[ehutch79]

That's all non obvious. As far as I can tell this was just as serious as any of the other, 'this is the future', post. See the recent humane keynote for example, and the vergecast's reaction to it.

That said, it's absolutely valid to question stuff like this. A lot of design student type stuff miss HUGE usability issues.

[renewiltord]

Is it non-obvious? The page goes like:

1. Title

2. Screenshot

3. "Mercury is a speculative reimagining ..."

[ehutch79]

Yeah, that sounds like pretty standard marketing copy. Definitely nothing to say this isn't a thing someone intends on bringing to market.

[anigbrowl]

Speculative literally means conjectural, hypothetical, toying with an idea for its own sake, though. It's not a word I associate with product of any kind, more with a sketch than a prototype.

[EyeSayUntoThee]

The screenshots tricked me.

[janalsncm]

To me there were a couple of giveaways.

1. “Art direction” is the second tab. There’s no technical components, no installation info, no GitHub.

2. Jason Yuan Design in the footer. So clearly some kind of UX person/group built this, not a hacker collective.

3. Flowery UX-heavy language and the absence of concrete features. Focusing on the “what” rather than the “how”.

[warent]

I shouldn't need to be a detective to understand the point of a website lol, unless that is the point. It was completely non obvious to me as well.

[afavour]

Standard marketing copy does not have the word “speculative” in it because it’s not… speculation

[MadcapJake]

Can you really identify usability issues on something that is both a) just a concept and b) is meant to shift the work paradigm substantially?

Local optimization for your existing workflow is not the intended goal of this exploratory project.