Design@SAIF - Issue #28

"A network designed to withstand nuclear attack,brought down by toasters"

That line made me jump out of my Monday morning bot-like routine—the reference is to the massive internet outage on October 16th across the US thanks to a handful of IoT devices. A reminder, that we are as strong as the weakest link. But thankfully there are less unsettling things to talk about and share this week—from processes to a little fun history, a checklist of design-mistakes and more. Here goes—

We've all worked on flows that are "optimized for keeping our engineers busy rather than allowing us to quickly tackle the most important thing." Here's an alternate - would that work for you?

What's the difference between Emojis and Emoticons? If you've ever thought of how Emojis came to be and came to rule our chats, tweets and more—this is a definitive read for you.

My attempt at capturing the stumbling blocks of designs in startups. I run into these often and this (a longish read) is a short checklist on how these mistakes can be spotted and avoided. Thoughts, comments and critiques welcome.

"Fail faster" has been that over-repeated mantra, taking its much deserved place amongst the over-quoted greats such as Henry Ford's Horses-and-Cars and Maslow's hierarchy. But this, for a change, is not the "10 ways to fail faster and succeed" write-up but a reflection on the failure. After all, "failure may not just be another rung on the ladder to success".

&...

Poster by Holstee, inspired by BrainPicking

Detail of a Poster of the Seven Learning from BrainPickings' Seven years of reading, writing and curating. In an era filled with relentless productivity tips, apps and hacks—this stands out for me as a nudge towards balancing it with mindfulness and thoughtfulness. BTW PowerUp Issue 10 has 2 more learnings (BrainPickings completed its 9th year then).

Until after a bright weekend of lights—

Happy Deepavali,

@JDallcaps @SAIFpartners