Huion KAMVAS GT-191 drawing monitor + Photoshop

Huion KAMVAS GT-191 drawing monitor + Krita app

I was reading Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience again over the weekend (highly recommended if you haven't read it). Flow is one of the most important recent academic work in psychology that captures the universal state and motivation for human happiness. It’s that feeling you get when you’re “in the zone”: fully in control while performing an activity with clear goals and immediate feedback; where the rest of the world fades away, allowing you to achieve higher levels of performance in a new focused state of consciousness. I’m iterating on this idea: a management framework for fostering happiness, productivity, and individual growth, grounded on the principles of flow.

I first read Flow years ago, shortly after joining the Concept Lab, in an "individual contributor" capacity attempting to design engaging experiences for customers - to help them get in the flow of recreational shopping (I think it was a backwards progression from The Paradox of Choice to Thinking Fast and Slow to Flow). The primary reason I read it this time was because I’ve been in search and refinement of my ikigai since the start of this year - my new year’s resolution for finding sustained happiness - and have also been experimenting with purposeful flow state induction for some time. Reading it now through the lens of a people manager, I noticed the condition for flow makes for a great set of management principles. It requires active nurturing from management and leadership team, but if harnessed properly and redirected towards work-related tasks and activities, it could increase focus, agility, impact, and overall happiness within the team. 

This is super early thinking so I’m really open to feedback. It involves three components for management team to focus on in order to nurture flow: (1) the team – creating the conditions for flow at the team level through clear goals, tasks, and decision-making; (2) the individuals – identifying unique flow state conditions for each team member; and (3) the culture – fostering an environment for sustained happiness. This is partly inspired by a conversation I had with a colleague last week where he shared his key components around management success which includes (1) the product – being concise about what the team works on, (2) the people – focusing on measurable individual growth, and (3) the team culture – creating a supportive environment and unique identity within the team. Note: this framework is dependent on the notion that purposeful flow state induction is possible not just for everyone but also for a range of assigned tasks. I’m aware that psychological entropy affects individuals differently which impacts their ability to enter a heightened state of focus, and that not all types of activities are enjoyable by everyone. However, reading, writing, and engaging is social environments are activities where people can often enter flow state. This should extend to other creative and functional skills we use in a work setting. My predisposition is that flow state is always possible as long as we control the optimal conditions which requires removing/minimizing possible detractors.

Flow starts from clear expectations at the team level, which helps build clarity and motivation around the work. Below is a list of conditions and effects that people describe when experiencing flow state (note: not all have to be true to achieve this state).

deep and effortless involvement, removed from awareness of daily life

It seems possible to control the first four conditions at the team level through the team's operational model. This is fairly standard at Amazon: a document that describes the team’s mission and decision-making. It generally covers the vision for the team, the overarching goals, the current priorities that contribute to those goals, how reviews are conducted (mechanisms for feedback); all of which help individuals on the team understand their tasks better and how it contributes to the team’s success. It helps team members calibrate with what they should be doing and how their work contribute to the overall business. One of my previous managers, coming out of an executive leadership training, had created a personal operational model document and encouraged his leadership team to do the same. This was helpful to capture things that didn’t belong at the team operational model – like his availability, what he needs to be informed on, and what situations require him to be a decision-maker/breaker. This team and leadership operational strategy is best communicated at the team level and has the effect of turning potentially bleak objective conditions into subjectively controllable experiences by creating clear decision-making guidelines that can help individuals stay focused (reduced chance of straying out of the flow channel, more below).

Beyond the team level, nurturing flow requires managerial calibration with each individual on the team. The difficulty is that each of us is temperamentally sensitive to a certain range of information that we learn to value more than other people. Assuming the goals / team objectives are fixed, then calibration should be focused on individual motivation (what drives them) and scope (what they're expected to deliver). Success here requires understanding of both functional skills and offering appropriate work challenges to keep employees in the flow channel.

