Matthew: Welcome to restock a podcast by no code supply Co where we highlight people and the things they build. I'm Matthew.

Corey Moen: And I'm Corey, what's up y'all?

Matthew: Hey everybody, thank you for joining us. And Cory, I'm just kind of want to start off like, what's top of mind for you? What are you kind of feeling these days?

Corey Moen: ⁓ man, you know, I think there's the common things that many in this space are feeling among new products and features in AI or whatever. ⁓ I think I'm still, my head always comes back a few times a week to what does this all mean for how I work and my workflows every day. And then at the very same, completely other end of the spectrum. ⁓ finding more joy recently in making physical things. And one of them was I have this silly ⁓ idea or desire to play with robotic lawnmowers one day and I built this garage for one that I got and designed it, built it, planned it, all that and it was just, yes. So the robot's name is Doug and so I call it Doug House, of course. ⁓

Matthew: ⁓ yeah. Kind of like a dog house, but for a long time. Or it could be the dugout. Yeah.

Corey Moen: Yes, ooh, or the dugout. But it does literally look like a dog house in terms of size and shape. And there's like a little garage door that like mechanically opens and closes and like, it's so nerdy. But again, I think it's just the point of like, man, I just, I, you know, have that inward feeling recently of like, I just like making stuff. Sometimes I don't really care what the thing is. Just making things is fun. Bringing things into the world that didn't exist before, you know? How about you? What's up with mine?

Matthew: All right, cool. Yeah. ⁓ well, yeah, top of mind. Did you use like a plan for the house or do you just kind of like this is what I want to do and just start doing it like.

Corey Moen: Hahahaha Man, I would say I approach it in the same way that I approach ⁓ even web projects, is first, go out in the world and see what maybe exists that I can either repurpose or be inspired by. And I found a few different videos ⁓ on YouTube, especially, that weren't plans. But apparently, for context, robot motors are very common in Europe, or they've been a thing much, much longer in Europe. I don't know if it's like,

Matthew: All right, get some inspiration.

Corey Moen: smaller lawns or what the difference is of why, but they're only now starting to come on the scene in the US. And so a lot of these videos, like some of them aren't even in English I found. And so some people would show their designs, some people just show the end result. And so like even the door thing I mentioned, for example, and how that works, I found a couple different people that did a similar general approach to that. And I was like, ⁓ that's super clever. And so that was as far as I got in terms of like plans. And then from there was like, okay, I know where I want to put it. ⁓ I know the dimensions I roughly need because of the charging pad size and whatever. And then again, the spot I was putting it. ⁓ And then from there, just like, I did use quad a little bit to like help me plan dimensions, but it quickly realized like, ⁓ maybe quad can make me like an SVG diagram of this. And it like kind of did. ⁓ But it, and it was close enough to get. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's honestly what I was hoping for.

Matthew: you Make me an IKEA assembly guide. Mm.

Corey Moen: And it did a decent job. It was enough to at least get me a high level material list and ideate through, hey, should I use this type of screws or should I use glue or should I use this material or that material or some of that? But ultimately, it ended up being one of those projects where I knew generally what I wanted. I went and got the first batch of materials. I started building the frame and things. And then I had to go back to the store and get other things along the way just because of the-

Matthew: Mm. Yeah, you always got to go back to the store. It's at least once.

Corey Moen: Oh man, that's the classic thing, right? And it's, yeah, the ironic thing that I always laugh about internally is just like, there's so many parallels to, again, building things on the web. It's just like, you're not going to have all the knowledge and things up front. You're going to have to go back and revisit code. You're going to have to go get this other tool or integration or extension or whatever. It's like so parallel in the weirdest way. So yeah, I don't know. It was super fun. This, yes. Imperfections 2.

Matthew: Yeah, you're going to have unexpected things come up and you're going to have to adapt and research more.

Corey Moen: Yes, like on one of the pieces of siding, it got away from me when I was cutting it and it left this groove in the side. And I was like, ugh, I didn't want to have to redo it because there's other contexts there in terms of angle cuts and it was just kind of a hard piece to make and it matched all these other pieces. So I literally just left it ⁓ because I'm like, whatever, you know? I think it's funny in a way I'm like...

Matthew: Mm.

Corey Moen: I care so much less about perfection the older I get or the more I make things over the years that I'm like, sometimes I'm like, man, there's actually kind of, you know, it's cliche, but beauty and imperfection. Yeah, yeah, it's character. maybe is actually ironically evident that it was made by hand or by a human. It is like another side of it that came to mind. So I don't know. It's been fun.

Matthew: character. Mm. Mm. Mm-hmm. That is fun. I, when we moved back to the U S a few years ago, I looked into, ⁓ robotic mowers at that time. And I don't know what the prices are now. I mean, when I was looking at it, was like $6,000 for.

Corey Moen: Oh, let's go. Yeah, yeah. They've gotten better than that. The one, yeah, no, no, no. The one I got, the brand is called Limo and TLDR, I've been researching this for like, I don't know, maybe a year or more. Cause I joke with family that like when AI takes my job, I'm going to start a robot lawn care company.

