Life is a series of brush-strokes
On how obsessing over micro-problems is the key to mastery in life
Life has been crazy these past few months. Wanted to update y’all.
First - I had the opportunity to do some cool Snap AR marketing campaigns. Very rewarding creatively to sharpen my craft/skillset.
In interview season right now. Had a chance to speak with a career coach, and am interviewing for some really cool AR product design roles right now.
One of the areas that has been exciting me is exploring speculative design, in how tech connects with culture, society, and politics.
I believe it’s difficult to explore this type of tech outside of traditional tech companies since their business structure doesn’t allow for this exploration.
Given how COVID has rapidly shifted society, I wanted to take advantage and interview for these roles.
That being said, these past few months have been a philosophical whirlwind for me.
Having visited San Diego and Miami, really participating in NFTs, crypto, and DAOs, I’ve seen a strange spectrum of human nature that really made me question a lot of things.
One philosophical stance I still carry even to this day is that the product and the user experience Web3 and the metaverse should not be a pure shopping mall or optimize heavily on the “economic progression” form of game design.
I think in other words: I like making money, but the incentives don’t align for other forms of human connection that I feel is missing in these Web3/metaverse games. ‘
And I think that’s the core issue with a lot of NFT collectibles these days.
The DeFi aspect of pumping and dumping or using the “community as exit liquidity” leads to skewed incentives that make deep social experiences difficult.
It’s why even for me, I’m still very hesitant on working for a crypto company full time (part-time is better). If you’re a 3D designer, the operational culture of these places make it difficult to have these conversations.
I say this with a lot of confidence.
I take pride in buying a Phantabear NFT for 0.39 ETH, seeing the floor price go up to 8ETH, watching it drop back to 4ETH, but not selling or caring lol. This is all within a 10 day period.
Yes, it is life changing money. Yes, if it drops down to 1ETH, I wouldn’t care. Yes, I sound crazy when I say this. I’m not judgmental for people who do sell it - people gotta do what you gotta do to pay the bills.
But I bought it because I wanted to go to a Jay Chou virtual concert lol. I really had no idea it would moon this fast.
But the problem is a lot of people don’t want to wait that long to get into a Jay Chou NFT concert.
Unlike traditional businesses like retail, fashion, food, where there’s a “try before you buy” option, the NFT space doesn’t have that product/customer experience at all.
And that’s the problem: try before you buy is basically looking at social clout from celebrities.
By treating NFTs purely as financial assets, we aren’t taking advantage of other elements that really push the VR/AR metaverse forward. Social signaling is not enough as a design feature.
That being said, I am all for financial independence.
I do recognize ever since the US has outsourced its manufacturing capacity, workers lately are more incentivized to focus on crypto/NFTs.
I just think we need to build a culture again around making stuff again. We have to be obsessed with the micro-problems, the failures, and successes around building and how things work.
Crypto is great but we can’t have a workforce built 100% around attention economy, FOMO, fast fashion retail, brand deals and influencers, and virtual real estate.