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Folk Interfaces

maggieappleton.com

41–50 of 103 posts

Re: Folk Interfaces

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you talk about some concrete examples?

Not parent, but here's an example from a past project. Customer: "Could you make the 'name' field of this entity longer? We need to add longer names." Me: "Why?" Customer: "Well, we want to name the entity '2022 - Spring - $500k - Contoso Inc. - Presale stage' so we can find it more easily." Me: "So what you actually want is to be able to filter/search for entities by all those values, and you're just using the name…

This SO MUCH!

It doesn't matter that you can add any fields you want in Salesforce, and we do, nobody will use them and continue to encode all the information in the title of the object.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#42
post #38

> 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?

There are, and they'd make fairly poor paperweights because they aren't typically very heavy - the intent is to use friction with the ground to keep the door from moving, rather than just weight. For instance: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-Heavy-Duty-Walnut-Brown...

There are heavy ones (cast iron doorstop will find some) and they work better in certain cases.

You can also use a doorstop to wedge a door slightly open so it won't close and auto-lock.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#43
post #2

On the etymology of "folk", saying that it the word comes from Old English folc is true, although a vast over-simplification. A lot of languages share this word. This is actually an ancient word, you can trace it back to proto-Germanic "fulka", and further to Proto-Indo-European "plh-gos" (presumably pronounced something like phulgos or pholgos, close enough to folk).

...and then from phulgos to the latin "vulgus"?

Where "vulgate" and "vulgar" come from, the common.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#44
post #7

Some 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…

I believe another term related to these phenomena is Elephant Paths. Named after the trails that pedestrians leave behind when they choose a shorter path over grass in favor of the official paved paths.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#45
post #2

On the etymology of "folk", saying that it the word comes from Old English folc is true, although a vast over-simplification. A lot of languages share this word. This is actually an ancient word, you can trace it back to proto-Germanic "fulka", and further to Proto-Indo-European "plh-gos" (presumably pronounced something like phulgos or pholgos, close enough to folk).

Folksy: people doing good or neutral stuff

Vulgar, populist: people doing naughty or debased stuff

Re: Folk Interfaces

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you talk about some concrete examples?

Not parent, but here's an example from a past project. Customer: "Could you make the 'name' field of this entity longer? We need to add longer names." Me: "Why?" Customer: "Well, we want to name the entity '2022 - Spring - $500k - Contoso Inc. - Presale stage' so we can find it more easily." Me: "So what you actually want is to be able to filter/search for entities by all those values, and you're just using the name…

This is why listings on Amazon are a million words long. They do an adequate job pulling important attributes into the metadata so you can filter on them, for some categories. For example, the size and type of TVs. But it's not really possible to do that for all product categories. Moreover, users can't easily see the attributes in the search page, so it's best to just put it all in the title. For things like motherboards, they get super dense with jargon.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you talk about some concrete examples?

Not parent, but here's an example from a past project. Customer: "Could you make the 'name' field of this entity longer? We need to add longer names." Me: "Why?" Customer: "Well, we want to name the entity '2022 - Spring - $500k - Contoso Inc. - Presale stage' so we can find it more easily." Me: "So what you actually want is to be able to filter/search for entities by all those values, and you're just using the name…

[deleted]

Re: Folk Interfaces

#49
post #2

On the etymology of "folk", saying that it the word comes from Old English folc is true, although a vast over-simplification. A lot of languages share this word. This is actually an ancient word, you can trace it back to proto-Germanic "fulka", and further to Proto-Indo-European "plh-gos" (presumably pronounced something like phulgos or pholgos, close enough to folk).

OA here. Thanks for the expanded etymology. I was using https://www.etymonline.com/word/folk as my source which goes into more historical detail. But didn't want to get too carried away in the opener on etymology.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#50
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not parent, but here's an example from a past project. Customer: "Could you make the 'name' field of this entity longer? We need to add longer names." Me: "Why?" Customer: "Well, we want to name the entity '2022 - Spring - $500k - Contoso Inc. - Presale stage' so we can find it more easily." Me: "So what you actually want is to be able to filter/search for entities by all those values, and you're just using the name…

This SO MUCH! It doesn't matter that you can add any fields you want in Salesforce, and we do, nobody will use them and continue to encode all the information in the title of the object.

Funnily enough - I was building this application ...to replace Salesforce (for this business process, not company-wide).

Because the person managing Salesforce approved all requests to add any field, there were just 400 instead of the 5 I mentioned, and none had any validation - so no one knew which ones to fill with data, which ones to keep updated, and which ones absolutely to never touch because you would accidentally commit fraud because you falsified sales figures.

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