Read
When I heard Hayes describe how his phone buzzes in his pocket whenever there is breaking news, I was actually shocked. Do people really allow their devices to interrupt them on a random reinforcement schedule? I mean, no wonder the internet makes people go crazy.
People do; and it does.
Like Cory, I aggressively manage my notifications and have a fairly similar hierarchy to him. I’m slightly more permissive about what can silently appear on my notifications screen, but in general, a few messaging apps are the only apps that can vibrate my phone (who would ever turn on sound for notifs?!) or even show banners when I am in a different app. And certainly nothing like email, news, or other opt-in content gets through. If I am curious about what is in my work email, I intentionally check it.
But I hate algorithmic feeds. To explain why, I should explain how much I love non-algorithmic feeds.
This related, but separate part of his piece is worth reading all on its own. Feeds consume our attention and why would we not also aggressively and intentionally curate what we allow ourselves to see in them, similar to notifications?
Read
Social networking and media should have always been temporal. These should be thoughts and creations you’re okay with letting go of into the wind. Social platforms are a distribution channel at best, and a mechanism to garner some notice. Some apps have leaned into this: messages that disappear or vanish, time-boxed content, and auto-deletion.
Not everything is worthy of archival. In many instances, you’d even cringe at something you wrote ten, or even a year ago.
If you told someone that in the future we would be recording every conversation in public spaces and allow total strangers to read and refer to those conversations, indefinitely, I think most of us would agree that that future sounds like a dystopian hellscape. Yet this is most social media today. As Naz says in this excellent piece, “Not everything is worthy of archival”.
Read
Sometimes, that pause before ordering a second burger isn’t judgment. It’s a kind of latent wisdom. Sometimes, the social constraints we’re so eager to shed are the very things keeping us from our worst impulses.
As a designer, I love friction. Friction acts as a constraint and sets the outer bounds of what can be accomplished in an experience. Social constraints help inform the norms that guide us in our day-to-day.
To use another analogy, if we design a road to increase the throughput of cars, some drivers will immediately take advantage of the reduced friction by driving faster. As those drivers drive faster, others around them tend to respond by increasing their speed as well, until the throughput of the road once again reaches a place where the friction in its design is noticeable—usually through car crashes and violence against pedestrians or other non-car road users.
The next frontier of digital design can’t just be about making things easier. It has to be about understanding when friction serves a purpose.
Friction is often a feature; not a bug.