@kieran I took your designs into account. What I didn't get from reading and looking at those was which part was non-negotiable for you. I think it's clear now, and it seems to be captured in a single sentence:

Forwarding and Returning need to be totally visually and physically isolated (to avoid any accidents / confusion)

Is that the crux of what you didn't feel heard on? If so then know that I agree with this principle.

What I'm surprised about is how big a deal there seems to be here if it's just this one sentence. Is there more than this one sentence that's a block? Some of the words I've heard you using suggest there might be. Here's some words that have snagged for me recently:

• unilateral decisions (re: that design session shape)
• competing
• bullshit capitalist paradigms

If we've got beef going on here we should escelate it to talking directly about what's going on. My guess is the form of our constraints is exacerbating a bunch of miscommuncation. This is laregly what I feared would happen. I spent and hour (1/4 of my work time for the day) yesterday trying to fold in your thinking and communicate clearly and hoping this wouldn't be a massive energy drain. I feel a really unpleasant tension where I know it's important to get to the heart of this, AND I feel upset about the idea of spending 2-3 hours talking about feelings when I am poor on time and energy, and I don't feel like it's going to change our situation much. (I could be very wrong about my assessment, that's just how I feel at the moment).

Yeah, I'm upset by this, I feel really annoyed.

My analysis is that at the core of this is that there's a power imbalance that we haven't clearly acknowledged, nor planned for and we're trying to pretend does not exist. Namely that mix and others have the luxury of being able to work on and in this a lot and Kieran doesn't. I think for Kieran he has a day job, and this is his idealistic work, and he wants it to conform to idealistic ways of working, specifically we're all equal and have equal steering rights. This is just my best guess. I think in practice it's hard for us to work with equal steering rights because we're on different tempos. I think the emerging informal dynamic is that I (and others) are making decisions and folding in Kieran's thinking, but that he's not an equal decision maker, he's more giving input and advice. To make decisions he'd have to be here more, but he's not. I'd love him to be here more, then we could talk about ideas and integrate them as we went, but we can't. I think I might be being perceived as a making decisions over or without Kieran. I feel like this is best available path (to make decisions and fold in input and advice). The alternative is that we reduce our tempo to match Kieran's. My assumption is we can't do that.

FWIW I think if Kieran and my roles were reversed we'd experience the same tension. I care about the things I work on, and I hate feeling left out.

This is just what I see or am modelling. I would be happy to be wrong. I look forward to hearing from others and updating how I'm thinking to better match what's going on.
I'd love to hear what others experience is.