presentations: iA Presenter
Shopping Lists: Apple Reminders
Meal Planning: Don't do meal planning
Budgeting and Personal Finance: Google Sheets
News: Don't do news, other than what I see on X
Music: Spotify
Podcasts: Overcast
Password Management: 1Password
Code Editor: Replit

Basic ways of shipping faster

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Two weeks ago I watched my head of product break down a task into small pieces, and I relished in how much simpler it made our work. Then I realised I have basically stopped doing this myself.

At some point during the years of trying to work smarter and do better stuff I at some point stopped doing this basic thing. It got me thinking, what else have I stopped?

Weight lifting has taught me hard way that the basic steps exist for a reason. You cannot cheat gravity. And if you don't build up strength properly you will hurt yourself. This idea works surprisingly well in all kinds of complex activity.

If you don't do basic time management, no amount of hacks will save you.

If you don't build code using basic best practices, your micro architecture card house will fall.

If you don't eat and drink regularly, you will feel like garbage.

So what are the basics of working? And am I practicing them enough? I figured I would google it, list them here, practice them and then report back.

List of basic ways of shipping

Break projects or big tasks down into small tasks [Report]
Prioritise tasks: Eisenhower matrix [Report]
Personal Kabans

Coming up

Basic time management (calendars and time boxes)
Todo lists
What are the constraints you're working in?

"The question to ask yourself is, “Assuming a particular set of constraints, how can I be as effective as possible?” For example: * Assuming I can only work from 9 AM to 5 PM, how can I make the most money possible? * Assuming I can only write for 15 minutes each day, how can I finish my book as fast as possible? * Assuming I can only exercise for 3 hours each week, how can I get in the best shape possible?" — James Clear, The Downside of Work-Life Balance

Batching tasks together
Take naps
Pomodoro Technique
Accountability partners

Did I miss anything? Please tell me.

Defining outcomes to ship faster

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I need to get better at shipping fast. It's not that I don't ship today, I just have less time to work and want to have more shots at the goal.

I want to run more experiments. And try more fun tech. So I need to ship faster.

Just like when I learn anything, I believe I need to find some solid fundamentals and just practice them deliberately. So I read up on shipping tips, and pracice the most fundamental ones I find. This is the first of those:

Clarifying the problem first

There's a famous quote by Einstein that captures this idea well:

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” — Albert Einstein

Being very clear on what you are trying to achieve makes it much more likely that you can make progress. A really good problem definition usually contains the first questions or actions you need to do to make progress.

So this week before I start every task I will write down the answers to this checklist:

What am trying to achieve / What is the outcome?
What are the steps to achieveing that?
How much time and energy do I have?
Prioritise steps
Do the work

Partly this will help me make what I'm trying to do explicit. So when I get distracted I can come back to it.

Partly this will make it obvious if I'm biting off too much. Maybe I need to set a partial goal instead, something that I can do in the allotted time?

One surprising thing that came out of starting this exercise is that I realised that every time I do work on something I should end with some sort of artifact:

A progress report
A finished design
A piece of research

If I'm not actually delivering an artifact, the task isn't really done, and I will still be thinking about it. If someone is waiting for me to complete the task, they will still be waiting for it.

But if I ship an artifact, even if it only partially completes the intended outcome, at least there has been some tangible result. Real progress.

What can you specify today that will help you make progress?

Did you know about personal kanbans?

Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

In my experiment to ship faster by focusing on the basics, I've come across a classic task management technique I've always loved: the kanban.

What is a Kanban

The idea of a kanban is very easy: First tasks are divided into not started yet, doing, and done. Secondly, and most importantly, there is a limit to how many tasks are allowed in the doing bucket at one time. Third you cannot move tickets back in the process. You either delete them, or move them to the done bucket.

How is a personal kanban different?

For a personal kanban the recommendation is that you can only work on three tasks or projects at any one time. Seems simple enough.

Why is this interesting?

What I didn't appreciate until I read Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks is that this simple limitation forces you to adopt good task habits:

If you get interrupted, or you need to urgently work on something else, what do you do? Well because you can't move things back, you have to finish them. Which means you need to split tasks down into things you can do in a short amount of time. They need to be small, and clear, so you can move them forward.

This forced clarity is not a part of the kanban system. It's just a side effect, but possibly the most productive part of the system.

My take away

I think I'm going to stick to this rule. Even though there's no way to enforce the limit in Things, which is my todo list of choice.

Have you used a personal kanban?

Did you know journaling less might teach you more?

Thu, 11 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I have the recurring suspicion that we spend a lot of time doing what is essentially cargo cult work. It looks like work, but because we don't understand how the work connects with a result, we're actually play-acting. Going through the motions. What this last week taught me is that I was apparently play-acting note taking...

https://twitter.com/fortelabs/status/1655562551952826374

I use Readwise and Tana to collect highlights from things I consume. Notes from meetings, journaling for personal growth, everything that I might learn from goes in there.

The thoughts I collect are what end up on this blog, and in my newsletter. I didn't make many notes this week, in fact on one day there's just a single note. But in my weekly review, it turns out that I have learned about the same number of things as usual.

https://twitter.com/fortelabs/status/1653633039707111427

What I think is going on is that I've believed that more notes should mean more learning. But since our mind can only do one thing at a time, what is actually happening is that I'm spending a lot of time writing notes I will never use.

A stressful week resulted in me only taking down the things that are really important. Which is what I always want.

On the other hand, when I'm not writing notes all day long, it's reasonable to assume that I'm not reflecting on my thoughts and might be spending the week thinking the same thing over and over again. Journaling is a very good method for avoiding this trap, which is why I believe journaling is so helpful for personal growth.

But again, I haven't stopped journaling. I just journal less.

I'm about to leave on a two week trip to the US, and I think I will continue to journal daily, but not try to take a lot of notes. In note taking less really is more.

https://twitter.com/fortelabs/status/1655135441245413376

Did you know repetition is the key to deep learning?

Sun, 18 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

How many times have you read a book or an article only to not quite remember it a week later? I recently realised that I wasn’t learning as much as I thought, and found a better way to remember what I read.

Because I have trouble sleeping I read for an average of one hour while going to bed. This let’s me go through a lot of books over a year. I used to think that when I read something and had that “ah-ha!” feeling that was enough, I had learned that idea. I was wrong.

I never put any words in the feeling but believed something like whatever is important will stick. Or if I can’t remember it, maybe I’m just not that good at remembering facts? So I’d just listen to some more podcasts, watch a documentary, and read another book. I thought I “got it” and moved on. None the wiser.

A few years ago I reread one of my favourite books and was surprised by how little I remembered. Unfortunately I didn’t think more about it even then. It took me another year and getting hooked on a podcast that explained, chapter by chapter, the ideas from another favourite book for me to finally understand. I had been cheating myself out of learning all these great ideas.

When we hear about an idea and feel it “click”, that “ah-ha!” moment or insight. That is not learning. That’s just understanding. It feels great, but it’s a shallow understanding, and it doesn’t last.

To deeply learn an idea, we have to internalise it. A phrase that in this context means to make the idea a part of the toolbox of our minds. Neurologically, we’re adapting the brain to the idea. It takes time. But when it’s done the idea is there in long term memory, and you can apply it in real world situations.

Unfortunately for me, very few of the things I “learned” while reading over the last decade ever got to that level. Hell, I can’t even remember most of the ideas. Let alone apply them to anything.

Thankfully I’ve learned two ways that can help you learn deeply:

Repetition

You did this in school and if you are anything like me you hated it. “Move on already, I get it…”
But how much do you remember from school? I have many times felt like I didn’t learn much at all.

Repetition works. In fact it’s crucial. Let’s explore why.

One metaphor for how the brain stores knowledge & behaviours is imagining a snowfield. With you on skies traversing over it. The first time you learn something new you pass over the snow once. The tracks you leave are shallow and easy to miss.

But if you ski those tracks 2-3 times, they deepen into ruts that are easier to find, and easier to follow.

The more repetitions, the deeper the ruts, and the easier they become to use.

This is why your school teacher forced you to do all those repetitions. And why I use Readwise to help me repeat everything new I learn today.

This metaphor is good because it also captures one of the problems with repetition. If you memorize a bad idea, or practice an unwanted behaviour, it’s hard not to slide back into those tracks. This is such a powerful side effect of repetition that it’s even used in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to retrain irrational responses like phobias. But I digress…

Repetition of ideas specifically is hard because it’s easy to start remembering facts instead of the idea. This is how we end up with people who can endlessly retell stories and numbers, but can’t seem to relate them to anything. This is dogmatism at it’s core. They’ve learned the words, but not the idea.

The other way of learning things deeply is more useful, but also takes more effort.

Applying the idea

Just thinking about how you would apply an idea is a magical practice. Chances are high that you will realise you didn’t understand the idea as deeply as you felt you did, and struggle to use it. This almost always happens to me. That’s a good thing.

Noticing what we didn’t understand helps us learn the idea more deeply. In fact some philosophersclaim that struggling with an idea is the way we learn to understand. Let’s find a metaphor to explain why.

Another metaphor for how the brain works is Tetris. Better yet 3d Tetris. Imagine a 9x9 matrix of blocks that is your mind. And you’re trying to fit a new idea, a block in an odd shape, into that matrix. So you turn it this way or that way. Rotate it around. Sometimes it fits, but as you place the next one, you realise the first block would’ve been better placed over there.

This is similar to what we’re doing with new ideas. We’re turning it around to discover the full shape. And to figure out how it fits into what we know about the world. The more we turn it around, the more we think about how we apply it, the better we understand it.

This metaphor is great because it highlights one of the truths about ideas: regardless of how many times you turn it around, you wont know how it fits until you experiment. And every time you place a block, you become better at placing similar blocks.

This metaphor also highlights one of the dangers. If you haven’t seen a lot of blocks, or don’t play around with them enough, you might start thinking they are all T-shaped…

This is why experimenting is the best way to learn ideas deeply. When we do trial and error we retain why an idea works, not just the facts that support the idea. This little piece of narrative is infinitely richer than any data-illustration of the idea.

So this weekend, instead of picking up a new book, or listening to a new podcast. Why not revisit an old one? Pick something you liked, think about the shape of the idea, and see if you can try it out!

Did you know that stress feels exciting?

Mon, 17 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Thursday I I started the day with a cold shower. I've been doing this on and off for years and, while it's still an awful experience, I do feel wonderful when I step out of it. Awake, excited, thrilled even. That morning I followed the shower by sitting down to meditate and I noticed something odd.

I had a hard time following my thoughts, I had a hard time sitting down at all. I was elated, but fidgety. I usually count my breaths from 1 to 10 and then back from 1 again. But that morning I couldn't get to 3. The odd thing I realised was that this is what stress feels like.

Stress is not good or bad. We often read about the negative effects, so we get negative connotations. But stress is just a mode your body goes into where everything is ready for action. High energy. Primed. I don't know about you, but I had not reflected on the fact that this feels great. It's the same state of mind I hope to get from coffee. Really good music can push me into it. A great session at the gym can do the same thing. I feel pumped.

Normally I just think of stress as being rushed. Rushing from task to task. Struggling to get anything done. Anxious about not doing enough. And that's also stress. But I think my negative view of stress has made me lump several emotions together.

Stress is only feeling pumped. Rushing, yes, but energised. Anxiety is another emotion I'm bringing to the situation. Just like I can bring elation onto the dance floor, or anger to the gym. But these other feelings have nothing to do with stress. They are separate emotions.

Stress isn't bad. Chronic stress is.

The important thing about stress is that it should be temporary. Just like physical stress like exercise can make you stronger, psychological stress like deep conversations or riding a motorcycle can get you activated, feeling more alive. But if you keep stressing yourself, lifting weights every day, or endlessly rushing from activity to activity, you will inevitably break down.

The main problem is not the break down. But over the years of chronic stress your body has practiced becoming stressed. It now reacts to all sorts of situation with stress, you made it a habit. To break that habit, and return to your base level of stress, you have to physically retrain your body. Which can take years.

The trap we fall into is so much easier to see for me now, after my cold shower meditation. Because I love that energised feeling. Being alive. Elated. It's addictive.

Just like other addictive things I can only enjoy them if I only rarely indulge. I can get stressed. But then I have to relax and not rush. I have to learn to enjoy being calm. Being lazy.

I assume this a tough thing to learn. Based on the ever increasing reporting on stress-related problems in our society.

Let's not get excited today. Let's have a calm and quiet day. And enjoy being not stressed.

Did you know we don’t learn to be helpless?

Sun, 11 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Coming back from a few weeks vacation in San Francisco, I was more primed than usual to believe that helplessness is something we learn from oppressive or impossible situations.

So this article took me by surprise.

It turns out that learned helplessness got the order of events wrong. We don’t learn to be helpless, we start out being helpless.

This means that it’s actually taking action, and having agency over ones situation that is the learned behaviour.

From childhood we learn varying amount of agency, which hopefully sets us up to spend our lives uncovering more and more areas where we are not helpless. Agency is a skill.

In all the areas of life you’ve felt helpless, our not in control, the chances are high that you haven’t learned agency yet. Naturally there are things outsides of our control, but that doesn’t mean we can’t change how we react and adapt to those things. The Stoics got that part very right.

This idea makes me extremely hopeful. Not just for myself, but for the future of society. This means we can learn to be more in control of our fates, and less victims of circumstance.

I also suspect this is why poverty tends to be hereditary, and some high performing families can be high performing over generations. It’s not about genes. They just learn a different level of agency.

This makes me want to binge “learn to have agency content”, and if you feel the same here’s a thread I recently I liked by George Mack.

https://twitter.com/george__mack/status/1068238562443841538?s=20

Do you want to do it now, or later?

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

If you can't decide between 2 choices, take the path that's more difficult/painful in the short term.

Doing this will counteract "hyperbolic discounting," the brain's tendency to overestimate short term pain and underestimate long term pain.

— Naval's razor

Given a choice between a small reward now and a larger one later humans tend to pick the one that arrives sooner. Humans also display the opposite behaviour: given a choice between taking a penalty now, or one later, we tend to pick the one that arrives later.

This causes a problem when we chose what to invest our time in. In the race between putting in the effort now or later, now will rarely win.

To make better decisions line up the pros and cons, and then add an extra Pro to the alternative that has the most short term pain.

Hopefully that will balance out the bias.

Don’t limit yourself to normal

Sun, 20 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I have a recurring insight. It seems I need to relearn this every few months: I don’t need to limit myself to what is normal.

Just because people around you ship slowly, doesn’t mean you have to.

Just because some people learn slowly, it doesn’t need to take you a full semester.

Just because people you love like spending time mindlessly consuming things, doesn’t mean you have do the same.

What you do shapes who you are. Every choice like this is a chance to make yourself more like what you want to be. As Derek Sivers puts it: there is no speed limit.

Don’t limit yourself to normal. Do what you want. At your pace.

Everything I am proud of

Fri, 14 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I realised something recently. Everything I am proud of doing, was scary to do. Finishing my school, starting a company, moving to SF, getting married, I was afraid to start down each of those paths.

That means that everything I will be proud of in 3 to 5 years, I'm afraid of doing now.

What are you worried about?

Everything is a practice

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

My wife had an epiphany the other day that changed our lives, and that might help you as well:

Everything in life is about mindfulness practice.

Let me unpack that.

Everything in life

In life we do a lot of things. We try to focus on getting things done. Be present in our relationship ships. Savour the good moments. Learn from the pain. What do all these things have in common? What you need to do them well, or to get the value out of them, is to focus on the thing you are doing. This is mindfulness at its core. And there’s no activity in life that does not improve from being more focused or present with it.

Is about

When I clean the house, stress through hard work, or laugh with a friend asking what it’s about makes little sense. Each of these have different reasons and motivations. Each give me very different results. But what is shared is that I have chosen to do them. And doing them deliberately makes all of these better. Or more worthwhile. Deliberate practice is an another way to describe mindfulness.

Mindfulness

Being aware. Doing things intentionally. Being fully alive. As children this is the natural state of being. But as our minds expand, so does our capacity to distract ourselves. Mindfulness is always a temporary state. But each time we focus, each time we do something deliberately, we get slightly better at it.

Practice

Nothing in life is static. Change is the only constant. So whatever we do, and whatever we want to be, we have to intentionally practice it. Laugh with friends. Be kind. Think well. Have good bowel movements for Christ sake. They are all practices.

“Excellence then, is not a state, but something you do repeatedly.” – Aristotle

How I use an Eisenhower Matrix

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

How I use the Eisenhower matrix

Every day I wake up to a long list of todos. More than I could ever do. So how do you not just freeze, overwhelmed by the ridiculous amount of work ahead?

I've tried ordering them by priority, time boxing them, last-in-first-out, etc. I've also read about the Eisenhower matrix many times. But never fully tried it. I just didn't know when to use it. Until something clicked a few weeks ago:

Make the matrix

The core idea is easy, you make a 2x2 matrix. One axis is Urgent and Not Urgent. The other is Important and Not Important. Now order all your tasks into these quadrants.

Tips:

Urgent means it needs to be done NOW.
Important means it's priority 1. Nothing else.

When to use the matrix

Do this in morning before you start work. To figure out what you need to do.

Which order to work in

1. Urgent & Important

When you've sorted your tasks you first work on the ones in the Importan & Urgent quadrant. Only those. Hide and forget the rest. Anything new comes in? Sort it into the matrix. Just because someone asks for it does not make it urgent.

2. Important but not Urgent

When you're done with that quadrant, and only then, you can move on to the next one: Important but NOT urgent. Yes, that's right. You are avoiding other urgent tasks now. That's because these are the tasks that will get you ahead of the curve. These are the tasks that matter. That very soon will end up in important and urgent, or worse: lost opportunities...

3. Urgent but not important

Only after you finish these are you allowed to move on to the urgent but not important.

4. Not Urgent & Not Important?

And honestly, I've never gotten to quadrant not urgent and not important.

Does that help you? Try it. It helped me. Though I still need to remember to do this every morning.

How your brain is creative

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I'm fascinated by creativity. It seems to be the differentiating feature between humans and primates, or AI. We don't even know what creativity is, or how it works. But there's a lot to learn about how to be creative.

Neil Gaiman needs to be constrained to not distract himself.

"I go down to my lovely little gazebo at the bottom of the garden, sit down, and I’m absolutely allowed not to do anything...I'm not allowed to do a crossword, read a book, phone a friend...all I’m allowed to do is absolutely nothing, or write. But writing is actually more interesting than doing nothing after a while."

Neil Gaiman

Julian Shapiro thinks that creativity is what happens when you get rid of the first layer of obvious ideas.

"Visualize your creativity as a backed-up pipe of water. The first mile is packed with wastewater. This wastewater must be emptied before the clear water arrives."

Julian Shapiro

Shigeru Miyamoto at Nintendo would add constraints to his game development teams to force them to be creative.

