Instagram's evolution; Thinking beyond ourselves; Open design culture
Milk, No Sugar #287
💡Think
Do you ever disagree with your colleagues? Or is there a culture of agreeableness?
The fact is that we desperately try to build culture and this in turn means mono-culture, where everyone must agree and move in the same direction. As you can imagine, this leads us down a path where innovation stalls, because we fail to see outside of our bubbles.
Now I’m not saying we should barge into our Zoom calls on Monday morning disagreeing with everyone, but should try to get comfortable with sticking our neck out every so often and offering different perspectives or ideas that are a little bit outside of our rigid systems and structures.
Without difference, we will stagnate culturally; the opposite of our goals as we build teams.
📷 Look
📖 Read
❶ Instagram’s evolution
This week, the head of Instagram posted a video on…Instagram to explain where they are taking the product forward in the coming months. To no one’s surprise, it looks like they are chasing their competitors, rather than trying to innovate themselves. The thing is though that Instagram has always been chasing other products, rather than being the first in their field. Is there anything actually wrong with this?
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❷ Thinking beyond ourselves
Little bit of philosophy for you on this pleasant Sunday. This article puts a big ol’ mirror up to us (humanity) and says “stop thinking you created everything!”. The reality is that we see the human race as central to all the successes of the planet, but fail to address the failures we’re causing too. It’s time to consider how “our myopic worldview is endangering us”, and start thinking outside of our little homo sapien brains.
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❸ Creating an open culture (of design)
I know a lot of you aren’t designers, but the central message here is all about collaboration. The article addresses the issues that most of us want to be seen as “the person with the great idea” and most of the time our bosses want to gatekeeper our precious process because external feedback can derail our genius; this is simple not how design, tech, engineering, or anything in the workplace should be.
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Bonus round
If you’re into line drawings and comic books, this new one from John Cei Douglas is great. It’s a story about anxiety and the drawings are very sweet
I was the guest at a design operations event this week, had tonnes of fun and we shared some pretty sweet tricks on how to get started. It’s available to watch on YouTube
Episode #4 of my podcast 8px Radio is now live – Apple, Spotify, YouTube
🎧 Listen
Monzo CEO On Death Threats, Depression & Digital Banking Wars
I know, I know, this is a long podcast, but I had it on in the background whilst working and it was a fantastic listen.
One of the UK’s brightest finch startups – Monzo – has been through a bit of a rollercoaster the past 24 months, and it peaked with their founder deciding to leave because he just wasn't in it anymore.
This podcast is a really honest one with him and it’s rare to hear such heartfelt opinions about the struggles of work, especially coming from a founder.
Listen to this podcast (1 hour 48 minutes)
Spotify ~ Apple
🙌 Share
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🙏 Thanks
Have a great week,
Luis Ouriach
@disco_lu
Founding member special shoutouts:
Kevin Fernandez (@kvnfz)
Karl Barker