The core user experience is not a set of features; in fact, it is the job users hire the product for. Uber’s core user experience is to get a taxi easily at any time. The countdown, displaying when exactly the taxi will arrive, is a suitable feature that expands this experience. But Uber’s product works regardless of this feature. The countdown, on the other hand, cannot live without the product (the certainty to get a taxi easily at any time). There is a one-way interrelationship between feature and product: Features don’t work without the product. This is why designers should think in products first.
]]>Unfortunately, it’s an almost essential skill.We don’t have to accept everything in the world — but we do have to be able to accept when we fail, or accept when success doesn’t look the way we thought it would.
I worry sometimes that we’ve put too much weight on success. That we’ve sacrificed everything else to make success our religion and our creed, as though that’s where we can measure a life.
That’s where we get this idea that we’ve got to hack everything, or we’ve got to do everything. That’s where we get the incredibly misguided idea that people who are successful in one area must be experts in all others. We listen Jim Carey talk about vaccination like a few hit movies make him a medical expert.
]]>Warren Buffett plays the ukulele. Larry Page played the saxophone growing up. Scores of other entrepreneurs and business leaders have learned an instrument growing up or still play to this day.
There’s no denying the link between playing music and achievement.
Video games have been shown to improve memory, spatial reasoning skills, strategy, and even social skills.
So whether you’re solving complex puzzles, killing waves of zombies in a post-apocalyptic hellscape, or becoming a rich criminal mastermind in San Andreas, just play in moderation!
]]>Business deal — I am scared right before every meeting and will probably skip.
I’ve even left in the middle of the meetings because I was too afraid to speak.
New friend for coffee? I will cancel at last minute. Agree to give a talk? I will back out. Going to a networking dinner? I won’t speak the entire time.
When I was in a summer camp as a kid, I never spoke. They thought something was mentally wrong with me. So I got to just hang out in the one room with a pool table all day and just shoot pool until the buses came.
My parents would say, “What is wrong with you?” But I didn’t have an answer. I’d lie in bed at night and be afraid of morning. I just wanted to sit. I just wanted to read. Or watch TV. Or watch a movie. Or play chess with my dad.
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