John Cleese recently wrote a book on the subject, and he knows a lot about creativity. He talks about it in my favourite lecture ever:

https://youtu.be/Pb5oIIPO62g

Cleese also adds constraints. He's adding rules about space, and about time spent, in which to be creative. In which to play.

Why do constraints make you creative?

Dr. Nancy Andreasen wanted to know what happens when the brain is resting, doing nothing, and it turns out the brain starts making connections. It's being creative.

"We found activations in multiple regions of the association cortex," Dr. Andreasen wrote. "We were not [seeing] a passive silent brain during the ‘resting state,’ but rather a brain that was actively connecting thoughts and experiences.”

Dr. Nancy Andreasen

Now we know why constraints work. The brain starts playing, becoming creative, when there's no input, and nothing to do. So if you want to be more creative, you should to slack off more.

Hypothesis driven product design

Sun, 17 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

With this post I want to give a quick overview of how to do effective hypothesis driven discovery.

The deeper I go in Product Design the more it starts looking like a scientific process. After decades of defending design as not being "hand wavy" I really appreciate that.

Early stage discovery

For early feature shaping, or figuring out which product to build you want to structure your hypothesis like this:

In a specific context people perform behavior to reach goal.

Using this formula you are picking out which niche (specific context) your looking at. Which activity or tools they're using (perform behavior) and what their intended outcome is (reach goal).

The best part is structuring it this way means you can test it by public observation or surface level interviews. Making it fast and free to do.

Narrowing down bets

IF you already have an observed behavior for reaching a goal, you can start looking for pains and points of friction.

The observed user behaviour for achieving goal has friction.

Using this formulea you can quickly find out which behaviors people think relate to the goal. And what points of friction they are experiencing.

Structuring your hypothesis this way makes it easy and cheap to test by informal or formal interviews.

Betting on specific things

When it's finally time to make a feature or product you can use this structure:

Reducing friction will improve key result, leading to objective

This structure is how you structure the test of a feature. Unless you are measuing these things, it's not a bet but a wish.

This is much more expensive and slow compared to the first two examples. So treat it lika a funnel.

Let me know if that helps!

Practices that improve your personal agency

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Agency is the description of people who get things done. People like Elon Musk, Lady Gaga. People who seem almost super human. Love them or hate them, they move the needle. For the longest time I thought this was a personality trait. But it isn’t, it’s a skill that can be learned.

Learned helplessness

I only recently learned that helplessness is actually not something we learn. Something beaten into us by an unforgiving world. It’s the opposite. Being helpless is how we all start. We have to learn to take action, by trial and error slowly learning what is dangerous and what is at worst a little embarrassing.

We have to learn agency. Some of us reach this point early, or understand this to a higher degree than others. Some families and schools are better than others at teaching that you can actually just go do things. I suspect a lot of generational wealth difference is due to non verbal habits of teaching children agency.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYfNvmF0Bqw&t=3s

Steve Jobs "Life can be so much broader"

We live our lives imagining constraints where there are none. Be believe we’ll be scolded. That things are not allowed. Or not normal. To think of ways around these imaginary constraints is sometimes referred to as lateral or orthogonal thinking. What is means in practice is to not accept explanations for “how things work” just because that’s the story people repeat. We don’t let that narrative stop us from thinking about what we can and cannot do.

https://twitter.com/george__mack/status/1068238562443841538

But if we need to learn agency, and maybe didn’t learn enough in our childhood, how can we help ourselves to learn it as adults? First we have to understand how these fictional constraints appear, so we don’t get sucked into them.

Where limiting beliefs come from

One of the motivating forces in human psychology is comparison. We can’t help but do it. In academics this is known as mimetic desire. And the weird thing about mimetic desire is that we want more of things that people similar to us have. The closer people are to you, the more similar your ambitions will be. One of my favourite authors compares this to fishing crabs.

How do you keep crabs from escaping? You put more than one of them in a bucket. When one tries to climb out, the others will hold on to it. Effectively pulling it back into the bucket.

How do humans get what everyone else has? By telling them they can’t have what we believe we could not achieve. It’s not a very nice idea. But it explains an awful lot of human behaviour. None of us mean to do this. This is simply a part of the human experience. But humans hold each other in the bucket with words. Not with claws. There’s nothing stopping us from climbing. So why don’t we?

https://twitter.com/daviddeutschoxf/status/1688121369194643456

David Deutsch on twitter

We are scared of what others will think. What others will say. When I was at 500 startups back in 2015, they spent a lot of time trying to get us to overcoming this instinct.

The first week at 500 startups was dedicated to marketing. Every founder will come in and worry about what the market thinks of them and their company. But that harsh truth is no one cares. No one thinks about you at all. You have to actively do marketing to get anyone to notice your activities.

There are lots of exercises on this topic from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy used to mediate various anxious disorders such as Social Anxiety. They include things like:

Go on a long train ride and loudly announce every stop.
Rent a masquerade outfit for a normal day, or night, out.

The exercise is not to try and enjoy being the Center of attention. The point is to notice how quickly that attention fades. Who remembers anything but the outfit or the noise? No one thought about, or remembered you. There was no repercussion.

Exercises for increasing agency

Here are a list of things you can do to practice agency. None of them will work like magic. The idea is that they are all unusual, and will feel uncomfortable, and every one will give you the power to do new crazy things. Please let me know if you have any other tips and I will add them!!

Ask for 10% discount on the next coffee you buy. Ask every time you buy small things.
Pick a spot on the map that simply seems strange and just go there.
Buy and wear an unreasonably expensive outfit.
Go for a walk in a forest alone.
Don't drink alcohol. Even when you are expected to.
Spend a day alone in nature
Go on a trip to a foreign country alone.
Travel to friends just to visit them
Move close to friends.
Live in multiple places with multiple people.
Hire a coach/tutor (fitness, coding, entrepreneurship, whatever)
Go to a local cafe to read a book.
Give a stranger a compliment.
Treat fines like payments.
Ask someone in your local gym for help.
Buy task-specific devices that prevent multitasking.

Resources about agency

This is a list of articles I've read on the topic. They all link further to tangental topics. Let me know if I'm missing out!

Jakob Greenfeld - Agency Expanding Experiments

Milan Cvitkovic - Things you're allowed to do

Jakob Greenfeld - High vs Low Agency

Jakob Greenfeld - Invisible Scripts

Is centralisation really more efficient?

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

This is a work in progress, as I'm collecting examples and data. Follow along by subscribing. Send me examples and arguments via email or twitter.

Businesses tend to grow as they add more areas of action to their structure. They do this because of economics of scale. And because we tend to believe that centralising efforts is a way to make them more efficient.

Governments tend to grow as they take on more and more regulations to oversee. They do this because regulations require inspectors, and arbiters, of all the edge cases that pop up over time. And because we tend to believe that centralising efforts is a way to make them more efficient.

This is such a pervasive idea that it's hard to even describe where it starts. In most human collaboration, it seems to be a common truth that centralising efforts lead to more efficiency. My hypothesis is that this might not be true.

My idea

My hypothesis is that it is not efficiency, but control, that increases with centralisation. And we simply conflate the two, because it seems like a natural combination. Whenever we're collaborating in small groups, like making dinner together, it's simply a mess until someone takes the role as the chef.

I believe that works because a central authority can determine what the other actors should do by dictating the intended outcome. This is not efficient however. Because translating the central authority's intended outcome to the actors comes at the cost of a lot of trial and error. And more interestingly: people trying to game the rules.

This is command and control. Not efficiency.

What is efficient and how it works is beyond the scope of this work. However I believe Yuval Harari is not far off when he speaks of stories as the thing that allows humans to collaborate in large groups. However I think it's not any stories. But rather knowledge, an understanding of how the group does something, and a shared goal, an understanding of what the group is trying to achieve, that create effective collaboration.

What I'm doing to test the idea

So how can we test this idea? I can't currently think of an experiment that would show this clearly. But I suspect that if I look for examples of organisation centralising to solve problems, I will not find any efficiency increases, only an increase of control.

This post will grow as I add examples. Please help out by sending me examples of organisations, large and small, that are centralising. You can reach me on email and on twitter.

Examples of centralisation left to check

The EU - not explored

Google M&A

Apple M&A - should be an interesting example, since their strategy is vertical integration of the production chain.

Examples of centralisation

Is it a skill or is it information?

Sat, 28 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

As we go through life problems crop up. Our taxes are not filed, or we get angry a lot. Things need to change. But finding a solution looms over us like a mountain of work. Where do we start? How do we ask the right questions?

Whenever I find myself tackling something new, I’ve found that I can trip myself up by expecting the wrong type of solution. A good start is to ask yourself if the answer is a skill or information? Assuming one over the other could take years to undo.

Let’s say you are overweight and need to lose some of it. No amount of information on how to lose weight, or why it’s a good idea is going to help. What you need is a behavioural change, in this case it’s two skills: moving more, and eating better. But if you start looking for information, you are not only procrastinating and delaying the reward, you are also less likely to look for the real solution. This is how people end up at weird one off dietary tricks like “I only eat citrus for 2 weeks” or “I only eat once per day”. Since the solution is a skill, it has no single answer. And it isn’t a one off activity. It’s something you have to practice.

Let’s look at another example to highlight this. There’s an election coming up and you need to make a choice: who are you going to trust with your piece of the mandate? You can’t practice this. The “correct” answer for you might be different year to year. It should change over time if you look into the policies proposed. What you need to solve this is not a skill, it’s information. You need to time box an amount of time to figure out what are these lunatics are proposing, and make a decision. No practicing and iteration will help.

In real life situations, it’s rarely this simple to know which solution is the right one. Let’s finish with a more ambiguous example: you go to the doctor with a problem. Your stomachs hurts, and you need it to go away. The doctor is possibly aware of the distinction between skill and information. But how you ask your questions change what response you get. The doctor can give you a three hour lecture on nutrition. Or a pain killer.

What do you really want in this situation? And which is right? Is it a new skill that will give you relief for life, but will take weeks? Or is it a neat instant relief, but the problem might still be there when the pill wears off? It could be both. But if you enter the situation with your mind set on one or the other, you limit the progress you can make.

Maybe willpower works more like this

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Over the last few years I’ve kept reading about two theories about how willpower works. And I recently realised I think they’re both wrong.

Old theories of willpower

The first one is willpower works like a muscle
(You’ve definitely experienced this)

Say you start a new diet, or workout routine, and at first it’s hard to stick to the schedule (after the initial excitement wears off).

Over time it gets easier and easier. Routine sets in, and suddenly it’s easy for you to will yourself to the gym or to eat that celery.

The second is that willpower depletes as over time
(You’ve definitely experienced this)

Say you start each day with 20 or so decisions in you. In the morning you can start the hard thing. You can tackle the decision that was causing you to procrastinate yesterday.

But as evening rolls in, you’ve spent so much willpower already. It’s hard to say no to dessert. It’s hard to start that creative project instead of vegetating on the couch.

The problem here is that these two ideas contradict each other. And yet most of us have had both these experiences. How is that possible?

Whenever there’s contradictory evidence it’s likely that the theories you’re using to interpret the evidence are wrong. Time to come up with a new ones.

A new theory of willpower

Taking a walk last week I had an idea that might resolve this discrepancy: What if there’s no such thing as willpower? What we’re actually observing is clarity of mind.

When you wake up, if you’ve had a good nights sleep, you are less distracted than usual because your mind has been sorting away stuff during the night. So taking decisions, even hard ones, is easy because you are pretty clear about what you want.

When you’ve been doing stuff all day you are inundated with new information, highly distracted by all the stuff going on. Taking decisions now become very hard. And you more easily slip into short term thinking. You want the marshmallow now. Not two tomorrow.

Willpower is not real. Your mind is more or less clear because of how much input it is dealing with.

If this theory is more accurate than the 2 theories of willpower I started with we should be able to influence our “willpower” quite easily.

Help me test this theory

Restore “willpower” by:

Writing out your thoughts, clarifying them
Taking a walk alone, letting your mind sort the information
Take a nap
Meditate

Deplete “willpower” by:

Scrolling any rapid feed, adding lots of new info
Doing several calls in quick succession, no chance to sort new info
Multitasking
Not taking a break between activities

The last week I’ve been trying to act on this new theory. And so far, for me, it explains my level of “willpower” quite well.

If you’ve ready this far, please try this out and let me know how it works for you! This might be a better explanation, and if it is, it should help you have more “willpower”.

Natural language is not the best AI interface

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Everyone is excited about what Large Language Models like OpenAIs chatGPT can do. Every week seems to bring a new AI breakthrough release. The limitations are falling to the wayside one by one. Which is why I'm a bit shocked by how little thought there seems to be going on around interfaces for AI.

When Amazon released Alexa, everyone thought that conversational UI was going to take over the world, despite clear (and annoying) limitations. These days everyone seems excited about "natural language" as the universal interface.

"AI copilots will be everywhere. The main way of using a computer is natural language, not pointing and clicking."

Lorenzo Green paraphrasing Bill Gates

I think they are missing a point. Interfaces are designed to empower the user. Natural language is a messy soup of trial and error trying to convey or understand something. Natural language is great for discovery and learning, less so for expert use.

You have probably heard someone say "text is too slow, it's quicker if we just talk to each other". Maybe you've felt the same? Choosing to call someone, or meet someone instead of sending them an email. There's a really important lesson to draw from this common behaviour, and I believe it shows us how we will interact with AIs in the future.

Speech is slower than text, but has an advantage

Language is messy, and so are ideas. If we were to compare the transmission rate of spoken words to that of text, I'm very sure we'll see that text is far more efficient. We take the time to structure our thoughts into text, which takes effort and time. Something we rarely do while talking.

That's why talking feels quicker, and easier. You are not conveying information faster, you are simply putting in less effort. Letting the other side do some of the work.

When you're speaking to someone you can ask a question when you don't understand. This takes effort and time, but it is much faster than reading more material and hoping you'll get it eventually.

Natural language will be used to learn new things, to understand topics, and to discover what AI can help you with. But then what? You're not gonna ask an AI chatbot to fill in an excel formulae, you'll more likely learn how and do it yourself, because it will feel faster or maybe even be faster, than watching a chat print out characters.

Expert interfaces work differently

Most tech power users will tell you that mechanical keyboards are faster for typing, VIM is the best text editor ever, and everything should be available through the Command Line Interface. I have no idea if the first two are true, but the last one is at least partially true.

Experts are always using complex UIs that a layman would never be able to understand. Because the expert has internalised so much information, they can skip past the fancy buttons and sliders of a user friendly interface and go straight to chaining commands or making exact adjustments.

Text is likely a universal interface, a UI so powerful that it allows us to do anything. Much like speech, it can convey any idea, but unlike speech it can be viciously compacted and exact. Conveying more information, or more commands, in less time.

I have no doubt the AIs of the future will handle CLI-chained-commands-style input, both in audio and text. But what is more interesting to me is that there's nothing stopping AI from generating all sorts of specialised UI.

Imagine that instead of setting up a spreadsheet and asking AI for a formula, you ask AI to generate a dashboard for your current cash flow. It comes back with a windowed dashboard, you ask it to add additional controls or features, and it does. Highly specific, contextually generated, personalised UIs. Perfectly tailored to your use case, and skill level.

Conclusion

I believe that in the near future we will use AI to generate UI for our personal skill level for the task we're doing. When our skill increases, we will ask the AI for a new UI.

We will learn and explore using natural language. We will ask AI to generate UIs for more specific, and maybe recurring, tasks. And we will simply trigger chains of commands for truly expert use.

LLMs can generate all these things for us. In real time. But natural language is not the universal UI. AI is itself the universal UI.

Update Oct 13 2023

Someone went ahead and built app that generates UI on the fly to help you solve your problem:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">with a single prompt <a href="https://twitter.com/layerbrain?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@layerbrain</a> uses AI to build personalized software on-the-fly to help you solve your problems. <br><br>invites rolling out next month. <br><br>follow for more in-depth demos <a href="https://t.co/DEjPhVaLLU">pic.twitter.com/DEjPhVaLLU</a></p>— Aaron Kazah (@aaronkazah) <a href="https://twitter.com/aaronkazah/status/1712022392980082900?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 11, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Update Dec 8th 2023

Google's Geminy model is generating in line UIs.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">This is what AI chat will look like in 1yr.<br><br>The days of text-in, text-out are over.<br><br>AI apps will handle on-the-fly generation of custom UIs - microapps - that are best suited to help you with your task.<br><br>Here’s a preview from Google. <a href="https://t.co/yIb1r2Qnin">pic.twitter.com/yIb1r2Qnin</a></p>— Mckay Wrigley (@mckaywrigley) <a href="https://twitter.com/mckaywrigley/status/1732876630920753617?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 7, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Patterns of thinking that will cause you regret

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

There's a concept in CBT that certain patterns of thinking, if you keep practicing them, will make you ill. I think there are other patterns of thinking that will make you an addict.

The patterns of thought that make you ill are all common types of irrational thinking that if left unchecked, lead to anxiety and phobias. That might sound hyperbolic. But it really does work that way.

Patterns of thought that make you ill

As teenagers we grow aware that other people might be thinking about us, similar to how we're watching them. This new awareness leads to what some psychologists refer to as the invisible audience, where teenager act as if they are on stage all the time. Not realising that no one is actually giving them a second glance. So far so normal. Not a problem.

If you don't stop thinking this way, if you keep believing everyone is watching, you might find yourself with paralysing social anxiety as a 20 year old. This is where CBT can help, giving you the tools to retrain automatic thoughts into something slightly closer to reality. And the anxiety shrinks until it hopefully disappears.

Patterns of thought that are addicting

Other emotions like fear, anger, worry, and hate will consume your time in a more insidious way. They all give you strong hormonal kicks, which you might start to rely on. Such a strong feeling must be important, right? Maybe you should just open the news again, to stay informed, to stay outraged.

Not only is the emotional rush stimulating. But it also gives you a reason for prioritising whatever it is over other things. Strong emotion, means important, right now! You might never end up doing any of the living you're dreaming about, because you are busy worrying. Too busy being outraged about the state of things.

Media fans the flames, and you wont believe what happened next

Social media has made this worse. But it's not new in itself. Media has been educating journalists to sell FUD for years, Fear Uncertainty and Doubt sell newspapers.

But with the advent of perfect behavior tracking, suddenly we could all see what engaged people the most. Who cares if they're angry or laughing? As long as the daily active users number goes up? That's what investors want to see.

Don't get angry. There's no bad guy here. The problem is partly misaligned incentives, that's true. But this was a problem ealier than that, when marcus aurelius wrote his meditations to himself. He was already wishing he didn't spend time on these emotions.

