Hi!

Your probably don't even remember why you are getting this email. Let's recap: you have signed up for Fuzzy Brain on danielsouza.org a few months ago.

Every month I share about music, things I am learning and experience design. Today we talk about Cabo Verde, personal knowledge management and time.

Music

This month playlist is all about Afro House and African rhythms. Or like they say in Portugal, Fananã. We visited Boa Vista, one of the Cabo Verde islands in the North Africa coast. With temperatures above 25C in march, it was a nice place to escape.

The resort staff was fun and inspiring. Everyday, before the acqua gym class, they played their own local music.

There is a song that is still stuck in my head from the trip: O Benga. This playlist celebrates that moment and the transformative power of black creativity. Enjoy.

Things I am studying

Personal knowledge management and note-taking

I have been experimenting with note taking for years. My first contact with the topic was with Jeff Collins, former manager and now a friend. He showed me his meticulously organised Evernote, and sparked a fire in my brain.

I tried a lot of tools, but it was not consistent. One day I found a community that really expanded my understanding on the topic. It was a bunch of nerds using tools like Obsidian, Roam Research, Zettelkasten and others. Tools of Thought on twitter.

If you care curious, I recommend to start with Tiago Forte's concept of Second Brain. And if you are hooked, listen to the The Informed Life. Jorge Arango, information architect extraordinaire, is writing a book about the topic. He recently interviewed Maggie Appleton and Aidan Helfant. It's a great intro to the theme.

tl/dr: Your brain can be augmented. Using the right tools and methods to link ideas and concepts creates findability for your ideas and helps you to create better knowledge.

Experience Design

Experience Design and Time

Of all the things we do as experience designers, visual design and style in interface design is the one that will be a commodity in the space of months.

Machines are not great in creating the unexpected. As we see on mid journey hands and the appalling low quality of ChatGPT writing.

Content is not a challenge, it's the opportunity. Words shape our experiences like never before. Videos are proliferating like weed. Still, we are already uncareful with our language, tone and editorial principles when debating, imagining or delivering experiences. In the future, organic content will be scarce. So it's really not about speed of production, but the right timing.

We say that experience design core material is behaviour. And behaviour will always have a dimension of time. In service design, we talk about journeys. I content design, we discuss user needs and expectations of information and content across screens.

Content design and service design together have the power of providing reassurance and comfort. It's all about orchestrating the experience, helping to manage expectations and attention.

The right words create welcoming environments, persist attention through emotion and provide closure with elegance.

We can't design experiences, but we certainly can try to create good time to frame them.

That is it for today! Feedback and comments always help.

@danielsouza