However, for that kind of Web site-design task, you don't want a narrow focus, you want a broad focus.

WSJ: How to Stay Motivated: Daniel Pink on 'Drive'

The reason for the success was the translation from a boring one-on-one task to a design appealing to human instincts of cooperation and competition.

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"It's hard to understate the impact his ideas have had on the space, " says Phill Ryu, a developer who helped design the Clear task-management app, which uses variations on "pull-to-refresh" and has been downloaded more than 800, 000 times.

WSJ: Loren Brichter, a High Priest of App Design

If you wanted to do only one task and do it the same way every time, you would do better with a custom chip design -- what the engineers call an application specific integrated circuit.

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