Revamped “About” page

Announcements
1

The new Observable has a new marketing homepage: About | Observable .

It’s the logged-out homepage (on the new subdomain), and you can access it while logged-in from the workspace switcher → “About Observable”. It’s not yet the default homepage (on the root domain, displacing Observable Notebooks: Fast data exploration and prototyping ); it still needs better examples, more links to docs, testimonials…

The hardest part has been looking deep into our souls to identify the core values that dictate how we design notebooks. None are new, but we are trying to narrow and clarify our focus. We’ve got:

  • Fast (“Five seconds to chart”)
  • Interpretable (“Understand your code”)
  • Collaborative (“Work better together”)
  • Open source (“Own your work”)

Maybe “Fast” isn’t quite the right word, and “Five seconds to chart” doesn’t quite cover it. It’s not fast like a Bugatti; it’s not horsepower. It’s more like simplicity, elegance, clarity, focus, getting out of your way. We talk a lot about the “parsimony” of our primitives.

Another interesting bit is how to position AI. The agent in the new Observable may be the single biggest improvement, but it’s not as if “AI” is a core value; it’s useful only insofar as it advances interpretability or accessibility or some other high-level humane goal. We could still probably pitch it better.

Anyway, happy to hear any feedback (though mostly we’re back to focusing on feature work!). Are we missing the reason you use Observable?

E.g., I remember this post by @nxrix articulated the appeal very concisely:

I like Observable mostly for these reasons:

  1. Everything updates in real time.
  2. You can create and edit notebooks on your phone.
  3. Many useful things are already built in (inputs, imports, …).
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Looks very good, but the example notebooks take some time to load, and the generative art one is heavy.

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I gave this some thought, and I believe the best way I can describe what makes Observable so good for me is how scrappy it affords me to be. Hot-swapping between smartphone and desktop is awesome, I can experiment, prototype and iterate ideas while commuting and straighten it out later when I find a quiet moment in-between family life.

I’d also add a word like “Available” somewhere, because you’re understating how well it works on a mobile form factor. I do probably 80% of my notebook tinkering on my smartphone. Maybe that’s not a primary core value, but in that case it sure is a sweet emergent feature!

“Interpretable” is right, and I’d say “Transparent” is an important element of that; being able to not just understand but immediately review all of the code, data sources and actual data is empowering.

Also, instead of “Fast”, maybe “Immediate”? Still feels like there’s an even better word hiding, but that word sounds and describes better to me. Or maybe Snappy? Slippy? Slick? Pronto? Idk, I just love brainstorming :innocent: Cheers to the new About page!