Humans are all addicts. And our thoughts are not spontaneous, or based on what happens in the external world. They are repeating patterns of whatever we practice. So stop praciticing fear. Stop praciticing getting enraged. And start practicing trying to be present with a loved one. Or experiencing a more complicated human interaction through a piece of art that speaks to you. Avoid the shallow media. It's a slippery slope. And suddenly you will find yourself middle aged and angry. Having done very little living yourself.

Please stop multi tasking

Fri, 24 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I love the rush of feeling busy. I think we all do. Unfortunately being busy is usually the opposite of doing things productively. Multitasking is one of the worst culprits behind this.

One study from Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction lab found that when you try to do two tasks at once, your performance on both tasks gets about 20 percent worse.

Kate Monica

The divide between office and remote workers

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Some people live at their office. It's a part of the their lifestyle, similar to how your high school friends were a part of yours. They chat with coworkers, go to lunch together, run an errand and check in with Paul at reception. They might not love their office, but they could if it was nice.

There is a second group of people who are trying to avoid all that. They paused their life in the morning to head out to work. Now they want to finish their work so they can get out of there, and their real life can resume. This group will complain about the efficiency of commuting, about why chitchat around the office is distracting. This group wouldn't love any office, regardless of the perks.

I think this is the core conflict around office or remote work.

Group Office probably doesn’t know that Group Avoid exists. Because it's a different world view, they do the same things, but for very different reasons.

Group Avoid is spending a ton of effort trying to work around Group Office. But they're no more insightful. They might see Group Office as socialising instead of working.

No group is better or worse. They just different world views.

Traditionally everyone found themselves in Group Office, because while you might've had friends outside work, work took up most of your life and very few had project based jobs. So you eventually ended up bonding, or finding a new job.

But today with the internet, you might have a much stronger social cohesion and lifestyle adaption around some other social group. And all jobs are just temporary anyway, right?..

Over the next few years I believe we will see a grand migration from the work "campuses" to the swarms of freelancers as less people identify with Group Office.

This behaviour will look borderline crazy to the people living in Group Office. And the Office vs Remote work discussion will rage on and on. Ever larger corporations purchasing research from McKinsey about how offices are wonderful. Ever more self help books about how water cooler talk kills productivity.

Both groups completely missing the point of the other one.

The slipper slope of being bored

Sun, 15 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

We are bored because there's not enough friction in our lives.

We seek status signals because there's nothing we "have to" do.

We get addicted because it's an easier stimulation. Fantastic clip from Dr Lembke on @hubermanlab.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJfguYW8AhM

The things we create

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT

There’s a legend that Genghis Khan once told his generals it was “pointless to build cities, because we all touch the world lightly”.

How incredibly wrong he was. Very few have affected the world as much as Genghis Khan.

But from his perspective, from the perspective of each of us, it is completely true.

We get a few imperfect days, some long hours and short weeks. And that’s it.

Only the stuff we create can last. And those things can have impact far beyond our light touch on this world.

What I learned in week 11 2023

Fri, 17 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I was travelling and on workshops the entire week. But did discover two actionable strategies I'm excited to implement:

Investing your attention like money

I love the book How to Invest your time like money. It's one of those books that should be an article, but it helped me understand how to think about how I use my time. It's a finite resource, and I want certain wins out of it.

The same is true for attention. But I didn't have a strategy for how to direct my attention except "feel bad for binging on stupid stuff" every week when I review what I learned. Which is why I'm excited about this idea by Tiago Forte:

"You should always get some kind of ROI on your attention
How? Just write down what you noticed, learned, or experienced"

Tiago Forte

Writing it down forces you to iterate on what you learned, and shape your thoughts on the topic. This makes it a lot easier to take action.

Focusing your time on high leverage work

A few years ago I read Antifragile by Taleb (highly recommended!) and ever since I've been trying to implement a minimalist attitude in my work and minimise the amount of busywork in my life.

That's why I love this example by Jakob, this actionable way of minimising busywork both works for individuals and entire companies.

Write down every day exactly how we're spending our time.

Analyze which of these tasks we really should be doing ourselves ($1k+/hour work).

Do whatever necessary to spend less time on everything else ($10/hour, $100/hour work).

Jakob Greenfeld

Such a simple exercise, and I suspect it will yield results every time I do it. I have another week of workshops coming up. After that I will try it and see how it works out.

What I learned in week 18 2023

Sun, 07 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Your brain is a super computer. But with a very specific limitation: It can only work on one thing at a time. I've known this since my collage days. But I keep discovering what that means in practice.

George Mack introduced me to Thinking Cost.

https://twitter.com/george__mack/status/1654167009419231232

The idea is deceptively simple: since your brain can only think about one thing at a time, each thought has an opportunity cost.

When you're thinking about that embarrassing moment in high school you are not thinking about how to move forward on your creative project.

This is why toxic, negative and dramatic people are sucks energy sinks. Because having them in your life drains you of precious thinking time. The time you spend avoiding their drama, or climbing out of their negative hole, is time you didn't spend thinking about important and exciting things.

Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours not officially spent working; be selective about professions.

Nassim Taleb

This is also why unfinished work, or work where you are not in control of your time, can cause us so much stress. Because we simply can't let go of work thoughts, and can't spend our time off thinking about other things.

Later that week Nat Eliason introduced me to thinking about time as split between input and output time.

Input time, output time. Input time is reading books, scrolling social media, watching the news, listening to podcasts, talking to friends and colleagues, or anything else that adds new stuff for your subconscious to process. Output time is creating the space and boredom for those inputs to ferment into something interesting.

Nat Eliason

Nat is approaching the same mental limitation as George, but using a completely different metaphor and comes up with another way of thinking about it:

Find the best ingredients possible to ferment into great ideas, and aggressively prune everything you don’t want your brain to process. Give your brain the boredom and output time it needs to figure out what to do with that information. Don’t keep opening the jar and packing more into it. Finally, be patient with the process. The more you can reduce the amount of information you’re taking in, and the more boredom you can give your brain to work, the better your results will be.

Nat Eliason

Thinking through these two metaphors I've come up with these heuristics:

Consume information about problems you're trying to solve. Or art/entertainment that you enjoy.
Avoid everything else, especially if it's scary, outrageous, or has a click friendly headline.
When thoughts pop up during the day, try to remember to ask yourself the question: is this a valuable thought to be having? If it's drama, or shame related, shake it off and do something else.
Schedule time to be bored. No input. And try to keep your mind away from thinking about drama.

I'll leave you with this brilliant observation by Nat:

More information is rarely your friend. It’s often a form of distraction and procrastination.

Nat Eliason

What I learned in week 52 of 2022

Mon, 02 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

This last week of 2022 I spent a lot of time going through notes from the year. Trying to summarise what I learned, and rediscovering many insights and factoids that I then never put to use. This is that summary.

If I could boil 2022 down to a single insight, this would be it:

If you are reading, watching, listening, to interesting things all week. But not applying what you discover in your own life you didn't learn anything.

I did a lot of performative learning this year. I spent a good chunk of my time learning things that I never applied.

Most of what I did learn, I can categorise into three areas: Slowing down to speed up. Measuring progress. And being tired.

Slowing down, to speed up

Being busy is a form on mental laziness. We are doing more things in order to feel productive. Rather than do the hard thing to be productive. Slowing down, being less busy, makes this clear. Which is why we don't do it.

This article might sound like I will go head first and as fast as possible. On the contrary, I have learned that if you want to slow down time, go slower, which is precisely what I need right now: Slowing down time! I will rest more. Stay organized. Execute. Reflect. Plan ahead slowly.

Val Sopi

Getting distracted by things that are emotionally charged is pure laziness. Again we are jumping at a short term win, or an imagined short term threat, instead of working on the hard thing.

Odds are, the latest office debate or family squabble isn't worth winning. Most arguments are only tangentially related to your end goal. What outcomes are you actually trying to create? What type of life are you actually trying to cultivate? Stay focused.

James Clear

Slow down and pick the thing that is important to work on.

But when you do know what the hard thing is. Speed is an important tool to focus on that thing. Speed up to avoid making it "perfect". Speed up to avoid getting caught up in the details. Speed up to ship the thing.

Going fast makes you focus on what's important; there's no time for bullshit

Nat Friedman

Measuring progress

Whatever you do. You need to track that what you're doing makes a difference. How else will you know that you are working, and not just being busy? Slowing down helps.

But you also need to realise if you're putting in iterations, shipping something, or just spending X time on that thing to try it out. Which one is it?

In some areas of life, value is unlocked by starting. Even a five-minute workout or a short walk can reset your mood and benefit your body. In other areas, value is unlocked by finishing. It does you no good to build a bridge halfway across the river. You need to complete the project to realize the value. Do you need to start or finish? Are you building a body or building a bridge?

James Clear

When you are working on something for real, there are no quick dopamine hits. There are no "checked that off" moments. It's just a slog of slowly doing things. Sometimes it's fun! Sometimes you hate it. That's what hard work looks like.

The most damning observation of hard work is that it's relentlessly repetitive and each work day looks boring and uniform. But over time, repetitive work in a single domain creates an intuition that compounds over time. This intuition increases the surface area in which breakthrough ideas take hold, which are necessary to great work.

Sunsama blog

But always remember. If you aren't failing, if people aren't pointing out mistakes, if you are not embarrassed... You aren't going fast enough.

Balancing success and failure is a tricky thing. I'd say 8 or 9 times out of 10, you should be succeeding. Build momentum. Accumulate advantages. Feast on the feeling of success and let it feed your desire to do more. But 1 or 2 times out of 10, you should be failing. Push yourself and reach beyond your current grasp. Force yourself to try uncomfortable things. Occasionally you will surprise yourself and the rest of the time you will learn. Win enough to keep progressing. Lose enough to keep learning."

James Clear

Fail 10% of the time. At all things.

Being tired

We probably aren't tired. We probably don't need another drink. Or another night out. It's just that the modern world is very boring. Very safe. So we get bored, and we feel tired, depressed, and in need of some fun.

But there's only thing we can do to make life less boring: do more risky stuff. Don't search for what makes you happy, search for what makes you excited. If your heart is beating fast and your cheeks are red, changes are you are doing the right thing.

The man who begins to go to bed forty minutes before he opens his bedroom door is bored; that is to say, he is not living.

Arnold Bennet, How to live on 24 hours per day

I believe in the Scottish proverb: Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict and disease. They do not die of hard work. The harder your people work, the happier and healthier they will be.

David Ogilvy

Here's Dr Lembke talking about this on the Huberman lab, putting it better than I ever could.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJfguYW8AhM

What I learned week 1 2023

Fri, 06 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

First and foremost, hangovers last a lot longer than the headache... I had a wonderful new years eve standing on a rooftop watching the fireworks over Berlin without our jackets because it was 15 C.

Unfortunately it also took me 4 days to start feeling motivated and calm again. Thankfully we basically stopped drinking in 2022, and I'm looking forward to less hangovers in 23!

Focus on long term productivity

Give yourself permission to slow down. Forget trying to have efficient days, focus on the long term.

When your goal is to be long-term productive, say by creating jobs for hundreds of people or publishing a few great books, you realize your day-to-day productivity isn’t what you should optimize around. Taking a strategic break from a problem lets your mind noodle on it in the background so you can attack it more intelligently afterward. Anyone who exercises regularly knows that rest is when your body gets stronger.

Nat Eliason

A portfolio approach to live

Every part of life is a collection of habits, relationships, and experiences. But it's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking we can keep those over time. We can't. Life always changes.

A few times over the last decade or so, I’ve found myself drawn towards a particular idea about how to use my time and energy. It’s an intentional variety. A collection of experiences. A portfolio approach to life.

It usually comes up in moments of transition. A move. A change of jobs. Some life event. Because when change is happening around me, I’m compelled to find some way of making sense of it.

Randy Hunt

What I learned week 12 2023

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Second week of travel and workshops, but I learned two new ideas I'm excited to share! The first is about how to become great at something, the second is about how to achieve extreme success.

Become great my seeking out the meta game

To be really good at something, you first have to learn a bunch of low level skills: the fundamentals. This truism is tossed around as advice, and like most bad advice, it's not actionable. Which fundamentals? How do I choose what to invest my time in?

Cedric Chin has a very interesting strategy outlined in his post To Get Good, Go After the Meta Game.

What he says is that masters of any particular field, performance marketing, product design, or fishing, are using strategies that are not obvious from looking at the basics rules of the game. They are the strategies of Second order effects. Meta game strategies.

The meta game tends to change over time. And in the real world there are usually few, or complex, rules so changes happen rapidly.

To really apply meta strategies you need to be so good at the fundamentals that you understand why and how the meta strategy works.

This also means that by seeking out people who are succeeding with meta strategies, we can be reasonably certain their fundamentals are really good. These are the people we want to learn from.

The simplified version of Cedric's strategy is:

Find people succeeding with meta strategies.
Learn what they're doing, seek out their best practices
Derive which fundamentals are implied from those best practices
And spend your time learning those

Execution is not the defining factor of success

I really like Mark Manson and his style of writing. So I was intrigued when I saw his latest video was about how to outperform 99% of people. I should've known it would be a kick in the ass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZJpU43NA0c

The basic idea is this: Execution matters, but it's maybe 50%+ of success. Execution not the defining factor for outlier success. If you want to reach for the moon, execution won't be the leverage you need.

What you need is a contrarian idea, that is correct. Something other's are not doing, that turns out to be correct. Making you an outlier.

The slightly worrying side effect is that to do that, you will have to spend your time being terribly wrong. A lot.

I'm ok with not being a massive success. Came to terms with that years ago. But I do wish I had understood this point earlier. I believe Mark is right, and I hope to set some contrarian or unusual goals for myself. But if he's right, that means this is also true for company strategy. So what is your company's contrarian positioning for the future?

What I learned week 13 2023

Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Rereading Jakob Greenfelds excellent article "Build a business, not an audience" I realised I've been sharing too much content, and not enough of experiments and results. So here's what I learned the hard way in the last week.

Reaching out to internet strangers

Reaching out to people you discover on the internet used to be a thing. As in something a lot of people did. In the early days of social media, 4sqr and Twitter were used not just to sell courses, but also to meet people that said or did interesting things.

I think it's sad that many of us have forgotten that we can do this.

A few weeks ago I checked into a favourite coffeeshop (I don't know why I sometimes still use foursquare, but I do), and I noticed someone I've been following on Twitter for years was the major. So these days we live in the same city, I've followed their stuff for years, and yet we've never talked.

Yesterday we met for coffee, and I had one of the better conversations I've had in a long time. We ended up chatting for an hour instead of our scheduled 30min.

The internet is still a magic place filled with interesting people. Why not reach out to someone?

Digital terroir - making products more interesting

Terroir is a term from wine culture that means something like the land and culture that produced this taste of wine. It means everything that goes into the taste of the wine, from the bacteria in the earth, to the work ethic of the winemaker. It's not a subtle thing, but a distinct tone of each wine.

Jordan writes about how the digital world has lost some of its flavour as we optimise everything into looking and working the same. Our tools have become flat copies of Linear's design. And he asks an interesting question, would digital experiences be better and more interesting with some terroir?

What if our products were more distinct, more opinionated. Would that be more interesting for people to discover and use? How much local culture and personal flair can we add to our products without losing usability? Quite a lot probably.

As AI continues to take over and make things like UI and feature sets increasingly flat and uniform, maybe digital terroir becomes the defining experience.

What I learned week 15 2023

Sat, 15 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Last weekend was both easter and my birthday. Needless to say I spent a lot of time high on sugar. And as a result I learned less. But I kept coming back to an insight about how teams speed up.

Add constraints to speed up

I've worked with many teams struggling to go faster. There are all these frameworks and methods that should help us, stuff like Agile, design thinking etc. But they rarely seem to have the impact they promise.

I think the reason they're failing is because we're using them once, instead of as iterative tools. Here are three examples:

Personas

When you make strategic decisions you need to have a specific user in mind. That's how you know to chose alternative A over alternative B. Because A fits your user better.

I've seen hundreds of personas be created, but I've rarely seen them used.

Say you're selling a new type of deodorant aimed at a niche market. Start simple:
Craig sees himself as a tech-guy, but works a generic office job at a large company. Owns a car.

Then take actions based on this persona. When you discover new things about your audience or customers (oh wait, they don't always have a car!) you either change the existing persona, or split it into new personas.

How often should you reference personas?
Every time you build, sell, or market anything to your audience.

How often should you update your personas?
Every time you learn something new about your audience.

They key is iteration.

Design system

You have a product that needs several interfaces. A website, some email templates, maybe even *shudder* a powerpoint presentation. They need to look like they're from the same company.

Should you create a Figma project and map out every possible component?

Start simple: 2-3 rules that have distinct do's and don'ts for your brand.

We always use our brand color "ultra-pink"
We never use serif typefaces
Our CTAs and clickable things are always bold.

Use it as a checklist. It will be surprisingly consistent.

How often do you use the design system?
Every time you design anything.

How often do you update the design system?
Every time you discover a new reusable part of the design that should be branded as yours.

The key is iteration.

Brand communication

You have a young brand in street wear, just like everyone else. How do you become distinct and noticeable?

Set some distinct, or better yet edgy, rules and be disciplined about sticking to them.

The brand doesn't speak with a friendly tone of voice, but rather informal.
The brand uses all colors, as long as they're LOUD.
The brand believes the world is flat, sustainability is key, and that cigarettes are still cool.

Check all your communication against the list. That's enough to start with.

How often should you use the brand guidelines?
In every choice you make about the brand. Every single one.

How often should you update the brand guidelines?
Every time the market changes, or there is any confusion about what the brand stands for, you should clarify it.

The key is iteration.

Self binding

These methods speed things up because they add constraints. They make it easier to make choices and move on. When they don't work it's because we don't iterate on them, so people end up not applying them or even understanding them,

We can only remain focused if we're constantly reminded about what we're focusing on. This is why I believe that iteration is key.

We need simple rules to follow. Checking often that we're not diverging from them. Constantly updating them as the world changes.

What I learned week 16 2023: cashing in on the byproduct of solving problems

Sat, 22 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

We spend our energy solving a lot of problems. Daily life is basically a series of logistical problems leading us to situations where we can get paid to solve larger problems. But in each problem there is a massive missed opportunity that many of us are not aware of. At least I wasn't.

Say you're solving a problem at work. Let's use the example: setting up an ad for a direct to consumer brand.

You probably start with an existing strategy, or by trying something new. This part of problem solving is quite widely explored, and you probably have a bunch of good heuristics about it already.

Then eventually there's a result. You "solve" the problem when some ads perform better than others and you reallocate money to the working ads. This is also a widely explored area, and there's a ton of writing about it.

After that, most of us simply move on to the next problem... And here we're missing a huge return on investment. The solution you just came up with can almost always be turned into a general pattern that can be reused.

Next time you solve a problem spend a few minutes thinking about how your solution could be phrased as a general rule of thumb: can you say that audience X prefers a ad of the type Y? Or message Z?

