When someone has performed the same move 500 times and you have performed it 10 times, their speed feels like intelligence.
Remote
Raghav Agrawal
@impactology@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Former Diamond Dealer | Turning research on learning, cognition, and systems into interfaces that reduce confusion, cost and decision stress.
1429 Followers
3047 Following
50 Posts
Joined October 28, 2022
Learning to Imagine by Amy Kind
https://scispace.com/pdf/learning-to-imagine-37j5pkmd.pdf
Imagination works by combining, adding, subtracting and modifying material we've previously encountered.
You may never become someone who feels equally comfortable with everyone. There will always be people you simply don't click with. There will always be stronger personalities. There will always be environments where you are the junior person
The people who eventually matter most are not necessarily people with the highest titles. They are the people who have built something, know what they're doing, don't need to dominate every room & are secure enough in themselves to treat you like an equal
Education, money, designation, intelligence and all of that never mattered to me for relationships and friendships and my basic filter for a relationship (whether platonic or romantic) is "are you kind or are you an asshole"
"It takes immense strength to be bad at something in a world that only celebrates being the best.
The first note you play will probably sound unmelodious. The first sentence you write might feel clumsy. The first line you draw might be uneven.
That is okay.
Every master was once a beginner. Every expert once felt the same embarrassment. The only difference is that they chose to continue"
The Courage to Be a Beginner
https://medium.com/@Wini_Sathvika/the-courage-to-be-a-beginner-86da7ca40702
Screenshot of an X (Twitter) post by Aaron Levie arguing that the "hardest" work like math and coding is actually the most prone to AI automation first, because its results can be objectively verified and tested, while knowledge work like legal, marketing, sales, and budgeting lacks clear right answers and instant verifiability
https://x.com/levie/status/2083965372747882741
Customer/Client fickleness is basically job security.
RE: @impactology@mastodon.social
What burden is the human carrying, what ability can the computer contribute & what interface makes that contribution intelligible & controllable?
- Look for effort people are carrying because software has not yet taken responsibility for the right part of the work.
- Identify what computation can contribute and find the real technology capable of providing it
- Design the interface through which a person can understand and control that contribution and test whether the burden actually moved
Perceiving Potentiality: A Metaphysics for Affordances by Barbara Vetter
https://philarchive.org/rec/VETPPA
https://www.human-abilities.de/publications/vetter2020perceivingpotentiality/index.html
Vetter introduces a very useful concept for seeing ability of stuff, partner or joint potentiality.
What can two things do together that neither can do alone?
A key has the potentiality to open locks of a certain shape. A compatible lock has the corresponding potentiality to be opened by such keys.
I finally understood the value of dubberly style concept maps, its not really for stakeholder communication as much it is for having a compressed snapshot of all the relevant pieces of contextual knowledge, just enough that's needed, that can fit into the working memory of the designers, engineers to hold in their head while actually building the screens and flows for the feature set
Unforgettable Zhejiang Digital Nomad: My 3-Week Blissful Escape
https://chinatourtip.com/2025/zhejiang-digital-nomad-life/ https://chinatourtip.com/2025/zhejiang-digital-nomad-life/
"My Zhejiang digital nomad initiation began with what locals call “tea field vertigo” – that dizzying moment when you realize your “office view” is endless emerald terraces"
Organizing content in a way where all the loose threads are tied up well feels like more than half the job of designing
Its not easy to figure out a spine, a structure that synthesizes all the different parts of what you want your site or app to say or do
Designing for forgiveness: How to create error-tolerant interfaces by Tetiana Sydorenko
"Exploring how to design interfaces that feel intuitive and forgiving, even when users make mistakes"
https://uxdesign.cc/designing-for-forgiveness-how-to-create-error-tolerant-interfaces-af9146c8072b
Replying to
What hidden capacity is still present, and what condition would allow it to re-emerge?
That is different from optimization. Optimization assumes the system is already alive and functioning.
Revival design begins when the system looks inert, broken, silent, ashamed, blocked, exhausted, or dead.
