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Folk Interfaces

maggieappleton.com

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Re: Folk Interfaces

#91

Post by nicbou »

Mappleton wrote: post #63
bo0tzz wrote: post #8

Another article in a similar vein, that I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday: https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/

OA here. Loved this piece as well, and it certainly got me thinking about a set of themes that led to this essay. Robin is an exceptional thinker in this space.

Your digital garden intro had a massive impact on me. It finally gave me the vocabulary to express how I build the website I live from, and spurred me into an impromptu redesign of my personal website. It also led to half a dozen hand-drawn illustrations on the commercial one, with more on the way.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#92

Post by SamBam »

password4321 wrote: post #82
SamBam wrote: post #26

Orthogonal 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.

Not super useful without a tuner, receiving every frequency at once. Perhaps the next step up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio

Apparently it would only receive one frequency (presumably tuned when made). The target was for developing countries that might have only a single state-run station.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#93

Post by ryanf »

austinsharp wrote: post #68

I was surprised to see no mention of automation tools like IFTTT and Tasker. These sorts of overarching automation oriented tools let people solve a lot of problems by stitching together things that aren't designed to work together. I would actually put Excel in this original category. Part of Excel's utility is that it is really good at enabling building of dashboards, applications, whatever. While Excel's builders…

It's funny that you mention IFTTT because one of the inspirations for its creation was the book Thoughtless Acts?, which is full of photos like the ones in this post: https://ifttt.com/explore/ifttt-the-beginning

They used to give a copy to new employees, but it seems to be out of print now.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#96

Post by password4321 »

SamBam wrote: post #92
password4321 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not super useful without a tuner, receiving every frequency at once. Perhaps the next step up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio

Apparently it would only receive one frequency (presumably tuned when made). The target was for developing countries that might have only a single state-run station.

"The radio is, of course, non-directional. This means that it receives all stations simultaneously. But in emerging countries, this is of no importance: only one broadcast (carried by relay towers 50 miles apart) is carried."

Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change ©1971 pg. 162 https://archive.org/details/designforrealwor0000papa/page/16...

Re: Folk Interfaces

#97

Post by ThePadawan »

leokennis wrote: post #86
ThePadawan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Switzerland's biggest online retailer whose USP was that it actually did strongly typed attributes really really well. To date, it's still incredibly searchable. Want to find a 5.5" phone running Android 10+ and at least a 12MP back-facing camera for below $350? You can filter for it. It was an absolute nightmare on the (normalized, backend) technical level, but a real pleasure to consume on the denormali…

https://tweakers.net/pricewatch/ is also a great example of this. No idea how they do it.

As someone who worked in the space - there are standards and commercial solutions which all do lots of good work (some are now unfortunately having to break into the AI space, literally because manufacturers are too cheap to use standards).

But they all come at some cost - my employer decided to cheap out slash invest in a highly custom in-house solution instead that relied on lots and lots and lots of data entry.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#98

Post by a1369209993 »

lrpe wrote: post #53

I build fictional worlds as a hobby, and sometimes I need to make a map of a globe and find myself in need of a program that can draw vector shapes onto a globe and project it onto a 2D map afterwards. The simplest way I've found to do that which fits my workflow is a program called GPlates. A program that simulates plate tectonics. I've never touched the simulation part, although it might be useful in my worldbuildi…

Honestly, that seems to be a common use case for GPlates (see eg[0][from 1]), and might even be more common than actually using it for plate tectonics work.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQvwgPFSN-I

1: http://www.youtube.com/user/Artifexian

Re: Folk Interfaces

#99

Post by PoignardAzur »

xsmasher wrote: post #62
PoignardAzur wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying that this is wrong because picking "assets" (rushes, transitions) is done once at the beginning of the edit process, so the screen space is wasted the rest of the time?

Not the poster you replied to, but I think I understand. * instead of using a two step process (add to library, then drag from library to timeline) users just drag media to the timeline. Makes sense. How often do you re-use the same clip? * instead of dragging in a transition and having to re-set the values from the defaults to the value you want, users drag in once, set the values, and then copy-paste it around. In…

Oh, I see. From the description, I thought the library was the finder (never used iMovie), so I didn't understand the complaint.

Re: Folk Interfaces

#100

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #18
uhoh-itsmaciek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you talk about some concrete examples?

Gimme a bit. I’m going to have to come up with examples that don’t compromise any proprietary information. Most of the examples are from my work for a photography equipment manufacturer, and they wouldn’t want me to talk about it.

I'm not going to follow up on this. The examples I could come up with, outside that experience, would not be accurate recollections.

That company considered exactly that kind of experience to be one of their "trade secrets," and they were fairly well-known for "leaning into" customer mental models.

Even though I could legally discuss it, I won't. I feel they could use all the help they can get, right now, and I won't make things harder for them.

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