The Flow channel is a state in which the task or activity performed aligns with the team goals and is challenging but achievable, which in turn leads to continuous growth. It’s possible to develop skills to take on more challenging problems that are either bigger in scope or difficult in complexity (moving from A₁ to A₄). There’s a danger in pushing the individual too hard which could induce high anxiety (A₃) or putting the individual on problems that aren’t challenging enough (A₂) which could lead to boredom; both have the consequence of breaking them out of the flow channel. This maps somewhat to the adaptive learning model: when picking up a new skill (especially something with a high skill floor), it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the challenge. This is called going against the grain, and can result in a total abandonment of the learning objective. The success at this stage requires that managers are attuned to individual team members, provide a challenging scope of work, and create a safety net so that everyone feels comfortable taking risks.

I’m still fleshing this section out, but the central point I want to capture here isn’t necessarily just creating team culture within the work environment but creating a culture that encourages and supports sustainable happiness which may occur outside the work environment and is potentially unrelated to work. It could be active, like helping individuals form atomic habits, but I believe sustainable happiness comes more from one’s ikigai.

Ikigai is the Japanese concept of finding joy and living a fulfilling life; a person’s reason for living. As a personal anecdote, my journey began at the start of the new year, as it often does for people looking for a reset, resolution, or a radical improvement. I was feeling less fulfilled at work; at home, our newborn was constantly keeping us up through the night which added to the stress. It took a lot of introspection and experimentation, but I realized that the thing that brings me purpose - my ikigai - is constantly learning new things (especially across different domains) and finding opportunities for practical application. I now wake up around 5AM every day to have uninterrupted reading & reflection time before the kids wake up. It required changes to my night time routine, but I’ve found myself in a happier mood despite factors at work. Interestingly, it created a condition such that on most days, I do find myself being able to enter flow state.

There are some parallels between ikigai and flow: creating order in your consciousness, performing a specific task/activity, having a goal, and requiring some amount of focus, although the activity doesn’t necessary have to be autotelic or require psychic energy. In the context of this framework, I think the main differences are: (1) consistency and (2) sustainability. First off, it must be a routine, a condition one is in control of that’s replicated at a regular cadence, ideally daily since it should be the reason you wake up every day. Secondly, the activity must be sustainable. It's important that the task is clear, but the goal doesn’t need to be. In fact, there’s a danger in having goals clearly defined, unless you have a way to continually move the goalposts. Otherwise, once you achieve those goals, it becomes more difficult to recreate the blissful condition. To find sustainable happiness even in the mundane, you shouldn’t expect to increase your skill or the complexity of the task. With respect to team culture, it’s important for managers to respect and embrace someone’s obligations (like daycare drop-off) and rituals outside the office (like making time for their ikigai). Sometimes, those activities can be flow-inducing; at the very least, it helps people minimize distractions outside the office leading to better focus and flow-potential for experiences at work. 

Below are work conditions which I’ve found to be detractors for my personal Flow state (not exhaustive, just some top of mind items).

Changes in priority or leadership. When this happens, the team/org vision becomes fuzzy. The work being performed by members of the team, no matter intellectually challenging, may no longer align to the goal. Even if there’s no change in the goals, the disconnect or unknowns between deliverables and leadership expectation tend to cause churn, making it hard to enter flow state. It’s up to managers to get guide people back to their flow channel through better communication and building triggers into the operating model to adjust how the team should respond to these changes.

Appropriate scope of work not available. Realistically, the appropriate scope with the right level of challenge isn’t always available. If the scope is too low or there’s a disconnect with the team goal, it can be challenging to find the right work to keep people stimulated. It may help to shift focus towards growing functional skills and leadership principles, and finding other career development opportunities.

Challenges or risks too high. What I’ve found to be extremely flow-breaking is poor management of goals and team capacity. There are three interconnected constraints within any project: time, resources, and feature scope. If you assume resources on the team is fixed, then changing feature scope should require a reassessment of time. In cases when leaders set aggressive deadlines and take on new work without growing the team capacity, you end up high anxiety, overworked employees or unpolished features (or both).

Management Grounded on Principles of Flow

After working on a few different innovation teams at Amazon, I've found that innovation at an enterprise level can generally be classified as one of three categories - continuous innovation, discontinuous innovation, and big vision ideas. My mental model is the following:

Continuous Innovation. Incremental features within the existing business verticals. This is your atomic unit of innovation and tends to be the most common form across all business types and sizes.

