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Folk Interfaces

223 pointsby lysergiaover 2 years ago

29 comments

tikwiddover 2 years ago
Some random folk practices I&#x27;ve come across:<p>* Blocking, stacking and pulling creep camps in DOTA. Unintended behaviours that became core game mechanics.<p>* Comments in the tag section of Tumblr posts, to avoid the comments appearing in a reblog (&quot;Why do people use tags on tumblr instead of comments?&quot; [1])<p>* The appropriation of switching MOSFETs such as the IRF510, designed for low frequencies, in homebrew amateur radio QRP power amplifiers. &quot;In talking to International Rectifier, they were floored to find out QRPers were using them at 7MHz or higher.&quot; [2]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;NoStupidQuestions&#x2F;comments&#x2F;nu4vpa&#x2F;why_do_people_use_tags_on_tumblr_instead_of&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;NoStupidQuestions&#x2F;comments&#x2F;nu4vpa&#x2F;w...</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iw3sgt.it&#x2F;IW3SGT_PRJ&#x2F;IW3SGT_AMP_LF&#x2F;ClassDEF1.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iw3sgt.it&#x2F;IW3SGT_PRJ&#x2F;IW3SGT_AMP_LF&#x2F;ClassDEF1.pdf</a>
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andrepdover 2 years ago
&gt; Large California-based companies produce monolithic apps and interfaces for a global audience. They&#x27;re designing for the broadest, generic use cases to make things work for the greatest number of people.<p>Hah! If only! Actually they often (but not always) seem to design it for an SV audience with the latest-gen phone&#x2F;computer, fast uninterrupted internet, familiarity with the latest &quot;UX&quot; fads, perfect eyesight, etc. Anybody that falls outside that narrow group can get shafted.
bo0tzzover 2 years ago
Another article in a similar vein, that I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.robinsloan.com&#x2F;notes&#x2F;home-cooked-app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.robinsloan.com&#x2F;notes&#x2F;home-cooked-app&#x2F;</a>
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austinsharpover 2 years ago
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&#x27;t designed to work together.<p>I would actually put Excel in this original category. Part of Excel&#x27;s utility is that it is really good at enabling building of dashboards, applications, whatever. While Excel&#x27;s builders didn&#x27;t have D&amp;D character sheets in mind, they definitely expect users to do unanticipated things with the software, just as much as IFTTT or Tasker would.<p>In some ways this is a &quot;platform&quot; type of perspective. &quot;Here&#x27;s a bunch of building blocks, go do whatever you think you need&quot; is really powerful once the network effect of building blocks gets big enough. Any tool with a built-in DSL or workflow builder type of UI is probably in this category.
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SamBamover 2 years ago
Orthogonal to the main point of the article, I was interested in the mention of Victor Papanek&#x27;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.<p>I haven&#x27;t been able to find a simple guide for how to make one myself.
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lrpeover 2 years ago
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&#x27;ve found to do that which fits my workflow is a program called GPlates. A program that simulates plate tectonics. I&#x27;ve never touched the simulation part, although it might be useful in my worldbuilding at some point. All I use it for is drawing colored shapes.
