Weeknotes 3
Layoffs at Intercom
Last week, I couldn’t bring myself to post Weeknotes. On Monday 14th, a second round of layoffs kicked off at Intercom (the first wave was in September). I count myself lucky for not being directly impacted, however two designers on my team are considered, and entered consultation process. I have many thoughts about this: from a perspective of a line manager of impacted employees, from a product leadership perspective, from individual perspective on companies and employers, and from a business angle.
However, I'm not ready to reflect and write about this yet. Still, I wanted to acknowledge that this occurred, mainly as a mental note to synthesise my thoughts and what I have learned from this situation. I’m determined to write more when I create an emotional distance.
In the meantime, check layoffs.fyi for a filterable and up-to-date view of layoffs across tech.
Design Threads - a must read of the week
If there’s one link you should follow from this post, one thing you’ll read this week, it must be this one: Design Threads.
What is good design? Who gets to decide? How are designers feeling right now? Are we tasked with too much? Are we doing enough? How is our role changing? Where does design go from here?
The report tackles everything from the question as old as design itself: ‘What is good design?’ all the way to NFTs and impact of AI tools.
I can’t remember when I was so excited about a trend report. The quality of synthesis, presentation and storytelling are excellent. You’ll get inspired, and your thinking will be challenge just by skimming though it. I guarantee that.
Curation, recommendations and meaning
I remember the days when AltaVista was a bustling web city (I’m just showing off my age now!). Using directories was the primary way of looking for websites. Everyone did it because search was pretty much useless. Then Google happened and I never thought I’d see a web directory again. I was obviously wrong.
I re-discovered DMOZ (“largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web” ) this week. I remember submitting a couple of sites to the directory back in the days, but I haven’t used it for many years, and frankly I completely forgot about it. DMOZ catalogue hasn’t been updated for a few years now, but a sister project, Curlie, is very much alive and well worth a browse!
Last but not least, you need to check out ooh.directory, catalogue of blogs, just in case you thought blogs are dead. Hint: they’re not.
What do AltaVista, DMOZ, Curlie, and OOH have in common? Human curation. AltaVista’s web catalogue was an exception I guess, as anyone could add their site. Curlie (and previously DMOZ) as well as OOH are way more curated. One can suggest a website or a blog to be added to the catalogue, but that doesn’t guarrantee that the site will be added.
We have seen a ton of algorithmic curation happening since early 00s. The most apparent at first was Google search, with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok being the next most obvious proponents of it. The promise was to deliver the most relevant content, at the right time. The idea was fascinating and convincing until the moment when cynical exploitation of personal data for advertising purposes became too obvious.
This topic is really close to my heart. I spent two years (2014/15) exploring the content recommenders and editorial tools during my time with the BBC Research & Development. My interests there revolved around recommendations beyond filter bubble. And while I think today’s Twitter’s algorithms-driven timeline does a solid job at serendipitous discovery, human curation has way deeper added value, as it can provide meaning. And meaning is something we’re yet to see when it comes to ‘AI’.
Hardcore initiation
I’m listening to Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed. The book is shaping up as my #1 read this year - and I’m pretty sure this isn’t recency bias.
In second part of the book, Matthew describes how cognitive dissonance skews cognition of those who came through ‘hardcore initiation’. Matthew gives a mixed bag of examples, ranging from studies in applied psychology and ethnography of world-end cult, all the way to horrifying criminal cases. The theme is the same for all those cases: those who come through intense and ‘hardcore’ process of ‘initiation’ become incredibly invested in the idea and subsequently, when confronted with facts that oppose their existing views, they don’t change their beliefs but rather spin the facts.
There are parallels and examples applying to recent politics, but I will stay away from that. Rather, I’d like to entertain the idea whether we’re all witnessing an (inadvertent?) creation of a cult-like environment, suffering from cognitive dissonance at Twitter.
One more thing: LEGO and design systems
Check this out. This is top notch component reusability. What can design systems learn from LEGO?
Thank you and see you next week!