The chat interface isn’t for everything. Sometimes people prefer browsing, especially if browsing is visual. Sometimes the getting to the thing that you want through window shopping is the point.
Something that a lot of people don’t understand about R&D: You want to share the break through with some research insight, so that the conversation is centered around the frame of the job or problem. If you share prematurely, you’ll get a lot of noise around technical rigor & over engineering.
You’re coming from a place where you assume the capability of the solution exists, and you know how the tech works and how to build it. Much of what I work on is about figuring out what the emerging tech needs to do in application of the problem.
Another example is testing a “Recent” recommendation against a manual browse. But you leave filters blank and ask the user what the option might be. This is to capture what other ways of discovering content that wasn’t currently available.
It depends. Early conceptual testing enable you to see trade offs that the user is willing to make between the poles. That durable insight can guide the entire experience. Great example is giving users full control vs on-rails in a 3D experience. This could be about exploration vs efficiency.
That’s right. But in my experience they are incredibly revealing and they often lead us to ground breaking ideas.
We’ve explored automation vs control, efficiency/fast vs manual inspection, decision support via insight vs personalized preferences.
Both. A lot of people — product included have trouble with research thinking. Part of structuring a test is to be able to see the possible test, ways to disprove, or manifest your questions at the ideation stage.
A lot of times, the innovation unlock comes from the disprove. It’s when you try to think of what might disprove the original idea or solution and you come up with a question or behavior you hadn’t considered. In the disprove you gain clarity on variants and apply rigor to the experiment.
You know that saying, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take?” Well you can’t call the shots if you can’t define what they are. In product dev, defining your shot is the first step to hitting them.
You know you’re old when you say “boil the ocean.”
I said this to someone yesterday: “My brain is leaking.” What I mean is there is so much information and I’m trying to make sense of so much on the fly.
I’ve had decades of experience in UX and UI. They are not the same thing. I find that despite the fact that Design has a lot of bluster when talking about validation, it is also the function that I’ve had the hardest time teaching experiment thinking to. There’s been years and years like this.
My brother installed a new sleek ceiling fan at my mom’s house but then I saw this. WTF?
Been rethinking information architecture in the world of AI. It’s the jobs that AI does based on expressed or unexpressed customer intent, and there’s structure in that interaction. It’s like a game engine.
If I can’t find the rational or principles in your thinking then it’s highly probably that I haven’t trusted you yet.
This notion where companies are launching their vibe coded prototypes reveal so many things. It all comes back to risk. When a chat experience falls on its face, it’s telling that companies could not or would not segment system behaviors. Perhaps they are willing to take that hit to check a box.
We have a stellar researcher on our team and I’ve asked her to provide weekly “hunches” or questions based on data.
If you cannot articulate concisely what you’re trying to learn, you have not understood the problem, and you cannot move ahead clearly with intent.
My brother is retired from being a senior technical artist for video games, and he told me that when they plan, he would think about the condition that would make things go to shit — who would be most impacted in terms of work load and he’d fight for that person.
My brothers and I are giving our mom’s home a makeover and they constantly call me for design decisions. Good lord I’m so over making decisions.
If you want to explore the future you have to be able remove any sunk cost fallacy. You might consider bulldozing the experiences that you’ve built. That’s hard to imagine especially if you’re whole identify is tied up with the house you’ve built brick by brick, the curtains you selected…
A lot of what I do is not about me. I really don’t have ambition. But I care about fairness, authenticity, creating space for curiosity, building critical thinking practices, celebrating authentic wins over performative smartness. These are the foundation for a healthy team.
One of the best advice someone gave me was, “If you want something, just do it and it’ll become yours.” Sometimes things take a little longer but the mindset is, you don’t need permission. There is some gamesmanship, like knowing how to position, and knowing when to fly under the radar.
Something I’ve known about myself. I can be very direct in my communication. When I work with science and engineering, it’s never a problem. But when I work with Design, I have to be more careful about how I deliver a message, how I say no.
Ambition always implies that there is a carrot that you’re chasing. For me, it’s about defining the right opportunity to chase, and the rest falls into place.
Historically I have conscientiously stayed under the radar to focus on some pocket opportunity I believe in. It’s the preservation of energy towards building and learning over alliance and aligning. Not sure if it’s possible now in my new role now but I dislike going where it’s already crowded.
We’re in SoCal and life is still pretty good here. I recognize that we are in a somewhat privileged position in many aspects. CA has is a bubble. I didn’t realize just how much of a bubble it was.
No matter how many times I question my identity, I always end up concluding that I am American. There’s a Vietnamese American guy on TikTok who went back to Vietnam to escape America and he realized that he didn’t feel understood. I can relate. I think and dream in English. That’s just a part of it.
Was at an offsite with the Research org today, and I gotta say it’s the most strategic research organization I’ve ever worked with. I feel like I fit much better in this org than within Design.