{"id":"db05bce3-4f55-43c4-a595-1ecbe191bd57","slug":"s18e01-pulling-the-cord-do-not-reply-fast-user","subject":"s18e01: Pulling the Cord; Do Not Reply; Fast User Switching","title":"Pulling the Cord; Do Not Reply; Fast User Switching","publish_date":"2024-03-11T20:12:59.315275+00:00","year":2024,"month":3,"season":18,"episode":1,"episode_label":"s18e01","canonical_url":"https://newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s18e01-pulling-the-cord-do-not-reply-fast-user/","is_premium":0,"word_count":1171,"body_html":"<h1>0.0 Context Setting</h1>\n<p>Monday, 11 March, 2024 in Portland, Oregon after being away for a while. But I’m back now! That break allows for a new season, so I’m just going to with that.</p>\n<h2>0.1 Hallway Track News</h2>\n<p>Hallway Track is taking a little break while I cue up the next few sessions.</p>\n<p>I expect we’ll start up again around mid-April.</p>\n<hr />\n<h1>1.0 Some Things That Caught My Attention</h1>\n<p>Two big things and one little thing today.</p>\n<h2>1.1 The Pulling the Cord alpha</h2>\n<p>Here is a new thing that I am doing.</p>\n<p>For a long time, I’ve been working with leaders and executives in government explaining and persuading them to take an alternative approach to buying and building tech in their business-as-usual approach.</p>\n<p>I am, I’ve been told, <em>very good at this</em>. I did it again recently for a client, and remembered how fun and fulfilling it feels to:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>empathize with leaders, fundamentally, feel trapped into some sort of groundhog day time loop of trying harder and not really getting any different results, i.e. spending a lot of money on tech that still, more or less, sucks</li>\n<li>I mean, really, really candidly talk about this in a way that gains trust</li>\n<li>Be very clear about what consultants can and can’t do, given that I’m a consultant too</li>\n<li>Be very clear about what vendors can and can’t do</li>\n<li>Help them understand the clear, realist choice they have, if they have a procurement coming up and they want to know what to do about it and what to change</li>\n<li>and a bunch more.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>All of which is to say I’m testing turning this into a sort of <em>Pulling the Cord-as-a-Service</em>.</p>\n<p>I’m going to test it first for middle management - the program managers, procurement managers, and so on in government, who want to do things a different way, and want to know how better to influence their peers and leadership to provide the cover to properly investigate and use a different approach.</p>\n<p>But the big thing I’m going for is the kind of meetings I have with the exec leadership -- the decision makers who sit <em>above</em> the office and department directors, sometimes even above the agency directors, and are in control functions like “your proposal for a new procurement needs to be approved by finance and central IT”. That’s a separate thing.</p>\n<p>So. A test. 15 people on the 20th March: <a href=\"https://www.verylittlegravitas.com/pulling-the-cord\">The Pulling the Cord alpha</a>.</p>\n<p>Sign up if it’s for you pass it on if you know someone who’d be into it.</p>\n<h2>1.2 Do Not Reply</h2>\n<p>For the last three weeks or so, I’ve been working with <a href=\"https://florian.framer.website\">Florian Fangohr</a> on the next version of what I showed in s17e10, the Reply Management Stickers<sup class=\"footnote-ref\"><a href=\"#fn1\" id=\"fnref1\">[1]</a></sup>.</p>\n<p>The new versions are at <a href=\"https://newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s17e10-alt-text-reply-management-stickers/\">https://donotreply.cards</a> (and also at <a href=\"https://xn--nepasrpondre-geb.cards\">https://nepasrépondre.cards</a> and <a href=\"https://xn--nepasrpondre-geb.cards\">https://keineantwort.cards</a> for the respective French and German versions. Spanish to come, soon)</p>\n<p>Anyway phooey did a lot catch my attention about going through this whole process:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Using Figma, Framer and Height in anger</li>\n<li>“Launching a website”, which to be honest is not something that I’ve been involved in to such an extent for quite a while, which includes for this kind of