Discontinuous Innovation. Most people think of this as disruptive ideas or new-to-world products. Through an enterprise scope, I see it simply as a new business vertical (new-to-us, not necessarily new-to-world).

Big Vision. Long-term product strategy for the existing business which takes about 3-5 years to achieve. This also requires 1-2 year continuous innovation strategy and support from various teams within an org/company.

I was fortunate to have worked in the retail org Concept Lab which evolved through different stages. We did everything from exploring new technologies and disruptive opportunities to smaller incremental features; from developing big vision ideas to crafting the near-term strategy. And with Amazon Glow, I was part of a recent new-to-world product launch, seeing the idea go from prototyping all the way to production. With each team, there were a lot things we did right but also plenty of learning opportunities; after some reflection, here are some thoughts on what I think are critical for success for each type of innovation. While the points aren't mutually exclusive and there are certainly edge cases where they don't apply, these are what I consider success criteria for the general case.

1. Continuous innovation requires cultural investment at the executive level.
Employees hired to run the existing business are closest to the problem/opportunity space and are best-positioned to identify improvements. A dedicated innovation team brought in to incrementally innovate is poor resource utilization at best and degredation to team morale at worse. Instead, it's better to create a culture that enables everyone in the org to innovate. The biggest innovation blockers are teams either heads down maintaining an existing system or implementing an existing roadmap, so much so that there isn't space to explore new ideas. Beyond having the space, time, and autonomy, team members need to develop the muscles to ideate and agility to validate concepts; to feel empowered to try and have a safety net to land on when things fail. And they need the infrastructure (tech capability, UX support, product approvals) to be robust enough so that they can not only think big but deliver big. This culture of innovation is often embedded within startups but is an absolute tectonic shift for larger companies where leadership/executive-level mandate is critical.

2. Discontinuous innovation requires proper funding and should be intentionally detached from existing business verticals.
That's not to say the catalyst for disruptive new ideas can't come from someone within the current team. However, the new initiative should have a clear separation from the existing business which requires proper funding. The problem is that the branches which support the current business may appear helpful at a glance but turn out to be thorny. Some examples include: finding a "home" prematurely, morphing the idea to fit within an existing business unit; enforcing current architectures (especially tech infrastructure/capability) as dependencies rather than treating as new opportunities with potentially a more optimal solution. It's better for these ideas to germinate and grow without the existing frame. One strategy is to control this at the seed level by bringing in outside expertise, cherry-picked to tackle a specific domain foreign to the company. This detached models helps retain focus and product differentiation up to launch, but post-launch introduces a unique set of problems with scaling and integrating with the company ecosystem which I won't get into here.

3. Big vision ideas and long term product strategy requires both healthy funding and a strong culture of innovation supported by a dedicated innovation team.
Again, these are roadmap strategies that take ~3-5 year to realize the full vision and requires every team within the org to execute on. This is where a dedicated innovation team can provide the most value - by tackling the big, non-incremental problems. There's definitely a danger with the innovation team being viewed as elitists which is counter-productive to both the mission and the culture of inclusivity. It's crucial to get partner teams bought into the 1-2 year strategy, and it starts by carrying them along the journey so that ownership is shared. For this to work, the innovation team's charter doesn't stop at the big ideas; they should also be responsible for facilitating the culture and enable teams within the org to continuously innovate along the roadmap.

I have worked in the innovation space for the past decade. One superpower (as we like to say at Amazon) that I developed is the ability to expeditiously dive into new technologies and acquire the functional skills needed to create fully working prototypes for the purpose of validating new experiences and opportunities. In the Amazon Concept Lab, we rotated projects every quarter or half-a-year, and the prototypes span across many different tech domains (full stack web & native development, hardware prototyping, circuits, AR, VR, ML, object classification/detection/tracking, 3D modelling and rigging, writing 3D parsers and shaders, CAD, 3D printing, etc).

