Here is an attempt to stand up some logic that I think informs some of the true hurdles we’re bound to face with River. Rudimentarily, the goal for Instagram is to create an environment that encourages users to use the app as much as possible. This is because they are in the bus...

The overarching question of _why River_ is going to continue to bug us until it is blatantly obvious. One approach for attempting to identify that _why_, is becoming obsessed with anyone who is interested in trying River. So far the most organic invite requests have come from Twi...

Yancey’s concept of [Post-Individualism](https://darkforest.metalabel.com/postindividual) resonates with me but I’m skeptical about the idea of building a network around it. When I hear Post-Individual, I think multiplayer, but I haven’t quite done the work to etch out the nuanc...

Earlier today I had a conversation with Richi (a designer and one of my great friends from school) surrounding what we should be thinking about when conducting user research. To date I haven’t applied any formality to this process, or even thought deeply enough about it to consid...

In previous conversations, we’ve spoken about this idea of a threshold of readiness that we’d like River to reach before sharing it directly with folks on the user recruitment list. The reason the current user recruitment list is tough to digest, is because it is not clear what ...

Earlier today I was sitting with Max at Ornithology and we were discussing the importance of having overarching questions that can be used to guide our collective efforts. The thesis being, having a set of significantly interesting questions allows us to stay grounded, both to ea...