[Weekly Retro] Innovation and social norms

#217 - Mar.2025

Hi there!

💡 Here is a quick idea before you head off to the weekend:

Sometimes you need to create new social norms to spread large-scale innovations.

Many powerful innovations fail to scale not because they don't solve important problems, but because they conflict with existing behaviors and beliefs.

Take electric vehicles as an example. Despite clear benefits, adoption remained slow for years until now where the social perception around EV ownership has changed.

New behaviors and technologies move through social processes and scale through networks of people.

Who are the connectors that can champion your idea?

What new norms do you need to create to change behavior?

🧠 Ideas from this week

Modern times

#213 - Knowledge bites on tech innovation, design, and creativity. It is never just about the technology. Is about how we use it to deliver memorable experiences.

César RodríguezCésar Rodríguez

What’s not going to change

#214 - Knowledge bites on tech innovation, design, and creativity. We’ll continue to design for people. Tools will change. People’s needs will remain constant.

César RodríguezCésar Rodríguez

How people process an experience?

#215 - Knowledge bites on tech innovation, design, and creativity. Three levels of how people process an experience according to Donal Norman.

César RodríguezCésar Rodríguez

Tell their story

#216 - Knowledge bites on tech innovation, design, and creativity. A user story should describe a user’s work and problem, not the engineering required to solve it.

César RodríguezCésar Rodríguez

🛠️ Practical framework

When creating user stories, context and motivation are much more important elements than describing the solution:

🤖 Gadget of the week

"682 custom parts. Built with two human hands."

the Seneca

the Seneca a keyboard dream from the future Learn about buying from $3600 682 custom parts. Built with two human hands. The Seneca is my middle finger to the aesthetic homogeneity and economic over-optimization of 21st century life. Its intricate mechanisms can only be assembled and tuned by human hands, over hours of

Norbauer & Co.

👨🏻‍💻 Interesting links

AI is Probabilistic – That’s Why It Needs Constraints

Computers used to exclusively follow rules; now they generate possibilities. Combining both approaches maximizes their potential.

jarangojarango

Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino

Who decided these personalized Siri features should go in the WWDC keynote, with a promise they’d arrive in the coming year, when, at the time, they were in such an unfinished state they could not be demoed to the media even in a controlled environment? Three months later, who decided Apple should double down and advertise these features in a TV commercial, and promote them as a selling point of the iPhone 16 lineup?

Daring Fireball

Designing for AI Engineers: UI patterns you need to know

A reference article with guiding principles, patterns, and personas to help designers become more AI literate.

UX CollectiveEve Weinberg

🖋️ Quote of the week

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” – James Clear

César Rodríguez
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