From scratch
Fallible is a new idea. I'm taking it from initial spark, to working prototype, to in-market product
Joe Kelly
Product Designer
Software Engineer
Writer
Software Engineer
Writer
Author of
A Book Of The Way
A Book Of The Way
Founder
2023 –
Mission
Make people harder to mislead.
What?
It's a thinking tool that helps you avoid forming mistaken beliefs.
How?
Take any piece of media content, paste it into Fallible, and see it transformed:
Reframe what the author is saying, so their views are expressed in terms of questions and percentages
Uncover the strategic context, and dig into the hidden incentives and intentions
Expose the playbook of tricks and traps, and highlight common errors and fallacies
Fallible makes it second nature to think in a way that resists manipulation and error — to expect distortions and mistakes, and systematically uncover the way things get distorted, both deliberately and accidentally.
Why?
The harder people are to mislead, the better the world works:
Weaker returns to exploitative information practices
Decreased polarisation
Increased capacity for productive disagreement about things that matter
Our information ecosystem is fucked, and Fallible can go a long way to un-fucking it at scale.
Role(s)
Human
The primary design challenge is in making Fallible a down-to-earth product that fits into people's current habits
Co-founder &
Head of Product
Head of Product
2017 – 2022
Mission
Replace Visa and Mastercard with a new payment network, designed to serve people and businesses instead of banks and card companies.
What?
The card networks were designed in the 1970s, before the internet existed. Curl is an upgrade to the way we pay, which uses straightforward transfers instructed via bank APIs instead.
Cheaper than cards (often zero fees)
Safer than cards (no sensitive information ever gets exchanged, even in online checkouts)
Smarter than cards (more connected, and with loyalty programs handled automatically as part of every payment)
The Curl network makes entirely new products and user experiences possible, including brand loyalty (think: @cocacola, @benandjerrys, @unioncoffee, etc.) — i.e. across all different stores.
How?
Curl works by @usernames and payment requests.
You receive a payment request from the merchant (@merchant123), including rich item data, and you simply authorise a Smart Payment in response, direct from your bank account to theirs.
You can set rules for approving payment requests automatically. And in-store payments work by Tap To Pay — so it's the same familiar real-world behaviour as making a card payment, but smarter.
Why?
Visa and Mastercard are no longer fit for purpose, and their high fees are like a private sales tax on our economic activity that benefits no-one except bankers.
We need a proper modern network built for the internet age instead. Cash → Card → Curl.
Role(s)
The Product
I'm responsible for the overall design of Curl — how it works, what it looks and feels like, and ultimately the value it produces for the people and businesses using it
iOS + Android
I lead the design of 2x mobile apps to turn your phone into a smart remote control for your bank account(s)
Online Checkout
We made an e-commerce checkout flow with no forms, no logins, and no sensitive information exchange
Point-of-Sale
We made a merchant app for taking Curl payments in shops. It shows the shopkeeper a live list of nearby customers, reminding them of each person's name and their regular order
APIs
As a product designer, I get my hands dirty down to the wire. These interfaces matter — they can have major implications for the people using the product and those working on it
Chief Research Officer &
AI Whisperer
AI Whisperer
2023 –
Mission
Understand the practical capabilities of large language models.
What?
Plump GPT is a thought fattener. (It's a Chat UI for interacting with language model APIs).
It started off as a research project, because LLMs play such a valuable role in Fallible. But it has since grown into something I use all the time, as a daily tool.
Why?
I needed some crucial features that weren't (and still aren't?) available in other clients, like the ability to fork conversations, which is essential given the probabilistic nature of generative AI.
Role(s)
All the things
Plump GPT is basically a personal side project that snowballed
Forks
The most interesting design challenge was to create an intuitive and visually appealing way to fork conversations at will (and navigate the resulting forks) that doesn't intrude on the core UX
Please write to hi@joekel.ly