> chairs as doorstoppers,
Wait, there are actual things, called "doorstoppers", that are designed to work exactly as door stoppers and have no other discernible function? Do they by any chance look anything like paperweights?
Folk Interfaces
21–30 of 103 posts
Re: Folk Interfaces
#22If this is an interesting idea to you, check out: https://screenl.es
Re: Folk Interfaces
#23Some random folk practices I've come across: * Blocking, stacking and pulling creep camps in DOTA. Unintended behaviours that became core game mechanics. * Comments in the tag section of Tumblr posts, to avoid the comments appearing in a reblog ("Why do people use tags on tumblr instead of comments?" [1]) * The appropriation of switching MOSFETs such as the IRF510, designed for low frequencies, in homebrew amateur ra…
Twitter's "retweet" and "hashtag" were both folk innovations that became product features. People used to write 'RT @user "comment"' to retweet.
I found that a really interesting development, and they embraced it. Probably the best example of "go with where your users are going" I can think of.
And it's silly as well, because anyone with a few weeks of software development knowledge could probably hack a Twitter-like together. Not that at that scale, admittedly, but still, prototype-twitter was nothing fancy.
Re: Folk Interfaces
#24> No matter how much well-intentioned user research these companies invest in, they'll never be able to produce software that fully meets the needs of individual users and culturally distant communities. Domain experts being able to solve their own problems sounds is a worthwhile objective for software tools but innovation in this space has been surprisingly sparce. I've been searching for other examples of end-user…
Minecraft comes to mind, if you want to think out of the box.
Re: Folk Interfaces
#25> chairs as doorstoppers, Wait, there are actual things, called "doorstoppers", that are designed to work exactly as door stoppers and have no other discernible function? Do they by any chance look anything like paperweights?
They are wedge shaped and usually made of rubber. You stick it under the door, hold it in place, then pull the door to get it stuck on the doorstop. Some doors also have built in door stops that are different- more like a kickstand on a bike.
Re: Folk Interfaces
#26Orthogonal to the main point of the article, I was interested in the mention of Victor Papanek's tin can radio receiver, which apparently cost 9c to make (presumably the cost of the transistor, since everything else was recycled), and could be fueled by burning wax or dung.
I haven't been able to find a simple guide for how to make one myself.
Re: Folk Interfaces
#27> No matter how much well-intentioned user research these companies invest in, they'll never be able to produce software that fully meets the needs of individual users and culturally distant communities. Domain experts being able to solve their own problems sounds is a worthwhile objective for software tools but innovation in this space has been surprisingly sparce. I've been searching for other examples of end-user…
Corel's office suite has a scripting language if I recall. My grandfather in law learned enough of it to develop a few systems for managing family finances, gifting (it's a large family), etc.
Emacs is notable. It requires learning a bit of elisp programming but, like a browser, is basically a development environment that gives you access to a windowing system, input from the user, image rendering, text buffers, etc. Plenty of people write their own tools to manage particular workflows.
Update
Examples of emacs as folk interface:
Re: Folk Interfaces
#28> chairs as doorstoppers, Wait, there are actual things, called "doorstoppers", that are designed to work exactly as door stoppers and have no other discernible function? Do they by any chance look anything like paperweights?
Generally they are just a wedge-shape that gives enough friction at the bottom of the door so that the weight of the door or strength of the closing mechanism can't overcome that friction.
Re: Folk Interfaces
#29> No matter how much well-intentioned user research these companies invest in, they'll never be able to produce software that fully meets the needs of individual users and culturally distant communities. Domain experts being able to solve their own problems sounds is a worthwhile objective for software tools but innovation in this space has been surprisingly sparce. I've been searching for other examples of end-user…
Microsoft Power Automate[0].
This tool scares the hell out of me, as a sysadmin, with end users who have no education re: software engineering (and potentially really wonky mental models about software) developing potentially business-critical tools/processes out of the IT equivalent of "glue and tape".
This is especially scary to me because building on "evergreen" platforms like Office 365 means that critical emergencies and downtime could occur at the whim of platform owners making changes to the underlying platform. Spacebar heating.. all that... >sigh[0] https://powerautomate.microsoft.com/en-us/
Re: Folk Interfaces
#30This is like the interface version of Hyrum's law:
With a sufficient number of users of an API,
it does not matter what you promise in the contract:
all observable behaviors of your system
will be depended on by somebody.