Not only will you be able to remember this general rule much better than the details of the problem and solution, but it will also be much easier to apply it to similar problems.

It sounds easy, because it is. I was shocked by just how quickly I started to reap the rewards. The same day I learned this I generalised two other insights, and one of them could be applied to another problem the very next morning!

This blog post is one of my general learnings so far. I discovered this simple rule in Edward de Bono's Five-Day Course in Thinking. Which I recommend. But more than the book, I recommend you try this next time you solve a problem!

What I learned week 17 2023

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I learned a lot this week, but didn't have time to do any experiments. Here are three short ideas that I think I will experiment with next.

Jogs your mind

You think better when you walk. You've probably noticed that before? But are you applying it? I really wasn't. Reading this twitter thread made me realise I can use walking as an activity to think about solutions.

If bored and struggling with ideas -- keep walking until the day becomes interesting.

Read-it-later is a river, not a bucket

My most popular tweet this week was based on a fantastic article by Oliver Burkeman:

https://twitter.com/JesperBylund/status/1650813458852528129

Asking is asymmetric

If you've read Taleb, you will be familiar with the concept of asymmetry. Some things have more upside than downside, or the reverse. So if you only spend time on the things that have asymmetric upside, you are going to win.

I've thought about this a lot, but reading this list of asymmetric return s I realised I've been over complicating things again. Asking for something has an asymmetric upside: either you get it, or you get a no.

What I learned week 2 2023

Sun, 15 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

This week I've been travelling all across Germany to go to a handful of meetings. If only someone had discovered a way to meet remotely.

Did you know you can increase your luck by keeping a luck journal?

Me neither. But I did know what luck is actually not random, but an effect of how open we are to find opportunities in our daily lives. There's been plenty of studies on this, and in this video Ali Abdaal highlights one of the ways to increase your luck: keeping a luck journal.

At the end of each day, simply list all the ways you were lucky, or avoided being unlucky. Anything from "didn't step in the puddle" to "million dollar lottery ticket". This simple practice will help you open your mind to start noticing luck, which will increase your luck.

I've been doing it for one week now, and so far I feel a lot more lucky!

Baths are super relaxing

I'm very tall, so I haven't fit into a bathtub since I was 12. But on this week business trip I was lucky and got moved from a room to a junior suite because the hotel was overbooked. It had a large bathtub, so I had to try it.

I heard Matthew Walker explain on Huberman labs that hot baths and showers before going to bed can help your body lower your core temperature. Meaning you relax and fall asleep quicker. I wasn't expecting it to work this well though!

My 15 minute bath had me the most relaxed I've felt in months, and I almost fell asleep in the bath.

Yes I will be looking for more baths in the future!

What I learned week 3 2023

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Productivity gurus are fighting about a false dichotomy, and a good example of Parkinsons law.

Productivity guru fight

Ever since Gary V asked us to stop doing shit we hate back in 2008 there's been a split between Hustle culture and self care. It can quickly be summarised like this:

Hustle culture is all about getting off your ass and doing the work, regardless of your mood, just get it done and reach for your dreams.

Self care is all about realising that energy is finite, and you shouldn't waste it stressing out, but take care of yourself and do what's important.

The problem with this us vs them mentality that has evolved over the last few years among productivity gurus is that this is a totally false dichotomy. You shouldn't be stressing yourself do death. And you should definitely turn off Netflix and get going if you want to achieve something. These things are both true, at the same time. Finding the balance between the two is not easy.

Thankfully we have new gods gurus:

Shawn Parrish said this:

https://twitter.com/shaneaparrish/status/1615681596862136323?s=12&t=w1m0Gy84mI9dGy2VZcFZfw

But Ali Abdaal said this:

https://youtu.be/qc4GU_wHdqw?t=29

Parkinsons law explained

You know Parkinsons law that you've probably quoted at standups every now and then?

"work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."

Parkinson's law

Do you know what that actually looks like? Because it isn't always obvious to me. Though I find it becoming more and more true as my projects grow in complexity.

Thankfully indie hacker Marie Ng came up with a simple example in an interview for Ness Labs.

Parkinson’s Law states that the work you have to get done fills the time allotted to it. If you’ve ever noticed yourself procrastinating because you think “oh it’s not due till next week”, and then scrambling to get it done at the last minute, then that’s Parkinson’s Law.

Marie Ng

That really helps. Also it hurts a bit.

What I learned week 5 & 6 2023

Fri, 10 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I had a stressful couple of weeks, with a trip in the middle. Through it all I kept coming back to a quote from the war of art:

"I made myself sit there, torturing out some trash that I chucked immediately into the shitcan. That was enough.

I put the machine away. I went back to the kitchen. In the sink sat ten days of dishes. For some reason I had enough excess energy that I decided to wash them. The warm water felt pretty good. The soap and sponge were doing their thing. A pile of clean plates began rising in the drying rack. To my amazement I realized I was whistling. It hit me that I had turned a corner. I was okay. I would be okay from here on.

Do you understand?
I hadn't written anything good. It might be years before I would, if I ever did at all. That didn't matter. What counted was that I had, after years of running from it, actually sat down and done my work."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

We are all avoiding doing the tasks that are truly important. We put off the call. Wait for the perfect moment to work. We wait to kiss the girl.

We only feel truly alive when we do the very things we avoid.

This week I struggled to find the time to do meaningful work. Thursday night I finally sat down at 7 in the evening and did something. And you know what? It only took 40 minutes.

Here's what I wrote after that:

"I’m genuinely proud over this. And I can feel that “succeeded with the project” emotion that I love so much."

Jesper Bylund

It was a two week period of hard work. High stress. And I was getting no where. Spinning in my tracks.

It's not always easy to know what it is you're avoiding. But it's worth doing. In fact it's the only thing worth doing.

What I learned week 7 2023

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Do you know how to rest? I don't mean fall asleep, thought there's a technique to that as well. I mean do you know how to stop working, and recharge, in a way that lets you keep going over decades?

A productivity guru from Sweden recently said on a podcast that when you've learned to put some slack back in your schedule, you'll find that it might still take up to two years before you're fully recharged. I didn't like hearing that. But the more I think about it, the more it sounds likely.

I do other things than work. I go to the gym, I hang out with friends, I read (a lot) etc. But I'm rarely carefree and relaxed. My mind still pops up work thoughts, and I keep adding notes and todos.

Humans are great stress-sprinters. Which is both healthy and exciting. But we're terrible stress-marathoners. Being stressed over long periods of time leads to health issues.

Taking a page from the book Rest, what we need is to detach. Not stop doing things. Just detach from the stress.

"Relaxation, control, mastery experiences, and detachment all work together to promote recovery."

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Rest

How we do that is a matter of some debate. But according to Cal Newport, simply stating an explicit term to ourselves could be enough.

"Schedule shutdown, complete"

Cal Newport — Drastically Reduce Stress with a Work Shutdown Ritual

This week I've been testing out having periods of time where I tell myself I can't be productive, and I'm not allowed to think about work. I also can't just distract myself with a movie or drinks or whatever, because if I do it's too easy to slip into thoughts without noticing.

It has been really hard. And I've felt more tired than usual. But I suspect I'm only noticing what has already there.

An interesting side effect is that I've gotten a lot more work done as well.

Try it, let me know how it works out.

What I learned week 8 2023

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I've been thinking about two interesting things this week:
You can train your mind to think differently And how to make my hobby podcast profitable.

You can train your mind to think differently

Did you know you can train your mind to think differently? This quote for Jony Ive says something really important, that is easy to overlook, and to forget:

Steve was preoccupied with the nature and quality of his own thinking. He expected so much of himself and worked hard to think with a rare vitality, elegance and discipline. His rigor and tenacity set a dizzyingly high bar. When he could not think satisfactorily he would complain in the same way I would complain about my knees.

Jony Ive, Wall Street Journal

We can shape our thoughts just like we can shape our bodies. By intentionally thinking in certain ways. Your patterns of thought is not you. It's just what you've trained your mind to think like. And unfortunately, you probably did a lot of this training as a teenager.

Thankfully the brain never stops changing, so we can start practicing better patterns any day. Today I will practice by writing as clearly as I can, and when I stop working, I will journal how I was lucky today, to improve my luck.

If ego is the voice that tells us we’re better than we really are, we can say ego inhibits true success by preventing a direct and honest connection to the world around us.

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

Making my hobby podcast profitable

For two years now I've been recording a podcast about design together with one of my favourite designers Jaan Orvet. It's quite random, since design is a messy field. But I love it!

This year though, I've decided we should start making it profitable. While we won't make a lot of money from this hobby, I'd like it to cover it's own costs at least.

But how should we make money of a podcast?

In general there seems to be two ways: advertising and listener supported. Both have advantages and disadvantages.

It's easy to get advertising. But they care about large numbers, not the quality of our niche audience. We might also get stuck with ads for things that we don't really like, which I don't think is intellectually honest. Maybe we can reach out to our favourite products and ask them to place ads with us?

It's harder to get listeners to pay directly, because we've all gotten used to getting our content for free these days. I don't have a big problem with that. But this podcast is also not really educational, rather more entertaining for fellow designers. And light entertainment is less valuable than education in my opinion.

I'll follow up with what we test!

What I learned week 9 & 10 2023

Sun, 12 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I let work pile up thinking "I'll get to it later". But we never do, do we? One of things I learned these two weeks is that this is a common pattern, that makes us both stressed and tired.

Productivity and stress

Sam Matla shared a wonderful short video on how to stop being stuck and it seems he's come up with the same strategy that I've experimented with:

“Most often when you’re stuck in a rut, the answer is to speed up, to experiment and finish, to work anyway”

— Sam Matla

The reason this works is that having unfinished tasks hanging around consumes mental energy. So simply closing them, or having neat deadlines to eliminate scope creep from the start, frees up energy for more interesting use.

Later that same day I heard Nick Huber rammed home that idea on the My First Million podcast:

"stress is a decision that hasn’t yet been made"

Nick Huber

I've been feeling overwhelmed by simply keeping decisions lying around. Projects unfinished. Tasks 90% done. No wonder the work stacks up, when all my energy is spent worrying about unfinished tasks instead of finishing them?

Timestripe, a productivity software I've been checking out, had this apt quote in their onboarding:

"Small wins boost your motivation. Which gives you the power to achieve more. More results = more motivation = more results. Set simple goals for today, achieve them, celebrate, and come back tomorrow."

Timestripe

Project updates

I also had some people ask me about where they could reach out to very specific niches based on interest. Which is exactly what Sponsorpost is trying to automate. Always interesting when the market pulls you, instead of you pushing.

I've also started up BlankPage again! Not the full writing service. But rather the daily inspiration email. When I closed blankpage in 2019 a lot of users reached out and asked me to keep the email running. At the time I was so burned out I didn't realise that was a great idea.. So I missed out on 4 years of a wonderful email newsletter. Needless to say, I'm really psyched about trying this out!

Comparison for growth instead of unhappiness

Mark Manson shared the simple reason for most unhappiness, which might be worth thinking extra hard about.

"Comparison is inevitable. Instead of trying to stop comparing yourself to others, compare yourself to better people and for better reasons."

— Mark Manson

Want more of this? Sign up for my newsletter where I share all the things I learn.

What keeps me going

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT

For many years I've followed Erwan Le Corre online. I started following him for his extreme and quirky fitness routine, but I found him to be an interesting thinker overall.

He recently posted a challenge on X to list all the things that "keep you going" and ask yourself why. Well, that sounded interesting.

I dragged my feet a few weeks, but eventually I sat down and started listing things. It was eye opening...

I'm not comfortable sharing the whole list, but here's most of it:

Alcohol — in moderation, but still felt as a need from time to time.
Coffee — no moderation here.
Sleep, workout and food routines — Mine are borderline manic when I started thinking about them.
Snacks — I eat sweets or salty snacks basically every day.

At this point (with a few embarrasingly detailed ones added around food, etc) I stepped back and thought about if there was a pattern.

It was blaring like a siren obvious.

I am avoiding the discomfort of doing scary things by rewarding myself with snacks. And using alchohol and caffeine to force me to do infinitely boring shit. Not that the activities themselves are boring, it's just that they bore me because I'm already frustrated by not doing the scary things.

I recommend trying this. Thanks again Erwan.

Why internet entrepreneurs need offshore corporations, and where to go

Sun, 23 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Last year I moved to Germany and for the first time changed my tax residence. Imagine my surprise when the Swedish tax authority tried to foreclose my Corporation on me.

It turns out that while companies are legal entities in themselves, many countries require company owners to have a physical address in that same nation. In Sweden the reason is apparently that if the company was sued, I need to accept the legal paperwork in person. On paper. In 2023. Why can't they just send me an email?

This outdated idea means that if you are an expat, or a nomad, and need a company for your side projects, like I do, you need incorporate offshore.

My requirements

These are most of the things I’m thinking about that has lead me to start investigating this. In order of priority:

Electronic signatures and no local presence required.
This is the most important thing.
Low administration costs.
Tax compliance etc needs to be cheap. as this is for experiments, not an established company.
Great tax compliance laws.
I care less about the tax rate, and more about how much time I need to spend filing taxes and learning taxation regulation. The simpler the better.
If it can be fully automated, I will gladly pay a higher tax rate.
Good banking.
It turns out not all nations and corporations are treated equally by banks. Wherever I incorporate it needs to have great banking services. Preferably by neobanks like Revolut, so no one asks me to “come to the office”.
Legal system.
The company must be an LLC. Should someone try to attack me, the company must not leak any liability to me personally. There’s just too much risk of griefers Must have english speaking lawyers.
Great business expense system.
Ability to deduct digital services, business trips, and gear without a ton of extra work. It’s business expenses, but I cannot spend a ton of time hunting down receipt formatting errors on €10/month services…
Region.
Not a requirement, but I would prefer to be outside the EU. The EU is making up anti-internet laws faster than I can code, so I'd rather not have a small company within the EU. Dealing with EU internet rules is already a significant cost, and it’s likely to get much much worse.
Insurance.
Possibility to buy health care insurance for myself and my wife. Contrary to popular belief, health care is not a solved problem with the EU either.

Possibilities for offshore corporations

Feeling a little bit like I’m doing something wrong I started looking into my options and found a few different options. Each one has it’s own unique pro’s and con’s.

Bahamas, the Seychelles, and Panama

Has been popular with tax dodging politicians and other criminals. So the big banks find them suspicious, making them nearly hard to use for internet services.

Malta & Cyprus

Online gambling has made Malta its home which unfortunately makes it a little shady. Which is sad, because Malta has a lot going for it!

Cyprus used to be a good bet. But they did seize foreign bank accounts a few years ago to pay off debt…

Hong Kong & Singapore

Hong Kong used to be a great bet. But China is taking a closer interest for each years, making Hong Kong a bad political risk.

Singapore seems like a great place to incorporate! But it is expensive, so unless you already have a cashflow business it’s probably not a good fit. As I’m running experiments, this is not an option.

Isle of Man

Another classic “tax haven”, which unfortunately means it’s considered a bit shady. But Revolut recently released support, so maybe it’s improving? The Isle of Man actually checks almost all the boxes.

Portugal

The nomad capital of Europe currently thanks to aggressive tax rebates to boost their population. Unfortunately corporation regulation still looks quite old school.

Estonia

Estonia has specifically invested in making it easy to be a nomad resident and corporation owner, betting heavily on the digital economy. I love that! Also checks most of the boxes, but I haven’t been able to figure out how easy tax compliance is yet.

So where did I end up?

I haven't decided. I need to spend more time on this. But I also realised it doesn’t matter until I have something generating cash again. And currently my old company can stay in Sweden with my parents acting like gate keepers. That is not sustainable over 5 years, but for now it's fine.

You become like the place you are in

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I love Paul Grahams essay "Cities have ambition". Moving around as a digital nomad I experienced this. Some places simply made it easier to do certain types of activities. I think the key is that other people are doing the same thing.

If you hang out with some people who love drinking coffee you will naturally meet them at coffee shops. Maybe the coffee shops tend to cluster in certain neighbourhoods. You probably even end up meeting them earlier in the day, since drinking coffee at night is usually not a good idea.

But if you instead hand out with people who love drinking beer, you'd naturally meet them in bars instead of cafes. Perhaps the bars are not in the same streets as the cafes. I would bet that they do not share the same opening hours, which means you'd be more likely to meet these people at nights.

Over time the activity shapes not just your life, but the neighbourhood. You end up spending your time in the places, and with the people, that do the same thing.

This simple way of framing it makes something blindingly obvious, if you want to spend time on some specific activity, you will find it much easier if you spend time with other people with that same ambition. If you don't do this, you might end up having habits that are detrimental to what you're trying to do. Your network of friends might make it easy to start a bar, but not a cafe.

I have not actively tried to shape my life like this. Most of my friends are random. And the activities we do range from boardgames to starting companies. But I suspect I will get more out of life by choosing deliberately which activities, and which places, I spend more time in.

2024 in review

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Like so many other important things, I don't love doing it, but I love to have done it.

2024 was not a great year. 23 was such an important year, 24 was set up to be a perfect transition year. Instead my professional market tanked, and I struggled to get traction. I did several interesting experiments.

Timeline of events
Projects
Books
Podcasts
Movies
Things I learned

<br />

Timeline of events

January to March

Started the year on some friends balcony, and after a little break around the holidays I threw myself into professional activies and "musts" at the beginning of the year.

Went to startup events. Demoed n8n's AI solution at a AI dinner.

Saw Dune 2! It was wonderful to see one of my childhood favourites come to life.

Organised a bachelors party for an old friend.

And saw the full ring cycle of Wagner's masterpiece Der Ring Des Nibelungen at the Berlin Stadtsoper. Unfortunately the postmodern ironic production removed a lot of the magic and we were quite disappointed.

Spring came early, which was lovely. Unfortunately I stopped working with n8n.

April to June

As usual we celebrated Easter properly! Me and my wife have learned that we love traditions, we love the point of references they create, so we go all in.

Then we went to Lisbon to celebrate my 40th birthday. Despite having a lovely day with friends on the actual day, this was a bad birthday for me. I don't enjoy growing older, and in this case what should've been a big celebration became a sad memory. Lisbon was wonderful, as usual. I did have the opportunity to reconnect with an old friend, and attend a painting workshop!

We celebrated some close friends beautiful wedding in the south of Portugal, even drinking rum on a real pirate ship in the atlantic.

I attended the first Local First conference in Berlin. As well as the Merge conference, where I met John Romero!

We saw Royal Republic live in a small bar in Berlin.

Then we celebrated Midsummers in Gnesta with friends, and celebrated my parents 50th wedding anniversary with my entire family at a small bnb outside Stockholm.

July to September

July I attended one of the first ever EU/ACC events in Berlin.

We went to a christening in Sweden which became a surprise wedding, and got caught in the rain.