I've been meaning to create a framework on how to master new skills quickly. Some things I found useful include: the adaptive learning model, identifying the right scope, the 80-20 rule applied to functional depth, "going against the grain", and of course a healthy dose achieving flow-state (as in The Psychology of Optimal Experience). But then I read a book recently and came across this word that seems almost sprinkled/glossed over: Antifragile. It really caught my attention and put new lens in my thinking. Down the rabbit role I went! (If you're curious, the book is Ikigai by Héctor García... and while I do recommend the book, it only mentioned antifragile in passing.)

Antifragility is a concept developed by Nassim Taleb in 2012 to describe systems that become stronger, more resilient, or even thrive when stressors are applied to it. It's not the antonym to fragility, which for simplicity let's denote as robustness. It's the opposite of fragile, BEYOND robustness; a system which actually improves when under stress. And it's better than adaptive systems which merely changes behavior based on current available information. There's some great examples in natural science, especially in biology: muscles become stronger when stressed through activity; callous feet help you walk better barefoot; the human immune system.

So what does this have to do with learning? I think there's an interesting topic beyond adaptive learning. That my ability to acquire technical skills at the functional level has a lot to do with a healthy amount of stressors applied, which comes in the form of unfamiliar domains, limited existing resources, and compressed timelines. The rest is letting the body do what it does best: be antifragile. Obviously if the stressors are too much (timeline is impossible, scope is too big), you fail in your learning objective. But if you challenge yourself repeatedly enough, learning new skills become easier. The cross-functional domain knowledge alone gives you plenty of headstart on new things. The true value, however, is getting calibrated with exactly what to do, how to do it, what the learning objectives are, how you're progressing, and what to do when faced with roadblocks - pretty much the beginning conditions for achieving Flow.

ergodox-infinity.jpg

ergodox-case.webp

The first mechanical keyboard that I put together back in 2016 - my gateway into the hobby - was the Ergodox Infinity. And the first time I dropped some serious money on a case was a year later: a beautiful hardwood case made out of walnut for the Ergodox Infinity. Beyond the ergonomics of the attached wrist rest, I was really drawn to the material. While most keyboards were (are) cased in cheap plastic with brightly lit LEDs scattered all over, the textured walnut from this case gave it a mature sophistication, the type of look I would be proud to display on my desk at work.

I started with that intro because when I purchased the 3018 mini CNC machine about two years ago, the only thing I wanted to use it for was to make custom wooden cases for my mechanical keyboards. Due to the steep learning curve and deficient set of tools, there were some miserably failed attempts (along with a few snapped router bits that could've ended dangerously). This corne keyboard case is my first real successful CNC project - a case that I designed and created out of walnut, equipped with that nice wrist rest. I've uploaded the design to thingiverse if you're interested. You don't have to make it out of wood, it functions the same when 3D printed.

Flow is a markdown editor web application for Google Drive, you can access the app at https://flowdown.dph.am. 

This project is in active development and is not approved by Google Workspace Marketplace. While it's functional, it's not listed on the Google Drive app listing page yet, and there are extra warnings on the oauth permissions page. 

Flow is really a note taking app built for me. I love markdown - specially the ability to quickly create structured documents with minimal effort - and have been using it to take notes for years. I've been searching for the perfect note-taking app with Markdown support for a while. Unfortunately, I haven't found one that 100% meet my needs (some came really close; I've actually been using Joplin for about 3 years now). My biggest requirements are:

No subscription cost (preferably free but I'm okay with a one-time fee)

Cross platform & accessible from anywhere

So as a pet project, I decided to build the editor that I want to use, specifically with those requirements. Google Drive is a large part of my productivity workflow so I already had a few markdown notes in there. Plus they have a harness which lets you associate a webapp with different file extensions, allowing users to launch the app directly from Google Drive and for the app to persist changes back. I wouldn't have to spin up any services to handle user data and can focus on building the user experience.

Most of the requirements I mentioned above have been implemented. The app has two editor modes which I call code and visual. The Code Editor mode uses https://ace.c9.io which has built-in vim and emacs key bindings. The Visual Editor mode uses the easy-markdown-editor package. They currently share a live preview container which uses the markdown-it parser, but my goal is to use a richer markdown parser like MultiMarkdown.

