Faster and Worse
Quick 3-5 minute dispatches which focus on a single idea or concept related to tech product design
Tech As Anti-Design
Because the means are predetermined
Referenced article: Computers and communication design: exploring the rhetoric of HCI https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/174809.174812
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They Are Products
AI is not a tool or a technology. It is a product.
Useful is Nothing
Useful is the lowest possible bar for any product, let alone a billion dollar, all energy-consuming, one
General Purpose is an Accountability Loophole
If they don't say what it's for, we can't say if it works
Trajectories of Coding with AI
Things don't look good if you like making things with code
Tangible & Worse
An LLM wrapped in space-grade aluminium is an amplified slop machine.
Projecting Purpose
When we define our own purpose for their product
The Mouse Jiggler
The unsung hero of humane design
Everything Is Work Now
Tech products have a work/life balance problem
Kill Magic Thinking
Bulls**t isn't created or destroyed, it just takes on different forms
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The Swiss Army Knife Of _____
Master of none.
Finding Purpose is the Fool's Errand
If they don't say what it's for, don't help them.
Edge-case Marketing
Products that are marketed with purposes they can't be optimised for.
Purposes not Problems
Don't ask what problems it solves, ask what purposes it satisfies
Software as Material
Software is a material among infinite other materials for satisfying a purpose.
Pay to Disable
Features that are more profitable as a detriment than a benefit.
Do Less Products
Old hardware that can do more than new hardware designed to do less.
Assumed Inconvenience
Automation assumes peripheral effort is inconvenient.
Captive User Experience Design
People use it because they will be unemployed if they don't
Potential Distraction
The distraction which is always ready to distract.
The gist: There are two types of digital distraction.
The actual and the potential.
Actual distractions are things like notifications and alerts.
Potential distractions are the features a thing has which can provide an escape from a challenging thing we are using it to do.
If someone is using a computer to write an article, and that computer is connected to the internet, the potential escape that the internet can provide will be present in that person's mind.
The...
Mechanism Lust
How it works is not what it is for
The Product Makes the Pattern Dark
The assumption that empathy isn't used to manipulate
The gist: Standardised "dark patterns" of UX design exist separately from any underlying products. Because "dark" implies otherwise degrees of "light" a sense of free legitimacy is given to products which use them.
Usability is based on a removal of obstacles in a user interface. Any library of user interface components based on non-dark patterns does not care if it is applied to an online casino or a crypto rugpull project.
Every UX design decision which made FTX's apps easier to use turned out to...
A Use Case is a Trojan Horse
A use case is a solution to a problem they wish you had
The gist: The tech industry has rejected the design process of starting with a purpose and deliberating over ways to satisfy it and, instead, latched on to a model of making the thing first and then deliberating over possible purposes it can satisfy.
A use case is a solution to a problem they wish people had. This means that the use case will always be smaller than the thing that was created in the first place. There will always be additional baggage...
Here, See What You Can Do With This
Software as an amorphous blob
The gist: Software as a service providers leave us to find purpose in their product's collection of features. They escape accountability by only asserting vague purposes like "collaboration" or "productivity"
SaaS products are merging into something that, rather than being an "everything app", is more of a "general app" - made up of individually useful things that become the product's collection of features.
These SaaS products are so general purpose that the marketing language of "productivity", "collaboration", or "communication" translate to "here, see what you can do with...
The Cycle of Tech Products
How commercial tech products have turned design into antidesign
Tech organisations take a concept or thing which began with a sole purpose to benefit people and, through iterative antidesign, turn it into something that is both bad for people and bad for their business.
These things begin in the area of, supposed, human-centered design where the needs of people are the only concern, but within commercial constraints this inevitably leads to a drift toward the inclusion of business concerns.
The concerns of people become shared with the concerns of business. The drift continues...
Software is Vapour
SaaS products don't deliver anything specific because they don't promise anything specific
Video also available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJuXUpuFOGM
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Snake Oils
The aspect of snake oils which rarely gets mentioned
Video also available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_EhTVBR9Js
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User Experience is the Product (now)
UX is how we are sold things that don't have much else to offer
Video also available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S_hwTKeE8c
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Innovation is a Reaction to Stifles
Why innovation can't be stifled
Video also available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBKnOagRXqA
This podcast is powered by Pinecast.
