Cheng Peng

Ideas can feel complete. It's only when you try to put them into words that you discover they're not. So if you never subject your ideas to that test, you'll not only never have fully formed ideas, but also never realize it.

—Paul Graham

there is a natural intelligence at work in existing ecosystems, and therefore the most intelligent way to farm was to interfere as little as possible. This obviously requires a reworking not only of what we consider farming, but maybe even what we consider progress.

Creativity has two parts:- Creative discovery mode: shuffling things around, exploring. Playful.- Implementation mode: creating something robust and concrete.- Revisit the work the next day in an alert state and assess whether it is ready for linear implementation.

Many ideas are provisional: they have yet to be fully grasped, made explicit, connected to what they should be connected to, had all their components implemented, carved at the joints, made available for use, indexed. Many important ideas are provisional. Playing with provisional ideas helps nurture them.

A research-driven artwork generally progresses in three stages. At the beginning, it’s about having the intention to explore an idea, and then (you guessed it) researching that idea. The middle stage focuses on moving and shaping an idea as you learn and explore. This part of the process is gray, beautiful, and middling—you have to follow where the... See more

We think in questions. If knowledge is a complex web inside the mind, each node is a question, and each connecting line the information you’ve picked up on the journey from node to node. The pursuit of knowledge is the accumulation of questions. They shape our identity as much by being asked as by being answered.

the easiest thing to do in a product is add a feature. People new to design tend to see the world of product as a set of features to build more than an experience to balance, and they rush to add things until they paint themselves in a corner with an encumbered experience that lacks a cohesive purpose. Balancing and integrating takes a lot more eff... See more

Video games are experts at teaching you the rules of a game and building mastery. If your goal is to relay complex information about how to do some set of tasks for an end goal (aka. all of healthcare), then there are lots of lessons to learn from games.