Individuals and Groups
Content tailored to purpose-driven individuals and groups building collective understanding and impactful sensemaking
Aha moments - the link between curiosity and serendipity
This article explores research from the University of Pennsylvania and American University that identifies two types of curiosity: "hunters" who connect closely related topics in tight clusters to fill knowledge gaps, and "busybodies" who jump between diverse topics creating loose knowledge networks. The research used Wikipedia browsing patterns as a novel measurement approach. The piece argues that curiosity involves both consumption (gathering information) and curation (shaping and retaining it), with both aspects contributing to wellbeing through "aha moments" when understanding crystallizes. However, the author suggests that losing curated information—through forgotten notes, lost tweets, or failed memory—can create frustration that negatively impacts wellbeing. The article proposes that understanding these curiosity patterns can inform the design of tools that better support information discovery and retention, claiming this could enhance emotional satisfaction and overall wellbeing.
Good thinking counts on Hunome
This article critiques traditional social media platforms for promoting fragmentation, polarization, and individualistic "one-to-many" communication structures that the author argues diminish meaningful collective action. The piece contrasts fleeting social media messages with building lasting understanding, describing personal frustrations with Twitter's ephemeral nature and difficulty facilitating coherent group discussions. The author advocates for moving beyond the follower-based model toward what they term "atomic communities" that form around shared interests and thinking rather than personal branding. The article criticizes social media's advertising-based revenue model as creating inherent bias, comparing it to Google founders' 1998 warning about advertising-funded search engines. It contrasts traditional search results with what the author calls "boutique search for understanding" that provides insights and thought connections rather than isolated information fragments, arguing that current platforms waste users' efforts on temporary content rather than building lasting knowledge.
What is a humanity explorer? This is their DNA
This article defines "humanity explorers" as individuals from diverse backgrounds who share a curiosity about human behavior and societal systems. The piece describes three key characteristics: they come from various professional and personal contexts (designers, marketers, strategists, or simply curious individuals), with estimates citing 1 billion knowledge workers and up to 50% of adults in high-income societies as "cultural creatives"; they possess empathy and insight, leading to broader worldviews and creative problem-solving abilities; and they reject simplistic black-and-white thinking, instead seeking nuance and multiple perspectives to build comprehensive understanding. The article claims these individuals tend to make more sustainable decisions by considering various viewpoints and seeing themselves as part of larger systems rather than focusing solely on individual concerns. The piece positions humanity explorers as naturally inclined toward collective thinking and human-aware decision-making approaches.
Diverse perspectives build multidimensional understanding
This article presents Hunome's approach to building multidimensional understanding of human-related themes through collective perspectives. The piece argues that everyone is qualified to contribute to understanding humanity since all people have lived human experiences, whether simple daily activities or complex expertise in fields like anthropology or social psychology. Using recreational space use as an example, it describes how different stakeholders (designers, town planners, community fitness group members) can contribute varied perspectives that collectively build comprehensive understanding of topics. The article outlines three levels of understanding: individual (connecting personal thoughts with broader perspectives), shared (developing collective insights about human experiences), and impact-oriented (using multidimensional understanding to make more human-aware decisions in personal choices and product/service design). The piece positions this collective sensemaking approach as a way to improve perceptions and decision-making by making comprehensive human understanding accessible to everyone.

 
 
 
