Andy Matuschak
patreon
Office hours tomorrow; prototyping sneak peak livestream
🕑 Added 2022-04-29 04:55:52 +0000 UTCHi, all! First, a timely reminder that the second April office hours is tomorrow (Google Calendar link; iCal URL):
- Friday, April 29th, 9:30 AM PDT (meet)
Prototyping new mnemonic medium design
After a lot of Quantum Country data analysis early this year, last month I switched back into design mode, focused on creating new primitives for the medium which give readers much more control (yet without creating burdensome interaction cost). See these two letters for more background there.
I have a new set of interactions which are holding together well in my "paper prototypes" so far, so I've been working on a talk which will include extended live demos of prototypes in action. I hoped to finish that this week, but that's not happening—so in recompense, I recorded my morning prototyping session.
It's more than five and a half hours long, so I don't expect anyone to watch it all the way through, but many of you may be interested in the opening few minutes of remarks about how I see the role of demo presentations in the process of inventing new user interfaces.
One more small offering: a little story on the self-inflicted harms of inappropriate time pressure in open-ended creative work.
That story presents a funny contrast, actually. There, time pressure was self-defeating because it actually subverted my own creative goals: it kept me from engaging seriously with the subject matter I was purporting to adapt into my new medium. And how else am I going to know if the medium's really working? But in this morning's livestream, I'm afraid the last two hours are me wrestling with various LaTeX rendering bugs. Those, of course, have nothing at all to do with the actual ideas under consideration, and so time pressure is actually helpful, insofar as it nudges me to give up and use hackier solutions.
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Andy Matuschak
In fact, it turned out to be a big mistake! Everything is trade-offs, of course: going straight to code gives more control, but often more fiddly details, particularly when doing a lot of spatial layout. I'd had good luck with Framer prototypes a few years back, so I thought I'd try it again, but they'd rebuilt the app (twice!) since then, and after this stream and another day of trying to use Framer, I gave up and built a hacked-up version with code. That turned out to be the right call: it took 20-25 hours and gave me a lot of fine control.
Thanks for sharing! Writing about your design decisions and storytelling UX flows before getting into Figma is a huge nugget - I'll try it out to unblock me in my work :) Andy, I'm curious what made you go for Framer instead of doing the high-fi prototype in code? It seems like you battled Framer so much that going from Figma to throwaway code could have been better and more loyal to the test you wanted to run.
Andy Matuschak
Links from the chat: Ethan Plante9:32 AM Mornin’! Taylor Mitchell9:32 AM q Andrew Judson9:41 AM q Ethan Plante9:42 AM Q Grady Simon9:49 AM examples of concrete numerical thinking situations you have in mind? You9:50 AM Dropping some relevant URLs: http://glench.com/LegibleMathematics/ http://calca.io https://soulver.app Samuel Arbesman9:52 AM This is another one that looks interesting, though I haven't played with it that much: https://www.causal.app/ You9:53 AM https://www.getguesstimate.com You9:54 AM https://www.getguesstimate.com You9:55 AM http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/ Grady Simon9:56 AM Is normal, non-notebook-based software "linked" in this sense? Ruben Artus9:59 AM The Descript app has a great way of linking text to the sound which leads to a great benefit in manipulating the audio track! Silka Sietsma10:00 AM i wonder if you could like to voice and hand gestures or other sensory data. Great thought problem. Yes, Desscript is what I had in mnd :). Thanks Ruben. You10:01 AM https://rmozone.com/snapshots/2021/11/gentle-history/ Andrew Judson10:02 AM someone mentioned "nato.dev" or something that sounded like that - what is the exact name? You10:02 AM https://natto.dev You10:06 AM https://twitter.com/azlenelza/status/1486680833431797765 on pitch length vs. text typographically You10:19 AM We assume that it is our HLAMT system Human using Lauguage in which he is Trained that has the capability Artifacts Methodology and that performs the process in any instance of use of this repertoire Grady Simon10:23 AM gotta run - I really appreciate hearing everyone's thoughts! Thanks for hosting, Andy! You10:26 AM Alan's "Change the thought patterns of civilization": http://worrydream.com/refs/Kay%20-%20User%20Interface,%20a%20Personal%20View.pdf Inventing on Principle's demonstration of linked representations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGqwXt90ZqA Silka Sietsma10:28 AM q Will Simpson10:30 AM A "tool" for language learning.Simple but easily accessible. She is french learning english.[Developping my writting skills and foreign languages : the lexicon tool — Zettelkasten Forum](https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2261/developping-my-writting-skills-and-foreign-languages-the-lexicon-tool)
I can 100% attest to your little story of having similar experiences. Although dropping all pretenses of deadline have also made me less productive, finding that balance is critical.