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mikewarotover 2 years ago
Random folk practice that <i>drove me nuts</i>, Outlook &quot;Deleted Items Folder&quot; as storage, never actually deleted, ever.<p>20+ Gigabyte mailboxes, which were actually a threaded, searchable, rich content database. (Exchange&#x27;s superpower (when it works) is a almost perfect online&#x2F;offline sync able database -- You can send an email in your offline client, when you go online it&#x27;ll get sent, your calendar updates will sync, etc)
uhoh-itsmaciekover 2 years ago
Folk interfaces are a natural consequence of the focus on building applications for millions of users and the dearth of situated software [1]. They&#x27;re also a clever way of claiming no-code or low-code platforms in unexpected places.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gwern.net&#x2F;docs&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2004-03-30-shirky-situatedsoftware.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gwern.net&#x2F;docs&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2004-03-30-shirky-situ...</a>
jonahxover 2 years ago
This is like the interface version of Hyrum&#x27;s law:<p><pre><code> 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.</code></pre>
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rileyphoneover 2 years ago
This is referred to in the literature as &#x27;appropriation&#x27; [0], though perhaps that term has gained too much cultural baggage recently to be useful.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scienceopen.com&#x2F;document_file&#x2F;cbe110a4-c761-4afe-9d3c-294066bfce36&#x2F;ScienceOpen&#x2F;001_Dix.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scienceopen.com&#x2F;document_file&#x2F;cbe110a4-c761-4afe...</a>
benjaminjosephwover 2 years ago
&gt; No matter how much well-intentioned user research these companies invest in, they&#x27;ll never be able to produce software that fully meets the needs of individual users and culturally distant communities.<p>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.<p>I&#x27;ve been searching for other examples of end-user programmmable tools beyond spreadsheets for inspiration. Anyone have suggestions of some other places these kinds of &quot;folk interfaces&quot; show up?
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dan-gover 2 years ago
One of my favorite creative uses of Excel comes from !!Con 2017, where Kevin Chen used spreadsheet to implement HDR imaging[1]. It’s also just an incredibly well-crafted presentation.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kevinchen.co&#x2F;projects&#x2F;excel-hdr&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kevinchen.co&#x2F;projects&#x2F;excel-hdr&#x2F;</a>
ChrisMarshallNYover 2 years ago
The biggest issue that I come across, is users of my software, developing mental models of the software that I would never, in a million years, have developed, myself.<p>They often work with the software, based on their &quot;strange&quot; mental model, and can have very weird workflows.<p>In some cases, this is excellent, and it is worth it for me to learn the new model, and maybe add affordances for it.
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sgtover 2 years ago
On the etymology of &quot;folk&quot;, saying that it the word comes from Old English folc is true, although a vast over-simplification. A lot of languages share this word.<p>This is actually an ancient word, you can trace it back to proto-Germanic &quot;fulka&quot;, and further to Proto-Indo-European &quot;plh-gos&quot; (presumably pronounced something like phulgos or pholgos, close enough to folk).
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mikewarotover 2 years ago
Using Virtual Machines as capability based security is something I&#x27;ve come to accept.<p>Windows and Linux are vulnerable to the confused deputy problem, so you separate your concerns into separate VMs and give each &quot;machine&quot; a set of resources (capabilities)<p>IBM and Digital machines have done this since the 1960s.
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pradnover 2 years ago
There&#x27;s also the Indian cultural concept of `jugaad`, which refers to folksy hacking. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Jugaad" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Jugaad</a>
avg_devover 2 years ago
I found the post interesting. It provoked me to think about the low-code, no-code movements, and of the concept of folk interfaces. It is a nice term and I will try keep it with me in my future thinking. I found the 9c radio particularly appealing. It also made me consider how I ended up where I am now, and one thing that struck me is that when I was learning to program, I tried learning from textbooks about programming and they intimidated me and felt impenetrable. I didn&#x27;t know how to get into them at all. Then by stroke of fortune I came across the first programming book that really took me. It was called C for Dummies, by Dan Gookin. It was filled with humor and encouraged experimentation, and above all it was empowering. It made me feel good and it inspired me: I sent a couple of busted but well-intentioned input routines off to a friend who was further along in the process than I was and he introduced me to the off-by-one-error. I never became a good C programmer, but I learned how to make the computer do my bidding in small ways, and it wasn&#x27;t long before I picked up another book, on Perl and CGI.pm, and I wrote my first &quot;web applications&quot;. Eventually I went on to do a computer science degree. Today, by HN standards, I&#x27;m maybe nothing to write home about, but I make a very comfortable living and I enjoy writing code at work. I enjoy learning about tech in my spare time, even now.<p>I guess what I&#x27;m trying to get at is that I wish to see learning to code, per se, easily accessible for all. I&#x27;m not talking about cheap or even free boot camps that promise entry into a lucrative job market. I&#x27;m talking about a kid, or a parent, or an auntie or uncle or cousin or sister or brother, about whoever, who just sees something they want to make happen and they literally do because they can. I read through the comments and I re-read the wonderful article by Robin Sloan linked below (&quot;An app can be a home-cooked meal&quot; -- look through this comment thread, and you&#x27;ll see it, alongside my first observation of the term &quot;OA&quot;, one that took me some time to decipher -- another thing that will stick with me).<p>I believe that programming is and always will be for the masses. I believe in development best practices when they are called for. But for learning, for discovering the beauty of computing and the joy of software, of writing one&#x27;s first programs, I wish the barriers were less!