Matthew: Okay. You don't have to tell me what you spent on this project, limo. Okay. I mean, I was saying, as you were describing it, like you've actually kind of forged a new path. It sounds like there's not a lot of resources online about it. So you could probably actually share some stuff and maybe get some traffic.

Corey Moen: No, no, no, no, no. Maybe, yeah. Like honestly, it's been so fun. I will candidly say I may or may not own lawnmowen.com, the domain, just in case. And anyways, Limeo, I didn't find this out until actually I was almost about to like, okay, I think this is the one I want to try.

Matthew: On mowing. That's good. That's good.

Corey Moen: is that it was a Kickstarter, like I think a year and a half ago. And at least, I don't know if this still is true, but I saw some article where I discovered it that claimed it was the highest grossing Kickstarter of all time to that point. They raised like seven and a half million or something like that ⁓ from Kickstarter. was like, dang. ⁓ But at the same time, mean, Chinese made Chinese company as well. Not that that matters, but like it was a little bit like tricky.

Matthew: Well, on Kickstarter for hardware is, I don't know, it feels riskier to me.

Corey Moen: Tricky for sure and the one I ordered was the second gen already like it wasn't the one out the gate It was ⁓ they had one that was out. I think last summer And then a lot of the videos I saw on people reviewing at first a lot of the things that people had issues with they fixed So was like, okay perfect time to get in. I know it's not gonna be perfect It's definitely had some bugs here and there but like for the most part has been reliable and just like super fun to play with like the app is great and like, you know

Matthew: Okay.

Corey Moen: for the most part, very capable. ⁓ I don't know, yeah.

Matthew: I, when I thought about the, one of the reasons I stopped was we have a dog. it's like the backyard's fenced. It's like, how's the robot going to get to the front yard without like letting the dog out, you know, but you're kind of mechanical kind of gate there. Um, like that actually could probably work if you put it like in, in, the fence as well.

Corey Moen: Hmm Yep. ⁓ Yeah, I've seen, I saw some wild stuff online. People are so inventive in this way. For what it's worth, backyard is fenced and Doug's, Doug house is in the backyard. But then like I mow every day or I've been trying to cause it's supposed to be good for the grass. So he does the back one day, front next, back, front, back, front. And so to be clear, it's also not fully automated. Like if he's going to do the front, I got to go open the gate, put the gutters up.

Matthew: ⁓

Corey Moen: you know, and then let them rip. ⁓ And so, but even to that point, this. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Like it's, and that's fine to me, cause it's still saving me a ton of time. ⁓ And you know, I still have to trim also, like it's not a perfect fully automated thing. I think what's fascinating to me though is,

Matthew: I have to do that for our indoor robot vacuum too. Like, okay, I have to the chairs up and yeah. Mm-hmm. ⁓ is it weather aware? Okay, that's good.

Corey Moen: It is weather aware. Yes. And it uses AI for detecting elements or whatever, supposedly. And it has a camera on it. You can see the live feed of the camera from the app, which again, I joke is like...

Matthew: That's what you can put on lawnmowing.com is just stream the feed.

Corey Moen: All right, man. Dude, is, that's like, it was a few years ago. was like COVID, I think, in Iowa here, because, you know, we don't have a lot of other entertainment. I remember something that went viral was this like Eagle cam. It was like a bald eagle nest. Do remember this? Maybe it wasn't, I don't remember where it was, but it like, it went completely viral. It was just a live stream of a bald eagle's nest with like babies and all that and like.

Matthew: You Yeah, it's a similar thing. Yeah.

Corey Moen: Dude, that's this, right?

Matthew: Couple of weeks ago, my wife shared with me ⁓ one of the other teachers had duck eggs in her classroom for the special needs kids and ⁓ the eggs were hatching and she shared this trip with me. I'm like working, I just have this old monitor over here that's just like watching the eggs hatch. I'm like, what if I knew, I don't know, but it's going over. Yeah, well, ⁓ this kind of plays into, I think a lot of like what we're experiencing with the changes in workflows and

Corey Moen: Love it. Yo, hey, watching life happen is awesome, ⁓ you know? Yeah, yeah.

Matthew: AI, it's like, we're becoming so efficient, we can do so much in less amount of time, but almost also at the same time, right? And it's like, I think these moments when we can actually slow down and something that is real time and just, you know, very slow, like it's almost becomes therapeutic or meditative, you know, it's like actually kind of good for us.

Corey Moen: Yes. Yeah. So good, especially when you say at the same time is like just like bing in my head. ⁓ man, which can be overwhelming just that, but like at the positive side of it is it is helpful. not to keep going back to Doug, but now like again, the only reason I've always, know, ⁓ especially

Matthew: Yeah, it's the context switching and the cognitive overload.

Corey Moen: I guess context, I got into like grass and all that. To be clear, I realize it's not the best thing for the world, but I got into it back in COVID. Yeah. I don't know. yeah. And so like, I know you're good, you're good. And so I've known this whole idea of like the theory is, you actually don't need as many chemicals and all that. If you just mow really often, grass likes to be cut.

