There is an axiom in the art of storytelling — or the art of “writing fiction” — that I think is useful for us to be reminded of time and again. It’s the distinction between character and characterization.

You’ve probably heard someone said something like “That flirty uncle is an interesting character.” or “This Becky character is so basic.”. In the art of storytelling, the uses of the word “character” in those sentences are inappropriate because those sentences describe not characters, but characterizations. …

Psychology is underrated. People who are starting a company tend to overlook the psychology of a person they were trying to hire — as a staff or even a co-founder — unless maybe that said person has a discernible character flaw. They might not even realize there are some psychological traits which they themselves can improve to be more effective at work.

While skills and knowledge can predict whether or not your product can be built and how long it can take, psychology can tell you a lot of information about the mind of a person which you can leverage…

I came up with this idea when my friend who’s also my regular hackathon teammate got invited to compete at F8 hackathon in San Jose on May 2018. I was credited in his LinkedIn post below:

We have competed in about a dozen of hackathons together but when the registration for this hackathon was opened I had just recently moved to Singapore to start a new job so I chose not to compete and only help by coming up with an idea.

So after hours of brainstorming and pages with list of ideas (from so-so to okay) and UI sketches…