Great art makes you wonder,
great design makes things clear.
John Maeda, in ‘The laws of simplicity’
If Amazon owned YouTube…
We got a BT Sport subscription last month to watch Champions League and Europa League matches. The stream (we watch on the TV using Chromecast) often paused and skipped, often over entire plays, and at least once over a long sequence including the goal. It was terrible.
Before the finals, we remembered that BT Sport streams the two finals free on YouTube. So, halfway through the Europa cup final, I switched to streaming from YouTube. It was flawless. There was no pause-and-skip. At all! For the Champions League final, I didn’t even bother switching on the BT Sport app, and went direct to watching on YouTube.
BT Sport isn’t the only company with a terrible live streaming product. Eurosport player’s pause-and-skip is terrible, making all sports unwatchable. ITV is so aware of its terrible product that it doesn’t even offer live streaming on Chromecast, only recorded programs are available. These are just the ones I’ve tried1.
This got me thinking. YouTube has some of the best2 streaming infrastructure and knowhow. For instance, they understand that continuity is more important than quality in live streaming, so their algorithm dynamically reduces video quality instead of pausing live streams. They have content delivery deals with most network providers globally, helping reduce lag and data transfer. They basically already have all the infrastructure for a successful streaming platform.
What would Amazon have done if it owned YouTube in its current state? They would have productised the YouTube streaming platform, a la AWS and Amazon logistics, and opened it up for any company to use.
Stacked chart—order of data series
This chart in The Economist bothered me. It’s not a bad chart, but it could convey the data so much better if just the order of columns was reversed.
Once the data is reversed, it’s much clearer to see the relatively stagnant number of Republican women in Congress, along with the increase in Democrat women in Congress.
Big bonus ≠ quick promotion
Pay people based on how well they do their current job.
Promote people based on how well they’re suited to the next job.
Both need not, often will not, be the same people. That is fine.
Not chat apps
Chat apps were once for digital p2p1 communication—chatting.
Now chat apps have become the media for news, faux news, entertainment, memes, commerce, and more. They are a combination of, for old school web-ers, a portal, a usenet or yahoo group or bulletin board, and mass email (with everyone in cc).
With chat apps no longer primarily the medium for p2p digital communication, what is the new chat app?
In corporate environment, this p2p role is partly fulfilled by Slack DMs and email. Which app will fulfil this role in personal use case?
COV19 threat in two charts
Four months of gains lost in three days 
Safe haven
Scarry’s law
Scarry’s Law, formulated over a decade ago by this newspaper and named after Richard Scarry, a children’s illustrator, states that politicians mess at their peril with groups that feature in children’s books—farmers, fishermen, train drivers and suchlike.
—The Economist in ‘Britain’s regulatory-divergence dilemma’
Helps explain why some reforms are so hard.
Incomplete numbers
India’s premium smartphone segment grew 29% YoY in 2019; Apple was the fastest growing brand, up 41% YoY, and OnePlus maintained its No. 1 position
—The Economic Times (via Techmeme)
This headline is bothering me. It appears to present the idea that the Indian market is (finally) turning towards premium smartphones. But these numbers only present half the story.
It’s great the the premium smartphone segment grew 29%, and Apple’s sales (I presume) grew 41%. But from what base did they grow?
Also, how fast did the overall smartphone market grow? If the overall smartphone market grew by more than 29%, then the market share of premium segment actually shrank.
Half the numbers, half the story. Still makes it to the front page of Techmeme :/
Two GTD tweaks for Todo.txt for Android
I follow a slight variant of GTD, and use my Todo.txt for Android app for task list management. Here are two tweaks I use in the app for parts of the GTD process—quick capture, and easy identification of next actions.
1: Use a special project for quick ‘capture‘
Set up +quicktask as default project for new tasks
New task input opens with +quicktask already selected
I use ‘+quicktask‘ as default project for all new tasks to quickly capture them. This allows me to just note the task in plain English and continue with the task at hand. I don’t need to think about their priority, due date and all other things at the time of capture.
Writing the task down closes the loop and frees the mind. Applying the +quicktask project allows me to easily find the task later during the clarification stage.
When I’m in the clarify or organise stage, I filter the task list for +quicktask and process them.
2: Use a special tag to mark the ‘next action‘
I use ‘#next‘ tag to indicate the next task to focus on in a project. During the organise stage, I mark one task in each active project as #next. This ensures that I don’t have to look through the task list for what to focus on next.
My task list widget is now filtered by #next and sorted by due date. What’s on top, is what I need to focus on now.
Penny’s insight—women in science
From an episode of The Big Bang Theory…
Bernadette is being featured as one of the sexiest scientists in California by a fashion magazine. Amy criticises it because it highlights Bernadette’s looks not her scientific achievements. Penny defends it with something on the lines of…
… if fashion magazines highlighted female scientists, I might have become a theoretical physicist.
Amy and Bernadette’s smirks suggest that this may just be a joke in the series. But this statement is practical marketing1.
Marketers know to advertise where their audience hangs out, not where other marketers hang out. Featuring women in science magazines is an example of the latter—useful for career advancement of women already in science, but not useful for outreach to new audiences.
To encourage more women into science, we should be featuring more women scientists, more often in magazines that non-science women read. If women prefer reading fashion mags then that’s where more women in science (or business or tech or sports or politics) need to be featured.
Pretty, and pretty confusing
They look pretty, in a industrial chic kind of way.
The idea is interesting—
- Red action button in the middle,
- Operation instruction around it—‘Push to stop’, and
- Warning around that—‘Penalty for improper use’
And the execution is precise—the button’s radius, the width of gap around the button, and the width of ‘Push to stop’ ring appear beautifully aligned.
Every time I pass them, I get attracted to these buttons.
There’s just one problem. On every attempt, I read the message around the button as:
Penalty for push to stop improper use.
The clarity of message has been forsaken at the altar of design.
Humans don’t read in concentric circles. We definitely don’t read inside-out.
We read from left-to-right, or right-to-left, and top-to-bottom.
In an emergency, when this button would be usually used, we follow instinct—read as we usually do. Not as the designer wants us to—inside out, concentric circle at a time.
This button would be much simpler, and not much less prettier, if it just said ‘Push to stop’ up top, and ‘Penalty for improper use’ at the bottom. (My ugly sketch is below the fold)