Matthew: You got into grass. Was this before you got into weed? Yeah. Sorry, I to.

Corey Moen: and weeds don't as just a simple explanation, but I never had the time to do it every day, 0%. I have two kids, a job, used to freelance, all that, but now I can just because like, again, it's not hands off. I still have to go do something, but it takes me four minutes to go do the things, let it go, make sure nothing wrong happens, which again, things have like the other day it was running and my neighbor came running in the backyard and she's like, Doug's in the street, like Doug fell off the curb.

Matthew: ⁓ yeah.

Corey Moen: And I'm like, no. ⁓ I've had all the neighbors asking questions and my straight to is, well, this is Doug. The kids named him, you know. ⁓

Matthew: That's hilarious that your neighbor knows Doug by first name basis. So next season, ⁓ all the neighbors are going to have dogs of their own synchronized lawn cutting.

Corey Moen: ⁓ yes. This, right? This. And it's funny because behind us is an older couple and ⁓ they, know, especially the guy will mow the lawn, but he's up there in the air. So when it's really hot, you can tell it's kind of brutal for him. And he hasn't asked as much, but I'm like, this is the... And he doesn't have a fence or anything. This perfect persona for something like this. And equating that back to code and websites. Same, think all this has that parallel again, where it's like, I can now go have AI do and work on something while I'm working on this other thing. And even if I forget about it, I've still made some progress and come back to something that's advanced and saved me time. Or on the flip side of giving somebody the ability they otherwise don't, it's the same thing, right? How can it just move that forward? And again, to be clear, I don't think it's just a high, this is like any tool. that is helpful out there in the world can enable that in people. And I don't know, that's where I always, I think that's like the wrapper around the workflow thing is like, how do we just, I don't know, take advantage of tools to save ourselves time and do things that are more interesting and fun and expressive or memorable or whatever.

Matthew: been thinking about the industrial revolution a lot recently, because I think there are lot of parallels with what we're going through. ⁓ But also it's kind of an extension of, there was a major shift in humanity at that point at the industrial revolution, once things became mechanized or mass produced, know, doing all this kind of stuff. we're just kind of at this, it feels like the curve is just like going exponential.

Corey Moen: Yeah. Yes.

Matthew: and all the things that started at that point in history, which boggles my mind to think in a couple of decades from now, if things are ramping up this fast, is technology going to look like in two decades? But then the reverse of that is, I remember

Corey Moen: Totally. Yes.

Matthew: being a kid and reading like, you know, popular mechanics and you know, it was like the year 2025, you know, and it's, you know, it's going to be hover cars and you know, all this kind of stuff. And it's like, so far off from that. So it's, it, it's weird having watched technology advance and it's both moves really fast and really slow at the same time. And it doesn't, I think what holds

Corey Moen: ⁓ the... Yeah, yeah. ⁓ Yes.

Matthew: think it's actually kind of culture in our capacity as societies and individuals to actually make change or accept these changes that actually kind of holds technology back or helps to decide which way technology goes. If we hadn't gone through the COVID pandemic, actually a lot of technology like pay...

Corey Moen: For sure.

Matthew: ⁓ contactless payment wouldn't have taken off in the US. Zoom wouldn't be as ubiquitous as it is. We could go on and on. But it's like there are these things that you can't plan for that actually have a major impact in the development of technology. What actually gets adopted and long term and then actually kind of starts evolving.

Corey Moen: totally. Mm-hmm. Totally agree. Totally agree. It's... I think what's interesting, too, is that we... It's easy to look back at history books, movies, whatever, and understand some level of that change, but we didn't live 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 1,000 years ago, to viscerally feel how radically different it is. Like, a simple example, I don't know why I come back to more and more often.

Matthew: Mm-hmm.

Corey Moen: I think it started from maybe a year ago or whatever. I went deep on like Cowboys and Yellowstone, the show and like all of that. And like realizing y'all at least, sorry, first world problems and statement, but like a hot shower. We live in an age where we at least, know, in developed parts of the world completely take that concept for granted. Like, of course you have a hot shower or reliable electricity.

Matthew: Yeah. ⁓

Corey Moen: And ⁓ there's just things like that that we just don't, most or all people living today don't actually have that lived difference of what it was before those things to understand how impactful that is, again, in a silly, simple way or like another parallel. I actually wrote like a blog post on my personal site that was like called the horseless code base. it's just this, but talking about when we went from horse transportation primarily to and I'm sure that that felt uncomfortable and I'm sure that people are like, I'm not like an engine in a car is literally explosions in a steel box.

Matthew: Mm-hmm. Yeah, this metal beast is never going to replace horses. Yeah.

Corey Moen: Yes, people will be like, that is a bomb. I am not gonna get in a bomb and go 30, 40 miles an hour down a hill and die.

Matthew: When I was in defensive driving class, the instructor was trying to scare us. And he described a car as a ⁓ bundle of sticks of dynamite. And he actually had a model made of this. It's a bundle of dynamite sticks with a keg of gasoline on top. He's like, you're driving down the road in this. It's like, ⁓ wow, this guy's a little extreme.