This project started out because I had an extra 775 DC motor lying around (worth about $20). You could say I went deep down the rabbit hole here.

When I bought my CNC 3018, a small tabletop hobbyist CNC router, I knew nothing about routers and wood working. It was an impulse buy; I've always wanted to make my own wooden keyboard case and there was a sale on the 3018. I quickly learned that this thing makes a lot of dust, some wood dust can be pretty toxic, and proper dust management is mandatory. I also learned that a proper woodworking dust collector was gonna run me at least $1k (or ~$500-600 if I'm gonna be super cheap about it). Since these shop vacs take up a decent amount of space and I live in a townhouse with not a lot of garage space (plus this is a hobby machine, I'm not trying to start a shop), the full dust collection system wasn't going to work anyway. For the first few projects, I managed by sitting next to the machine with a small corded handheld vacuum cleaner. It turns out most vacuum cleaners can't run for long periods of time; they typically have higher HP and will shut down after long continued stress. Which doesn't bode well for me - these hobbyist routers can only go about 0.5-1mm depth per cut (read: takes FOREVER).

Fast forward a few months, I got fed up with the stock spindle motor and decided to upgrade to something that's sturdier and has a wider z-range. That stock spindle - the 775 DC motor - was sitting on my desk as I was once again searching for a solution to my dust problem. That's when I realized that (1) vacuum cleaners rely on a motor, (2) there's a motor on my desk that's literally built to run for long periods of time, and (3) I should have everything I need to fabricate a vacuum. So I spent about a week between researching, designing, and 3d printing.

The physics behind it was simple enough. There's a fan (turbine really) that attaches to motor; the housing needs to be designed in a way where the air is forced out of an exhaust port lateral to the fan. This decreases air pressure in front of the fan, effectively creating suction in that area - or whatever small opening is connected to that area, like a hose. The first part was the fan design. I tried several of my own creations, but they all snapped when the motor RPM is cranked up. The 3d-printed plastic wasn't rigid enough; some other material might've worked. I eventually came across this beautiful design on thingiverse that had enough rigidity even when 3d printed with PLA filament. I made some modifications and built the housing around that. The dust separator was also adopted from someone else's design from thingiverse, but they're all based on the widely-popular cyclone separator - reduced air pressure at the hose sucks things in, but there's a wall preventing most of that dust from making it to the fan. (not all though, that's why we have filters at the exhaust end). The heavier stuff falls into the bucket and won't go anywhere because, well... vacuum.

The neat thing about having direct access to the motor power is that I can use the existing connection on the CNC machine to automatically turn on the vacuum when it starts milling.

Around my 5th wedding anniversary, I came across a picture of a really cute eyeglasses holder made out of wood. For the uninitiated or those who want some inspiration for your next anniversary present, there's a list of anniversary gift suggestions by year (the theme for year 5 is wood, in case you didn't catch on). I had just gotten my CNC 3018 router and thought: "I could totally make this." I eventually found a site that sold it, but regardless, there was no way I'd pay for one. I wanted it to look like Chewy, our special snaggle-toothed Brussels Griffon / Maltese mix; the only way I'd get his likeness is to make it myself.

I had a cheap wooden board sitting around that was perfect for the job (it's actually a $3 chopping board from Daiso). Since my router only has a z-depth of about 50mm, I couldn't make this out of a single piece even if I had a thicker wood block. So I took to Fusion 360 and designed it specifically to be cut into 6 pieces. These were wood-glued and finished with the Waterlox stain, giving it a nice shade that matched Chewy's fur more. There's a bar that acts as a nose bridge, connecting from the nose piece through the back of the head where the glasses handle can rest on.

This is a keyboard housing I created for the UT47.2, a programmable, hot-swappable 40% board from KeyHive. I was inspired by Qlavier's amazing work on the Keeblade, as well as gun concept designs from video games Destiny and Borderlands. It features a fully-functional trigger.

If you want to make this, I've uploaded the STLs to Thingiverse. This was a one-off project; if things were too tight, I just filed down the print rather than adjusting the CAD. Don't expect any support if you try making it yourself.

