tech

How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

One major reason why is the #1 psychological ingredient in slot machines: intermittent variable rewards.
If you want to maximize addictiveness, all tech designers need to do is link a user’s action (like pulling a lever) with a variable reward. You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing. Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable.

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– via medium.com

This Is How You Design Your Mobile App for Maximum Growth

When it comes to onboarding, too many apps open for the first time to a series of sliding screens that do nothing more than look pretty and provide more reading about what the product does. Don’t do this.
 
The users who installed your app already took a set of high-friction actions to find it in the App Store, install it and open it after download. They didn’t do all that just to learn more about your product. No one pauses to read this text. And the very few who do immediately forget what they read when they have to take an action like filling out a signup form.

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– via firstround.com

Why I don’t answer most phone calls

Whether I’m working or spending quality time with close ones, I hate being interrupted. Most people want to call me because it’s “more convenient” for them, but in most cases it’s not reciprocate.

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– by Adrien Joly via medium.com

World War II’s Greatest Hero: The True Story of Alan Turing

A computer pioneer who helped defeat the Nazis, Turing was a war hero working in secret, a gay man in an era of extraordinary prejudice and a genius before his time.
 
Unknown to the general public at the time of his death, Turing was a World War II code-breaking hero who, as Winston Churchill would later recall, made the single biggest contribution to the Allied victory in World War II.

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– via nytimes.com