Corey Moen: love this. This, this, right? And like, I think also what you said has ironically come to mind as well. Like, this is another personal detail, but what you said about willingness, I think is the main thing. like, ⁓ music wise, an artist I've liked in the last couple of years, we saw him live and now he's like exploded as Noah Cahan, like, I don't know, folk. alt ⁓ artists and he just dropped a new album recently and there's a song in it titled willing and able and it's a great song, but B for whatever reason keeps coming to mind in this realm of like whether it's AI or anything else, if it doesn't matter how awesome and amazing and spectacular people think it is or people say it is, if everybody's not willing and able to go so cheesy to actually go use it and have it have an impact, it will go nowhere. Like that is a fact and to your point, we've seen it time and time and time and again, and sometimes like what actually ends up being the forcing function or the thing that organically makes people willing and able is out of unexpected, yeah, out of somewhere that wasn't expected or out of our control, like COVID or whatever. ⁓ I don't know, yeah, it's fascinating to me. I am... I think I step back and I'm so grateful to be like, I don't know, living in this time that we do have hot showers, but also like observing that like, what is all this happening right now? That's pretty crazy. Like will people look back in the history books a hundred years from now and this is a notable point in time? I don't know, but it could be, ⁓ you know, interesting.

Matthew: Yeah, well, and history is written, right? You know, so history needs to be remembered, otherwise it's going to be written for you. that is also, like, if you go down the history path, ⁓ yeah, you'll realize, and especially having traveled.

Corey Moen: Mmm. Yeah. Mmm.

Matthew: you realize people have different versions of history, like, and different viewpoints. And going back to what you're saying about like, what's normal, like even having a hot shower, know, so I've lived in different places and you really come to realize that as kind of Western culture or Americans, like we have this idea of what's normal life or, what are standards.

Corey Moen: Totally.

Matthew: And then you go and live in other places and you're like, ⁓ we're even common sense. It's like something we think of as common sense and logical. go someplace else and it can be a complete opposite. it's neither is wrong. You know, it's like I've lived in places where yes, buildings don't have hot water like that. They just, they don't have that kind of infrastructure. And like, it's actually kind of a choice at this point in some places, ⁓ you know, and if they do have hot water, it's like on demand, you know, at the tap.

Corey Moen: Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Matthew: and you're going to use it pretty sparingly. ⁓ like, you know, every every kitchen in America has a dishwasher. Like. Go to Europe, most houses won't have dishwashers, you know, you know. ⁓

Corey Moen: Yeah. No, no, or even even to the point of water dude in Iowa, especially with all the farm runoff and all that there's all this like drama right now around water cleanliness or you know things getting into our water and it's like at least it's clean enough to not kill us, you know, like we're not getting you know infectious diseases, but you know, I don't know to your point, whereas there's points places in the world all over that don't even have that right like it. I don't know, it's really interesting,

Matthew: It's on one hand, we take things for granted ⁓ as just being like, know, almost like. ⁓ kind of a default or something we deserve, like a baseline for life. But then you go other places and they don't have that. really, we live with a lot of conveniences in life and we don't necessarily always see it as that. We see it as we deserve it or it's... Anyway, yeah.

Corey Moen: Totally, totally. Yeah. love it. We went deep early. This is great. This is a...

Matthew: Yeah, y'all who are watching, listening to this, we do not play at any of this. We just start talking. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, let's process.

Corey Moen: That's actually kind of the point though, right? Like, let's restock on our thoughts and energy and what's happening in the community. ⁓ Even if it goes to places like this, I think that's part of the fun, to be honest. So good.

Matthew: Yeah, I love it. ⁓ Okay. ⁓ Did you have anything you want to share or should we get into the main topic?

Corey Moen: Sure, I mean, I can share some high level stuff around the main topic. Do we want to talk about, yeah, kind of even how we got there or maybe some of this context around, yeah, I don't know, Easter eggs or doing extra things in projects, yeah.

Matthew: Okay. Sure. Yeah, OK. I'll tee this up, so to speak. So yeah, I was noticing a little trend with sites that I'd come across a few weeks ago. And I was like, OK. You start seeing a pattern. You're like, OK, maybe there's a larger trend going on. And then why is this happening? And before I get into what that is, I want to talk about kind of the history of the web a little bit, which is

Corey Moen: Mm-hmm.

Matthew: First, it was let's get our web presence online, right? And it's what we would kind of refer to now as brochure sites. It's pretty static presence and it's just like, here's the information about a business or a thing, and it's just, that's all it is. ⁓ And then, I don't know, probably in the mid 2010s, we'll say around 2015, is kind of what my memory tells me, that we started to... think more about how can websites actually tell a story and be engaging, Beyond just presenting information, it's like how can we kind of pull people in emotionally and convey feelings through this digital medium. You can also kind of mirror this to other mediums, like film or even print. you know, where you go, the technology seems to go through these stages of like expression and like finding like its ultimate kind of place. And so it's like, okay, we're conveying information. Now we're conveying feeling. ⁓ And then now it's like, I think we're entering this next level of kind of, I don't know if maturity is the right word ⁓ or evolution, but where the web. ⁓ is becoming more playful, more interactive. ⁓ So beyond just trying to convince somebody or sell somebody, we're just, it's almost bringing a level of like humanity to sites. Cause it's like, here's like how you can actually interact and get an experience, a memorable experience out of the same, like same way you would go to the cinema and sit down and like, yeah, you're, you're getting a

Corey Moen: Mm. Mm. Mmm.

