a perennial summer homosexual. shining superstar vtuber. evil nasty catboy.


i stream indie games and indie music heavily. got a new game or album to show off? shoot me an ask!


cohost's dreamer, sweetboy, sickposter...


support the preservation of my species
ko-fi.com/spookybiscuits/
send enrichment for my enclosure
throne.com/spookybiscuits
view the camera in my exhibit
twitch.tv/spookybiscuits

thricedotted
@thricedotted

ellen ullman on so-called "user-friendly" interfaces, excerpted from an essay published in her book Life in Code:

Pretty graphical user interfaces are commonly called "user-friendly.'' But they are not really your friends. Underlying every user-friendly interface is a terrific human contempt.

The basic idea of a graphical interface is that it does not allow anything alarming to happen. You can pound on the mouse button all you want, and the system will prevent you from doing anything stupid. A monkey can pound on the keyboard, your cat can run across it, your baby can bang it with a fist, but the system should not crash.

To build such a crash-resistant system, the designer must be able to imagine — and disallow — the dumbest action. He or she cannot simply rely on the user's intelligence: who knows who will be on the other side of the program? Besides, the user's intelligence is not quantifiable; it's not programmable; it cannot protect the system. The real task is to forget about the intelligent person on the other side and think of every single stupid thing anyone might possibly do.

In the designer's mind, gradually, over months and years, there is created a vision of the user as imbecile. The imbecile vision is mandatory. No good, crash-resistant system can be built except if it's done for an idiot. The prettier the user interface, and the fewer odd replies the system allows you to make, the dumber you once appeared in the mind of the designer.

The designer's contempt for your intelligence is mostly hidden deep in the code. But, now and then, the disdain surfaces. Here's a small example: You're trying to do something simple, like back up files on your Mac. The program proceeds for a while, then encounters an error. Your disk is defective, says a message, and below the message is a single button. You absolutely must click this button. If you don't click it, the program hangs there indefinitely. So — your disk is defective, your files may be bolloxed up, and the designer leaves you only one possible reply: You must say, "OK."

fun side note… she wrote this in 1994.


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @thricedotted's post:

bars

for real, when im designing programs to make tasks easier for myself i usually think like "ok ok ok, i need to make something that isnt for me right now understanding whats going on. i need to make something for me when its 3am and im fatigued out of my mind and i haven't eaten or drank anything all day cause i forgot and also im running a fever and i need the computer to do something anyway" which is really just "i need it to work when im fuckin stupid" but with more compassion