
'Google Hobbies' proof of concept - kunle1
https://blog.prototypr.io/google-hobbies-a-retrospective-on-a-new-feature-to-help-google-users-find-and-learn-new-skills-650947f0be#.c0si6ns7l
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bpires
Reminds me of [http://www.nina4airbnb.com/](http://www.nina4airbnb.com/) who
made an extensive analysis of where airbnb should target next in an attempt to
convince airbnb to hire her.

After her website went viral, she did eventually get an interview with airbnb.
While making such an analysis is no guarantee of a job, she was rejected
because the interviewer couldn’t contextualize her experience because she
"hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford".

She did however in the process land several interviews with different
companies and picked a company called upwork in the end. So this kind of work
can have several positive side effects even if your initial objective is not
reached.

Her complete report can be read here: [http://eatwritewalk.com/2015/07/14/the-
good-the-bad-and-the-...](http://eatwritewalk.com/2015/07/14/the-good-the-bad-
and-the-ugly/)

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ffumarola
Yikes. If the CMO of Airbnb actually said that, that's awful.

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IshKebab
Of course he didn't.

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ffumarola
Why is that?

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IshKebab
It's exactly the sort of thing people who didn't get a job say was the reason
("ah they didn't like me because I'm not from Harvard") and it's exactly the
sort of thing interviewers don't _actually_ say.

Maybe he thought it - he might have said something like "I don't think we're
looking for someone with your background" or "we're looking for someone with
different skills", but people always read what they think into comments like
that.

There's almost no chance he _actually said_ "Sorry we're looking for someone
from Harvard" (especially as that is obvious from the CV so you wouldn't even
get an interview).

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jamespitts
This is excellent work, almost a whole book here.

At Code 4 SF where I've been volunteering a subgroup has been running a series
of tests/challenges using design thinking. This is a hugely effective
methodology for understanding problems, identifying opportunities, opening up
the creative process in order to address them.

Design thinking works, but you have to really invest in it. If you don't want
to make the full leap, there's also a large number of individual methods/tools
emerging in the design thinking community that you can try out.

[http://www.designkit.org/methods](http://www.designkit.org/methods)

~~~
maxpupmax
That's an awesome site. I've been reading this book on a specific
implementation of the design thinking methods with GV's "design sprints" \--
might be worth checking out if you haven't heard of it already:
[http://www.gv.com/sprint/](http://www.gv.com/sprint/)

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tdaltonc
Why pitch this to google? If you think there's a useful tool here, why not
built it and own it yourself?

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blisse
The author seems to be a product manager and designer, rather than an
engineer.

~~~
LukeB_UK
The author could still work with people to create it.

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aresant
Startups have won on a lot less than the feature / ux innovation the author
just laid out.

Forget google - build this with a "Show HN:" to find a cofounder!

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personjerry
Is this a form of appropriating other peoples' content? Google 's already
borderlining, I think, with the instant answer stuff. This seems like it's
definitely crossing copyright lines.

~~~
amelius
Also, I don't like Google to become a universal place to go to for anything.
They already dominate search; they don't have to dominate the entire internet.

Further, I am afraid that these tutorials could lead to a "bubble" effect,
where everybody who learns to play the guitar starts with the same songs.
Boring.

~~~
chrismartin
Everybody who learns to play guitar already starts with the same songs. :)

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cableshaft
Had more or less this exact idea for a website before, with the exception of
using wiki for the main technology, and there being different paths to
learning the material provided by curators.

Essentially it'd say go to this tutorial, now this tutorial. Now watch this
video. Now do this exercise. Very similar to online courses nowadays, except
it all pointed to external links and volunteer contributions, and there'd be
more than one path for learning the same material (probably with comments and
ratings to help you pick which one to try).

There's a billion tutorials online, but things get out of date, and you have
to hunt them down, and some people might think one link is more important than
another, hence the different paths.

But I shelved the idea after seeing online courses getting better and
incorporating a lot of my ideas.

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trevyn
1) This seems awful close Google Helpouts. Why do you think that might have
been discontinued?

2) If you're trying to get attention of someone at Goog, fix your branding
mockup -- the product name is in grey, and doesn't have the jaunty "e". See
e.g. the header of
[https://www.google.com/services](https://www.google.com/services)

~~~
innocentoldguy
I think some reasons products like Needle and Google Helpouts don't make it is
the time investment, minimal payback, and the fact that this type of
information is generally available all over the Internet for free.

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macscam
lmao at "Before and after showing how awesome the 960 grid is.". Half the page
is now ads.

By the way, I find it incredibly annoying when a page performs some action 2
seconds delayed. It makes me click on things I didn't intend to because the
content shifts.

Anyway, thanks for giving me a introduction to UI?UX.

~~~
soared
Agreed, Medium makes me furious with how they load images.

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Animats
It seems intrusive - questionnaires, tracking, etc. Very Google.

If you want to find out how to do something, Instructables is probably more
useful. That's owned by Autodesk. Autodesk doesn't want to know about your
social life; they just want to sell you tools for designing and making stuff.

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justifier
nice, i call this modis: method of discovery

if i am learning something new i will log whatever i read or watch or listen
to in the order in which i did in order to achieve the level of expertise i
currently possess

my goal is more of a possible vector of learning instead of thinking it 'the'
way to learn something