Matthew: You're getting a story, but you're getting a message from the director and the people who made the movie. But you're also just, getting an experience. just in kind of like sites, ⁓ mini games.

Corey Moen: Mm. I think this totally makes sense. I love that you also tied this back to humanity in some ways, because I think my brain ⁓ goes kind two paths, especially for websites in this realm of pulling in that unexpected detail or game or whatever. ⁓ My spicy is I think sometimes designers do this as a way to show off. They do it more for themselves than the user. ⁓ But I think there's a whole other side of this general idea that actually can bleed into things that make something generally memorable or useful. Especially like the memorable side is what I often go to of just like if something sparks enough of an unexpected wow interest in a user, like in theory that at least from my lived experience, makes it so I'm more likely to remember it and mention it to somebody else. Right. So much stickier. And so I think there is a business value to it. And we can even see it in ways that I would actually say aren't obviously a game or something, but they are an unexpected like, ⁓ this is kind of neat. I haven't seen this pattern before. Yes. Yeah.

Matthew: It's stickier, right? Yeah. moments of delight, right? Interactivity and delight, think, is kind of two words I've coalesced around.

Corey Moen: Totally. it has a wide spectrum. Like, yeah, we can go through some of your examples. And then some that just came to the top of mind for me is there may be actually not as much games. They're more in the realm of something, I don't know, this is very silly, but something like a light switch in a house. Some of them are just a little toggle. Some of them are like you go up and down, dimming. Ooh, that's fun. It could be so simple, but it still is in this bucket of light.

Matthew: Like how tactile is it and does that, how tactile interactive is, does that actually relate to like the functionality or the experience of using it? Or is it just there because somebody could build that kind of switch or that functionality? ⁓ So this is the site I think that kind of initially kicked this off for me, which, you know, this is a fun, you know, interactive site, you know, very kind of engaging. ⁓

Corey Moen: Totally, totally. Yes. Totally, yep.

Matthew: of elements here, you know, like how the ticket kind of rips apart, like as if it's a ticket stuff, you know, um, that's kind of fun. Um, so as we go down in this site, it's like, okay, yeah, it's a nice site, you know, maybe award winning. It's great. Right. But then you get down here to the, well, it's not quite the footer, but here to this section, it's like, Hey, play a game. Like, Oh, okay. Play a game. It's like, you're still inside the website and.

Corey Moen: ⁓ yeah, so good. Yes. Can you scroll still like you've?

Matthew: ⁓ yeah, I can still scroll. So that's, this is why I said it's like an embedded mini game because it's part of the website and it's not taking you away to another page or anything. I'm getting so rich. don't know. When does this stop? I don't know.

Corey Moen: So fun. So fun! Yes, yes. ⁓ the sound effect is so good. Where, I love that the counter is the background too. So it's like a graphical element more than it is just like a scoreboard or whatever. So good.

Matthew: Right. ⁓ there we go. Yeah. So, and then it's like, you know, hey, did you have fun? Well then buy tickets. But, and maybe I haven't read enough about this. I believe it's a, it's like a museum or it's a real place, right? That's like an, exhibit, right? So did that interactive experience, like, is that indicative of the kind of experience you'll get like in the place? Like I actually think so. Cause if you look here, like it's about,

Corey Moen: Mm-hmm. Mmm.

Matthew: interactive displays, right? So I mean, this actually could help drive people to actually buy tickets, you know, if they're in the area.

Corey Moen: Yeah. Yep. And even the copy there ready for real life cash grab, right? Like, did you have fun? Go do it, not on a website, you know? So cool, so cool.

Matthew: Yeah. So I thought that was a good idea. But I want to talk about those different levels, I said, ⁓ and go back to websites that are just interactive. Here's a 404 page. So you can click around, and you can add to the kind of art on the page. As I kind of scroll, the size of my brush grows.

Corey Moen: Mmm ⁓ fine.

Matthew: And you can see it has morphine here. So the shapes actually start blending together. So this is just like, and I think 404 pages are a great place to do things like this because it's like, if somebody ended up there, it's not a great experience, right? Like when you're like, oh, what are you looking for? Page not found, great. But it's a way to kind of turn that moment around.

Corey Moen: so nice. Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Matthew: and make it a little positive or kind of bring the visitor back to not have such a negative experience.

Corey Moen: Hmm.

Matthew: This was one also that came up recently. are like, I think they're Japanese masks. ⁓ And you can actually, let's go into the site. And so these are the masks here in Tokyo. And so they're trying to tell the story about these masks. And you can see here, it says play mini game, but it's also, it's this right here. So you can actually, these are the six things that mask represents. So strength, so we can like actually, you can see we have skill points on the right and we can allocate these to different kind of attributes. Vitality, let's move that up.