It asks:
Is this truly dead?
Or is it dormant?
Is the seed defective?
Or is the soil wrong?
Replying to
Conceptual thinking does NOT transfer into execution automatically, It sets direction and constraints. That’s it.
After that you are blind again and you must learn through contact with reality.
Replying to
Design For Revival is an outsider’s paradigm of restoration, fit, and latent capacity. Of creating the minimum conditions under which suppressed generative capacity can return.
It applies to a person.
It applies to a student.
It applies to a mind.
It applies to a workshop.
It applies to an institution.
It applies to neglected tools.
It applies to ecosystems.
It applies to science itself.
Replying to
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What conditions are currently suppressing it? Fear, debt, time pressure, bad interface, poor incentives, lack of maintenance, isolation, noise, shame, underfeeding, overcontrol.
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What is the smallest condition change to test? Movement, music, sunlight, money buffer, better tool, less friction, autonomy, calibration, rest, lubrication, temperature, moisture, different feedback loop.
Replying to
@dogfox@kpop.social Thanks for this example, because of this I'll modify my post by adding "conceptualization purely via reading a text" vs your experience of doing it in the middle of a project
Replying to
@dogfox@kpop.social Was this your first experience of setting up a cryptographic protocol or did you have prior experience?
History of Mathematical Tables: From Sumer to Spreadsheets — https://amzn.to/4n93gs1
h/t @prathyvsh from twitter
https://x.com/prathyvsh/status/2051604581097083064
"Tracks the way in which tabulation evolved with mathematics. The last paper is one the rise of spreadsheets"
Replying to
Why reading feels useful but fails at execution
When you read you understand what something is, you recognize patterns when you see them and you can explain things but you cannot act.
Because action requires order of steps and timing of decisions
When you read your brain stores labels, when you build your brain stores a sequence of moves tied to consequences
My ultimate goal : Become irreplaceable to 5–6 mid-market companies by operating as a retained design partner inside their product decision loop.
In this model you are not a freelancer taking briefs. You become a retained design partner who sits inside 5-6 companies' product decision loop on an ongoing basis. Monthly retainer, not project fees.
The difference is a freelancer is called when needed. A retained partner is consulted before decisions are made.
One gold standard of any training any course should be long after the course or training is done what exactly can the person do think that he couldn't before taking it and what quality of life changes did that bring either to their life or to others life via application of that knowledge or skill
Atleast 60 days of the course being over, what is something that's permanently stored in their mind and body
Replying to
How can we distinguish irreversible decay from reversible suppression, and how can design create the minimum conditions required for dormant generative capacity to return?
Replying to
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What would count as first revival? A sketch, a prototype, a clear thought, a sprout, a stable signal, a working mechanism, a returned behavior, a successful measurement.
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What would suggest true irreversible loss? No response across many suitable conditions, structural damage, missing substrate, repeated failed recovery, decay markers that do not reverse.
RE: @impactology@mastodon.social
The north star for the ux bootcamp for me apart from getting a job
Give me a human situation and I know how to investigate it, find the burden, find what computation can contribute, turn that contribution into an interface, make it look good, and build the flow.
When entering a large field, do not build a comprehensive map immediately.
First build sketchy concepts good enough for the task: choose, compare, explain, prototype
Your concept of the field only needs to be as comprehensive as your purpose demands
“Before I practise interface design, I must first form a complete and properly integrated conception of interface design.”
No. You need a conception rich enough to guide the next class of decisions you are practising.
