30 minutes with a stranger

Not a fan of fancy websites, but this one really hits the nail on the head.

It's telling about society how much of these conversations revolve around work. It makes sense, since it's where we spend most of our time, but at the same time a lot of people are not happy at work. Recently I've been avoiding this type of smalltalk because it has this pattern that starts with "and what do you do for a living". I'm trying to make the world a better place is not usually the answer. I wish it gets normalized to ask "what do you like to do in your life" as a first question. I like to cook and fix bicycles and in general do something practical.

Claude to the rescue: This is an interactive data story from The Pudding about research showing that talking to strangers makes us feel better, despite our expectations.

The piece follows conversations from a study of nearly 1,700 video calls between strangers with different backgrounds (age, race, politics, etc.). While people predicted they'd have negative experiences talking to strangers, the vast majority actually felt better by the end of their 30-minute conversations - regardless of how different they were from each other.The story argues that we've lost "bridging social capital" (connections with people unlike us) and explores how this contributes to declining social trust.

It ends with a personal reflection on helping a bleeding teenager on the subway, suggesting that despite our fears, most people will help strangers when needed - and that these connections are crucial for tackling big societal challenges.

I remember the days using chatroulette :)

Really great design.

This is the unicorn of fancy websites because for once, it actually makes sense to override browser's standard scrolling behavior. The 30-minute timeline on the right provides an obvious context for what you're navigating with the scroll actions, and you wouldn't be able to do that with a regular scrollbar.

Usually scrolling overrides happen because the designers' mindset was that the site should be a sequence of beautiful slides. They might prototype it as a Keynote presentation that is approved by management. And then some poor web developer gets tasked with building a site that feels like the Keynote slide show that everyone loved, and the only way to do that is to turn scrolling into an annoying "next slide" action.

The Pudding is such a cool publication. They have incredible research and dataviz, in particular on cultural topics but not only. It’s worth subscribing to their newsletter. Glad to see them there!