website “fuck it, we’re doing it live”</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.framer.com\">Framer</a> is definitely better than Squarespace, but still has stupendous frustrations, in the same way that Wordpress is now built around Blocks. These website building systems are like some sort of in-between no-code hellishness, where in Framer’s case, you can insert a form, <em>but the form is only hooked up to certain third party services</em>, where you can embed forms, but it’s difficult to style them based on the styles you’ve set up, and where you <em>can</em> do all of this, if you just learn Typescript and React which... I do not want to do? And I imagine that I will just have to Learn to Code in 2024.</li>\n<li>Ugh, other Framer stuff. It has support for a production/staging distinction but not versioning or branching, so the usual “multiplayer web development” also turns into a “what did you do” and figuring out ad-hoc workarounds for branching.</li>\n<li>There are other things like “there is a CMS” and you can do <em>some things</em> but not other things that you would expect to be able to do. It’s the whole 90% of the way there problem until you try to do the 10% and then start screaming.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>So. This was a recent trial-by-hobby-fire of putting together a punch list of stuff to do to get live and the opportunity to be somewhat of a creative director again after a break of around <em>ten years</em>. It’s been a long time since I’ve worked with such a great designer, especially a long time since I’ve been told not to be happy with something being <em>okay</em>.</p>\n<p>There’s a whole bunch of stuff I’m proud of. The cards aren’t just images now, they have previews that get pulled in and use the updated images if you just share them as their URL, which is super nice.</p>\n<p>There’s also a lot that’s missing and we haven’t done yet, and a lot that I could write about the design process and what went into the decisions we made, and why. Some of our decisions have happened to have been obvious (yes, we took direct inspiration from The Designers Republic), but there’s a lot about the copy that I had to think about, and is important about <em>why</em> I wanted to put these together.</p>\n<h2>1.3 Fast User Switching</h2>\n<p>Look, all that stuff about streaming music services like Apple Music and Spotify generating batshit trend reports and suggestions because you have the temerity to be a parent or caregiver who has to play music to a younger, smaller person? And how it’s super irritating?</p>\n<p>I don’t get why streaming music services can’t have user profile accounts in the same way that <em>video</em> streaming services have user profile accounts. I would like to be able <em>quickly and trivially</em> switch to a kids account in Spotify or Apple Music and just play from there. Or even from a search <em>in my profile</em>, to select to play the next track as the kids profile <em>and then stay in that profile</em> until switched back. PLEASE.</p>\n<hr />\n<p>OK, that’s it for today. How are you doing, and how have you been?</p>\n<p>Best,</p>\n<p>Dan</p>\n<hr />\n<h2>How you can support Things That Caught My Attention</h2>\n<p>Things That Caught My Attention is a free newsletter, and if you like it and find it useful, please [consider becoming a paid supporter]({{ upgrade_url }}).</p>\n<h3>Let my boss pay!</h3>\n<p>Do you have an expense account or a training/research materials budget? Let your boss pay, at <a href=\"https://buy.stripe.com/fZe28qbFOazZ4M04gh\">$25/month, or $270/year</a>, <a href=\"https://buy.stripe.com/cN200i8tCgYn4M0eUW\">$35/month, or $380/year</a>, or <a href=\"https://buy.stripe.com/bIYcN4cJSgYnbao9AD\">$50/month, or $500/year</a>.</p>\n<p>Paid supporters get a free copy of <a href=\"https://store.verylittlegravitas.com/l/ThingsVol1\">Things That Caught My Attention, Volume 1</a>, collecting the best essays from the first 50 episodes, and <a href=\"https://verylittlegravitas.gumroad.com/l/ThingsVol1/subscriber\">free subscribers get a 20% discount</a>.