Interesting theory by Casey Newton that good Design helped Deepseek to become popular so quickly:

Both models “thought” for about 13 seconds. ChatGPT showed me a handful of two- or three- word snippets to tell me what it was doing during this time: “comparing protocols,” for example. For the most part, though, I was in the dark about what it was up to.

DeepSeek, on the other hand, shared more than 500 words about its process. I found it disarmingly humble. “Let me start by recalling what I know about these two technologies,” it wrote. “First, ActivityPub. I remember it’s a W3C standard, so it’s widely adopted in the Fediverse. Mastodon uses it, right?” (Right.) As the model continues, it eventually stops to review its work for errors. (“But I should check if I’m mixing things up.”) And 13 seconds after starting—the same time that ChatGPT took—it offered me its full answer.

This is what Jakob Nielsen—back in 1994!—called “Visibility of System Status” as part of his 10 usability heuristics for design:

The design should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within a reasonable amount of time.

Whether or not Casey’s theory about Deepseek is correct, I find it remarkable that over 30 years after those 10 heuristics were defined we are still seeing examples of their effectiveness on a large scale today.