I want the car culture to fall down tomorrow, and I no longer care who knows it. I want the end of single-occupant vehicles, and the end of suburbs that force us to drive 30 or 40 miles to get to a job. I want the end of plastic food produced in a factories thousands of miles away rather than grown in local community gardens and on nearby farms; and an end to clothing made in China by poverty-wage workers and shipped overseas, instead of sewn by us at the kitchen table. I want the end of over-programmed childrens’ schedules that force us to schlep the kids all over hither and yon, and jobs that require so much of our time away from our homes, gardens and families that we no longer have time to live as deliberately as our great-grandparents did.

– unpolitic via Mattly

One thing we learned early on talking to Basecamp customers: Many of them didn’t even know that the app was called Basecamp. They called it “GroupHub” or “ProjectPath” because that was their project URL. Didn’t stop them from using it (or paying for it) though.

Some points it brings up:

I am beginning to think that the whole idea of attention is a key to designing an engaging UI. I’ll write more in future articles about that. Grabbing and holding onto attention, and not distracting someone when they are paying attention to something, are key concerns.

People look to others for guidance on what they should do, especially if they are uncertain. This is called social validation. This is why, for example, ratings and reviews are so powerful on websites.

Link