Saturday, June 20, 2026 · 9:41 AM
ok dumb question, what’s the deal with a redesign won't save you?
The planning fallacy makes redesigns look easier than they are, and not-invented-here bias makes the old system look worse than it is. That is why starting over feels smart even when it mostly recreates the…
so the villain is... my brain trying to be helpful?
pretty much
your brain hates blank space, so it fills it with the nearest sample: you
Northcote Parkinson described this in 1958: teams spend two hours arguing about a button label while nobody questions the architecture that button sits on.
that feels rude but accurate
think of it like designing a hotel room while standing in your own bedroom. everything feels obvious because you know where your socks are
wait so the fix is just ‘ask users’?
annoyingly, no
asking helps, but the chapter is warning you about the gap between what feels true and what survives contact
In 2010, Digg launched version 4. The company was struggling, growth was flat, and the team had real architectural problems to fix. They decided a complete…
ok that’s the part people skip
yep. how products get messy is the trap door
then it shows up as starting over feels easier
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky identified the planning fallacy in 1979, and Buehler, Griffin, and Ross confirmed it in 1994: people consistently underestimate how…
so what do i actually do differently on monday
make the hidden assumption visible before the review starts
then test the behavior, not just whether the room nods
and if a choice only works for informed, patient, caffeinated people, treat that as a bug
that’s the series tbh
design psychology is mostly noticing the human nonsense before it ships
ok send me the next one after i recover
Read Sat, Jun 20 · 10:03 AM