Youyang Hou

User Research @Notion AI. PhD @UMSI. I am interested in #HCI, #UXR, #AI

[Ryo Lu @ryolu_]

convergence to the mean

when everyone looks at everyone else to decide what to make, we eventually stop making anything of our own.

we copy what works. borrow the language, the aesthetic, the features. we call it learning from the market, following best practices, staying competitive. together, everything starts to feel familiar. polished, interchangeable. nothing wrong. nothing alive.

the mean isn’t necessarily bad. it’s where everything lands when we remove the reasons for it to be different.

numbers are easier to compare than feelings, so we make things that produce numbers. we study what gets attention, then shape ourselves around it. eventually the feedback stops informing the work and starts authoring it. we’re no longer asking what we want to say. we’re asking what will be rewarded for saying.

ai makes this loop frictionless. it can draw from more references than we could see in a lifetime. but access to every perspective isn’t the same as having one. it hasn’t lived a particular life that makes one detail unbearable and another beautiful. when we ask it to choose for us without bringing any intention of our own, we get something plausible, easy to approve.

then we ship it, measure it, copy it, and feed it back into the next round. a tidal wave of mid.

this changes not just the work, but the people making it.

we describe ourselves in categories platforms can distribute and markets understand. designer. founder. creator. pick a niche. build a brand. be consistent. the parts that don’t fit become inconvenient, even when those contradictions might produce our most interesting work. we become easier to classify and harder to tell apart.

i think we need to approach making things more like artists.

an artist develops a perspective through the work. making, noticing, choosing, failing, returning. learning what matters even when nobody else cares. craft gives that perspective a form precise enough for someone else to experience.

the life outside the work matters too. the places you’ve lived, the people you’ve loved, the things you’re embarrassed to care about. these aren’t distractions from having something to say. they’re how you come to have something to say.

we understand this with music, paintings, photographs, movies. we expect a person to be present in the choices. we want to experience something we wouldn’t have encountered without them.

software can do this too.

a piece of software expresses beliefs about how life should feel. what deserves your attention. what you should be free to change. whether a task should feel like paperwork or play. even a small interaction can carry someone’s care, humor, or curiosity.

but we rarely talk about software as a medium. we talk about it as an industry. markets to capture, workflows to optimize, competitors to catch up with. we add a feature because someone else has it, without asking whether it belongs. products accumulate the same parts and lose what made them worth choosing.

underneath the branding, it’s all the same thing.

artists learn from others too. the question is whether you’re absorbing those influences into a point of view, or using them to avoid developing one.

what are you trying to let someone feel, understand, or do? why this particular shape? what have you noticed that the existing tools don’t seem to notice?

those questions don’t have answers you can borrow from a competitor’s roadmap.

if we can make almost anything, deciding what deserves to exist becomes more important, not less. speed gives us more chances to exercise judgment. it doesn’t remove the responsibility.

i don’t want a world where every person becomes a more efficient distributor of the same ideas. i want people to use these tools to go further into what they actually care about. to make things specific enough that we can feel someone behind them.

what is the point of everyone being able to make something, if we all end up making the same thing?

[Notion @NotionHQ]

The backbone of your dock.

[Notion @NotionHQ]

Introducing External Agents in Notion: Claude + Cursor.

Your team already collaborates in Notion. Now your favorite agents do too.

Assign them tasks from a board shared with your whole team. @-mention them like teammates. Watch them run.

[Notion @NotionHQ]

BIG one for devs today. Introducing the Notion Developer Platform:

- Notion CLI, ntn (Notion in your terminal)
- Workers (run code on Notion's infra)
- Database sync (any data source into Notion)
- Agent tools (build any workflow)
- Webhook triggers (trigger Notion from any app)
- External Agents API (bring any agent into Notion)
- Notion Agents SDK (use Notion Agents anywhere)
- …and a bunch more API improvements

And soon, you won't need to be a developer to build on Notion. Your agent will be one for you.

[Notion Developers @NotionDevs]

Introducing: the Notion Developer Platform

New building blocks that help you (and your coding agents) sync any data source, build any tool, and orchestrate any agent.

Follow along 👇 https://t.co/wxZDYxBrqK

[Notion @NotionHQ]

We've been a li’l obsessed with the Custom Agents our customers are building.

So we did what any reasonable team would do… collected our favorites in one place, prompts and all, ready for you to copy and remix.

We call it the Agent Hall of Fame → https://t.co/3W776ERSgD

(@ us if yours should be in here 👀)

[Eric Goldman @goldmanem]

Come to our SF HQ and build some super powered agents with us.

We’ve got an exquisitely designed space, food and bev, the best in the business roaming around, and full access to our new developer tools.

Registration link in the thread - spots are limited

[Youyang Hou @youyanghou]

Notion + Claude 🔥

[Notion @NotionHQ]

Before, you had two ways to use @claudeai with Notion:

1. Custom Agents (Notion runs the harness)
2. Claude + MCP (Claude runs the harness)

Now there’s a third with Claude Managed Agents. Notion is the collaboration layer. You can keep working in Notion while Anthropic runs the agent behind the scenes.

[Youyang Hou @youyanghou]

@yaquapril 高端朋友圈！

[Youyang Hou @youyanghou]

Grateful for conversations with our users and community leaders—they’re a constant reminder of why I love working at Notion. Thanks @samhli_ for organizing it and bringing us together!

[Sam H Li @samhli_]

🌁thank you to everyone who came out and talk all things @NotionHQ today!!

🗽more to come very soon…

[Youyang Hou @youyanghou]

@bearliu Good insight!

[Youyang Hou @youyanghou]

Calling all AI builders for our AI/agentic development study!

[Sam H Li @samhli_]

Notion-curious in SF? Join me this Thursday afternoon for a casual coffee pop-up near Notion HQ. Quick community overview + time to meet other builders.

RSVP: https://t.co/b3qhtoKyTq

[Randy J. Hunt @randyjhunt]

We're hiring a design leader at @NotionHQ. Maybe it's you. This is about leading through making, enabling builders, and building yourself.

You take great pride in seeing excellent output being appreciated in the hands and hearts of customers. You create momentum that leads to quality.

You'll be reporting to me, but you're not so concerned with reporting. Managing up isn't the vibe. Supporting the team is.

Talk to me and @kurissuuu

[Youyang Hou @youyanghou]

Notion is #9!

[Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan]

Surprises:
- Perplexity higher than you'd think
- removebg the 16th most popular AI tool
- Google AI studio beating Lovable, and together they're ahead of all other vibe-coding platforms
- JanitorAI is not what you expect
- Three in the top 20 are AI chatbot friends
- Google has four products in top 50

[Youyang Hou @youyanghou]

@bearliu 有没有可能因为目标客群和场景就是不一样的😊

[Youyang Hou @youyanghou]

@bearliu 试试custom agent，Notion platform以后会越来越强的😃

[Youyang Hou @youyanghou]

Notion is not a notetaking app.
Notion does the work for you.

[Notion @NotionHQ]

Allow us to reintroduce ourselves.

[Youyang Hou @youyanghou]

@eryidebiji 会越来越开放，敬请期待！

[Youyang Hou @youyanghou]

@geoffreylitt @mschoening @NotionHQ I look forward to a Geoffrey’s Podcast