Corey Moen: Mmm. Mmm

Matthew: and, ⁓ intellect, yeah, a lot of intellect. We get this little spider graph. ⁓ Spirit, ⁓ I have one. We'll give one to ferocity. OK. And then it's going to actually match that to one of the masks in the collection based on what you've input. ⁓ warrior. Perfect. So now I can scroll here, and we can see what the mask actually looks like. So I mean, this is pretty simple, right? Because they have

Corey Moen: ⁓ fun. Hahaha beautiful. Yes.

Matthew: a CMS collection that just has the different score values for these different attributes for each mask. And then you do the little quiz, and they just match to the closest one. So it's not that complex. Let me see the mini game. I think that's the same experience. ⁓ no, this is different. So.

Corey Moen: Hmm. Woo!

Matthew: Okay. Yeah. So what, yeah, this doesn't have a lot of point, but you know, it's keeping me on site, I guess. Let me see if I finished. There we go.

Corey Moen: You have to click. Oh, nice. That's so fun. Yeah.

Matthew: So different types of experiences. ⁓ And then, here's one that was probably kind of one of the original. Like, let's take ⁓ website navigation your experience of moving through a website and just really turn to something else. ⁓ So this ⁓ Bruno Simon. ⁓

Corey Moen: ⁓ good. Mm. Oh, it's so funny. I was going to mention, I tried to load it. It wouldn't load for me for some reason. Dude.

Matthew: Yeah, you might have to try again. yeah, and this is, don't know what iteration of this site. But I think originally it was like some kind of desert or something. It looked very different. But yeah, so you can navigate through the website as if you're inside of a video game, right? So this is a very immersive experience, which I think you don't see. Maybe we're seeing more of these, but you don't see them that often just because it is such a

Corey Moen: Right. So.

Matthew: Divergent experience. If you're a business, it's probably not a great decision. If it's a portfolio and you're an individual and you're trying to be expressive, there's probably a lot to that. This one, have you ever seen Neil.Fun? So these are actually just full on game, gamified experiences. So these are, oh, Cursor Camp is the new one. This one's pretty fun.

Corey Moen: Toots, toots. Uh-uh. You

Matthew: Here are people's cursors from all around the world. And so you just kind of move your cursor to the side and it scrolls the background. And as you're going around, you can actually do things. ⁓ I can buy these shorts, but I haven't collected any shells. So I've got to go find some shells. We can go in the cave here.

Corey Moen: So good.

Matthew: And I can, so this is all real time. can see other people and what they're doing around, around this world. I can grab the tube. ⁓ come on. And I can float down the river. ⁓ I lost my tube. Great. Anyway, so this is like full gamified immersive experiences. There are lot of cool experimental games and stuff on that site. ⁓ Here are some other that are more like marketing campaigns. So this is one from, I've never heard of it before, but it's MiniChat. ⁓ And it's kind of like a

Corey Moen: Dude. Mm-hmm.

Matthew: customer service type service where you can chat with your customers. ⁓ So these are kind of like the things that your customers ⁓ report. So we've got bugs and just all this kind of tech dead and all this kind of stuff. And this is kind of a gem style game where you're just trying to get like three or more in a row and it's going to get rid of the tickets. This is like a ticket queue.

Corey Moen: ⁓ man. What's interesting about something like this was like, as you're going through the other ones, this came to mind on like, what about the delight like this on actual tools? Like sometimes I think we just accept like maybe a spicy take on this is like, it bends my brain that tools like Salesforce, Marketo, know, whatever.

Matthew: They look like they're from 2000.

Corey Moen: ⁓ my goodness. like literally is so frustrating because of how archaic and just like painful they already use. And we just accept that. And like, I am eager for an era to come where we don't and we can modify the actual tools we use every day. Like imagine actually managing issues and stuff like that, where it's like a game type experience that you just have fun and enjoy. Like that sounds awesome. Like why would I not? I don't-

Matthew: you But going back to your talk earlier about workflows ⁓ and being productive, there is a line where when things are too kind of gamified, and some games do this either intentionally or unintentionally, where you're waiting on the game and it's like you can't move on or do the thing you want to do because you're waiting for the game to tell its story or do its UI thing. So I think there's

Corey Moen: ⁓ man. Mm-hmm. ⁓ Totally.

Matthew: You got to find a balance between, I mean, if you're making like productivity software ⁓ where things are delightful, but they don't get in the way when you're trying to get things done, you know, or they don't get too annoying when it's ⁓ repeating.

Corey Moen: Yeah, was a time years ago that I was like, for whatever reason, obsessed with preloaders and websites. was like, every site I work on, want a preloader just because it's like cool and it animates out. like, I try to rationalize the value of it. Like it just softens the experience or whatever. But then quickly came to realize like that's actually so annoying and frustrating. Like just build the site so it's fast and just loads and you can still have motion in some of that, right?

Matthew: ⁓

Corey Moen: I don't know. It's interesting.