</p>\n<hr class=\"footnotes-sep\" />\n<section class=\"footnotes\">\n<ol class=\"footnotes-list\">\n<li id=\"fn1\" class=\"footnote-item\"><p><a href=\"https://newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s17e10-alt-text-reply-management-stickers/\">s17e10: Alt Text; Reply Management Stickers</a> (<a href=\"http://archive.is/latest/https://newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s17e10-alt-text-reply-management-stickers/\">archive.is</a>), Me, 13 February 2024 <a href=\"#fnref1\" class=\"footnote-backref\">↩︎</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n</section>\n","body_text":"0.0 Context Setting\n\nMonday, 11 March, 2024 in Portland, Oregon after being away for a while. But I’m back now! That break allows for a new season, so I’m just going to with that.\n\n0.1 Hallway Track News\n\nHallway Track is taking a little break while I cue up the next few sessions.\n\nI expect we’ll start up again around mid-April.\n\n1.0 Some Things That Caught My Attention\n\nTwo big things and one little thing today.\n\n1.1 The Pulling the Cord alpha\n\nHere is a new thing that I am doing.\n\nFor a long time, I’ve been working with leaders and executives in government explaining and persuading them to take an alternative approach to buying and building tech in their business-as-usual approach.\n\nI am, I’ve been told,\nvery good at this\n. I did it again recently for a client, and remembered how fun and fulfilling it feels to:\n\nempathize with leaders, fundamentally, feel trapped into some sort of groundhog day time loop of trying harder and not really getting any different results, i.e. spending a lot of money on tech that still, more or less, sucks\n\nI mean, really, really candidly talk about this in a way that gains trust\n\nBe very clear about what consultants can and can’t do, given that I’m a consultant too\n\nBe very clear about what vendors can and can’t do\n\nHelp them understand the clear, realist choice they have, if they have a procurement coming up and they want to know what to do about it and what to change\n\nand a bunch more.\n\nAll of which is to say I’m testing turning this into a sort of\nPulling the Cord-as-a-Service\n.\n\nI’m going to test it first for middle management - the program managers, procurement managers, and so on in government, who want to do things a different way, and want to know how better to influence their peers and leadership to provide the cover to properly investigate and use a different approach.\n\nBut the big thing I’m going for is the kind of meetings I have with the exec leadership -- the decision makers who sit\nabove\nthe office and department directors, sometimes even above the agency directors, and are in control functions like “your proposal for a new procurement needs to be approved by finance and central IT”. That’s a separate thing.\n\nSo. A test. 15 people on the 20th March:\nThe Pulling the Cord alpha\n.\n\nSign up if it’s for you pass it on if you know someone who’d be into it.\n\n1.2 Do Not Reply\n\nFor the last three weeks or so, I’ve been working with\nFlorian Fangohr\non the next version of what I showed in s17e10, the Reply Management Stickers\n[1]\n.\n\nThe new versions are at\nhttps://donotreply.cards\n(and also at\nhttps://nepasrépondre.cards\nand\nhttps://keineantwort.cards\nfor the respective French and German versions. Spanish to come, soon)\n\nAnyway phooey did a lot catch my attention about going through this whole process:\n\nUsing Figma, Framer and Height in anger\n\n“Launching a website”, which to be honest is not something that I’ve been involved in to such an extent for quite a while, which includes for this kind of website “fuck it, we’re doing it live”\n\nFramer\nis definitely better than Squarespace, but still has stupendous frustrations, in the same way that Wordpress is now built around Blocks. These website building systems are like some sort of in-between no-code hellishness, where in Framer’s case, you can insert a form,\nbut the form is only hooked up to certain third party services\n, where you can embed forms, but it’s difficult to style them based on the styles you’ve set up, and where you\ncan\ndo all of this, if you just learn Typescript and React which... I do not want to do? And I imagine that I will just have to Learn to Code in 2024.\n\nUgh, other Framer stuff. It has support for a production/staging distinction but not versioning or branching, so the usual “multiplayer web development” also turns into a “what did you do” and figuring out ad-hoc workarounds for branching.