Author Archives: Jessica Jewell

About Jessica Jewell

Jessica Jewell is a Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

The future of email: an empathy algorithm

Posted on April 27, 2015

Some of our most popular entries are on how to write good emails: both what to say and what not to say. But what if the computer could tell you how to tailor emails to different people?

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Cobook is buggy

Posted on November 13, 2014

Following Aleh’s entry on contact management I decided to give CoBook a try. But it’s really buggy and doesn’t seem to work well with Yosemite. The Latvian company which built CoBook was recently bought by FullContact and while they’ve promised … Continue reading →

Posted in Contacts | Tagged | 3 Comments

Presentation zen with emoji

Posted on October 29, 2014

In presentations, I find myself in a constant battle with giving the audience enough visual cues so they can absorb my messages without cramming a lot of words on slides. In a recent talk, I was able to use emoji … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics, Presentations | Leave a comment

50 pounds of writing

Posted on May 28, 2014

A great article from a design blog talks about the importance of the first draft. It shares a parable from Art and Fear on art-making and creative ventures. A pottery teacher splits a class into two groups: one group is … Continue reading →

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 2 Comments

5 Typography essentials for academic texts

Posted on November 25, 2013

Typography can affect everything from the mood of a text to how convincing its arguments are. When self-publishing a thesis or working paper, or even in preparing a piece for review it’s good to follow these rules to make your texts … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics, Writing | Tagged | 10 Comments

Taking full advantage of Scrivener’s power for short writing: Streamlining research and writing

Posted on November 15, 2013

Recently, I’ve been writing shorter pieces and have developed a new workflow in Scrivener. At the beginning of a writing session, I work on the text which I’m prepared to write (i.e. I have all the references and ideas fleshed … Continue reading →

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 1 Comment

Color-coding scrivenings in Scrivener

Posted on November 14, 2013

One of things that makes Scrivener such a joy to work with is being able to color code scrivenings. At a glance, you can immediately see the state of different parts of text and, if you’re using Scrivener for collaboration, … Continue reading →

Posted in Collaboration, Writing | Tagged | 6 Comments