Interview with Leo Chang, Staff Designer at Darkroom Studios, on Visual Design
There are certain design principles you can apply to this like composition, hierarchy, color theory, and so on, but to the regular consumer, it’s the gestalt of all your design decisions that ultimately makes an emotional connection. We know emotion is so much of what drives purchasing behavior so the more nebulous goal of visual design is often pulling those levers in just the right ratio to elicit a desired connection to your product.
ven something as foundational as increasing white space in your design can instantly improve a customer’s perception of your brand’s worth when it’s done intentionally.
almost all clients agree that they need better look and feel in their digital experience, that they are looking to add some type of emotional signal that’s missing. But when it comes time to accept changes that address those problems, I’ve had several instances where clients are resistant to solutions that depart too significantly from what they’re already comfortable with. Usually that reservation is overcome when I correlate the visual changes to the ways in which the user experience is improved and the resulting impact on business performance.
There will be also times when a client expresses to us that they’ve never been satisfied with their brand or website and they point to competitors that evoke certain emotional qualities that they are aspiring to capture. In those cases it’s quite rewarding to be able to translate those more nebulous feelings into concrete terminology that gives us specific visual principles to bring in or improve on.
Interview with Jeremy Elder on Visual Design
I think most of the clients knew that good design would provide value, but ultimately I think they thought of it as the expression of the passion that fueled their business to begin with. It was something that made their vision tangible. A way to package (for lack of better term) their product or value to their prospects or market.
In marketing, I think visual design is used to guide a decision, while in applications it’s to isolate a decision. A marketing site might have one task in a flow, while an application can have many. With marketing, I might see it once, so a more liberal use of color or embellishment drives a more memorable or emotional guidance. In an application I (potentially) use it more frequently and am more task driven than emotionally driven, so something more plain is less fatiguing over time.
the most successful tools do both well, and understand the complimentary relationship. Take Linear’s recent popularity in the design community for example. The app is considerably plainer than the marketing site, but there’s a common undercurrent and degree of polish that is present in both and when you use the application there’s a degree of subliminal appreciation for how the design is simplified.
I believe recent macOS and iPadOS updates directionally point towards touch interaction and easier context switching more than they point towards the importance of “glassmorphism” or a soft and friendly vibe with larger border radius. Similarly, the return of skeuomorphism can hint at the need for more affordance. Focusing on the lighting, material effect, noise, or composition without understanding why they’re being used just leads to chasing aesthetics, but not usability.
The Signal and the Corrective
A technical breakdown of 'narratives' and how they operate: narratives simplify issues by focusing on a main "signal" while ignoring other relevant "noise", and this affects discussions between those with opposing preferred signals. It goes into many examples across basically any kind of ideological or cultural divide.
AI summary:
- The article explores how different people can derive opposing narratives from the same set of facts, with each viewing their interpretation as the "signal" and opposing views as "noise"
- Key concepts:
- Signal: The core belief or narrative someone holds as fundamentally true
- Corrective: The moderating adjustments made to account for exceptions to the core belief
- Figure-ground inversion: How the same reality can be interpreted in opposite ways
- Examples of opposing narratives include:
- Government as public service vs. government as pork distribution
- Medical care as healing vs. medical care as harmful intervention
- Capitalism as wealth creation vs. capitalism as exploitation
- Nature vs. nurture in human behavior
- Science as gradual progress vs. science as paradigm shifts
- Communication dynamics:
- People are more likely to fall back on pure signals (without correctives) when:
- Discussions become abstract
- Communication bandwidth is limited
- Under stress or emotional pressure
- Speaking to unfamiliar audiences
- In hostile environments
- People are more likely to fall back on pure signals (without correctives) when:
- Persuasion insights:
- It's easier to add correctives to someone's existing signal than to completely change their core beliefs
- People must feel their fundamental views are respected before accepting criticism
- Acknowledging partial validity of opposing views is crucial for productive dialogue
- Problems in modern discourse:
- Online debates often lack real-world consequences
- When there's no need for cooperation, people prefer conquest over consensus
- Lack of real relationships reduces incentives for civility and understanding
- The author notes that while most people hold moderate views with both signals and correctives, fundamental differences can be masked when discussing specific policies but become apparent in discussions of general principles
- The piece maintains a thoughtful, analytical tone while acknowledging the complexity and challenges of human communication and belief systems
- The author expresses personal examples and vulnerability in describing how they themselves react differently to criticism based on whether it comes from those who share their fundamental values
narratives contradicting each other means that they simplify and generalize in different ways and assign goodness and badness to things in opposite directions. While that might look like contradiction it isn’t, because generalizations and value judgments aren’t strictly facts about the world. As a consequence, the more abstracted and value-laden narratives get the more they can contradict each other without any of them being “wrong”.