Why is figuring out aesthetics, beauty so hard
Everything else in UX has some logic to it but an imagination for aesthetics, styles in visual design seems random
Organizing content in a way where all the loose threads are tied up well feels like more than half the job of designing
Its not easy to figure out a spine, a structure that synthesizes all the different parts of what you want your site or app to say or do
Chasing a different China Dream, young digital nomads head for the hills By Laurie Chen
"In this mountain town in China's southwest, drifters and tarot card readers rub shoulders with tech entrepreneurs and artists. Many are former city-dwellers in search of an elusive prize in authoritarian China: Space for open discussion and exchange of ideas"
Welcome to ‘Dalifornia,’ an Oasis for China’s Drifters and Dreamers
"Welcome to the Chinese mountain city of Dali, also sometimes known as Dalifornia, an oasis for China’s disaffected, drifting or just plain curious. The city’s nickname is a homage to California, and the easy-living, tree-hugging, sun-soaked stereotypes it evokes. It is also a nod to the influx of tech employees who have flocked there since the rise of remote work during the pandemic, to code"
Distributed Creativity: Thinking Outside the Box of the Creative Individual by Vlad Petre Glaveanu
https://www.amazon.in/Distributed-Creativity-Individual-SpringerBriefs-Psychology/dp/3319054333
Starting from the premise that creativity is distributed between people, between people and objects and across time...volume concludes by examining the practical implications in adopting this perspective on creativity.
Accumulate a handful of unmistakable abilities:
I can reproduce a polished interface accurately.
I can decompose a workflow into objects, states and transitions.
I can identify what burden the human is carrying.
I can choose a computer capability that helps.
I can embody that capability through an interface primitive.
I can turn the whole thing into a coherent flow.
I can build the flow into something someone else can use.
Do the same moves again and again until they become boring.
Replying to
Because procedural thinking for building things is only realized through the experience of actually building. If you want to learn how to build, you can only learn by building. That's the experience for it. That's the knowledge for it.
You cannot retain how to build without going through the experience of building. If you read about building, your mind retains the words related to building, not the procedural moves, not the step-by-step.
How Matchmaking Agencies In China Are Helping Young Men Find Love | Chinese Matchmakers - Part 1/2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWDoYQ27JCY
China's Young Men Seek Love, But Do They Know What Women Want? | Chinese Matchmakers - Part 2/2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ8VVdGqqBM
"Even well-qualified men are not guaranteed success. Zhao, for example, meets many financial expectations, but his matchmaker said his challenge lies in understanding what women want — a gap that matchmakers are stepping in to address"
Simple Heuristics For Concept Combination by Edouard Machery, Lisa G. Lederer | The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality
https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/41264/chapter-abstract/350864707?redirectedFrom=fulltext
A model for producing complex concepts out of simple concepts
Replying to
Those procedural moves : what to apply, when, how, in what order can only be learned and retained by going through them. Not by reading about them.
I know it's the most obvious thing people say. But it truly hits you when you realize you've read so much and actually don't know how to build anything. Because your mind never went through the experience of step-by-step building.
RE: @impactology@mastodon.social
A software manufacturing business is the only business where the factory fits on your desk.
Had an idea for contextualizing figma UI practice in shiftnudge
Chunking flows of apps like this i.e in 5 sections each section with core features and each feature's five core screens and drawing them on a big chart paper, using ryan singer's shorthand and referring to Builtwithmars.com's catalogue
https://builtformars.com/cheatsheets
https://builtformars.com/case-studies
and then recreating those screens's visual design using the tutorials in https://shiftnudge.com/, https://www.interfacecraft.dev/
Wonder : The Extraordinary Power of an Ordinary Experience by Vlad P. Glaveanu https://www.bloomsbury.com/in/wonder-9781350085169/
Gives a scientific yet accessible account of wondering and offers practical tools for cultivating wonder within ourselves, our interpersonal relations, and within educational practice.
Lying flat in 2025: Chinese youth choose slow life over big city hustle | Jing Daily
Cities like Dali in Yunnan, Chengdu in Sichuan , and Xiamen in Fujian have become magnets for this new wave of migrants. Their appeal is a carefully balanced equation: they offer vibrant cultural scenes, natural beauty, and a slower pace of life while still maintaining the connectivity and modern amenities necessary for a professional life
https://jingdaily.com/posts/lying-flat-in-2025-chinese-youth-choose-slow-life-over-big-city-hustle