Form over function; Robots are animals; Politics at work
Milk, No Sugar #277
💡Think
Are you familiar with Goodhart’s law? It’s both a useful and funny concept to understand
When you aggressively introduce a target as a measure of success, people will naturally try to bend the rules to meet it.
A classic example is a factory that wanted to increase the amount of nails they produce. Their employees decided to make tonnes of tiny (but useless) nails to meet that target – smart, huh.
A way around this is to track success through multiple measurement points.
An example being a target to reduce the amount of support tickets on our platform. The Goodhart’s method would be that you just pull the ability for people to report, but to actually help people, we could scan the tickets we receive to find trends and commonalities, then ship product features that solve these problems.
📷 Look
📖 Read
❶ Robots are animals, not humans
I thought that sea animals with lazers attached to their heads was just an Austin Powers joke, but it turns out that countries from the US, to Russia, to Iran have been training animals to be weapons since World War 1. It turns out that despite millions in investment into developing robots that can carry out this kind of stuff, animals are still far superior. So if animals are the closest thing we have to supernatural power, why do we always think of robots as looking like humans? This is a great read, and not usually the type of topic I share here.
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❷ In defence of form over function
Think about a significant purchase you made recently. Was a big part of that purchase driven by what the thing looks like? Was that actually the main reason? The fast and frequent releases of products (for example, a biannual iPhone update) that have marginal functional improvements are mostly sold to us on how their look has improved and we spiral into needing it to keep up. So the next time you’re working on an update to your product, why not think about how it’ll make people feel, rather than what it’ll allow them to do?
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❸ Why Basecamp’s new rules are controversial
The news this week about Basecamp’s new internal policies really disappointed me, because of how much respect I had for the way they ran things. If you’re not aware of what happened, or are and wanted to understand just why shutting down certain discussions in the workplace are an issue, this article has you covered. It’s a must read this week.
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Bonus round
Funny design tweet of the week
We’re hiring another Designer Advocate at Figma, so if you’d like to work with me, I wrote an article explaining what I get up to every day
I interviewed a designer at Babbel (the language learning company) about his career and being a designer as a new father
🎧 Listen
SM7 – The history behind Shure’s iconic microphone
You’re right, the title of this podcast is incredibly nerdy, but I promise you it’s not just for audiophiles. This podcast goes back in history – from Disney voiceover artists, to Elvis – to look into how influential Shure, and their SM7 microphone, have been on the audio industry for so many decades.
Listen to this podcast (22 minutes)
🙌 Share
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🙏 Thanks
Have a great week,
Luis Ouriach
@disco_lu