The new Search→Create flow on iPhone Bear feels immediately so distracting…
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The pencil icon animates in the corner on every search and every return to empty search (and is also visible underneath the keyboard), which is really distracting as it happens in the periphery, where we’ve evolved to notice and be alerted by things,
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the empty slot that appears if no results are there says “create your first note!” – it feels weird as I have thousands of notes already (was a wrong empty state piped in by mistake?),
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the idea of creating a note because you couldn’t find a search query seems really strange to me, and not a flow I would ever want to do. It crosses strange wires and adds complexity, feeling more like a growth hack. I’ve always liked and admired Bear because things were kept simple and understandable, and because the app avoided strange growth hacks and complexity edges like this one.
I think it’d be okay if the pencil icon was just there all the time without animation, and if the empty “no result” state was less confusing. (It sort of reminds me of how Chrome changed their bad connection/dinosaur page from “No internet” to “Press space to play”, seemingly forgetting what the page’s main job was.)