2 days ago, for day 55 by 
Kent de Bruin ⚡
Notion did something really well. It made the mental model for restructuring data very clear for non technical people. Visualizing data in various ways makes you look at the same stuff in different ways.
That is the beauty of data. You can reshuffle it and use it in different ways....
3 days ago, for day 54 by Kent de Bruin ⚡
Writing is thinking, And this thinking for me happens within tools for thought. My digital notes are a tool for thought, as is iA Writer, Figma and my good old sketchbooks.
Different interfaces give me different perspectives on the information
My current writing/thinking process includes a lot of switching...
4 days ago, for day 53 by Kent de Bruin ⚡
So what makes the difference between good and bad software? It all starts with incentives. Software makers should ask themselves if their incentives are aligned with those of the users. For a lot of the modern day apps, the incentives are fundamentally misaligned.
Business model
Misalignment starts with the...
5 days ago, for day 52 by Kent de Bruin ⚡
*Possible intro. Not sure if I like it. Seems like I need a story to start with. Maybe nice to compare technology progress in a different decade. How did people think about the technological progress around the Second World War? That a lot of our technology is harmful in 2021...
1 week ago, for day 49 by Kent de Bruin ⚡
As the writer and designer Frank Chimero writes: “it must not only look good and feel good, it must also be good.”
I do believe that software can create positive change. However, the ones that we have now have been been built by corporations to capitalize on our attention and...
1 week ago, for day 48 by Kent de Bruin ⚡
Free is complicated - Advertising
When it comes to social apps, free is... well, complicated.
When your business is advertising, your marching orders are to connect more people and maximize the time spent on your app.
have never been a fan of advertising as a business model...
2 weeks ago, for day 43 by Kent de Bruin ⚡
Another try at creating a cohesive outline for an essay I've been exploring for the last month. It's crazy how much time it takes me to come to a cohesive story. Keeping an overview of the thought process and different argument has been proven to be pretty difficult. It has...
2 weeks ago, for day 42 by Kent de Bruin ⚡
Subscriptions on the other hand are easy.
You pay, the company delivers. It can't be clearer than that. Incentives are aligned. If you don't like the product you quit your subscription.
Headspace benefits financially from you making mindfulness part of your daily routine, because they monetize through subscriptions. If they...
2 weeks ago, for day 39 by Kent de Bruin ⚡
scrap notes on ideas around the personal computer:
Not driven on apps but on intent, moving to completion rather then productivity. Almost everything that has a physical place in this world also has a digital equivalent. Early on we called this skeumorpishm. That macOS and the desktop interface have not...
2 weeks ago, for day 38 by Kent de Bruin ⚡
These are early ideas on starting a design research lab:
Lately I've been thinking and talking a lot about starting a design research lab. A collective of ambitious individuals that all center around the topic of the next decade of computing.
So why starting a research lab together with others...
