@gt
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Design co-founder at https://nitter.cf/t.co/yclsnRddXT. Previously VP Design at Meta. Co-founder Teehan+Lax. Creator of https://nitter.cf/t.co/mUHPfNwGgj & https://nitter.cf/t.co/aqoGgQ5wnc
California, USA
Joined October 2008
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Our team just cranked out another cool playground for developers to see how our card issuance works.
docs.lightspark.com/cards/de…
I've never really felt like I know what I'm doing. Imposture syndrome is natural, and it never goes away if you're really in the game. Anyway, here's 51 minutes of it, out now.
Thanks @ridd_design for the opportunity (and the heroic editing).
This week's episode is a deep dive into the design journey of the legendary @gt
⇢ Teehan+Lax
⇢ Leading design at Facebook
⇢ Creating viral games for Dialed
⇢ Building his dream team at Lightspark
Enjoy 🎧
youtube.com/watch?v=Lmr2Ud2A…
Love that details like this can exist without much effort now. An idea like colors changing as you progress through video chapters would typically just get set aside because the effort of building it wasn't worth the return.
Then: Ideas > Decide > Build > Understand > etc.
Now: Idea (singular) > Build > Decide
The details add up, too. Enough sincere, thoughtful and useful ones, and you’ll probably instill some trust.
My personal token usage is at an all-time high.
Geoff Teehan retweeted
All the kids are chasing millennial core on tiktok but you can now just join the testflight for @gt/@lightspark's html ipod app. The haptics hitting my neurons feels like injecting 2003 straight into my veins it's so good 🥹design.lightspark.com/og-ipo…
Remember when we’d see maybe one or two cool design things a week on here? My feed is now full of side projects, prototypes, micro-interactions, animations, demos.
And it's still so early.
Photography is a good analogy.
Film made every shot matter. We had 24 of them. We weren’t using one to remember where we parked.
Then digital came along. We didn’t just take 20% more pictures. We started taking pictures of everything. The inside of the fridge before going to the store. The back of the router. Tiny type on a bottle and zooming.
Software is already starting to do this. Little tools. Tiny apps (big ones too). Weird one-offs. Some will stick around. Most won’t. Fine. Most photos don’t either.
A lot of the conversation is still about making the same things faster. Ship the feature sooner. Build the prototype in a day. Useful, but the least interesting part.
The bigger shift is when we all start doing this casually. We need something, we make it, we use it, we move on. We don’t even think of it as “building software.”
Then the hard part isn’t making it. It’s deciding what sticks around, gets supported, connected to important systems, and allowed to become permanent.
We aren’t even in the parking-spot phase yet.
Approved! The OG iPod (Player 2001 now) is now available for iOS through TestFlight — limited to 10,000 people. As a direct download for Mac. It's a refreshing and nostalgic way to listen to your music again.
Get it here: design.lightspark.com/og-ipo…
That abundance creates a different problem.
Not bad software. Bad software disappears.
The danger is pretty good software that becomes important without anyone deliberately deciding to own, secure or maintain it.
Creation can become cheap. Permanence can’t.
5/6
For designers and engineers, making becomes a smaller part of the value.
Taste matters. Judgment matters. Knowing what belongs in a permanent system and what should disappear matters too.
The old question: Is this worth building?
The new one: What deserves to last?
Read the full piece:
design.lightspark.com/we-bui…
6/6
When building was expensive, deciding came first.
Idea → research → debate → prioritize → approve → build → test.
The process killed most ideas before anyone spent the time and money to make them. That was often useful. Scarcity forced judgment.
3/6
We built software companies around one fact: building was expensive.
That shaped roadmaps, teams, specialized roles, approval processes and who got to turn an idea into something real.
AI is removing the constraint.
What happens to the company we built around it?
1/6
I wrote a long piece about what happens when making software gets cheap: how the process changes, where the mess moves, and why expertise doesn’t disappear—it shifts.
design.lightspark.com/we-bui…
A few of the ideas:
2/6
63 countries. A decent start.
New week, new currency and payment system supported with realtime, 24/7 settlement. Fund your payments to Colombia in any stablecoin or fiat. This is country #63 if I’m keeping track.
OG iPods are cool.
We turned the interactive first gen iPod from our last article into a Mac app that plays your Music library. Built in a day. Turn the wheel, choose a song. That’s about it (actually, there's a lot to it).
Mac app is available now. The iPhone beta is waiting on TestFlight approval. design.lightspark.com/og-ipo…