beautiful digital spaces

I’ve changed the design of the blog, so that it is more simplistic. Just words. Posts organised by date. You can just scroll back through the timeline, pick a topic and explore some of the ideas that I was working through at the time.

The re-design has made me think about digital spaces.

We are already living in a metaverse. The only difference is that the medium of exchange of information is through a black rectangle, rather than through the different senses available.

We know that physical spaces greatly influence our psychology. Increasingly, its becoming clear that the same is true for online experiences - not only ‘what we consume’, but the form it comes in.

For example : paywalled articles written by journalists ladened with ads vs sub stack blog

Substack has a much nicer experience, irregardless of the quality of the content.

Crafting user experiences is a whole industry, and I’m no expert. But here are a few heuristics I’ve found that work :

1. Simple is better
2. Intuitive is better
3. Less is more