UXDX

It's the most wonderful time of the year - performance reviews!

Everyone can improve and feedback can really help people identify where they should focus. But annual performance reviews are less about improving performance and more about a way to explain who gets a bonus and who doesn't.

If the goal was performance improvement then more timely feedback is much better as it enables employees to adjust and improve their performance continuously rather than once a year.

Research in behavioral economics and psychology suggests that bonuses are not an effective way of motivating people in tasks requiring cognitive skills and creative thinking (e.g. software development). And what's worse is the negative effect of missing bonus results in a larger hit on motivation than the impact of receiving a bonus. It's a net negative.

Everyone loves bonuses though and there is a better way to do them. If you can enable a team to work autonomously and give bonuses based on their outcomes the research backs this up as being highly motivating. Another win for cross-functional teams.

What are your thoughts on performance reviews?

1 year ago | [YT] | 0

UXDX

Reflection: A Time of Realignment in Tech


Hey everyone,



Lately, I've been mulling over the stark contrast we're seeing in our industry. On one side, there's the U.S. economy, booming. On the other, major tech players like Spotify, Twilio, and VMware are hitting the brakes hard with significant layoffs. It hits close to home for all of us in UX, design, product, and engineering and I know some people in this newsletter are affected either directly, or indirectly.



The fact that Spotify’s stock price jumped 20% after announcing the layoffs signifies that the growth by headcount strategy, even in a strong economy, is over. This is a wake-up call for how we, as product teams, respond to a tech industry that's shifting gears. Efficiency and profitability are going to take the lead for the foreseeable future.



So, what does this mean for you on the ground? Have you been impacted by the change in sentiment? How is your team adapting? Are you finding new ways to innovate within these constraints? Drop your thoughts in the poll

For a deeper dive into this topic, I've pulled my thoughts into a full article in this issue below. It's a mix of my reflections, some hard facts, and a personal reflection of 2024.

How is your organization adapting to the industry's shift toward efficiency and profitability?



Keep innovating,
Rory

1 year ago | [YT] | 0

UXDX

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.



Twitter has exploded with demos of people turning sketches into real working programs with complex behavior and logic using tldraw and its Make Real function.



Andreas Klinger recreates the Atari breakout game using a rough sketch and some notes to describe the rules. "This is the point I'm looking for a new job. I think this whole programmers thing is done!".



twitter.com/andreasklinger/status/1725213534806794…



Under the hood tldraw is converting the sketches to PNG images, sending that as input to GPT4, and getting HTML + Tailwind styling back.



My mind immediately jumped to maintainability - and are we creating a mountain of technical debt. But then, looking at the speed and quality of what is created (and this is the worst the technology will ever be!), I'm questioning whether a lot of tech will become thrown away. What are your thoughts?



Will AI-created UI's using prompts be the new way of designing and developing?

1 year ago | [YT] | 0

UXDX

Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, personally tracks the progress of every project at Airbnb.


In a recent podcast with Lenny, Brian said that getting more involved has actually freed up time because he can get ahead of problems. It has also increased the pace of delivery which he attributes to the removal of politics: there is no hiding when the CEO is reviewing projects directly.


Still, it raises questions about scalability and reliance on one person’s oversight. My view is that this approach may work at a certain scale but at some point it will outgrow what one person can manage, creating a brittle bottleneck.



Is it good for the CEO to be in the details of every project?

1 year ago | [YT] | 0

UXDX

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1 year ago | [YT] | 0