davidkatz

I started

This is an important point. You contribute most as a designer when you control or influence whatever is necessary to get to good design. In most cases, the largest levers of influence are not in which design patterns you use, but in the business decisions that make things simple or complex.

Learn the languages that best help you build the things you want to build. Programming languages are tools, and that's all they'll ever be.

Actually that can be entirely rational. When shareholders believe that management will run said assets into the ground, they value a company under book (asset) value.

If I have two hundred dollars in my pocket and without you knowing anything else, you might assess my value at two hundred dollars. However, if I had a thousand this morning and I'm standing at a slot machine with no sign of giving up, you'd probably think my $200 are on the way out.

First impression: feels undifferentiated. It doesn't seem to be particularly quick on the data entry, or particularly powerful on the analysis and reporting side. Perhaps there's something great about it, but if so at least I didn't get the message.

A lot of companies don't appreciate the competitive space they're in.

If you're building something that addresses a novel value proposition ("a machine that turns water into wine") you can say it like it is and expect at least some conversion from an audience which cares about your promised value.

When your value proposition is something like "better product management" you're competing with dozens of products which people already use and are happy with. Just saying "we're a better tool for product management" isn't going to fly. You'll need to communicate exactly why you're better.

I appreciate the friendly "talk to us anytime and we'll walk you through it", but I think as a strategy that suffers from a similar problem. It's not going to work with a muddy value proposition, most folks just won't bother.

It is. It also happens to be very good at reporting live rocket hits fast, which makes it a valuable resource regardless of their politics (which I don't agree with).

Yo's popularity entirely rides two facts: (1) it's a silly app, (2) it got a million dollars. We currently know nothing about user engagement and retention. I'd be surprised if anyone uses it for more than a few weeks.

Try describing what you do instead of labelling it. "I'm building an app that helps blind folks read".

Personally, I'm allergic to the word 'Entrepreneur', whenever I hear it I wince. Just say what you're building, plain and simple. I also wouldn't call myself a Web Architect, I don't really understand what that means, it just sounds fancy.

Also consider not giving yourself a title at all. If you really want a title, I'd go with something humble like "a guy who builds stuff on the internet".

For reference, this is my personal site: http://www.davidkatz.me/

Anyone out here that's using TapTalk and can comment on it's quality? Is it useful/fun? What makes it better than Snapchat?

I wish this was a mac app instead of a chrome extension. So many things I want to organise don't live on the web. Photos from my iPhone, screenshots I take with my mac, pieces of text I write, etc.

Nate Silver discusses the Fox/Hedgehog division in his excellent "The Signal and the Noise" frequently, and he largely takes on the meaning proposed by Phillip Tetlock in his book on expert political judgement.

The idea that Tetlock puts forward is that pundits divide into two categories, Foxes and Hedgehogs. Hedgehogs explain the world and make predictions according to one large all encompassing principle. Foxes don't, and apply different principles to different circumstances. Tetlock concludes, and Silver endorses this, that Foxes are better at understanding the world than Hedgehogs.

An example might be the (proposed) principle that free markets lead to increased prosperity. A hedgehogy capitalist might state the above as a broadly applicable principle. A foxy capitalist might opt for something like: "yes, many times increased freedom makes us prosper, but sometimes it doesn't, it depends, let's talk about the specifics".

I take this to be an argument about complexity. The fox side of the argument is roughly that the world is more complex than most people allow for, and one principle or world view will usually not cover an area of knowledge well.

Hi there. I have some experience with building user generated content communities. If you'd like to talk, feel free to email me.

Brilliant piece. Should have gotten more attention on HN.

I use MixPanel to track permissions conversions, and they're at roughly 60%. So 40% of users assume they're going to get spammed, even though they're not.

Yeah, I did that. You need to tell users to navigate several levels of their settings app, which is a pain. Most people never touch their settings are and are put off by having to deal with it.

Sure. As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I want to send users a "your order has shipped" notification, when an order they paid for shipped.

I understand, and that's why it's tragic. I and my audience needs to suffer because other developers abuse the system. I'm calling into question whether there is not a better way.

I think you're making generalised, quick calls because you've been burned by spam, which I get. Doesn't mean there aren't a ton of apps out there that would provide value with notifications but are hard to assess.

I don't think it's a false analogy. I didn't not try to argue that the burden is equal, just that granular control can always come with benefits. For some apps, "failing gracefully" means not delivering a large part of the app's value, and that's a shame.

I believe that there are better ways to solve this problem, and that educating users to delete apps, and thereby educating developers to be conservative with their notifications is part of the solution.

Author here. Of course it occurred to me, but the problem is that users often can't predict if they want notifications or not, or how critical notifications are to the product. I'll give you a real world example from another permissions process - location.

One of the apps I work on is a neighborhood market place. It's all about seeing what people are selling around you, and requires location. The name of the app is roughly 'neighborhood', the marketing materials call it out in big letters, the permissions message clearly explains why the app needs location access. Still, people reflexively see a permissions dialogue and deny. Then the app doesn't work, and they contact support asking why.

I'd wager to say that I do. I'll give you a concrete example. People order goods, and I want to send them a "Your order has shipped!" notification. People who paid for something want to know that it has shipped and is on route to them. When I give them a push notifications permissions dialogue, they assume I'm going to bomb them with promotional material. I'm not, and they're missing out on a better experience.

One workaround is to better explain what notifications are for, but I've thrown days of work at designing better notifications permissions funnels. Lovely graphics, succinct messages that explain exactly what you're going to get, and it helps a little, but not enough. People are so negatively impressed by notifications, they often almost reflexively deny permissions.

I understand the problem of spam in notifications, but my question is, what's wrong with deleting an app that spams you, or not installing it in the first place if you don't trust their use of push notifications?

I've done all of that, and it solves some of the problem, but still falls short. Ultimately, my experience is that users just aren't well equipped to decide if notifications are worth it or not. My notifications are silent (no sound), and relevant ("Your order has shipped!"), but people wouldn't know it. When they see a request for push notifications, they assume they're going to get free coin promotions, which is a shame.

Yeah. I'm not saying that Apple is the only option, but surely an Apple option is theoretically better than Stripe. Entering credit card details on a phone keyboard isn't great, no matter how well executed.

Even when having the option of using Stripe, I'm not sure I'd take it over PayPal today.

The thing is, a lot of apps can't work without push, or work a lot worse without push, and I think users aren't well equipped to decide in a few seconds.

I think you can always find a case for more granular control. Say, if iOS enabled you to control the camera access or the microphone access for each app, we could find some class of users which might benefit from it. The question is, at what price?

The difference is that it enables your trust/don't trust decision. An app that requires access to your location and contacts has to be more trustworthy than an app that doesn't.

I think that most users aren't that well equipped to make these kind of decisions. How could they know how critical contacts or location permissions are to the product? I think users need to make a trust/don't trust call on each app, and Android does this well.

Here's to another round of correlation/causation errors. Brace yourself.

It's not a genuine worry for me, just something I think about from time to time, when I realize that an interaction (either a hand shake or a hug) was slightly awkward for one of the parties.

Other people don't need to give something the same amount of attention that I do for it to become a meaningful subject of thought for me. I also don't think that people generally take offense when (say) I give them a handshake instead of a hug, or the other way around. At worst, it creates some momentary awkwardness. All that said, it's still interesting.