The housing ended up being pretty big - even my CR-10 printer which has a fairly large 300x300 print bed wouldn't be able to handle a single-piece print. I designed from the beginning with this in mind and broke it up into four pieces: handle, front, top, and bottom. The front and handle pieces mount directly over the existing switch plate and bottom plate, and the top and bottom pieces sandwich them together, making it a pretty rigid unit.

The trigger also uses a mechanical keyboard switch - a Kaihl Box Jade to be exact - for some loud audible clicks and heavy tactile feedback. I designed the handle to include a "switch plate" where the trigger is located. This hollow opening goes up to where the "hammer" is supposed to be, except instead of a hammer, there's an audio port (female connector). A male-to-male audio cable completes the connection to the top frame which runs down the PCB.

The Box Jade switch has a traditional Cherry MX stem, so I designed a keycap that looks like a trigger to go right over it. To keep the movement from being too wobbly, I made a rail for the keycap to travel along. You can see the rail guide on the handle in the area adjacent to the "switch plate" for the trigger.

While the 3D modeling was inspired by the Destiny game, the visuals were heavily inspired by Borderlands with its vibrant, saturated colors, high contrast, and heavy outlines. I purchased an airbrush gun specifically for this project. The handle and switch plate were coated with a carbon fiber decal that I got from Amazon. The guns in Borderlands also have very striking brand elements which I love. This was airbrushed on using a simple stencil with Astrid's name (my oldest daughter) made from paper and an exact-o knife. I ended up making a wrist rest with the same branding element - 3d printed and airbrushed on. It includes four little magnets which attach to the bottom of the keyboard. The open space between the keyboard and rest was done on purpose to let the light shine through, as there are 6 underflow LEDs on the PCB.

Here's a video of the trigger in action along with some photos of the gun and stencil.

A few years ago, I managed to snatch an IBM Space Saving Keyboard (SSK) from eBay that was in great condition. It came in the original box and had a bolt mod done. For those not familiar with the hobby, the IBM Model M buckling spring keyboards were everywhere in the 80s and early 90s and have seen a revival in interest in the recent decade+. They've now become both rare and expensive (I guess expensive because it's rare). The SSK in particular is a rarer breed. They're equivalent to what we call tenkeyless (TKL) boards nowadays. There weren't many of them made; people only recently realized how useless the number pad is.

Back in the stone ages when these boards were manufactured, we used to connect keyboards to computers through the PS/2 port. The Model M's use what's called a shielded data link (SDL) cable which essentially looks like an RJ45 connector at one end and a PS/2 connector at the other end. As the PS/2 went out of fashion, some people started making SDL to USB cables, selling for a ridiculous $50 on eBay. About a decade ago, a brave soul decided to connect the SDL terminal directly to a Teensy microcontroller and remapped the keys, writing the firmware to translate it USB. Everyone now knows it as the Soarer's Converter (one day, I'd really like a widely-known mod to be named after me).

The Soarer's Converter brought us to the middle ages, but we're now living in the future (2019 when I did this mod) where USB ports are replaced with USB-C. I ended up not using Soarer's Converter for my mod, although it's technically possible since USB-C is backwards-compatible. With the cost of a Teensy, it was cheaper to get a generic PS/2 to USB adapter and converting that USB male port into USB-C. My mod consists of two electronic pieces:

I used a different breakout board than the one linked, but any female USB port should work. It's possible to rip this from an existing piece of hardware you're about to throw away, but the soldering would be a nightmare. Pictured below is the USB-C pinout from the same breakout board I used. Aside from connecting power (VBUS on pins A4/A9/B4/B9) and ground (A1/A12/B1/B12), you need D+ (A6/B6) and D- (A7/B7). The reason you need to connect on both sides A & B is because USB-C works in both orientations. Finally, I designed and 3D printed a piece to secure the breakout board in place. Now, I can use any USB-C male-to-male cable to connect the keyboard to the host device.

A machine that draws. Writeup to come. Meanwhile, check out the video below.

Dominick Pham,
Creative Technologist

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