“The free market is extremely powerful and will work best as a rule, but there are a few outliers where it won’t, and some people will be hurt so we should have a social safety net to contain the bad side effects.”
and
“Capitalism is morally corrupt and rewards selfishness and greed. An economy run for the people by the people is a moral imperative, but planned economies don’t seem to work very well in practice so we need the market to fuel prosperity even if it is distasteful.”
. . . have very different fundamental attitudes but may well come down quite close to each other in terms of supported policies. If you model them as having one “main signal” (basic attitude) paired with a corrective to account for how the basic attitude fails to match reality perfectly, then this kind of difference is understated when the conversation is about specific issues (because then signals plus correctives are compared and the correctives bring “opposite” people closer together) but overstated when the conversation is about general principles — because then it’s only about the signal.
I’ve said that when discussions get abstract and general people tend to go back to their main signals and ignore correctives, which makes participants seem further apart than they really are. The same thing happens when the communication bandwidth is low for some reason. When dealing with complex matters human communication tends not to be super efficient in the first place and if something makes subtlety extra hard — like a 140 character limit, only a few minutes to type during a bathroom break at work, little to no context or a noisy discourse environment — you’re going to fall back to simpler, more basic messages.
Internal factors matter too. When you’re stressed, don’t have time to think, don’t know the person you’re talking to and don’t really care about them, when emotions are heated, when you feel attacked, when an audience is watching and you can’t look weak, or when you smell blood in the water, then you’re going to go simple, you’re going to go basic, you’re going to push in a direction rather than trying to hit a target. And whoever you’re talking to is going to do the same. You both fall back in different directions, exactly when you shouldn’t.
It makes sense to think of complex disagreements as not about single facts but about narratives made up of generalizations, abstractions and interpretations of many facts, most of which aren’t currently on the table. And the status of our favorite narratives matters to us, because they say what’s happening, who the heroes are and who the villains are, what’s matters and what doesn’t, who owes and who is owed. Most of us, when not in our very best moods, will make sure our most cherished narratives are safe before we let any others thrive.
Most people will accept that their main signals have correctives, but they will not accept that their main signals have no validity or legitimacy. It’s a lot easier to install a corrective in someone than it is to dislodge their main signal (and that might later lead to a more fundamental change of heart) — but to do that you must refrain from threatening the signal because that makes people defensive. And it’s not so hard. Listen and acknowledge that their view has greater than zero validity.
In an ideal world, any argumentation would start with laying out its own background assumptions, including stating if what it says should be taken as a corrective on top of its opposite or a complete rejection of it.
Profile: haswell | Hacker News
For most of my career, I've been a full-stack dev, tinkerer, technologist, jack-of-all-trades type of person. Currently on sabbatical while I pivot to something...different.Consequentialist-ish, currently worried about the state of tech and its impact on society, and figuring out how to do something useful about it, mostly focused on personal/individual habit change.
Demystifying Burnout – A Deep Dive Into Its Symptoms And Remedies
I must emphasize that burnout isn’t just the result of a particularly taxing day or week at work. It’s not just the feeling of needing a good night’s sleep or a mini-vacation.
No, burnout is a specialized, clinical syndrome, recognized and categorized by very distinct symptoms. It’s a chronic state of being, a silent whisper of desperation that builds up over time, often unrecognized until it becomes a deafening roar that one can no longer ignore.
You might feel like you’re hanging by a thread, with one small tug capable of bringing the entire house of cards crashing down. Even after what should be a rejuvenating rest or holiday, you might find yourself still shackled by this relentless sense of emotional fatigue.
You might feel like there are structural constraints holding you back, preventing you from doing what you value in your work.