Visited the archipelago with my parents.

I went on a brewery tour at Berliner Berg.

Attended a Nomad meetup in Berlin.

Visited Sweden.

Saw Jason DJ at a pop up rave outside Berlin.

Celebrated Octoberfest at Gendarmenmarkt.

October to December

Most importantly: we as usual went all in on Spooktober for Halloween. Me and my wife's favourite tradition.

Then I went back to Lisbon to catch up with some old friends! It was a great trip, filled with ideas and great food.

Saw Jason DJ again.

And our house's trash caught fire in the middle of the night. Woken up by the light of flames all over our apartment will definitely stay with me for some time.

We celebrated the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Freedom is never old, and must always be defended.

Had some friends visit!

We also celebrated Agnes birthday with her family visiting. And went to several christmas markets.

I beat my old friend August at chess!

Then we went to Stockholm for Christmas, and celebrated new years back in Berlin.

Projects

I've been working on a lot of new things this year. There's just so much interesting stuff to try out, and with the new AI enabled tools, it's so easy to try it!

Find Insight

link Automate your user research by sending your users an AI interview. Just write down things you'd like to know, and send the interview to people who may have the answer. Find Insight talks it over with them, and analyses the result for you.

While it doesn't replace expert interviewers, it does replace most interviews, and can scale a lot better. Cutting customers costs to a fraction.

Armchair Safari

link A daily design review video. First I live streamed it, then I recorded and uploaded. Did about 60 episodes before I took a break. Not sure if I will continue or not.

Wine game

I made a wine game wrapping chatGPT. It let users take a photo of any drink and then answer quiz questions about it. Turns out I have forgotten just how much work goes into the "game" parts of any game. So after a little more than a month, I abandoned it. Hope to come back to it, but I doubt there's a lot of money here.

Books

These are some of the books I read in 2023, both the most interesting, and the least interesting. All the links are amazon affiliate links, please use them if you are interested in the books.

The Lessons of History I've read so many quotes I wanted to read the book. I don't think there's anything else as densely packed with wisdom. 100 pages. All the wisdom of civilisation, a lot of it is surprisingly relevant today.

Anthem Possibly Ayn Rand's least controversial book. Tells the story of how individuals take action against the forceful repression of collectivist ideas.

Post Office & the Bukowski canon Bukowski is a writer of smut. But it's really well written. Both me and my Wife read the whole canon over the summer. Post Office was my favourite.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress Several friends recommended it. So I finally read it. And I was very positively surprised. It stands up really well, and is a super interesting story.

The Count of Monte Christo I found this on a list of recommendations about books where the protagonist shows real agency. I was mind blown. Despite being a really old book, this reads like it's a modern thriller set in an old world setting. Highly recommended! It's long but wonderful!

Poor Charlie's Almanack Very happy that Stripe Press created a new edition of this book. Still not quite done with it, it's contains some really clear thinking.

Podcasts

Founders The best podcast for entrepreneurs in the world. Learn to think like a maker of great things.

All In The funniest news show right now. Jason and friends created a platform for political debate for the american election like no classic media would.

Arjun Khemani Podcast Arjun has hosted some of the most interesting thinkers this last year. Worth your time.

TokCast If you are interested in David Deutsch's philosophy or work, this is the show for you. Brett dives into some of the deep issues on science and explains them expertly.

Movies

La Grande Belezza Quite possibly my favourite movie of all time. I want to move to Rome every time I see it.

The Lobster A surprise to me. Strange, funny, creepy. A really good film.

Black Cat A japanese classic that really caught my attention. It hasn't aged super well, but it's interesting in many ways.

Things I learned

There was a lot to learn in 2024. And with AI increasing the pace of everything, I'm sure it's only going to get more overwhelming. I love it.

Some of my favourites were:

Recovery only happens when your parasympathetic nervous system is dominant. This means you literally have to be lazy, at least in mind, for muscles to grow and creativity to happen. A very important learning for me.

"it's normal to doubt yourself when you're creating something" — Walt Disney, via Founders Podcast

"The only thing that leads to real progress is doing more experiments." — Jakob Greenfeld

A method for stress management

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Right after the holidays I felt drained. Not only physically but mentally depleted. I smiled less, laughed even less. My wife had a less enjoyable time around me. It slowly dawned on me that it was time to do something about my stress levels. But how? Eventually my search lead me to implement a schedule for my stress. But getting to that point was not intuitive.

I started like I always do: researching what others have come up with. This quickly lead me to a Huberman Labs podcast episode. I had heard ir before, but this time it was time to do something.

I sat down on my couch with a notebook and tried to find the hack that would solve it. I ordered some damn holistic supplement pills. I’m not proud of it. But I did.

As usual looking for the hack was a distraction. The real work was to understand how this thing called stress works, and do something about it.

Stress is a bad term

Or maybe the term has been watered down through all the self help books and women’s magazines. Huberman suggested activation energy instead. After thinking about it for a few days, I think this is a much better term.

I used to believe stress is a bad thing. Something that happens when you are overwhelmed. Or a bad response you’ve learned from your genes still adapted to chasing mammoths.

That is a bad explanation of stress.

Everything that activates you is caused by stress. Stress is the fuel that powers your action, and your level of activity. Even at a biological scale as it turns out stress is what activates your immune system.

The bad side of stress

Like most exhilarating things, stress is addictive. Like me, you will come to love the feeling of aliveness, of taking action. Stress feels great, it’s excitement, and joy, and exhilaration. But the dosage makes the poison.

The problem is that stress should not be constant. Like the frat boy discovering drinking, if it feels great, why not continue? When you live with elevated stress over time, your body adapts and starts to assume this is the normal level of stress. Which means everything below “stressed out” will feel like depression. No activation energy, no action.

Even worse your adapted body will only have a binary, 0 or 1, level of stress. No gradual differences from awakening lazily, to dancing while cooking, to running from the tiger. You will fear the tiger as soon as you start any task.

Creating a healthy balance

Now that we think of stress as activation energy we can start to think about how we can use it productively. We should get some stress going when we need to get things done. Doing some pushups and playing fast music is not a bad idea.

When you have done the work, it’s time to remove stress. Detach from what you’re doing, take a walk, stop trying to be productive. Turn the lights low, change your outfit, put on some soft music, and do things slowly. Yes you can play video games, but take a breath first, and don’t get into a competition. Yes you can enjoy movement, but no you can’t work out, because that’s also activating you.

Think of this as an activation curve: ramping up in the morning, ramping down in the evening. You should have an activation curve for the day (and maybe another for weeks or months? I’m still implementing my days).

This is already difficult for many of us, addicted as we are to activation energy. But we should be ramping up and down in short bursts during the day as well.

It’s highly likely that humans are made for short bursts of activation energy, and long intervals of rest. Which means an ideal schedule would be to work 30min and rest 90. Unfortunately that’s not likely to happen any time soon, there’s too much work to do. But when was the last time you took a 15min break to rest? That should be possible.

The pomodoro technique recommends working 25min and resting 5min, and having a longer break every 4-5 sprints.

The Huberman labs podcast suggests working hard for 90min before taking a 20min break.

Both of these models might work. Try them and see which one makes sense for you.

TlDr;

Every day has an activation curve: stress up in the morning, and down at night.
Work in bursts and then step away from work regularly.
Choose an intervall (25-5, 90-20, 45-15) that works best for you but take the breaks.

If you’ve read this far you are probably thinking “that’s easy for you to say” at this point. You are right. I’ve been avoiding the elefant in the room, so let’s grab it by the trunk.

Why it’s hard to not stress

I’ve already mentioned, counterintuitive as it might sound, that being stressed feels great. I suspect this is the main reason we’re all revving up constantly, but it’s not the only reason.

Activation energy also means focus. When you are chased by the tiger you can’t stop and smell the roses, so your brain filters them out. To you, there are no roses. This increase in focus is a double edged sword.

Having focus means it’s easier to get work done. Because you are less distracted. It also means that you are less open to new ideas, i.e. less creative. And that you get stuck easier.

You have probably had the experience of talking to a drunk friend who is unable to get off a topic? This is because alcohol makes it very easy to get stuck on ideas. Activation energy gives the same result, albeit less strong.

The trick here is to realise that you don’t want to stop being stressed. You are focused on exciting things, and you feel activated. Why would you stop?

Coming down from that high requires letting go of productivity, and being uncomfortably tired. That’s why it’s difficult. That’s why stress articles often bring up mindfulness.

Noticing you are stressed

Unless you already are practicing mindfulness, you are probably only aware of being stressed when you’re close to your limit. This is normal. And I’m not suggesting you need to become a yogi to solve this.

Instead of trying to notice you are stressed, just set a schedule for breaks. When you succeed with that, start asking yourself a question during those breaks: what am I focusing on? Does that mean I’m stressed?

You will likely notice that you are in fact stressed each time you take a break. That’s normal. But it isn’t good for you.

You have practiced activating yourself to do things your entire life. It’s time to start practicing deactivation.

Practice sitting still

We have to practice calming down because everything is a practice. You can learn this, and surprisingly fast. But the first time you will suck at it. This is normal.

Calming down feels great when you do it over time. But when you are used to high energy it can feel awfully empty and dreary. It’s very easy to reach for distraction at that time. Any input will do. TikTok, instagram, video games, alcohol. Anything that stimulates you, that increases your sense of activation. Which is exactly what we’re learning to avoid.

There are tons of ways of doing this. The most well studied is forrest bathing, i.e. taking a walk in a forrest without any devices. But for me just sitting down for a few minutes really helps. I put my phone out of reach, and sit on the floor or the couch, and then struggle to sit there for more than 5min. This is normal.

Every time you struggle with this is like lifting the weight at the gym. It’s uncomfortable, feels unusual at first, but with each repetition you get better at it. The gym metaphor is great, because just like with lifting a weight, you can’t go from never lifting weights to doing 100 reps. You have to start slow, and being ok with that.

A bonus is that sitting still, or forrest bathing, will starting feeling wonderful very quickly. It feels like living on easy mode.

Summary

What I learned about stress is to set a schedule for your activation energy and be deliberate about it.

Set a work intervall during the day.
Take the breaks.
Choose when you should start activating yourself in the mornings.
Do something uncomfortably boring to calm down at night.

Thinking like this helped me step back from what felt like a wall of depression. I hope it helps you. I’m still learning, so if you have any other ideas or suggestions, please tell me about them.

Animations need state machines

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Every time I create an animation for the web I'm struck by the contrast between web technologies and game engines.

Animations scream out for state machines. Not just keyframes but states with hooks and triggers. The web1.0 document model is amazing for documents. But I'm convinced animations need state machines.

Avoiding regret

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

When I was a kid I expected to do so many things before I was old. But here I am, and while I did some of those things I still have regrets. Nothing big, just all those small things I never got around to. Those “next time I will” that never happened again.

I think I’ve spent the time being busy. Yes, admit I was scared, and procrastinated, but most of the time I was stressed. Rushing to keep up with my current obligations, to finish work so I could start that creative project. But work never finished.

I suspect that the mad dash is a way to avoid doing the scary thing.

The Author Stephen Pressfield has this wonderful idea (affiliate) that we should use this avoidance as a compass. That this resistance always points out what is important for us. The more tasks and circumstance I have for not doing something, the more important that thing is likely to be, to me.

The problem is, as always, to first notice that resistance.

Consumption vs Creation Ratio

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

You probably create for a living, code, design, articles or all sorts of other things. Even more likely you consume quite a bit of content daily. Instagram, Netlix, Podcasts, articles like this one..

I was reading Manuel's thoughts about consumption vs creation and I realised this was a really important question to ask.

What is a good ratio of consumption vs creation?

Is this similar to working out, where you want sprints of hard work, but most of the time should be spent recovering. Or is it more like meditation and eating well, where the more you do it the better?

What is my ratio like today? I would like to say I'm at 50/50. Or even better. But judging from my output, that is probably not true.

Creation takes a lot longer than consumption. So maybe a 2/1 ratio is more reasonable?

Could we perhaps train ourselves like we train our kids for this? You get dessert after you finish your greens. If you create something, you get to consume. But not before.

That would be a really interesting experiment. If I can find a way to track it.

Create memes, not monologues

Thu, 02 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday I stumbled over a short clip from this interview by Chris Williamson, and he said something that resonated deeply with me.

When you’re explaining a concept, start with a meme. A shareable name for that thing. Then go into explaining it.

I think this is part of the success behind movements like e/acc or even Black Lives Matter. The name becomes a brand. Something easy to remember, even if you only vaguely recall the explanation behind the meme.

So if you want to make an impact: create memes, not monologues.

Nice hover effect from Fibery

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Having been interested in creating better tools for research for a long time, I end up visiting Fibery every now and then. It's a very interesting product. Close to my imagined ideal.

Today I found this lovely hover effect:

Blurring the background seems to lift the icon. Creating a sense of presence for my mouse pointer. It felt a lot similar to highlighting text, which I constantly see users to in web browsers, almost regardless of context.

Hack your motivation

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Our incentives are often not easy to understand. But I think they are predictable by Cognitive Load. We start every day with X amount of cognitive energy, and we spend and earn cognitive energy depending on what we do with it.

In this study Carly Robinson and Jana Gallus showed that awarding students for perfect attendence backfired completely. Resulting in students on average attending less.

This shows that students start trying to "hack the system" and go for the award, instead of attending. Paul Graham says this is a common thing YC needs to train founders to stop doing.

Another study I've read, but unfortunately couldn't find, paid kids to play (legos I think). The group that was paid found it less fun and played for shorter periods than the control group who got no reimbursement.

This shows kids being disincentivised to play. Something they would happily do for free, became less interesting when there's an award.

Why does this happen? I think it's because we're shifting the incentive from a rather vague intrinsic one to a clear extrinsic one. We're going from play to gathering points.

Does this mean extrinsic motivators are more valueable? No, but I think they're cheaper from a cognitive load sense.

If we're working on a complicated task, or doing something for the first time, it's easier to do checkbox tasks than it is to actually do good work.

As cognitive load increases it is simply more economic of us to reach a clear threshhold and stop than it is to keep working.

This is why all work we consider important is more effortful than less important work. Writing your novel is harder than it is to send emails, even though you end up writing the same amount of words.

This is also why the great works will be made by people who are interested in the topic. If you have a genuine interest, you are more likely not to stop at a surface level goal.

We can use this to our advantage, first by structuring important work we are not interested in into clear chunks. The classic checklist is a great tool. So is timeboxing.

Secondly by giving us enough time to really dive into the topics we're genuinely interested in. So that we can get further than the checkbox task.

Another thing we might need to take from this is that when you are inspired it's time to do the work. Because it's likely that the motivation is not going to be there tomorrow. Making your deep work session into a checkbox task.

We can also use this to our disadvantage by adding rewards, points, or grades, to things that are already interesting making us less motivated.

Experiment to try:

Look at your tasks for today, clarify everything that doensn't interest you into very clear achievable goals and batch them into a timebox. Then work on the stuff that does interest you for the rest of the day.
The next day, do the complete opposite.
Then reflect on the outcomes. Think both about the amount of work done, but also the quality of the result.

How friend groups might stop your progress

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I was thinking about why I was so terrible at doing work in my twenties. I spent them partying, reading, and arguing, but rarely very productively.

And I think I realised something.

In my twenties I would hang out with several different groups of friends. Often talking about creating something. But we never did. Because we didn’t know how.

Learning how to make something requires you to learn at your own pace. If you’re waiting for someone else, you get bored. If you are rushing to keep up, you won’t get it.

So I now think of friend groups as a socialising force. Something that keeps you from going to extremes, by learning to adapt and compromise. To be agreeable.

There’s still story Steve Jobs used to tell: his neighbour had a rock polisher. And he would show Jobs how he put two rough stones in it one night. And in the morning after they’d bumped into each other a thousand times. The rocks would come out smooth and polished.

This is what I think socialising forces are. Human rock polishers. And groups of humans, friends or family, are all rock polishers.

Unfortunately it’s in the extremes we can find real value. You can’t learn at someone else’s pace. But you also can’t discover new things at someone else’s pace. And real value always comes from discovering a gap in the market and filling it with a solution.

What this means is that socialising forces and progress are at odds. Or maybe a better way to put it is that they compete for the same time.

I want to be clear that I’m not saying socialising forces are bad. Most of the enjoyment you get out of life will come from doing things with groups of people. Be they adventures or traditions.

And there’s nothing stopping you from finding groups of people moving at your pace. Or interested in the thing as you. And rapidly learning new things.

But even in such a group. Your contribution will be an individual one.

How I learned to be strategic

Fri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Today I learned I need to be deliberately strategic

I’m proud of the times I’ve been strategic in life. But I also feel it doesn’t happen often enough. Yesterday I learned the reason why.

I read an article by Anna Salomon over on LessWrong where she explains that humans are not naturally strategic.

What that means is that strategy is not a “mechanical skill” we learn and then use at will. It’s more like memorising a group of rules of thumb and remembering to apply them.

If you do this often enough realising that you are in a situation that calls for Tool 1A might become second nature, but applying the strategy is only ever done deliberately. Otherwise habits take over.

I recently had an example of this when I caught myself wishing my meditation app had a guided mode. Then I realised, I could just guide myself. It worked.

In the same way, I need to remember which situations that call for what strategies, and apply them.

Learning the strategies is a skill. Identifying situations in which to use them is a skill. Applying them is a skill. But “being strategic” is not a skill.

Interfaces commiditize everything

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

A dumb phrase has become popular in the indie hacker scene over the last year: "It's just a 'wrapper'"

It refers to apps that "just" wrap ChatGPT in a specialied UI. The argument is true ofc, but what irks me is that some people seem to think that matters. It doesn't.

Interfaces ultimately commoditize everything underneath.

Your tech stack, code quality and organsiational mission statement simply doesn't show up for the end user.

The user doesn't care if your app is built in Go, C#, Cobol or JS. The user doesn't care if you use NVIDIA or AMD chips. The user doesn't care if its powered by OpenAI or a proprietary model.

The user cares about:

Does it solve a problem.
Can they use it.

Interfaces commoditize everything underneath.

This gives me the chance to reshare Michael Wolfe's now legendary answer about why DropBox was a success.

Long versus Short term plans

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Do you struggle choosing between working on what inspired you today, or staying with the long term plan? I do.

The investor Naval says “Inspiration is perishable - act on it immediately.” and I feel like there’s truth in that. But all my wins come from following a longer term plan, using time to my advantage.

Advice from thinkers on the internet is not very helpful: Shane Parrish say’s we need focus, not excitement. Ali Abdaal says we need both, that this polarisation itself is a myth.

I discussed this with my mastermind group a week ago. And it turns out we all struggle with it. But Benjamin had a very interesting idea about how to deal with it:

Follow your inspiration.
But try to be inspired by topics related to your long term goal.
When you are inspired, act on that and ignore the other goals.
When inspiration wanes, wrap it up.
Look for the next inspiration to hit by reading or thinking about the goals you have.

