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Collection
What if. Redesigning what exists.
For years, I've kept a mental list. Every app, device, or service triggers a small frustration or missed opportunity. What if they added this? What if you could do that? What If is a weekly series of redesigns. Each episode addresses a real friction in popular products. Each episode explores a product and asks one question, from serious to curious.
Episode 01
What if Slack had a real vacation mode?
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You're on vacation, coffee in hand, and you check Slack, not for emergencies, but due to uncertainty. This cognitive bias leads you to seek bad news rather than embrace the unknown.
What if Slack protected your disconnect with an AI scan of conversations? It could assure you: nothing urgent, enjoy your vacation. An AI encouraging you to do nothing, allowing true disconnection.
Episode 02
What if Google Calendar could tell you when you're about to steal someone's focus time?
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You're booking a kick-off. Everyone is free Thursday at 10. But James has 12h of meetings this week. Your 90 minutes disrupt his deep work. This is the blind spot of good intentions. Each invite seems reasonable. Psychologists call it locality bias: we see what we can and ignore the rest.
What if guests showed their weekly meeting hours in the invite? Green, amber, red. Calendar could flag when limits are reached, changing how we book meetings.
Episode 01
What if Finder knew you'd already watched that episode?
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You open your Breaking Bad folder. S01E03. Can't recall if you finished it. You launch QuickTime, scrub around, and check where you left off. 2 minutes gone. You close it.
This isn't a memory issue, but a context loss between sessions.
Netflix and others track your progress. If you own files, you're on your own. Finder shows a name, size, date, but lacks context.
The OS knows you opened the file and how long you played it. Just needs a layer to show progress and status.
Episode 01
What if Slack designed the return, not just the absence?
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Sunday evening. Vacation isn't over yet, but anxiety is. You're scrolling through channels and messages that piled up. This is the peak-end rule: we remember experiences by how they ended.
If the ending is 127 unread messages, the rest didn't count. Slack's vacation status protects colleagues, but not your mind. What if you returned to postcards instead? One per project, warm notes from colleagues. You return informed, not overwhelmed.
Episode 01
What if Slack designed the return, not just the absence?
What if Google Meet showed who’s speaking and their company?
Join a call with 8 people from 3 companies. You smile politely, planning to Google their names later. Meet doesn’t show who’s talking. In physical rooms, you see badges and get introductions.