Your job may have lost its meaning, its purpose, leaving you feeling disheartened and dissatisfied. Even when you’re executing your tasks well, you might feel like it’s all in vain. The satisfaction and sense of accomplishment that used to come with doing your job well may no longer be present.
Stress is a response to the challenges and pressures we face, which eases with rest and relaxation. Burnout, on the other hand, is a persistent state of physical and emotional depletion that doesn’t abate with regular rest.
You might have entered your job with a certain idea of what you would be doing, only to find the reality far different. The tension between your personal values and the actual tasks and roles can lead to disillusionment and ultimately, burnout.
Imagine you’re an engineer who loves to innovate and create. You took your current job because it promised opportunities for innovation. Yet, as months pass, you find yourself stuck in a cycle of mundane maintenance tasks, with no room for creativity. The disparity between your personal value of innovation and the reality of your job can result in a loss of motivation, a decrease in job satisfaction, and eventually, burnout.
Picture this scenario: You’ve been working tirelessly on a project, going above and beyond your assigned duties. However, when the project is successful, your colleague who contributed significantly less receives equal credit or even more recognition.
In another scenario, suppose you and your colleagues have been voicing concerns about certain company policies, but those concerns are constantly brushed under the rug or addressed inconsistently. This sense of being unheard or feeling that the decision-making processes are opaque can lead to disillusionment and a growing sense of unfairness, further fanning the flames of burnout.
Do you feel like your work is no longer meaningful or effective, perhaps because of the structures of what you’re asked to do or due to perceived unfairness?
Snapchat, The Browser Company, and picking winning founders with Ellis Hamburger
Is the founder focused on a market opportunity, or a way that they want to change and improve our daily lives? It’s the difference between pitching the tool vs. the benefit. The best founders are always focused on the benefit—they’re putting themselves in the shoes of the consumer, instead of just building something because they can.
On how to identify a winning founder: “Great, thoughtful design. Great design tells you if the founder is focused, has good taste, understands the simplicity required to connect with the average consumer, and has a strong, specific point of view on what they’re building. It has always been my barometer. Great design is harder to identify than it sounds, though.”
Charles Melton on How ‘Riverdale,’ Heath Ledger, and His Childhood Informed His ‘May December’ Triumph
Yeah. I was thinking a lot about repression, and just not so much just the feeling, but how that would manifest through the body. How you can communicate so much by so little. If you see someone in the corner kind with their shoulders hunched and walking around and keeping to themself and not really taking up so much space, you feel sympathy for them. You feel kind of bad for them.
Opinion | Why Aren’t More People Marrying? Ask Women What Dating Is Like.
it seems that by the time men begin dating, they are relatively “limited in their ability and willingness to be fully emotionally present and available,” he said.Navigating interpersonal relationships in a time of evolving gender norms and expectations “requires a level of emotional sensitivity that I think some men probably just lack, or they don’t have the experience,” he added. He had recently read about a high school creative writing assignment in which boys and girls were asked to imagine a day from the perspective of the opposite sex. While girls wrote detailed essays showing they had already spent significant time thinking about the subject, many boys simply refused to do the exercise or did so resentfully. Mr. Cox likened that to heterosexual relationships today: “The girls do extra, and the boys do little or nothing.”
The Game is Afire: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes director Francis Lawrence on the still blazing legacy of The Hunger Games • Journal • A Letterboxd Magazine
There was just something magical that happened. We have that shot that’s swirling around her and it’s right after you see Cinna [Lenny Kravitz] get the shit kicked out of him and he’s probably been killed. She’s wildly upset and banging on the glass, and then there’s that music that’s ascending and the elevator starts to ascend, and it goes into darkness and then brighter, brighter, brighter, and you see the mats just start opening up. I think it’s a combo of her emotional state—the anticipation of seeing the beginning of these games again, the elevator rising, the music rising, the stuff opening up, and also feeling like you’re seeing it and experiencing it through Katniss’s eyes—that I think all just came together in that moment and made it so satisfying.
We were going to use the IMAX cameras and I decided, you know what? We’re just going to do the games in IMAX. That’s what makes sense—when we’re in the arena only. We’ll shoot these sequences with the IMAX cameras, these sequences with spherical lenses and 35mm, and we’ll blow it up, which meant that the transition was going to happen because our first time in the arena is as Katniss comes up.
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