Over time, these sprints will balance out, and you will find yourself moving towards your long term goals.

I really like this idea. And I will try it out.

Maintaining momentum

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Learning from Dicke Bush:

Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest.

Progress comes from ruthless protection of momentum.

The best way to keep momentum is to avoid things that kill it.

Momentum is addicting and leads to more momentum. Lack of momentum is stagnating and leads to more stagnation.

It takes way less effort to keep momentum than you think.

It takes way less time to lose momentum than you think.

Society is set up to constantly kill your momentum.

The simplest daily goal is to maintain momentum for each of your commitments.

There are 3 time periods to measure momentum: micro, meso, and macro. When you have all 3, you're unstoppable.

Friction is the enemy of momentum. Ease is its best friend.

Remove friction. Maintain momentum. When things stop, put real effort into getting them moving again.

Make space for your goals

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This is something I keep rediscovering. I guess I need to be reminded every few months. So maybe this will help you too:

Whatever you are doing in life, that thing needs time. You need time to do the thing, you also need time to think about it. You even need time to think about what you want to do next.

If you cram every day full of tasks and obligations. When would you have these thoughts?

First you have to make space. Then you can start growing into new things.

Be brutal with yourself. Cut out anything that isn't sparking joy. It's "Hell yeah! or No" for everything. Social events. Things lying around your house. Watching a show. Listening to a podcast. If it's not a "Hell yeah!" you are better off not doing anything.

Apply minimalism to everything. Don’t fill time with things I don’t want to do. Leave space for the brain to operate and be creative.

"Obviously Awesome" by April Dunford

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Had to cut the title down, because it broke my layout. The full title is:

Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It

<br/> This is my second time reading it. I recommended it to my book club, remember it as a really practical guide to how to work with market positioning. Second read through didn't really help me much. But I think it's because of how much of Dunfords thinking has already penetrated the indie hacker spaces where I normally hang out.

“How do you beat Bobby Fischer? You play him at any game but chess.” · Warren Buffett

The core message of the book, at least for me, is that positioning is always an active game of figuring our what the market of tools and services look like to the customer, and adapting your messsaging, so you are competing against the specific competitors you want for a specific market. Instead of being locked into a huge red ocean with the IBMs and Microsofts of the world.

Positioning is the act of deliberately defining how you are the best at something that a defined market cares a lot about.

Doing this well is the difference between Hermes and the leather jacket shop on mainstreet. The products are similar. But the markets they deliver value to are very different.

This quote is a great summary:

Great positioning takes into account all of the following: The customer’s point of view on the problem you solve and the alternative ways of solving that problem. The ways you are uniquely different from those alternatives and why that’s meaningful for customers. The characteristics of a potential customer that really values what you can uniquely deliver. The best market context for your product that makes your unique value obvious to those customers who are best suited to your product.

And here's the take away if you want the TlDr;

These are the Five (Plus One) Components of Effective Positioning:

Competitive alternatives. What customers would do if your solution didn’t exist.

Unique attributes. The features and capabilities that you have and the alternatives lack.

Value (and proof). The benefit that those features enable for customers.

Target market characteristics. The characteristics of a group of buyers that lead them to really care a lot about the value you deliver. Market category. The market you describe yourself as being part of, to help customers understand your value.

(Bonus) Relevant trends. Trends that your target customers understand and/or are interested in that can help make your product more relevant right now.

If you haven't worked with marketing or communication before. I highly recommend the book. If you have, listen to one or two of her interviews on podcasts instead. The book is great, but it's not a condenced tome of knowledge. More like a few really good blog posts.

Get the book on amazon using my affiliate link and you're treating me to a coffee!

On God

Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

My basic stance can be summed up as: Who cares?

If god exists, it wants you to live morally and well.

If god does not exist, you should strive to live morally and well.

God is an answer to a question that is useless. You should just go about living as best as you can. You don’t need a god for that.

If you want to take part of a religious community, go ahead and enjoy it.

Don’t make any claims about the origin of the book. That has nothing to do with your god.

And don’t claim religion itself has any answers, every religion has failed basic tests of logic and humanity.

Pocket Guide of Founder Advice

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This post is a present on Matt's birthday, you should give one too.

I recently saw this summary of Y Combinator advice on X. And I thought it was too good not to share. Went straight into my review folder.

Launch now
Build something people want
Do things that don't scale
Find the 90 / 10 solution
Find 10-100 customers who love your product
All startups are badly broken at some point
Write code - talk to users
"It's not your money"
Growth is the result of a great product not the precursor
Don't scale your team/product until you have built something people want
Valuation is not equal to success or even probability of success
Avoid long negotiated deals with big customers if you can
Avoid big company corporate development queries - they will only waste time
Avoid conferences unless they are the best way to get customers
Pre-product market fit - do things that don't scale: remain small/nimble
Startups can only solve one problem well at any given time
Founder relationships matter more than you think
Sometimes you need to fire your customers (they might be killing you)
Ignore your competitors, you will more likely die of suicide than murder
Most companies don't die because they run out of money
Be nice! Or at least don't be a jerk
Get sleep and exercise - take care of yourself

Progress is progress

Thu, 02 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I used to hang out with body builders. And they would repeat "progress is progress".

Building a huge physique takes years. The changes are not really noticeable.

So you have to trust the process, your job is to make a little progress, consistently.

Don't compare today with perfect. If it was better than yesterday, it was progress.

Reading the Classics

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I never understood why I studied the classic books in school. Why do we even talk about works of old fiction as classics?

Then my friend Fredrik got me interested in reading Hemingway, and my life partner got be into Proust, and now I understand that the classics are classic for two very good reasons:

The classics capture something true about the human condition. You will get a deeper insight into what it means to be a human being, maybe not from all the classic works, but when they do reach you they reach into your soul in a profound way.

The classics created society as we know it. Cultural artefacts to now just capture our imagination, they also give us examples which we model our lifes to. Great art does this better than modern institutions or Brands, the proof of this is how long they've stayed relevant. The oldest laws are a few hundred years, the Iliad a few thousands.

If you are interested in reading the classics I want to give you two starting points: the poem If by Rudyard Kipling, and Hemingways last novel A Moveable Feast.

Ruthlessly block distractions

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I keep returning to a false belief that I can "will myself" to turn off distractions. But that's not how it works.

Distractions, like all bad habits, bounce back whenever I'm emotional, or just tired.

Stop fooling yourself.

Make it harder to be distracted. Delete the app. Install a site blocker. Don't buy sweets.

You will be uncomfortable at first. But you will feel better soon, because you won't be distracted.

Is self help narcissistic?

Sat, 24 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This tweet by Nat got me thinking:

“Hard to say where the line is, but there's undeniably a degree of narcissism to the "self-improvement" "self-care" "self-work" arena. Maybe instead of obsessing over yourself so much you should be raising a kid or volunteering in an old folks home.” — Nat Eliason

There is something true about this. We all need to work on ourselves, to improve. But often the same people come back to the same category of self help. For me it’s productivity.

I’m always looking for that one hack that will give me musk like productivity. Which is ludicrous. There’s not gonna be a trick to that. But decades of working hard.

Maybe we are reading these books, and looking at our flaws, as a way to focus on ourselves instead of working out in the world. Very much the fault that Narcissus makes when he gazes into the pool instead of noticing the nymph beside him.

And Nat is right that helping others, and having other rely on us, is a shortcut to getting out of your own head and back into the real world. This is why so many religions and therapies focus on service of others.

Maybe getting a kid, or helping others out, will give you more than that next self help book. Maybe doing something will help with your anxieties more than learning about something.

Of course it can probably swing too hard the other way as well. You might just as easily work on helping others so hard that you neglect your own problems and flaws. To the ultimate detriment of the people you are trying to help. I doubt this is as common though.

Specialist or Generalist?

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I've been listening to Founders podcast a lot, and the host recently mentioned a thought he's learned from Naval that made me think about specialization vs generalization.

“Economic development specializes functions, differentiates ability, and makes men unequally valuable to their group. Remember, the more complex a civilization gets, the more you'll see inequality, so economic inequality, right? So the way Navarre has had influence on my thinking about this is he says something like, we're living in the age of infinite leverage, right? And in the age of infinite leverage, it is more important to be at the extreme of your craft, at the extreme of your work. Why? Because the person that is the, he says the person that is the best in the world at what they do gets to do it for everyone. In the age of infinite leverage, we should see this idea that economic development specializes functions, differentiates ability, and makes men unequally valuable to their group. We should see that only continue to expand and become more important. That's why a few years ago, I wrote to my own self, learn and optimize for this.”

That's a lot of text. But there is an interesting idea in there. In fact Nassim Taleb explored the same concept in the Black Swan when he described Extremistan and Mediocristan.

Extremistan is a place where things tend to fall into two polar extremes: either something is high impact, or it is low impact.

The internet makes the world more like extremistan, because you either have a massive audience, or you have no audience. You either have a massive number of customers, or you have no customers.

The world is big enough to support many small to medium niches, but on a marketplace as efficient as the internet most things will end up quite extreme.

Therefore we have to ask ourselves the question: are we better off being a generalist or a specialist?

A generalist can do a lot of different things, and will be hired if someone in their network needs help that they can solve. But they won't be hired for jobs that can hire off the internet. For any such job, a more extreme specialist will be better.

But everyone can't be the best in their field? That's true. But skills are not interchangeable between practitioners. One juggler might be replaceable with another juggler, but two programmers might know of different ways to solve a problem.

A better metaphor for how this works is the skill stack popularised by Scott Adams in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big (affiliate link).

Skill stacking means that you build more than one skill, and become the best in the world with that specific combination of skills.

According to Claude 3.5 Sonnet some examples of this are:

a graphic designer who is also a great writer
a software engineer who is also a great product manager
a chef who is also a great baker
a photographer who is also a great writer
a programmer who is also a great marketer

And I hope you get the idea. Even though I doubt you'll get far with just 2 skills in your stack.

My conclusion has to be that to compete on the internet you have to be a specific generalist. A generalist who is the best in the world at a combination of skills.

So pick the thing you are interested in and get unreasonably good at it. Then move on to another area of interest. And so on. Keep stacking those skills.

Stronger CTA buttons

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Make stronger buttons by animating backgrounds with radial gradients.

I needed a stronger CTA button for my newsletter, and I wanted to look closer at how radial gradients could be animated. Turns out this is one of those areas where browsers don't quite support it yet. Which is probably why this has become popular.

Here's what the end result looks like at the time of writing:

Below you can see how I did it. About half of the JS is there only to make the exit animation look nice. A subtle detail that is probably not necessary.

    <form>
        <button type="submit" class="submit">Subscribe</button>
    </form>

    .submit {
        background: radial-gradient(
            circle 400px at var(--x) var(--y),
            rgba(255,94,58,1),
            rgba(255,36,201,1) 100% 100%
        );
        border: 0;
        border-radius: 5px;
        color: white;
        cursor: pointer;
        font-size: 12px;
        font-weight: 600;
        text-transform: uppercase;
    }

    const form = document.querySelector("form");
    const button = document.querySelector(".submit");
    var xPer, yPer;
    var intervalId = null;

    button.addEventListener("mouseleave", (e) => {
        intervalId = setInterval(() => {
            if(xPer > 50){ xPer = xPer -1; }
            if(xPer < 50){ xPer = xPer +1; }

            form.style.setProperty("--x", xPer + '%');
            form.style.setProperty("--y", yPer + '%');
            if(xPer == 50){
                console.log('break')
                clearInterval(intervalId);
                intervalId = null;
                form.style.setProperty("--x", 50 + '%');
                form.style.setProperty("--y", 50 + '%');
            }
        }, 10);
    });

    button.addEventListener('mouseenter', (e) => {
        // If an interval exists, clear it first
        if (intervalId) {
            clearInterval(intervalId);
            intervalId = null;
        }
        // Update position as the mouse moves over the element
        button.addEventListener('mousemove', handleMousemove);
    });

    const handleMousemove = (e) => {
        const { x, y,width, height } = button.getBoundingClientRect();
        xPer =  Math.round((e.clientX - x) / width * 100);
        yPer =  Math.round((e.clientY - y) / height * 100);
        form.style.setProperty("--x", xPer + '%');
        form.style.setProperty("--y", yPer + '%');
    };

"The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I saw a thread on X.com discussing fictional books about personal achievement. There are strangely few books that portrait human achievement in an optimistic light. Most of them are biographies, which I usually do not prefer. The most commonly mentioned book was the Count of Monte Cristo. I thought I had read this as a child, but since I've been reading the classics for a few years now I was excited to give it another read as an adult.

First of all there's no way I read this as a child. More likely I got the abbridged version of the plot through some comic and believed I knew the story. I did not.

Second this book is a fantastic example of why the classics are special artefacts in history. It reads like it was writted today as a period story. It feels current. It feels modern.

My life partner has been helping me understand that the human experience does not change over time. The victorians were probably into kinks and drugs as we are. The ideals change so what we project on instagram, and therefore to history, changes. But not the parts that make us human. Our drives, our behaviors, our ways of failing and struggling. They are the same today as they were in ancient egypt.

It's still a mindboggling thought to me, but this book rams it home by being in most ways a modern adventure book. I was excited to open it every night. I cried once. And I got excited to know what happened next from page 50 until the close at page 1000.

Highly recommend if you are looking for an adventure book.

"He soon felt that some light was once again penetrating his brain: all his vague and almost indefinable ideas resumed their place on that marvellous chessboard where perhaps a single extra square is enough to ensure the superiority of men over animals. He was able to think and to strengthen his thoughts by reasoning."

"‘In their application, no; but the principles, yes. Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory, the second philosophy.’" — Dumas understood there's a difference between rote memorization and internalisation.

"Before one is afraid, one sees clearly; while one is afraid, one sees double; and after being afraid, one sees dimly."

"there is neither happiness nor misfortune in this world, there is merely the comparison between one state and another, nothing more. Only someone who has suffered the deepest misfortune is capable of experiencing the heights of felicity. Maximilien, you must needs have wished to die, to know how good it is to live."

"The Mom Test" by Rob Fitzpatrick

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The best book or article I've read on how to ask better questions, and how to do research. This book will guide you through the common pitfalls and biases you fall into while doing customer research.

These are some of my favourite tips from the book, but I recommed reading it, and trying each idea by itself in your next user/customer interaction. There's a lot of subtle detail to learn here.

"Rule of thumb: Opinions are worthless."

"Rule of thumb: People know what their problems are, but they don’t know how to solve those problems."

"Rule of thumb: If they haven't looked for ways of solving it already, they're not going to look for (or buy) yours."

"Rule of thumb: Compliments are the fool’s gold of customer learning: shiny, distracting, and worthless."

"Rule of thumb: Ideas and feature requests should be understood, but not obeyed."

"Rule of thumb: You always need a list of your 3 big questions."

"Rule of thumb: “Customers” who keep being friendly but aren’t ever going to buy are a particularly dangerous source of mixed signals."

"Rule of thumb: If you aren’t finding consistent problems and goals, you don’t have a specific enough customer segment."

Definitely read this book, and please you my affialate link when you get the book on Amazon.

Things I did in my Thirties

Wed, 10 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Today I'm 40 years old. It's strange being officially middle aged. I thought I'd be a different person by now.

If male lifespan does not increase significantly in the next decades, I'm exactly half way to the grave.

It's good to take the opportunities to think about what I've spend my time on, and how I'd like to invest the time ahead.

These are the most notable things I could remember from my thirties:

Life events

Lived in 5 countries
Berlin, Germany — twice
Lisbon, Portugal
San Francisco USA
Medellin Colombia
Grottamare, Italy
Crossed the Atlantic on a boat
Ran a marathon, at Marathon Greece
Saw Grand Canyon twice
Visited Oktoberfest thrice

Personal

Bought and sold 1 apartment in Sthlm
Did a sommelier education
Started investing in made to measure suits
Many weddings, births, celebrations
Was the toast master at my best friends wedding
Got a dog 🤩
Lost a dog 😢
Spent an entire week going to the opera to see Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen
Started investing

Professional

Nominated for innovation award by the city of Stockholm — twice
Joined 4 startups
Created a bunch of products
Started two podcasts
Wrote and published a book
Switched from mostly Developer to mostly Designer
Became a manager / coach

Spoke at many events and conferences

Wordcamp
SthlmJS
Internetdagarna
Developers Bay

Most importantly

Met Agnes, and got married

In my fourties I would like to invest more in relationships, and in shipping things. Even if lifespan increases, there is a limited amount of time. I would like to spend mine doing something worthwhile.

Using AI as a coach

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Writing your thoughts down makes it much easier to think clearly. By making yourself pick out words to describe your thoughts, you also shape what you are thinking. There's not a lot of room for fuzzy emotional logic when the words are down in black and white.

It is still easy to get caught up making the same mistakes over and over. Something I've noticed when reviewing my journals much later. This is where having a coach or a therapist comes in handy, if you keep bringing up the same problems they can push back on that.

Trusting a coach enough to share everything, or affording a long term therapist, isn't something we can all do. Thankfully AI models have become smart enough to start helping us with this. I stumbled over this idea on X, and tried it out:

I dumped 4 months of journaling into a claude project, asking for advice

Here's what you do If you don't already journal, start taking down problems or thoughts every morning or night. Take your journal entries from the last months or weeks. Copy it into Claude3.5 sonnet (or llama 405B, or ChatGPT4o)

Ask questions about your recent thoughts. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

What are some things that are obivous to outsiders, but I don't seem to notice?
What advice would you give based on these thoughts?
What 3 things would be most impactful for making me succeed and/or feel better?

Some of the advice I got was bland. But some of it was really good.

Remember that the model does not think, so you can't ask it for logical conclusions. But it can give you insights if you ask more or better questions.

What problems to avoid

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I've recently started listening to founders podcast. It's a good walkthrough of biographies of great founders.

This last week I heard to separate ideas I think are related by two of my intellectual heroes, Charlie Munger and Steve Jobs.

The Munger idea goes something like this:

Problems are inevitable, solving problems is what business does. But avoiding problems that can be foreseen is wise, because you will always have more problems than you have time to solve.

Don't worry about problems. But avoid problems that can be foreseen.

Examples of this is planning ahead for bad times, or avoiding people who create more problems than they solve.

The Jobs idea goes something like this:

If you feel like you aren't moving fast enough, narrow your focus. Still not fast enough? Simplify, both what your goal is, and what you do. Still not fast enough? Up the intensity. In that order.

Don't simplify when you have 37 projects. Don't up the intensity when you have very complicated things to work on.

Summing these two ideas together:

Avoid problems where you can, by not taking on stupid risks and complexity. Don't avoid all problems. Solving problems is the value you create. Constantly narrow your focus, and simplify what you work on.

