July 25, 2023

Unit economics, invisible interactions, reconstructive memory

I keep reading things that proclaim the death of design and the resurgence of other terms that describe design.

What people fail to understand is that design is eternal, evergreen, and one really does not need a word for it at all.

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This week, for paid members

• Our paid lesson is about identifying low-converting segments through new analytics tools.
• And our design of the week shows a curious nav item that looks like a good idea on face, but after some inspection…

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Links

• In some of the circles I roll in, there is a general allergy to the idea of “bypass,” or “good vibes only” sorts of spaces. This is because, shocker, life is hard and messy. Any software that attempts to ignore this exists at significant peril, and is likely to structurally destabilize the collective at scale. Enter Threads, whose management appears to exist profoundly out of relationship to real-world collective dynamics. Like their owners, this product is likely to precipitate deeper societal collapse going forward, and should be approached with the deepest of caution. (Or never, really.)
• I’m probably dating myself here, but in high school we took a class called “consumer education” that taught us how to buy well and save money. One of the big lessons was to pay attention to prices per quantity, because a lot of things exist at stores that rip you off. Enter Baymard’s latest, with an evergreen lesson for online stores.
• A nice meditation on the role of “invisible” interactions in contemporary design. In what specific ways do we successfully present such interactions to a wider team, so they can be implemented as we expect?
• I actually hadn’t heard of the term “reconstructive memory” before, so this piece was really helpful for me. When I speak of the need for familiarity & consistency in design, as I’ve been doing since 2008, this is largely what I’m referring to.