mikewarotover 2 years ago
I use Hugin[1] to manually align images and combine them into virtual focus.[2] I started doing this after learning of the Stanford Multi-Camera array[3], and wanting to replicate the ability to see through things[4].<p>I didn&#x27;t have the budget, so I used one camera and a cluster of photos from slightly varying locations. I got there eventually.[5]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hugin.sourceforge.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hugin.sourceforge.io&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.flickr.com&#x2F;photos&#x2F;---mike---&#x2F;albums&#x2F;72157718585123547&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.flickr.com&#x2F;photos&#x2F;---mike---&#x2F;albums&#x2F;721577185851...</a><p>[3] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;graphics.stanford.edu&#x2F;projects&#x2F;array&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;graphics.stanford.edu&#x2F;projects&#x2F;array&#x2F;</a><p>[4] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;graphics.stanford.edu&#x2F;projects&#x2F;array&#x2F;videos&#x2F;crowd0-sap.mpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;graphics.stanford.edu&#x2F;projects&#x2F;array&#x2F;videos&#x2F;crowd0-sa...</a><p>[5] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.flickr.com&#x2F;photos&#x2F;---mike---&#x2F;51018992733&#x2F;in&#x2F;album-72157718585123547&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.flickr.com&#x2F;photos&#x2F;---mike---&#x2F;51018992733&#x2F;in&#x2F;albu...</a>
nuc1e0nover 2 years ago
I approve of this, but its hardly novel. Web browsers were originally intended to view flat html documents with hyperlinks between them. The concept of a web app is itself a &#x27;folk&#x27; repurposing of technology.<p>Another might be the way blocks in minecraft are repurposed to make all sorts of elaborate redstone machines such as automatic farms.
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yuchiover 2 years ago
This argument is very similar to what I usually, probably inappropriately, refer to “malleability” of a software, interface or system in general: it’s ability to be used way beyond the initial use cases, and hopefully be good at it.
inasmuchover 2 years ago
Whenever I need to explain to laypeople what I do as a software designer, I tell them that most of my job is figuring out new ways to visualize and connect outlines and spreadsheets.
jessejjohnsonover 2 years ago
The theme&#x2F;presentation of this site is top tier. Nice work.
hprotagonistover 2 years ago
and when you start from the premise that folk interfaces are not only good but should be actively encouraged, you get something like emacs.
agentultraover 2 years ago
If this is an interesting idea to you, check out: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;screenl.es" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;screenl.es</a>
zemover 2 years ago
along the lines of the d&amp;d spreadsheet, I&#x27;ve developed an entire app for running scrabble tournaments as an elaborate google sheets script. it&#x27;s a couple of thousand lines of javascript for the logic, but the user interface is entirely a bunch of spreadsheet tabs.<p>I&#x27;m currently rewriting it as a standalone web app just to break the dependence on google, and have a more customisable user experience, but it&#x27;s <i>really</i> hard to beat the spreadsheet UX, where settings are all done using editable tables and the output shows up in another table.
Joker_vDover 2 years ago
&gt; chairs as doorstoppers,<p>Wait, there are actual things, called &quot;doorstoppers&quot;, that are designed to work exactly as door stoppers and have no other discernible function? Do they by any chance look anything like paperweights?
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amadeuspagelover 2 years ago
A lot of people use gmail or whatsapp for notes.
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smegsicleover 2 years ago
prefixing filenames with a period to hide them from ls
ExtraEover 2 years ago
Please write concisely.