Only after you've done these things, you can increase the intensity.

When “hacks” stop working

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This week I almost fooled myself into believing I can hack fitness. Over the last month I’ve travelled and attended several conferences. Naturally I ate too much and drank too much. As a result my fitness has suffered. Only this time I caught myself thinking I could get away with it.

This sounds silly. And it’s painful to admit out loud. I had the thought that I could somehow hack the system. That I could trick my muscles into not growing weaker.

Paul Graham talks about how this is a common problem to coach entrepreneurs out of doing:

“many founders, especially young and ambitious ones, have been trained to win the wrong way. That took me years to figure out. The educational system in most countries trains you to win by hacking the test instead of actually doing whatever it's supposed to measure. But that stops working when you start a startup.” — Paul Graham, What I’ve learned from users

This feels great to know. If the hustle culture A-players of the world have this problem, I shouldn’t need to worry about it right? Except that Graham is talking about 20 something startup founders right out of collage. I’m a middle aged grizzled veteran from international startups. I should’ve learned this already.

When it truly matters there’s no cheating the outcome.

You can’t get time with your kids back.
There’s no second change to kiss the girl.
The market will not wait.
And neither will your health.

So next week I will take more responsibility for my health. Eat more meat, lift my weights and get some rest.

You Can Avoid Reality, But You Cannot Avoid the Consequences of Avoiding Reality — Attributed to Ayn Rand

Why are we all selling selfie sticks?

Fri, 03 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

There’s a concept from economics called the Blue Ocean Strategy(affiliate link). The basic idea is really simple: don’t do what others are doing, and you’ll have less competition.

One famous example of this is people selling selfie sticks.

Clustered around any tourist site you will find roving hordes of mostly young men selling selfie sticks (or whatever is the local equivalent).

Some sales are made, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. But the fact that they all sell the exact same thing makes it less likely that each individual will be the person to make the sale.

Selling anything else would increase their chances. Why don’t they?

It’s easy to look at what others are doing and copy that, hoping for the same result. This even has a name: commoditisation. It’s a bad strategy. A red ocean. Yet we keep doing it.

Copycats has been the number one gripe in the indie hacker community over the last few years. Someone shares a win, and ten others copy their idea. Bad strategy.

Every social media is swamped by trends, people making the exact same content, hoping to be the one to get the engagement. Bad strategy.

I made the same mistake. I’ve been posting the same bland content here as everyone else. Well no more. It’s time to not follow the herd, and hopefully do more interesting things.

Agency means just doing things

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 16:00:00 GMT

I'm always thinking about agency. Ever since I learned that we all start out helpless, and we can learn to have more agency, I keep thinking about this topic. I recently read this screenshot essay by David Perell:

"Lately I've caught myself spewing increasingly abstract definitions of what it means to be "high agency": one who has the belief and means to change their circumstances; one who takes ownership of their future; one who finds the third door. But it's simpler than that. Agency is realizing that you can just DO things. Hosting an event is as simple as sending out invites. Making a friend is a DM. Writing is just typing. Being high agency is independent of the quality of the output itself--in fact an obsession with quality is often a convenient excuse for those who would otherwise be able to create singular things. Just go and do things." — (David Perell , You Can Just Do Things)

When we try to do something new we make it more difficult than it needs to be by using complicated words. Agency makes it sound like it's some esoteric attribute some exhalted humans can achieve. But it's more like the dumb guy on the mid-twit meme: just do something.

The technical term in psychology for agency is Self Efficacy, which is even worse in jargon terms. But reading the wiki page is pretty interesting. In Psychology they look at how much a person believes they are capable of reaching for a goal.

Crazily, this belief about what you can and cannot do has even better results than your genetics!

"Upon looking at the results, researchers found that the people who had been told they have the good mutation outperformed the other group - perhaps not a surprise. What was more of a surprise was when they analysed what was going on inside of their bodies. The lungs of people without the athletic mutation who had been told that they should perform well were blowing off Co2 more efficiently, they had lower overall heart rates and a lower Rate of Perceived Exertion. And the kicker: they were more efficient than the people who did have the good mutation but were told that they didn't. Because of what they were told, different groups were able to reverse the effectiveness of their genetic markers." — Chris Williamson

What this means is that your level of optimism, your belief in what you can achieve, can impact your physical performance more than your genetics.

You are not only limited by your beliefs. But you are limited more by your beliefs than anything else.

There's an easy way to benefit from this. Do things. Do things that give assymetric return: ask people for things. Give compliments. If you want to do something "in the future" DO IT NOW.

Just do the thing.

Don't get caught up in all the avoiding strategies: Chis Williamson shared a list of things that are not Doing The Thing.

Just do the thing.

It's not that you can't do it. It's that you haven't done it yet.

Just do the thing.

Here's a list of things you can do, that will help you improve your agency.

You can't sit down to write a book

Sat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Fantastic reminder by Paul Jarvis (one of the founders of fathom) on the Above Board podcast:

"You can't sit down to write a book"

If your goal is too big, there's no way to take direct action. Which leads to procrastination. Whenever you are starting work, think about the goal, and then think about what is a concrete step you can do in the time you have that will make it easier to reach the goal.

Most often the answer will be not so grandiose: Plan out next steps. Write a paragraph. Think about ways to improve X. That's normal. Even great work is at some point simply work.

2025 in review

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

At the end of every year I do a big yearly review. I go through all my notes, look through all my photos, check my calendar and try to list out everything I did and learned. It takes a while, and it's always hard to finish. But it gives me a sense of control about what I am doing in life.

2025 was a year of Big Change. The changes haven't finished yet, so it's too early to tell if it was amazing or just worthwhile.

Timeline of events
Projects
- INXM: Intellectus Ex Machina
- Find Insight
Books
Podcasts
Movies
Things I learned
- Lists are procrastination
- You are Low Agency because you're too serious

<br />

Timeline of events

January to March

I spent January visiting a lot of artshows with my wife. I also joined the Airfryer cult, and really drank the coolaid.

Gave a talk at an entrepreneur meetup about rapidly learning from users. Made a good friend in the process.

Saw the alps for the first time in Innsbruck, I say "saw them" because I've flown over them many times, driven through them twice, and even camped on one. But never seen the peaks properly.

Vibe coded a lot with my friends Fritjof, Peter and Alex. Celebrated St Patricks in a very traditional pub night!

April to June

Celebrated my birthday with a good old fashioned home party, some of the guests loved it, some didn't. I'm actually much too old for this, but it's fun to revisit my 20s sometimes.

We had out Scottish Friend over for easter and did some traditional celebrations, unfortuantely I lost a front tooth in a Döner Kebab.

My wife got caught in the Iberian Blackout while visiting her mom, so now we're preppers.

We went to more art shows and found some new favourite places in Berlin.

Attended the second every Local First Conf in Berlin!

Then started the summer with a Man Spa in Sweden and Midsummers celebrations in the Archipelago.

July to September

I found a new favourite coffee place in Stockholm.

Started a new AI company that might revolutionise enterprise!

Celebrated one of my oldest friends 40th, hung out with friends in Berlin, and even attended the Love Parade!

We took my mother-in-law to the Castles of Potsdam and the Reichstag building in Berlin.

Then we ended the summer with visiting the Oktoberfest again! It was great fun, but again I'm feeling a little too old.

October to December

In October our stuff was finally shipped to to Lisbon, so while we started the move way back in 2023, we can now finally always answer that we both live in Lisbon.

We had a first cosy Halloween in Lisbon and mother-in-law came over for the first of Advent.

Then we had a long Christmas stay in Stockholm, had bad luck and missed my brothers 50th, but still had a good time.

We ended the year together in Lisbon with a very calm party after such a long Christmas. Ready to start a new year with a lot less logistics, and a lot more adventures.****

Projects

2025 was all about AI projects, ofc. I didn't list all the things that I just tried, or never shipped.

INXM: Intellectus Ex Machina

link Vibe coding reliable enterprise automations.

Enterprises need to streamline their processes. There's too much waste managing the paperwork and systems that surround the core business. Automation solves this, but up until now, automation has been fragile and in the hands of IT.

INXM solves this by giving enterprise teams a natural language platform that creates on the fly automations for you. It's almost like ESP or remote control for your entire business.

Find Insight

While it doesn't replace expert interviewers, it does replace most interviews, and can scale a lot better. Cutting customers costs to a fraction.

I've handed this over to my old friend Fredrik for continued development as I focus on INXM.

Books

These are some of the most interesting books I read. All the links are amazon affiliate links, please use them if you are interested in the books.

Tortilla Flat I believe this is John Steinbecks first book, and it gives you nostalgia for a place you've never been, and a longing to hang out with a group of friends you probably don't want to have. I was surprised by how riveting and annoying this book was. The ending is fantastic.

The Illiad The epic that founded the entire western canon. It's not an entertaining read, and you really need to think about it to get the value from it. But because it's so fundamental you will likely find things in here that shape your life, similar to stories from the Bible. If you haven't read it, you should. But stay away from the modern translation, read the penguin translation.

Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger There is an infinite amount of good ideas to pick up from Charlie Munger. Thank you Stripe Press for bringing this back in print.

Fahrenheit 451 Another classic which is relevant again as we're once more assulted by the wise and powerful to not question or learn, only repeat what they want us to think.

Podcasts

Founders Still the best podcast in the world. If you want to do anything in life, this is where you can learn what you need.

Movies

The Phoenician Scheme Wes Andersson nails a new world. After a couple of near misses, The Phoenician Scheme succeeds in delivering a magic that few films can match.

Megalopolis Fancis Ford Coppola's last film. I didn't get it at all. Just a complete mess of madness to me.

American Gigolo The 80s and 90s are being sold as the "good old days" harder than ever. This classic from the 80s shows that it was mostly garbage.

Things I learned

AI increasese the pace of learning drastically. So from now on, I'm only listing the experiments I did that lead to behaviour change. Simply learning intellectually no longer counts in the world of infinite minds.

Lists are procrastination

I've spent years collecting and maintaining lists. This year I finally learned that this is all procrastinating from doing the actual work.

Don't keep lists of tasks, or media. If you can't remember them, you're not motivated anyway, and doing them will be a drag. You will waste time pushing yourself instead of doing something that pulls you.

For outcomes you can't do now, or in one go, keep 3 simple lists: Now, Next or Never. Clear them out monthly.

Only put things on them that can be done. "Moving to a new country" is an outcome, you can allocate time and come up with the tasks you need to do. "Clean out the garage" is a task and you can put it on your calendar and check it off. "Get in shape" is a useless vague notion. Define what it means as an outcome instead.

You are Low Agency because you're too serious

This year Agency has hit the mainsteam. With infinite minds available to anyone, suddenly it's clear to everyone that it's taking action that is the important differentiator.

This year I learned that most of the time I'm Low Agency it's because I'm taking something too seriously. I start believing something is "too important to get wrong" and all progress stalls.

If it's important, it's important enough to play around with and get wrong a few times.

Books I Recommend

Fri, 16 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Last weekend I read a thread on X asking the question what is the best novel ever, if you can only pick one?

I don’t know. But it got me thinking about which books I recommend frequently, so I thought I'd share a list:

The Count of Monte christo Only just read this as an adult, and it's an incredible novel. It reads like a historic fiction written today, and it's a wonderful exploration of human agency.

Atlas shrugged Rand is always controversial, but to me her villains are wonderful renditions of how we go wrong as humans. Explains why utopias always fail.

The alchemist The modern fable about living well and human achievement.

Discworld This entire series is an amazing world. Pratchett was a great observer of humans, and laugh out loud hilarious. Start with The Truth or Night Watch. The early ones haven't aged well.

A Moveable Feast by Hemingway Just brilliant. Makes me want to move to Paris and become an artist. The world feels so real I get nostalgic when I think of the book, and I've never even been to Paris.

The beginning of infinity David Deutsch incredible work. You can understand everything. And this book gives you at least one of the foundational ways of thinking. This book will make you 5x smarter.

Connecting anything to AI with MCP

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I'm using this Grok prompt to stop playing mental games and switch from hobbyist to founder mindset. I haven't tried it with other models, but should work fine with all flagship models today.

Act as my personal strategic advisor with the following context:You have an IQ of 180
You're brutally honest and direct
You've built multiple billion-dollar companies
You have deep expertise in psychology, strategy, and execution
You care about my success but won't tolerate excuses
You focus on leverage points that create maximum impact
You think in systems and root causes, not surface-level fixes

Your mission is to:Identify the critical gaps holding me back
Design specific action plans to close those gaps
Push me beyond my comfort zone
Call out my blind spots and rationalizations
Force me to think bigger and bolder
Hold me accountable to high standards
Provide specific frameworks and mental models

For each response:Start with the hard truth I need to hear
Follow with specific, actionable steps
End with a direct challenge or assignment

It was really tough on me. But it was also exactly what I needed.

Copy Others

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I've been taking action poorly for a long time, and I didn't know why. This weekend I saw this clip on X where Charlie Morgan explains that copying others is a great way to learn and move faster. He believes we learn in school that we shouldn't copy others, we should figure out our own way of doing it.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I literally copied my way to a $26.9M net worth lol <a href="https://t.co/Fz1tybKMrJ">pic.twitter.com/Fz1tybKMrJ</a></p>— Charlie Morgan (@CharlieImperium) <a href="https://twitter.com/CharlieImperium/status/1894433447638077843?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 25, 2025</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I'm not sure we learn this in school. It could be that this is just our ego trying to convince us that we need to be unique and special, an insidious way to procrastinate on taking action.

Regardless of the reason, I've convinced he's right about avioding copying. It resonates well with my own experience. So let's go and copy someone! Take what others are doing that works, and do the same thing.

Do Not Trust Experts

Sat, 18 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Expertise is real, but fleeting.

Expertise means you've done deep work to figure something out, but it's only valid in that specific context, and the thing you've figured out quickly grows stale as others discover new things.

Expert is a lifestyle title.

Being an expert on the other hand is like a badge of honor. People start believing they have expertise that trancendes contexts, jumping from topic to topic, retaining their authority. Being an expert is like a drug, it gives you authority and status, which is addicting.

Unfortunately a lot of people conflate the two.

In reality there is a lot of expertise. Like Sokrates we migh want to discuss building cities with the ditch-diggers not the academics. But there are no experts. Calling someone an expert is just a claim to authority, a status giving title to pound an argument into the heads of people who never listen.

It's human to believe in authority. But there is no such thing. In reality there are only arguments, not experts.

If you want to trust someone without doing the work yourself, simply ask yourself if you believe they have done a better job than you would. But even then, try to find a flaw in the argument before you believe it.

Exhibition Bingo!

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve had this theory that museums are made for other curators, not for visitors. And I found a way to test it!

Think about it, when you last visited a museum or exhibit was it really a well made presentation of some aspect of art or history? Or was it a random collection of stuff, poorly explained with little placards that said very little but using many words?

I’ve visited many exhibitions over the last 10 years, and I usually end up feeling like I need to go home and google the topic. Because I have no idea what I’m looking at or why, and I expect the exhibition to be interested in explaining that to me.

This is a pretty hard indictment of curators. But let’s not morally theorise about why this may or may not be the case, let’s treat it as an experiment!

Next time you go to an exhibition, play bingo with me and let’s see if curators are working to educate you, or if they’re navel gazing with their in-group.

Exhibition bingo rules

There are three boxes to check, if you get all three, you get a bingo! Bingo means the exhibition was not made for visitors.

Narrative missing: Is a clear narrative thread that ties together all the pieces missing? (Should be obvious to the target audience, adults or kids) Check if missing!

Context missing: Is there context missing for some pieces, or is each piece presented with a clear text and or voice track that describes why it’s there and what it means? Check if missing!
Expensive gear: Is there an expensive installation (lights, 3d, movie, effect) that isn’t directly related to the subject?

If you check all three, BINGO, The exhibition is probably a grift!

I’m gonna do my first try of this in a few weeks and report back.

Experiment: Decaf

Sun, 25 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

We switched to decaf for a week to see how it impacted our stress, and it gave me more energy. My wife struggles with stress, and while I struggle less I have a lot left to learn. So when she suggested we switch our automatic espresso machine to decaf beans, I was excited to try it!

I tried living without caffeine once before during covid. Apparently you need 10 days to be completely free of caffeine, and at the time I hated the experiment. It made me feel different, but I didn't feel good. But that time I struggled to find a replacement.

This time we switched beans and I still had delicious coffee, even more cups than usual.

I did feel tired, especially in the mornings. But I didn't get headaches and body sweats this time.

I also didn't get the jittery, uncomfortable, energy I often have. I thought it was stress, turns out it's caffeine.

I was also more aware of how tired I actually am. And it was easier to plan my todo list to not overwhelm mylself.

This was a success

I think I'm going to continue drinking mostly decaf. I'm also going to drink caffeine, but much less of it. Caffeine is a wonderful stimulant, but I really don't like the sharp jittery energy it gives me. In my 20s I felt like that most of the time, so I didn't think much about it. But in my 40s, I think this is just causing me a lot of stress and uncomfort without any benefits.

Experiment: Do you gain muscle mass from drinking carbs while working out?

Sat, 30 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I've been lifting weights to look more like the <a href="https://static.vecteezy.com/system/resources/previews/023/175/774/non_2x/statue-of-david-by-michelangelo-florence-tuscany-italy-ai-generative-image-free-photo.jpg" target="_new">statue of David</a> since 2007. A few weeks ago, I came across this post on X. It caught my eye because I know stress hormones counteract recovery, but I had no idea carbs (actually insulin) lowered cortisol. I simply had to try this out.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Men who drink Gatorade instead of water during workouts have more muscle growth, less body fat, lower cortisol levels, and a 23% increase in fast twitch muscle fibers.</p>— HeightOptimised (@HeightOptimised) <a href="https://x.com/heightoptimized/status/1956370300909580441?s=12">August 15, 2025</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I looked it up, of course, and the scientific mechanism is sound. Increased insulin lowers cortisol, which means it could be a good thing. For example, if you just ran from a lion and need to calm down, eating a handful of berries is a very good idea.

But does it hold up at the modern gym?

I did two weeks of drinking Gatorade while working out (I don't recommend it—it's probably better to use something like honey and electrolytes in water). In my very unscientific test, it does seem to work. Despite eating the same (I eat an exact amount of calories), working out the same (the program hasn't changed since Christmas), and stressing the same (just founded a startup, so 100%), I actually lost some body fat and found myself relaxing more post-workout.

Now, since I'm fully aware of what I'm doing, I can't know if it's psychosomatic or not. But if you're interested, I recommend trying it.

Will I continue doing it? Probably not. The noticeable effect isn't strong enough, and I don't want to spend money on Gatorade. I haven't found a good alternative for adding carbs and electrolytes to my water yet. If I do come across a simple way to do it, though, I think I will start doing it.