\n\nThere are other things like “there is a CMS” and you can do\nsome things\nbut not other things that you would expect to be able to do. It’s the whole 90% of the way there problem until you try to do the 10% and then start screaming.\n\nSo. This was a recent trial-by-hobby-fire of putting together a punch list of stuff to do to get live and the opportunity to be somewhat of a creative director again after a break of around\nten years\n. It’s been a long time since I’ve worked with such a great designer, especially a long time since I’ve been told not to be happy with something being\nokay\n.\n\nThere’s a whole bunch of stuff I’m proud of. The cards aren’t just images now, they have previews that get pulled in and use the updated images if you just share them as their URL, which is super nice.\n\nThere’s also a lot that’s missing and we haven’t done yet, and a lot that I could write about the design process and what went into the decisions we made, and why. Some of our decisions have happened to have been obvious (yes, we took direct inspiration from The Designers Republic), but there’s a lot about the copy that I had to think about, and is important about\nwhy\nI wanted to put these together.\n\n1.3 Fast User Switching\n\nLook, all that stuff about streaming music services like Apple Music and Spotify generating batshit trend reports and suggestions because you have the temerity to be a parent or caregiver who has to play music to a younger, smaller person? And how it’s super irritating?\n\nI don’t get why streaming music services can’t have user profile accounts in the same way that\nvideo\nstreaming services have user profile accounts. I would like to be able\nquickly and trivially\nswitch to a kids account in Spotify or Apple Music and just play from there. Or even from a search\nin my profile\n, to select to play the next track as the kids profile\nand then stay in that profile\nuntil switched back. PLEASE.\n\nOK, that’s it for today. How are you doing, and how have you been?\n\nBest,\n\nDan\n\nHow you can support Things That Caught My Attention\n\nThings That Caught My Attention is a free newsletter, and if you like it and find it useful, please [consider becoming a paid supporter]({{ upgrade_url }}).\n\nLet my boss pay!\n\nDo you have an expense account or a training/research materials budget? Let your boss pay, at\n$25/month, or $270/year\n,\n$35/month, or $380/year\n, or\n$50/month, or $500/year\n.\n\nPaid supporters get a free copy of\nThings That Caught My Attention, Volume 1\n, collecting the best essays from the first 50 episodes, and\nfree subscribers get a 20% discount\n.\n\ns17e10: Alt Text; Reply Management Stickers\n(\narchive.is\n), Me, 13 February 2024\n↩︎","raw_format":"markdown","source":"api","summary":"This issue explores three distinct projects and frustrations: the launch of \"Pulling the Cord,\" a new service helping government leaders and middle managers approach tech procurement differently by challenging conventional wisdom; the redesign and launch of Do Not Reply cards (multilingual stickers for managing unwanted communication) built through Framer, which prompted reflection on the frustrations of no-code website builders and the pleasure of working with a great designer again; and a brief rant about the lack of fast user profile switching in music streaming services, a problem that plagues parents trying to keep their listening habits separate from their children's. The throughline is a focus on systems and tools that don't quite work the way we need them to—whether that's how governments buy technology, how we design communication about boundaries, or how software accommodates multiple users—alongside genuine enthusiasm for the work and creative solutions that do get built despite those constraints.","reading_minutes":6,"links":[{"url":"https://www.verylittlegravitas.com/pulling-the-cord","normalized_url":"https://verylittlegravitas.com/pulling-the-cord","domain":"verylittlegravitas.com","anchor_text":"The Pulling the Cord alpha","is_archive":0,"archive_url":null,"archive_service":null,"category":"self"},{"url":"https://florian.framer.website","normalized_url":"https://florian.framer.website/","domain":"framer.website","anchor_text":"Florian