Matthew: Well, and if you are having that as the page load for every page in the site, yeah, that's old, very quick. Yeah.

Corey Moen: ⁓ man, why am I constantly waiting, right? Like this. And what does that say about whatever product or service it's representing? I don't know, but maybe not the best thing. ⁓ Yeah.

Matthew: ⁓ huh. Cool. A couple more examples and then let's see this one. OK. So this is a brand studio. So very, very colorful, all the work they've done. But there's this play button right here. They are a playful brand, right? So they want to represent that. So click playful. Oh, what's this? Oh, there's a score. OK. Shoot all these different things. ⁓ no, how much time? So again, this is them trying to express their brand, right? And it was something that was hidden in a button, right? So it's not like...

Corey Moen: So.

Matthew: that. necessary for the experience or. Well, look at those high scores. What somebody is running a script and the console to meet the game or something.

Corey Moen: Hahaha!

Matthew: But yeah, what do you think about that?

Corey Moen: So wild. So fun. uh, yeah. Oh, this is a forever in my brain sight.

Matthew: ⁓ Last one. Last one here. OK, for me. And then you can. Yeah. Do you know how to get to the kind of Easter egg experience on this one?

Corey Moen: I don't know if I do. Oh wait, is it something to do with the grid line animation things there?

Matthew: Okay. No. Well, mean, yeah, you can. Yeah, there are a lot of those kind of, yeah, like you said, playful or unexpected moments. But if you hit Command-K, you get a console.

Corey Moen: ⁓ okay. That's just an unexpected moment. Okay. Yeah, yeah. ⁓ So good.

Matthew: Theme list. What? OK. Oh, I got to it all in one command. Theme list. Let's do theme set Omaha. There we go. OK. But here's the one. Snake.

Corey Moen: and the sound effects and everything. Dude, what? I did not know this was in here.

Matthew: loop. It's very slow.

Corey Moen: Stripe, stripe, stripe.

Matthew: Yeah, and did they need to do this? No, let's see what else was in. ⁓

Corey Moen: No, no, no, This site always sticks in my brain. Again, I didn't even know this was in here because of the, and I feel like you and I have chatted about this in maybe massed conversations or something. This whole site is sub grid layout, if I remember right. Like it is hardcore, like multi-layer sub grid and it is just next level implementation. ⁓ my gosh. Yeah, yeah.

Matthew: Yes. It's like, what's it like a 2436 grid.

Corey Moen: So gnarly, so gnarly.

Matthew: Yeah, you can see the grid there. Yeah, 24. No, it's 25. Well, so it's a 24 grid. Yeah, 25 lines. Yeah, so 24 lanes. Yeah. And then, they're using subgrid here. Yep.

Corey Moen: from DevTools heart. Like, uh-huh. And keep going down. Isn't there like it like goes multiple levels deep. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: Yeah, it goes all the way down, I think. But yeah, which.

Corey Moen: So cool.

Matthew: Part of me really loves how precise that is. Every little pixel is super aligned. It's like, ⁓ so satisfying.

Corey Moen: you Yes, yes, yes. So satisfying and yet so simple in a way, I don't know. I'm just, you know, drawn to systems, I guess, of thinking.

Matthew: But yeah, mean, the reason it's exciting to us is because we fit right into the persona they're trying to, you know, it's like nerdy dev.

Corey Moen: ⁓ 100%. their targeting is successful. What's funny when you say that though, I still think this is the ironic parallel of no code, supply code is like no code being like we like, ⁓ is there music playing? I can't hear it.

Matthew: ⁓ you can hear it.

Corey Moen: Also, if we didn't say, because I know maybe people are listening to Spotify or whatever, is like this striped.dev is the site we're nerding out over here, but go watch it on YouTube or whatever to definitely see the visuals. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know. It's funny how that ironic overlap happens. Can I, maybe I'll just share a couple quickly. And then I was like, wait, have I shared yet on this?

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah, there were a lot of visuals in the past few minutes. Yeah.

Corey Moen: Okay, can you see? ⁓ I'm gonna do a first toot my own horn, okay? I didn't fully dev this, but ⁓ this is one that I was really excited to play a part in, anything, was the... Anthropic did this like code with Claude event. San Francisco just happened yesterday, and on the landing page, ⁓ there's this little Easter egg game, if you hover down in the corner, and it's Claude with a W, and I think ⁓ this is, it's a...

Matthew: Toot out your own horn. Yeah.

Corey Moen: retake on Plinko, think is the old Atari game. And you just try to hit all the little shapes. And then you eventually get more balls. And you can get a high score. And then it works on mobile and all that. ⁓ This was just so wild to see come to life. Yeah, it's super fun.

Matthew: paddle game. Yeah. So it's worse with touch. That's nice.

Corey Moen: ⁓ And then like even just some of it like this little motion piece on mobile as well ⁓ There's a little button that you on iOS you can like click the button to enable gesture And so when you move your phone gesturally this moves in the same way it moves

Matthew: Mm-hmm. How about like disable scrolling for that moment?

