I upgraded my PC’s graphics card over the weekend and almost lost the card because I didn’t know that power supplies and PCIe cables (the cable that transfers electricity from the power supply to a component) are not standardized. The cables all look like this:
But apparently, the wirings are different, so if you use a cable incompatible with your power supply, you may damage the connected component. This violates two UX principles. 1. Components that look alike should behave alike, and 2. Prevent user errors from occurring in the first place. Whatever business reasons the manufacturers have, they better be really good.
Software Engineering ⚙️
Measuring developer productivity? A response to McKinsey
As the tech industry goes into “the year of efficiency,” the engineering leadership can no longer skirt around the issue of engineering productivity. McKinsey has published a framework to measure developer productivity, which, thanks to its brand, has made quite a stir. This 2-part article is a response to McKinsey’s framework.
I loved this diagram from the article. It clarifies different levels of measurement. We need to be measured by outcomes (customer behavior changes) and impact (revenue generated, strategic positioning), and never by efforts and, rarely, by outputs.
Unleash the power of Fragments with GraphQL Codegen
Since Relay’s fragment-first approach has proven to stay performant and type-safe at scale, other frameworks, such as Apollo and GraphQL Codegen, have been trying to recreate a similar experience. I will be playing around with Apollo Client’s useFragment hook next week.
People ❤️
Here’s a Technique to Get Your Manager to Do What You Want.
The key insight is to make following our plans the easiest option. This applies to anyone, whether we are convincing our colleagues to adopt new technology or planning a family trip.
The Psychology of Waiting: 8 Factors that Make the Wait Seem Longer
This list makes intuitive sense. We can apply this insight to the UX patterns for long-running user actions:
Allow users to continue using the system while running the action in the background
Display the system status legibly in real-time
Provide a concrete estimated time to completion
Allow users to abort the action safely
Business 💰
Exclusive: Meta’s Canada news ban fails to dent Facebook usage
When the Canadian government passed a law to force Google and Meta to share their revenue with Canada’s news providers, Meta decided to block news in Canada. A month-long usage stat shows no difference before and after the decision, proving that Meta has not benefited from news on its platforms.
Robotaxis hit the accelerator in growing list of cities nationwide
Robotaxis are now being tested across more than a dozen cities in the US. I find it exciting, but I am curious who determines that enough testing is done and the robotaxi services can expand. The companies cannot be trusted to make that decision.