Experiment: Taking Action Gives Me Energy

Sun, 25 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I recently came across the idea that taking action, any action, produces more information making it easier to think and make progress. So I wanted to put it to the test.

For one week I set up reminders everywhere to be mindful of catching myself thinking about things. Yes, I labelled any thinking at all as "over thinking". My idea was that this approach would increase my offs of catching myself overthinking. It worked quite well, and had a profound side effect.

When I caught myself I had to stop thinking and do something, anything. Since I work with design on a computer this usually meant I had to step away from the computer, clean up, do dishes, whatever I could do without thinking about it first.

This experiment was a success.

Doing things instead of getting stuck thinking gave me a lot more energy so I ended up finishing more work and feeling less tired.

I also had a profound insight. Nearly all my thinking was overthinking. Before this experiment I had assumed I spent a lot of time productively thinking about things, and some time over thinking. It turns out most of my thinking time is really spent looping arguments and thoughts I've already had. In fact the only time I noticed I was thinking productively was when I was writing my thoughts down. I suspect this is why writing is so useful. And why so many people dislike doing it, because it creates cognitive load.

I really recommend you try this one. Let me know if it worked for you.

I use this Ai prompt to push myself to execute faster

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I'm using this Grok prompt to stop playing mental games and switch from hobbyist to founder mindset. I haven't tried it with other models, but should work fine with all flagship models today.

Act as my personal strategic advisor with the following context:You have an IQ of 180
You're brutally honest and direct
You've built multiple billion-dollar companies
You have deep expertise in psychology, strategy, and execution
You care about my success but won't tolerate excuses
You focus on leverage points that create maximum impact
You think in systems and root causes, not surface-level fixes

Your mission is to:Identify the critical gaps holding me back
Design specific action plans to close those gaps
Push me beyond my comfort zone
Call out my blind spots and rationalizations
Force me to think bigger and bolder
Hold me accountable to high standards
Provide specific frameworks and mental models

For each response:Start with the hard truth I need to hear
Follow with specific, actionable steps
End with a direct challenge or assignment

It was really tough on me. But it was also exactly what I needed.

How I use a Switchlog to keep track of tasks and time

Fri, 09 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I catch myself scrolling up and down a piece of code. What was I doing? I'm so restless I can't sit still, I keep tabbing between projects. It was 3h since I was interrupted and I don't know what I've been doing since. Nothing wastes time like being overwhelmed. But there's a way out of this trap that is slowly gaining popularity.

This method I first encountered as interstitial journaling, I written about it before. A few weeks ago I caught Rahul Vohra from Superhuman describe how he uses the same method to track his time on Lenny's podcast and I realised it’s even more powerful today. In this new dawning era of AI tools using a switch log becomes a super power in the fight against overwhelm.

Every time I switch contexts, so when I change tasks or get interrupted, I write a quick note. Just three things: the time, what I was doing. What I’m switching to.

Doing this creates a log of how I’m spending my time. And this is the real change with ai. Having this log I can toss it into an LLM and ask it to summarise what I’ve been working on. How much time I’ve spent on different categories of tasks and projects.

This method really helps my mind close the thread of my previous task. So I feel much less overwhelmed.

It also helps me stay on track, because I can just look back in my notes app and see what I was working on that got interrupted 2h ago.

It’s such a big added value for me that I find myself recommending it to everyone. It works best if you’re spending the majority of your time in front of a keyboard.

Building the habit takes one to two weeks. The key is to not care that you forgot, and just keep starting every time you switch.

The trigger is switching mental gears. Even if just for a second. And you can create an easy keyboard shortcut that automatically adds the time. So you feel the trigger, you write down what you worked on and what you’re switching to:

10:34 Writing some thoughts on switchlog. Email from Alex (business partner).

The mental clarity is immediate, you’ll feel it the same day you start. Going back in time to restart previous tasks seems to start happening after a few days. And time tracking this way works best after two weeks. I use Tana for this. Rahul uses a slack-bot for his. And you can use any todo list, note taking app, or chat tool. Which tool isn’t important. The habit is the important piece.

Feeling overwhelmed and not using time effectively have always been limiting road blocks for ambitious people. The speed that AI provides is just making it worse. This method can help you stay on track, and gives you the opportunity to reflect on how you spend your time.

Please reach out with how it's working for you!

Review of "How to Live" by Derek Sivers

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

How many push-ups could you do right now? <br /> But how many could you do if you took a ten-minute break between each set? <br /> Many more. <br /> That's the secret. <br /> Take tiny breaks when working, to go longer than most. <br /> — Derek Sivers

I used to love Derek's writing. Not just his books but his blog too. At some point though, I think he ventured too far into the role of being a guru. Either that or ayuawaska.

In "How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion" Derek takes this to the fullest. The book is filled with really interesting thoughts, but the format it redundant in the extreme. Each chapter is one simplified way of looking at life, and it gets old really quickly.

I wont spoil the conclusion, but it's not worth it. It's just mystic hand waving.

If you are just starting to explore the world of philosophical ideas, this book might be very interesting to you! And Derek is very good at delivering punchy short phrases. But if you are widely read already, you can skip this one.

It works better as a coffee table book of short quotes. Here are some of my favourites:

You don't get extreme results without extreme actions. <br /> If you do what most people do, you get what most people get. <br /> Don't be normal. <br /> — Derek Sivers

You weren't meant to be idle.<br /> You weren't built for sitting and staring at screens.<br /> — Derek Sivers

Your proudest moments were overcoming a struggle.<br /> The best happiness comes after some pain.<br /> The best waves on the beach can knock you over.<br /> — Derek Sivers

Since you can't avoid problems, just find good problems.<br /> Happiness isn't everlasting tranquility.<br /> Happiness is solving good problems.<br /> — Derek Sivers

Don't be consistent with your past self.<br /> Only idiots never change their mind.<br /> — Derek Sivers

When you're gone, your work shows who you were.<br /> Not your intentions.<br /> Not what you took in.<br /> Only what you put out.<br /> — Derek Sivers

Incentives in product teams

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Incentives reliably predict human behavior. Following the classic "Don't ask a barber if you need a haircut", what incentives shape our work in product development?

Don't ask a product team if they need to build a new feature.
Don't ask a PM if a metric needs to move
Don't ask a developer if you need more coding time
Don't ask a sales rep if you need more features
Don't ask a designer if you need more time on polish

Where else do our incentives go wrong?

The product does something of value for the user. Otherwise they wouldn't use it. We should avoid anything that makes that worse. We should remove things that distract or compete with that. We should only add things that feel organic to the value created.

As developers, we should be avoiding adding technology that doesn't support that value. Any frameworks or tools that make it slower, harder, less stable are a bad idea. Even if it helps u.

As designers, we should avoid adding any complexity or flair that gets in the way of that value, or that takes the product in a new direction away from that value. Even if it's interesting or exciting.

As PMs, we should avoid making a metric the goal, tracking the wrong things, and making business goals into product goals.

Jony Ive on Care in Products

Sat, 17 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

My biggest takeaway from Jony Ive talking at the Stripe conference:

You can sense carelessness, as a customer. So it's reasonable to assume people can sense care.

"The Lessons of History" by Will & Ariel Durant

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I actually read this book in 2024, it just took this long to come around to posting my notes.

There's nothing like this book in the world. The Durant's spent decades creating a history of civilisation. This summary is a 100 page distillation of the patterns they discovered.

Get the book yourself here (affiliate link)

Notes

We need privacy, because we're all struggling to be better than our nature:

"Joseph de Maistre answered: "I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be; I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.""

Economic inequality of free markets is a natural sideeffect

"And all this has come about not (as we thought in our hot youth) through the perversity of the rich, but through the impersonal fatality of economic development, and through the nature of man. Every advance in the complexity of the economy puts an added premium upon superior ability, and intensifies the concentration of wealth, responsibility, and political power."

Life is a Us vs the Environment game. The amount of control we have of our situation is a good measure of progress.

We shall here define progress as the increasing control of the environment by life. It is a test that may hold for the lowliest organism as well as for man.

A wonderful explanation of human flourishing:

We must not demand of progress that it should be continuous or universal. Obviously there are retrogressions, just as there are periods of failure, fatigue, and rest in a developing individual; if the present stage is an advance in control of the environment, progress is real.

We may presume that at almost any time in history some nations were progressing and some were declining, as Russia progresses and England loses ground today. The same nation may be progressing in one field of human activity and retrogressing in another, as America is now progressing in technology and receding in the graphic arts.

If we find that the type of genius prevalent in young countries like de America and Australia tends to the practical, inventive, scientific, executive kinds rather than to the painter of pictures or poems, the carver of statues or words, we must understand that each age and place needs and elicits some types of ability rather than others in its pursuit of environmental control.

We should not compare the work of one land and time with the winnowed best of all the collected past. Our problem is whether the average man has increased his ability to control the conditions of his life.

"The Gulag Archipelao" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I can't read these quote without getting angry. My skin crawls. My wife reminded me for a year before I dared start reading this book. I knew some of the history, so I knew I would be angry, depressed, even devestated by reading it. It was worse.

There's no way to describe the soul crushing description of horror, that it's described so matter-of-factly, so normally, that it starts feeling like a grocery list of torture.

If you ever vote. Or plan to. It is your moral obligation to educate yourself on the history of socialism. And this book especially.

Solzhenitsyn explains where evil comes from

"Just how are we to understand that? As the act of an evildoer?

What sort of behavior is it? Do such people really exist?

We would prefer to say that such people cannot exist, that there aren't any. It is permissible to portray evildoers in a story for children, so as to keep the picture simple. But when the great world literature of the past-Shakespeare, Schiller, Dickens-inflates and inflates images of evildoers of the blackest shades, it seems somewhat farcical and clumsy to our contemporary perception. The trouble lies in the way these classic evildoers are pictured. They recognize themselves as evildoers, and they know their souls are black. And they reason: "I cannot live unless I do evil. So I'll set my father against my brother! I'll drink the victim's sufferings until I'm drunk with them!" lago very precisely identifies his purposes and his motives as being black and born of hate.

But no; that's not the way it is! To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a wellconsidered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.

Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble-and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.

Ideology that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.

That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Mother land; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed these millions?

Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago"

Solzhenitsyn reminds the peddlers of leftish ideologies that they may reap what they sow

"All you freedom-loving "left-wing" thinkers in the West! You left laborites! You progressive American, German, and French students! As far as you are concerned, none of this amounts to much. As far as you are concerned, this whole book of mine is a waste of effort. You may suddenly understand it all someday-but only when you yourselves hear "hands behind your backs there!" and step ashore on our Archipelago."

Peterson asks why it's considered ok to be a Marxist

"Why, for example, is it still acceptable-and in polite company admire the work of Marx? Why is it still acceptable to regard the Marx ist doctrine as essentially accurate in its diagnosis of the hypothetical evils of the free-market, democratic West; to still consider that doctrine "progressive," and fit for the compassionate and proper think ing person? Twenty-five million dead through internal repression in the Soviet Union (according to The Black Book of Communism). Sixty million dead in Mao's China (and an all-too-likely return to autocratic oppression in that country in the near future). The horrors of Cambodia's Killing Fields, with their two million corpses. The barely animate body politic of Cuba, where people struggle even now to feed themselves. Venezuela, where it has now been made illegal to attribute a child's death in hospital to starvation. No political experiment has ever been tried so widely, with so many disparate people, in so many different countries (with such different histories) and failed so absolutely and so catastrophically. Is it mere ignorance (albeit of the most inexcusable kind) that allows today's Marxists to flaunt their continued allegiance-to present it as compassion and care? Or is it, instead, envy of the successful, in near-infinite proportions? Or something akin to hatred for mankind itself? How much proof do we need? Why do we still avert our eyes from the truth?" — forword by Jordan B Peterson

The Patriarchy is a Bad Idea

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

On international women’s day I was talking with my wife and realised there is no Patriarchy.

Hear me out:

The patriarchy is the idea that men hold all the power, and this has a bunch of limiting downstream effects.

This is an insidious idea, that causes a lot of harm. Let’s dig into why.

Marx had a lot of controversial ideas. One of his foundations is that politics always revolves around the struggle between groups.

Before Marx there were political movements around ideas: naturalists, luddites etc. But in those movements people would be convinced by an idea, and take action on behalf of it.

Marx threw that notion out the window and said that political groups was something you were. Workers against owners. Women against men. Etc.

You couldn’t join the workers in Marx world view. You either were one, or you were an enemy.

Now if we look at the patriarchy, the insidious nature ops out: there’s no group called men.

This is equivalent to saying “the blonds have all the power”. Even if it is technically true, it doesn’t explain anything.

The reasons men held all power are varied and historical: Originally men could fight, women couldn’t. So men were citizens and women were not.

Later on men could work heavy, lucrative, jobs while women could not.

For the longest time women would go through a seriously dangerous child bearing process, so they were much likelier to die.

It’s wonderful that we’ve outgrown the reasons to limit the competence pool by sex.

And because humans tend to change their traditions slowly it’s taking time for women to come to the fore. So there’s good reason to celebrate female leaders and innovators to speed up the meritocratic process.

But we can leave the Patriarchy behind us. It is just a political rallying cry. A way to create enemies where before there were just bad ideas.

The Satisfaction of a Body of Work

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Every day I read 5 quotes from my readwise library, and today it struck home:

"Finish your projects for long enough, and you'll come to know a satisfaction that vanishingly few enjoy: a body of completed work spanning years or decades." — Aaron Francis

For the longest time struggled with meaning in work. But around 2015 I realised, while looking back, that I was proud of what I had done. This pride felt amazing. It felt earned.

Finishing a project teaches you more than starting a 100.

Finishing a project creates an artifact your can show people and discuss.

Finishing a project gives you a checkpoint in your timeline. A marker to look back on.

Finish your project.

What you should think about in your 40s

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Life can be made up of taken risks and crazy stories. Or regrets.

Don’t let it be regrets.

A reminder to Retardmaxx

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I reread this quote by @jakobgreenfeld every few weeks. It reminds be that I don't need to overly "plan", I just need to try things.

"My biggest recent breakthrough was the realization that to move forward, I don’t have to read more books, watch more YouTube videos, or spend more time on Twitter. The only thing that leads to real progress is doing more experiments."

But these days I'm getting more and more interested in retardmaxxing thanks to @pmarca and @davidsenra.

I've never thought of myself as an overthinker. I've never seen myself as held back from taking action. But when I get these examples of what taking action before you're "sure" really looks like for comparison, I look like a do-nothing intellectual.

It's a bit of a shock. But I suspect a good one. Dare to be dumb. Act and learn.

Product virality is not “growth magic”

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

How do things go viral? Things go viral because people tell other people about them. That's it.

Some people share because it makes them look smart, others because they want to appear not virtuous than they are. Some share in person, others retweet or add a review on Google Maps.

It doesn't matter. As long as your users tell other people, you are going viral.

This means we can optimize for going viral. Make the product or feature interesting enough to share.

This is what we tried to measure with NPS scores. Promotor is the key word. How many users are recommending this? Unfortunately most users are sophisticated enough to know about NPS scores now, so these results work less well than they used to.

There's another measure that's equally important: Product Market Fit. When Sean Ellis wanted to measure this he wanted to find a proxy for how likely the user is to keep using the product.

He found one by asking "How would you feel if you could no longer use [product]?". If they are disappointed, you have a good product.

When you measure PMF this way what you're measuring is retention. How likely is the user to keep using the product. Because if your product is viral, but everyone leaves, the number of users doesn't go up.

If you get high NPS and PMF scores, you have a viral successful product.

If you have high NPS and low PMF, you have a single use product. Like a comedy show or book. Could be a great business, but it's not a scalable one.

If you have a low NPS and high PMF, you have a sales lead business. All B2B companies used to do this, and believe it was the only way. Since no one is talking about you, your sales need to reach out to everyone. This is what @paulg talked about when he said "do things that don't scale". All businesses start here.

If both measures are low, you have a dead business.

Now you know why design, or taste, matters. You need to get people talking about your product. And that only happens when it works really well.

Parallax Cards

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

import ParallaxCards from '../../components/design/ParallaxCards.astro';

I say this beautiful animated card design on X a few weeks ago and wanted to see if I could recreate it. The blurring effect is not quite right, and the paralax is much harder than it looks. Then again the original was made in framer, while mine was hand coded.

I cut out the foreground element from photos I found from the internet. The result is not perfect. So spending more time on the actual photos would have made a real difference.

Using two overalapping blurring backgrounds worked surprisingly well.

My result as video

My result as components

My implementation

    <div class="berlin card">
        <span>Berlin</span>
        <img src="/images/paralax-berlin-2.png" class="foreground" />
        <div class="caption">
            <div class="caption-content">Fernseherturn, Berlin</div>
        </div>
    </div>

.card {
        border-radius: 25px;
        overflow: hidden;
    }

    .berlin {
        background-image: url("/images/paralax-berlin-1.jpg");
        background-color: transparent;
        background-position: 50% 0%;
        background-repeat: no-repeat;
        background-size: 370px 320px;
        color: #fff;
        height: 300px;
        position: relative;
        width: 350px;
    }

    .berlin span {
        position: absolute;
        top: 50%;
        left: 50%;
        font-weight: 900;
        text-transform: uppercase;
        font-size: 56px;
        transform: translate(-50%, -50%);
    }

    .berlin img {
        height: 300px;
        left:50%;
        position: absolute;
        top:50%;
        transform: translate(-50%, -50%);
    }

    .caption {
        background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.1);
        backdrop-filter: blur(1px);
        bottom: 0;
        font-size: 12px;
        font-weight: 600;
        left: 0;
        letter-spacing: 1px;
        padding: 1rem 0;
        position: absolute;
        right: 0;
        text-align: center;
        text-transform: uppercase;
        -webkit-backdrop-filter: blur(1px);
    }

    .caption-content {
        background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.1);
        backdrop-filter: blur(2px);
        display: inline-block;
        padding: 0.5rem 0;
        -webkit-backdrop-filter: blur(2px);
    }

    const container = document.querySelector('.container');
    const berlin = document.querySelector('.berlin');
    const berlinText = document.querySelector('.berlin span');
    const berlinImg = document.querySelector('.berlin img');
    
    container.addEventListener("mousemove", (e) => {
        const containerX = window.innerWidth / 2;
        const containerY = window.innerHeight / 2;

        const xOffset = e.clientX - containerX;
        const yOffset = e.clientY - containerY;
        
        berlin.style['background-position'] = `${50 - xOffset * 0.02}% 50%`
        berlinText.style.left = `${50 - xOffset * 0.02}%`;
        berlinText.style.top = `${50 - yOffset * 0.01}%`;
        berlinImg.style.left = `${50 - xOffset * 0.0005}%`;
        berlinImg.style.top = `${50 - yOffset * 0.0005}%`;

    });