Fangohr","is_archive":0,"archive_url":null,"archive_service":null,"category":"external"},{"url":"https://newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s17e10-alt-text-reply-management-stickers/","normalized_url":"https://newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s17e10-alt-text-reply-management-stickers","domain":"danhon.com","anchor_text":"https://donotreply.cards","is_archive":0,"archive_url":null,"archive_service":null,"category":"self"},{"url":"https://xn--nepasrpondre-geb.cards","normalized_url":"https://xn--nepasrpondre-geb.cards/","domain":"xn--nepasrpondre-geb.cards","anchor_text":"https://nepasrépondre.cards","is_archive":0,"archive_url":null,"archive_service":null,"category":"external"},{"url":"https://xn--nepasrpondre-geb.cards","normalized_url":"https://xn--nepasrpondre-geb.cards/","domain":"xn--nepasrpondre-geb.cards","anchor_text":"https://keineantwort.cards","is_archive":0,"archive_url":null,"archive_service":null,"category":"external"},{"url":"https://www.framer.com","normalized_url":"https://framer.com/","domain":"framer.com","anchor_text":"Framer","is_archive":0,"archive_url":null,"archive_service":null,"category":"external"},{"url":"https://buy.stripe.com/fZe28qbFOazZ4M04gh","normalized_url":"https://buy.stripe.com/fZe28qbFOazZ4M04gh","domain":"stripe.com","anchor_text":"$25/month, or $270/year","is_archive":0,"archive_url":null,"archive_service":null,"category":"plumbing"},{"url":"https://buy.stripe.com/cN200i8tCgYn4M0eUW","normalized_url":"https://buy.stripe.com/cN200i8tCgYn4M0eUW","domain":"stripe.com","anchor_text":"$35/month, or $380/year","is_archive":0,"archive_url":null,"archive_service":null,"category":"plumbing"},{"url":"https://buy.stripe.com/bIYcN4cJSgYnbao9AD","normalized_url":"https://buy.stripe.com/bIYcN4cJSgYnbao9AD","domain":"stripe.com","anchor_text":"$50/month, or $500/year","is_archive":0,"archive_url":null,"archive_service":null,"category":"plumbing"},{"url":"https://store.verylittlegravitas.com/l/ThingsVol1","normalized_url":"https://store.verylittlegravitas.com/l/ThingsVol1","domain":"verylittlegravitas.com","anchor_text":"Things That Caught My Attention, Volume 1","is_archive":0,"archive_url":null,"archive_service":null,"category":"self"},{"url":"https://verylittlegravitas.gumroad.com/l/ThingsVol1/subscriber","normalized_url":"https://verylittlegravitas.gumroad.com/l/ThingsVol1/subscriber","domain":"gumroad.com","anchor_text":"free subscribers get a 20% discount","is_archive":0,"archive_url":null,"archive_service":null,"category":"self"},{"url":"https://newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s17e10-alt-text-reply-management-stickers/","normalized_url":"https://newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s17e10-alt-text-reply-management-stickers","domain":"danhon.com","anchor_text":"s17e10: Alt Text; Reply Management Stickers","is_archive":0,"archive_url":null,"archive_service":null,"category":"self"},{"url":"http://archive.is/latest/https://newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s17e10-alt-text-reply-management-stickers/","normalized_url":"https://newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s17e10-alt-text-reply-management-stickers","domain":"danhon.com","anchor_text":"archive.is","is_archive":1,"archive_url":"http://archive.is/latest/https://newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s17e10-alt-text-reply-management-stickers/","archive_service":"archive.is","category":"self"}],"sections":[{"id":4279,"ord":0,"number":"0.0","heading":"Context Setting","level":1,"word_count":33},{"id":4280,"ord":1,"number":"0.1","heading":"Hallway Track News","level":2,"word_count":26},{"id":4281,"ord":2,"number":"1.0","heading":"Some Things That Caught My Attention","level":1,"word_count":14},{"id":4282,"ord":3,"number":"1.1","heading":"The Pulling the Cord alpha","level":2,"word_count":347},{"id":4283,"ord":4,"number":"1.2","heading":"Do Not Reply","level":2,"word_count":489},{"id":4284,"ord":5,"number":"1.3","heading":"Fast User Switching","level":2,"word_count":142},{"id":4285,"ord":6,"number":null,"heading":"How you can support Things That Caught My Attention","level":2,"word_count":35},{"id":4286,"ord":7,"number":null,"heading":"Let my boss pay!","level":3,"word_count":79}]}