The Library of Minds The Hidden Story Behind the Like Button with Design Icon Soleio
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Oct 9, 2025 Soleio Cuervo, an influential product designer and co-inventor of the Like button at Facebook, shares his insights from his journey at tech giants. He emphasizes the importance of speed as a competitive advantage and how early coding influenced his design philosophy. Soleio reveals the story behind the Like button's development and discusses when to pivot or persist with projects. He contrasts Facebook's rapid iteration with Dropbox's focus on reliability and encourages a rethink of UX in the AI era. Tune in for valuable advice on blending speed with quality!
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Like Button Was Tested Inside UFI
- The Like Button was iterated inside a broader UFI effort to standardize feedback and comments.
- Internal dogfooding and A/B tests revealed likes increased comments, contrary to intuition.
Let Code Decide Disputes
- Use experiments and A/B tests to resolve disagreements instead of long debates.
- Prefer shipping a prototype and learning from real data because "code wins arguments."
Tell A False Fail From A Real Fail
- Distinguish idea failure from execution failure by asking if initial conditions and effort were sufficient.
- Diagnose whether poor performance stems from wrong assembly (onboarding, signal) rather than a bad idea.
