User-experience is defined by the times when a computer doesn't work, not by the times when it does.
Why Personas Fail
Personas are useful tools for UX work, so why do they often fail? Find out what pitfalls cause personas to fail, and how to avoid and overcome them.
Flawless - Durable Execution Engine
Flawless is an execution engine for durable computation. It will run your code until completion even in the presence of hardware or software failure.
Notes on software quality
“The absence of problems” is the best definition I can come up with for quality.
The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think
Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.
9 signs that your business idea will probably fail - Dan Norris
After 14 years running my own businesses, I’ve failed a lot. I haven’t kept count thankfully, but I’d say I’ve started at least 50 businesses / ideas and out of those, 3 have worked. And when I say worked I don’t mean staying in business, I mean resulting in either a decent income for me […]
Software Should Work
An independent conference on software reliability in Columbia, MO on July 16-17, 2026
Mental Models and User Experience Design
What users believe they know about a user interface impacts how they use it. Mismatched mental models are common, especially with designs that try something new.
Why design systems are a single point of failure
Tools and techniques to prevent design system collapse
Designing for failure
Nobody starts a free-software project hoping that it will fail, so it is a rare project indeed [...]
Explorable - Think Outside The Box - Research, Experiments, Psychology, Self-Help
"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default." - J.K. Rowling
Leadership fails, leadership failures, leaders fail
Leadership fails because leaders fail to connect with each team member in a meaningful way. Leadership failures can have a profound effect on the company.
The rise of Whatever
This was originally titled “I miss when computers were fun”. But in the course of writing it, I discovered that there is a reason computers became less fun, a dark thread woven through a number of events in recent history. Let me back up a bit.
Observability 2.0 — Observability Is About Asking Any Question | alok87.in
For years, the observability industry has been telling developers two contradictory things: "Build reliable systems" and "Log less, it's too expensive." This post is about a different shape of data — wide events — that gives you more answers for less money.
Startup Mistakes: First-Hand Lessons from 80+ Failed Startups
We've analyzed why +80 startups have failed and identified some of their common mistakes. Here're our findings!
One year as an AI Engineer: The 5 biggest misconceptions about LLM reliability I've encountered
535 votes, 59 comments. After spending a year building evaluation frameworks and debugging production LLM systems, I've noticed the same…
Long-tail of user needs
An analogy to understand how the rigidity of software interfaces fails to meet what we need from it.
User Agency in Other People's Websites - Orion Reed at JOTB25
When to Design for Emergence