Honestly, I see the team/culture/working environment dimension as being a lot more important than whatever the product or variety of products might be. So I'd hang my answer on that. And you really can't know either going into it. If the team and culture seem cool, I'd be willing to give it a shot.

The Archive is hands down my favorite note-taking app out of all of the ones mentioned here for pure knowledge work. I had previously used iA Writer pretty heavily as well, and it strength lies in its simplicity. Notion is a close second for me for more productivity-related tasks and documents.

Love the simplicity of this tool, really looking forward to the XD plugin.

I think when defining “good vs. great” as metrics, it is vert important to remember:

Your product is only as good as the value people get from using it.

With this as a guiding principle, you can really focus on the relationship that users have with the product. That’s where value is defined. From there you can identify what dimensions of the experience will likely have the greatest impact in getting the user to find that value, and when to emphasize what.

If you consider that you are essentially selling users to “yes” in each interaction—with the question being “Is this interaction fulfilling my needs and expectations for ___?”—you can really focus your efforts on the primary aspects of the product that answer that question in that moment.

In that context, a useful way to define good and great might look something like:

Good: the user’s needs and expectations are met and they are able to achieve their goals without confusion or frustration.

Great: the user’s needs and expectations are met and they are left with a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction from using the product.

Here, the distinction lies in how the impression that the user leaves the experience with. And I hold that enough “great enough” interactions within a product compound to what may ultimately be perceived as a “perfect” experience.

Check out Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design by Kat Holmes. It's an excellent read on designing for inclusion as a general practice and offers perspective on how to approach design considerations under the principle of "solve for one, extend for many".

There are a ton of great resources here as well — mismatch.design

It's a lot more manually intensive to adjust than simply scaling everything down proportionally, but approach it like you would responsive web design. Adjust your layout to the new, smaller viewport keeping as much of your styling as consistent as possible with the larger screen size. Only modify styles, margins/padding values when totally necessary to accommodate the smaller screen size.

If you are already this far into production, it might be useful to work out any adjustments in the live environment. Seeing your larger design considerations in a smaller size may also uncover items that you can adjust for globally that become consistent from size to size.

This is a matter of preference. Even if it is a little jarring to read an all lowercase headline, the article styling is internally consistent and doesn't take away from readability. If anything, you could argue the headlines actually stand out even more because of the lack of caps. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I'd honestly hope that a respectable design company wouldn't arbitrarily inflate the price for some customers just based on their perceived corporate value.

That is exactly the basis that you should adjust pricing around. Design is perception. Perception is value. Zara's logo is valuable to them because it theirs and not someone else's.

It is a direct representation of their brand. So while the perceived value may feel arbitrary to anyone outside of the brand, the price paid is a reflection of that value and not just that of the hours or resources that went into creating it

I am currently looking for my next read, but here are a few of my favorite books from the past couple of months.

Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives by Sarah Williams Goldhagen

New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future by James Bridle

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer

Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design by Kat Holmes

Metaphors We Live By byGeorge Lakoff and Mark Johnson

I have recently been exploring the synthesis/assimilation end of reading as well. On the topic of note-taking, I have had success with implementing the slip-box/card index approach. Check these couple of resources out, it sounds like it might be useful for what you are looking for.

How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

Create a Zettelkasten for your Notes to Improve Thinking and Writing by Christian Tietze