Corey Moen: Yes, I don't remember if it disabled scrolling or not. That's a great question. ⁓ But yeah, this is a fun little, I don't know, unexpected thing that kind of organically.

Matthew: I'm just trying to think through how that worked. And when you start that, because you're affecting how the text, the shape of it. And then when you start the game, does the text keep the shape of resets? OK.

Corey Moen: Yep. Yep. Yeah, no, it doesn't keep the form that it was last in, it kind of resets, ⁓ but it's ultimately used in character. It's all just a canvas too, but it was really interesting to see how, you know, ultimately fairly performant it is and interactive and all that. ⁓ Anyways, then the other things I was going to show is maybe a little less directly games. This was a site that was on No Cuts Supply Co.

Matthew: Mm-hmm.

Corey Moen: ⁓ point think, although this isn't games, scrolly telling is this like tag, we have a no code Supply Co. That I think is a general, this is good example of where like, you are still incurring an action on the site that reveals content and it has unexpected memorable aspects. ⁓ And I this one was just like super interesting. ⁓

Matthew: Mm-hmm.

Corey Moen: ⁓ in a lot of ways that it was kind of pulled into the content and also still like fairly minimal ⁓ little nice interactions. I don't know. ⁓

Matthew: I mean, that still is gamified, right? Because there are games where you are guided through levels and it's like, you can't really deviate, but like along the way you can have interactions and accomplish things. And so I think a scrolling telling website is very similar in the gamification.

Corey Moen: Totally. Totally. Yeah, yeah. And then in a maybe more literal sense, in this general camp, can't not show Apple in some regards, but I often still, for whatever reason, keep, I sometimes come back to like, yes, Apple has the fancy animations and all that, but I think they've been doing interesting things in the last year or two for interactions to reveal content that I'm seeing start to take off elsewhere. Yes, so like these little,

Matthew: You Yeah, I like their newer carousels.

Corey Moen: get more information and it's not just like a button that takes you to different page. It's like inline interactive content. So you don't have to leave the page. You can get more information in a kind of a...

Matthew: And also, if you don't need that information, you can just skip past it and get to the section that you want to dig into.

Corey Moen: 100%. And in classic Apple fashion, everything is very accessible, keyboard navigable, like they just slay. And then where I've seen it come to life more is Stripe. ironically, we mentioned stripe.dev, stripe.com got a refresh. I just, stripe.com is always one of those like, at least in SaaS marketing sites, like they're one of the pinnacles. And the new site's so good. And like, they kind of have this similar pattern, right? Where you can like expand these cards and almost get like a site within a site.

Matthew: Yeah, everyone's always looking up.

Corey Moen: ⁓ in an unexpected way and then even had some Easter eggs like I think this thing down here is like animated and then like you can like change it. And so I don't know, you know, I think it's just there is value beyond again, just the like, look, I'm cool. I can make this fancy animated thing or like there can be ways you take inspiration from games and ideas like that that become memorable and interactive and you actually apply them to marketing content or e-commerce experiences and some of that like in a really interesting way. So I don't know, forever inspired by some of it, but yeah.

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah, those are good examples too. ⁓ I know we need to go, then I want to wrap this up. And I had a few bullet points on to kind of sum this up. I think there are some things that kind of led to being at this point. ⁓ One is the tools have matured. Whether it's GSAP, 3GS, WebGL, Canvas, we now have tools that are really performant and allow us to do these kind of experiences, even CSSs.

Corey Moen: Yeah. Yes. So it's. Yes. browsers, internet connection, those things.

Matthew: And a lot in the browser. Yeah. So there's just the tools are at a place where we can do this now, where as before, it took a lot of expertise or a lot of hard work to make these things happen. There was also a recent trend of making everything more kind of tactile and kind of feel more physical, you know, in the way things like animate or look. So when you combine those, that gives us the ability to create these experiences. Then

Corey Moen: I'm gonna leave.

Matthew: Three points on, I think, why these experiences feel good. Because, like we said, it's humanizing. In this post-AI world, it actually feels human to play and to have whimsy and not everything be flat and informational and just like, we're trying to sell you, right? It's like, here, just have a nice experience on us, you know, for minute or two, right? Without us, you know, trying to sell you something.

Corey Moen: Mm. Mm-hmm. Okay. and actually more. Interactions free of charge.

Matthew: Yeah, it's also a ⁓ pendulum swing from minimalism, know, and like, let's just strip everything out. It's like, OK, let's find ways to actually put ⁓ some humanity back into it. And then last is in websites, attention is a luxury. So when we think about luxury goods, physical goods, right?

Corey Moen: Mmm. Mmm. you

Matthew: There's a lot of attention to detail put into the materials, how they look and how they feel to the touch and what the experience is, right? That's what makes it a luxury product. The same thing can be applied to digital experiences. It's by actually putting these things into what we build, we're actually creating a luxury experience.

Corey Moen: Totally, totally love that. ⁓ Nailed it across the board.

Matthew: Alright, well, Corey, good to see you and thanks everyone for joining us and we will see you next time.

Corey Moen: ⁓ like. Thanks, y'all.