Problem
Here at Notion Labs, Inc. our mission is to give everyone the tools to solve their problems. However, I believe our work to date ignores a meaningful subset of potential users and toolmakers: birds.
It is well known that birds are highly intelligent creatures. Corvids and parrots exhibit episodic memory and theory of mind superior to primates in some cases (Emery 2006). Beyond basic concepts, birds are also adept toolmakers: they can adapt existing items into tools (Jones and Kamil 1973; YouTube 2011) and even construct novel compound tools by combining 3-4 otherwise non-functional components (Bayern et al. 2018). From an evolutionary perspective, these behaviors are associated with the development of planning, causal reasoning, and complex task coordination abilities (Ambrose 2010). Moreover, birds frequently work in ensembles, coordinating tasks across a group in order to achieve their desired outcomes (Yosef and Yosef 2010). These behaviors are not a mere curiosity: for birds, behavioral plasticity and innovation are directly correlated with a lower species extinction risk (Ducatez et al. 2020). Absent sufficient innovation and adaptation, the birds will all die.
Despite copious evidence of viability and need, today’s SaaS marketplace is devoid of credible offerings in the avian project management space. This RFC poses the following question: Where are the tools for thought for birds? We argue for a new product initiative, Notion for Birds, in order to fill this gap. Such an offering would dovetail with our 2021 focus on multiplayer project management and our broader goal of empowering everyone to create bespoke tools to solve problems. All told, Notion for Birds presents a ripe opportunity for disruption in an impactful user group.
Proposal
In order to empower birds to leverage Notion as a tool, we must implement several key changes:
- Split pane support: Birds use their right and left eyes to perform different tasks (Birkhead 2013). As such, it would be useful to allow birds to create separate views within the application, dedicating the right side of the screen for a specific task and the left side for an overview of all tasks.
- More powerful databases with spreadsheet capabilities: Databases are powerful, but lack the raw numerical power and flexibility of spreadsheets. Grey parrots demonstrate numerical competence exceeding that of many Notion engineers: they can quantify sets of up to six items, manage heterogeneous subsets using vocal English labels, and have a concept of zero (Pepperberg 2006). Such intelligent creatures require correspondingly sophisticated tools, particularly if we hope to secure buy-in at the enterprise level. Databases lack the ability to create custom numerical units (e.g. using numbers to track grams of food, or pieces of nuts) and our formula language is very limited in expressivity compared to bird calls.
- Higher-contrast colors: Cultural adaptation is an important part of any localization effort; IKEA is known for adapting their catalog photographs to local audiences (Fenwick Elliot 2017), and the iOS Stocks application uses red to denote growth and green to denote loss in China, where the color red has strong positive cultural connotations (Duke1 2011). The same logic applies here. Birds exhibit a cultural preference for bright colors, as bright plumage indicates a mature, healthy potential mate, and brightly colored fruit is ripe and ready to eat at the peak of its nutritious content (Mayntz 2020). However, white is a sign of danger and aggression to birds, and many birds have evolved white plumage to be used as a warning.
Notion's color scheme is dependent on white and pale, muted colors, which may hinder widespread adoption among the bird community. In addition, birds with vision impairments may struggle to navigate the user interface with low-contrast labels. A culturally-sensitive, inclusive localization effort must include a contrast overhaul to support birds.
Future work
Birds need better tools for thought, but Notion for Birds is only the beginning. To quote Poland's 1505 constitutional legislation, “Nihil de nobis, sine nobis. Nothing about us, without us.” Truly inclusive design practices must involve the target audience in the development process, so Notion for Birds logically begets Notion by Birds.
A clear next step is to begin admitting birds to the Notion Ambassadors program and partnering with bird influencers to create new templates. I argue we can go further, however, and begin interviewing birds for engineering roles, effective immediately. Birds are capable of synthesizing recursive context-free grammars and can reliably exclude agrammatical patterns (Gentner et al. 2006), meaning they are at least as computationally capable as pushdown automata (which recognize context-free languages). Indeed, HTML defined on top of SGML is context-free, so it is not a stretch to say that birds could at the very least validate and lint our code for correctness, perhaps even contributing to our React codebase.
