• “Designers are trained to traditionally and classically solve problems. They’re almost like engineers of sorts. Then of course, they are also taught to solve [problems] with elegance. So when an emergency happens, they jump into action.” Paola Antonelli on the defining designs of 2020.
• “When in real life are you ever looking at a grid of faces? Never. It’s not natural.” John Palmer on how spatial thinking can make for better software design. Followup: a framework for designing spatial software. (Via the Culture Clash newsletter.)
• Rahel Anne Bailie’s ”uneven history” of content strategy.
• The Design Encyclopedia, “a vast collection of meticulously documented design tokens, components, page layouts, interaction patterns, and visualizations.” (H/t Nathaniel Davis)
• A USC study on the role of context in flagging hate speech in social media.
• New machine learning models provide new insights into the role of culture in shaping language.
• On emergence and agency. (H/t Benjamin P. Taylor)
• From my blog: Reflections on the importance of keeping a beginners mind as you progress in your career.
• Bill Verplank’s Interaction Design Sketchbook. (PDF)
• Some clever folks built a web version of Winamp and a museum of (playable) Winamp skins.
  

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• “All architecture is design, but not all design is architecture.” A great Twitter thread by Grady Booch about the architecture of software systems. (Many of his points also apply to the architecture of UX.)
• “Understanding the key properties of complex systems can help us clarify and deal with many new and existing global challenges, from pandemics to poverty and ecological collapse.” How understanding complex systems can help us manage complexity.
• “Seams aren’t just connection points, they are the space where the connections are made. Not every connection needs a seam, but, where seams exist, meaning, memory, and ‘what matters’ can as well.” Brian Dell explores our world’s vanishing seams.
• “The taste for this kind of mood — slow, quiet, meditative — used to be marginal but now, I’m happy to say, there are quite a lot of people at that margin. To me that signifies the emergence of a new type of mind, a type of mind we need in this new type of world.” Brian Eno in an interview about Mixing Colours, his new(ish) album with his brother Roger. (This music has been a salve for me in this stressful year.)
• “How to enable not users but adaptors? How can people move from using a product, to understanding how it hangs together and making their own changes? How do you design products with, metaphorically, screws not nails?” Matt Webb revisits Dan Hill’s work on Adaptive Design.
• From my blog: One of the hardest things about critiquing a product is putting aside our “expert” understanding of how it works.
• A16Z on the opportunities inherent in unbundling the verticals latent in platforms.
• I’m not thrilled about some recent changes to WordPress, the CMS that hosts my websites. A recent post by Ev Williams has me considering a possible change.
• How do you choose the right note-taking app? It depends on whether you’re an architect, a gardener, or a librarian. (h/t Benjamin Schneider)
• Ask Nature, a repository of natural strategies for solving complex problems — “it’s time to begin asking the rest of our complex planetary family how to build a more resilient, regenerative, and beautiful world.” (Via Recomendo, a great weekly newsletter from the folks at Cool Tools.)
  

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• Hugh Dubberly on how systems thinking is key for practicing design going forward.
• The information horizon, a useful concept for game designers — and perhaps designers of other information environments as well? (h/t Luke Stevens)
• “Once you are given a tool that operates effortlessly — but only in a certain way — every choice that deviates from the standard represents a major cost.” Amy Hoy on how blogging broke the web.
• A handy one-page guide to using RSS feeds by Matt Web. I love the independence afforded by RSS, but it’s hard for a technology that needs an elaborate explainer to be widely adopted.
• A brief history of the 2×2 matrix, one of the most useful conceptual structures around. (h/t Tom Critchlow)
• Sam Altman on what the best researchers and founders have in common.
• An interview with Abby Covert on her career path and why she went from solo IA practitioner to an individual contributor at Etsy. (Bonus: my conversation with Abby about remote work.)
• “User interface design has reached a point where looking at the past can provide inspiration and insights for our design activities.” A useful compendium of milestones of UI design. (h/t Moritz Stefaner)
• A case study of generative logo design.
• Ted Gioia on why Gregory Bateson matters.
  

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• In an interview for The New York Times, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey offered a good illustration of how it’s hard for startups to see the big picture.
• How Dropbox develops “North Star product experiences” — i.e., future visions for their products. (H/t Kenny Chen)
• Design Nonfiction, a series of video interviews that “explores and documents transformations in design between the Dotcom Crash and the rise of machine intelligence.” (h/t Peter Stoyko)
• An intriguing look at the structure of Google’s (software) design docs. (h/t Cyd Harrell)
• Ren Pope on the difference between data, information, and knowledge problems.
• Tim Sheiner on best practices for presenting numbers that change over time. (As in dashboards, etc.)
• Stephen Anderson released his first The Mighty Minds Club report, which is about exploring alternate futures. The best educational bang-for-the-buck I’ve gotten in a long time — highly recommended.
• The flexibility of software is enabling manufacturers to add or subtract features from products after they’ve been sold. This opens possibilities for new business models.
• A fantastic visual introduction to machine learning. (h/t Helen Armstrong)
• “Armed with 52 different bricks, let’s see what they can teach us about the design, layout and organisation of complex interfaces.” What you can learn about UI design from LEGO bricks.

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• A reminder that structure changes more slowly than look-and-feel.
• Google is redesigning Gmail so it works more like Slack. The result is a different conceptual model of the application.
• I’ve found remote brainstorming sessions to be less effective than in-person sessions, and I’m looking for ways to change that.
• “This is not going to be sustainable.” The shine is starting to come off remote work. (WSJ subscription required)
• A conversation about architecture and design in tech, via John Maeda.
• Alexis Lloyd on lessons from Jane Jacobs for creating more effective digital spaces.
• Six ways to think long-term by Roman Krznaric, whose book on the subject came out (in the U.K.) last week. (I’m looking forward to reading it in October, when it comes out in the U.S.)
• What I’m reading now: Bruce Mau’s latest, MC24. (I was turned on to the book by this interview.)
• A succinct explanation of the GPT-3 machine learning model.
• A fantastic interactive introduction to human network dynamics by Nicky Case. (h/t Patrick Newberry.)

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