Nikki Chan
Welcome to the eighth edition of Async Chats! This letter is all about candid conversations with people like yourself. If you’d like some more context see this letter. Otherwise, let’s get into this.
Nikki is VP of Customer Experience at Looking Glass Factory – “the hologram company 🙂”. She currently lives in St. Petersburg, FL, but floats between Florida and Greenpoint, Brooklyn NY. When travel restrictions lift, she will also travel back to Hong Kong regularly. She is a hybrid worker.
Why hybrid?
Right now at Looking Glass, we’re experimenting with a hybrid new model where we go into the office the first three days of every month. We’ve only done this for one cycle so can’t yet report back on findings. Because we work on physical products, being in the office to some degree, exchanging ideas and seeing demos is key to what we do and so far it seems like we had a pretty successful March cycle so already looking forward to our April one coming up!
What are your interests outside of work?
These days, I’m a big fan of being outdoors and near the water so being in St. Pete, Florida has its advantages. We just bought our first home in January so outside of work, it feels like I’m always either building furniture, buying furniture or returning furniture. (Likewise, my partner just spends all his free time at Home Depot or working on the yard.)
When indoors, I’m trying to become a better cook and challenging myself to make things without recipes too much. I’m also so bad at following them! I don’t love how most recipes are written and find them too long and confusing. A fun next project I’m thinking of doing is turning my favorite home meals into gantt chart-like timelines.
I love puzzles and word games so I get way too excited in escape rooms and do crossword puzzles in my free time.
What are some of your favorite digital or physical tools?
Obviously I love Notion but I find that I’m not using it the way I used to and have found other smaller tools to help me replace some of the smaller workflows in my life, here’s a quick shortlist:
Things for to-do lists
Bear for quick note-taking
Muse for ideation on the iPad
Whimsical for flowcharts
Procreate for noodling and doodling
Arc as my new browser (this is a brand new browser made by none other than The Browser Company — would sign up for the waitlist here).
Notion for my knowledge base (gardening!) + journal
I haven’t found a calendar app that I love just yet but just started using Cron so I’m excited to give that a go
Alfred for shortcuts
Loom for screen recordings
Duolingo for learning Japanese + Spanish
Descript for video editing + transcribing
I feel like I have to give a huge shout out to Hero Clip — I can’t go anywhere without bringing a clip / karabiner out, I always end up having to hang something, somewhere. The Hero Clips are cool because they rotate and you can hang anything off them.
Moonlists for slow and thoughtful analog planning
Do you prefer to work/ communicate asynchronously or synchronously? Why?
I think there are benefits to both!
I like to work in person to get a sense and feel for working with another human being in a shared space. There’s a camaraderie there that definitely can’t be replicated by endless Zoom calls. We often undervalue how much more efficient it is for knowledge to be exchanged in a shared space and how much more empathy you can develop for another human being by just being with them in the same room.
That said, communicating asynchronously allows for more focus and a chance to slow down and not rush things.
Questions of the week
Based on this edition of The Gray Area
In your opinion, what is a computer?
Oh what a loaded question this is! Of course, I can’t give an answer wholly without bringing up Steve Jobs’ “bicycle for the mind” analogy:
When we invented the personal computer, we created a new kind of bicycle…a new man-machine partnership…a new generation of entrepreneurs. c. 1980
To simplify, the definition of a computer is a machine that takes in a certain set of information and processes it in a way that enhances human intelligence and efficiency - and this exists in all shapes and forms today! Just thinking of all the “computers” I use on a daily basis: my MacBook Pro, my iPad, my iPhone, Alexa, Apple Watch, heck, even some cars!
Has this opinion changed for you, and why?
Over time, definitely! I grew up in the dial-up era and I very specifically remember that every time I would wait for my modem to dial up to the internet, I could microwave a whole entire bag of popcorn.
It’s astounding to me how far we’ve come since, though I often find myself nostalgic when computers didn’t take up so much of our time and attention! Every year, I think, “we gotta be at the peak! computers can’t continue to take so much attention from us!”, alas, along comes another new app and we drown again.
I’m very much a proponent for a slower internet though I don’t quite know what that means and how we can get there. For myself, I try to find balance as much as possible so when I find myself too reliant on systems, my primitive brain will find its way to the closest pen & paper. Personally, I oscillate a lot between loving computers and hating how reliant I’ve become on “tools” and “being productive” so my answer for this will certainly change from week to week.
You work for a holographic display company – how does this affect your view on computers?
Hah! Glad you asked. Right now, our displays aren’t yet the full kit and kaboodle of being an operating system on its own and we do rely on computers to run the display.
I do think that we’re still in the early days of hologram computing and in 10-20 years, we’ll look back and 3D holographic interfaces will just be so darn obvious! We spent the last 10 years fascinated by VR, AR and full immersion but I think that’s going to scale back and people will realize that while being totally immersed is cool, the real world is even cooler. And I do think there’s room for all of this technology in the “metaverse” but the realization that holographic displays > VR will soon be the more popular opinion.
The next step for Looking Glass and our displays is to have them on as many desks as possible and to find a way to connect them all to one another. The thing that makes computers powerful today is the ability for them to connect to one another via the internet and I think the same will be true for holographic displays, just wait and see :-)
What is something few people know about you?
I’m a stepmom to two incredible kiddos and this has given me the gift to see the world through the eyes of an 8 and 11-year old — a sense of wonder & an unending urge to save the planet we live on.
Anything new or important you’d like to mention to the readers?
I started a newsletter late last year - Tools for Creativity - and have been consistent with publishing until we bought a house. I’m really hoping to carve out time for myself every week to write again so do subscribe there if you want more wondering thoughts from yours truly!
Note from the writer:
In every letter, I ask the participant to provide an image of themselves. This is what Nikki wrote and provided.
I met my spirit animal (manatee) while paddling in Coffee Pot Bayou yesterday so this is a close approximation.
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