#4 Roam Research — What comes after a renaissance?

Humans are bad at coming up with search queries. Humans are good at incrementally narrowing down options with a series of filters, and pointing where they want to go next. This seems obvious, but we keep building interfaces for finding information that look more like Google Search and less like a map.

All information tools have to give users some wa... See more

On the surface, Roam looks like a cross between a slightly weird wiki and a note-taking tool like Evernote. It’s not. It implements a few key features of 1980s vintage hypertext visions — block-level addressability, transclusion (changes in referenced blocks being “transfer-included” wherever they are cited), and bidirectional linking — that utterl... See more

Playgrounds over Paths

Today's standard design wisdom focuses on the design of linear paths. Sometimes they may branch, but they're ultimately a sequential set of steps towards a desired outcome.

Within complex systems, these paths often lack the flexibility to adapt to emergent conditions - users acting outside the "designed boundaries".

Instead of... See more