Episode guests
Podcast summary created with Snipd AI
Quick takeaways
- Graphic design optimizes information absorption, industrial design focuses on user-friendly tools.
- Games as indirect communication software convey messages through challenges and solutions.
- Clear interfaces enhance software communication, emphasizing contextual and natural language elements.
- Software design shifts from functionality to presentation, emphasizing clarity, context-sensitivity, and user-centered design.
- Context-aware tools adapt to user needs, optimizing efficiency and learning experiences.
Deep dives
Graphic Design vs. Industrial Design in Software
Graphic design focuses on maximizing the human eye's capabilities for effortless information absorption, while industrial design pertains to manufacturing tools that are both effective and user-friendly.
Software Classification: Information vs. Manipulation vs. Communication
Information software aids in learning internal models efficiently, while manipulation software involves creating external models through a blend of graphic and industrial design. Communication software facilitates shared model communication.
Software Design Challenges
Communication software, while leveraging the capabilities of human interaction, poses unique challenges compared to information and manipulation software due to its indirect communication nature, illustrated effectively in activities like game design.
Game Design as a Communication Software Example
Games serve as indirect communication software where the message is conveyed not through direct instructions but by designing challenges and solutions wherein graphical and interactive elements are pivotal for effective communication.
The Mastery of Game Design
Game designers exhibit mastery by using graphic, interaction, and industrial design to intentionally create challenging elements to convey ideas non-verbally, showcasing a high level of skill in leveraging the interactive medium for effective communication.
The Importance of Graphical Communication and Context-Aware Interaction in Software Design
Understanding the value of graphical communication and context-aware interaction in software design is crucial. The discussion highlights how early Mega Man games excelled in level design without heavy tutorials, emphasizing the significance of graphical communication in user interaction. Brett Victor's perspective on the need for discernible changes in context-sensitive information graphics echoes the essence of effective software design.
Exploring Linguistic Software versus GUI Language and Design
Contrasting linguistic software with GUI language unveils the importance of clear and expressive interfaces. Brett Victor's insights emphasize the limitations of decontextualized GUI elements like menus and checkboxes, advocating for more contextual and natural language-based interfaces. Examples from the San Francisco train system's interface demonstrate the power of contextual sentences over traditional dropdown menus, highlighting the potential for clearer and more informative software design.
The Shift from Functionality to Presentation in Information Software
The podcast delves into the fundamental shift required in software design from prioritizing functionality to elevating presentation. Brett Victor emphasizes the significance of improving information software communication through thoughtful presentation techniques over mere functionality. The discussion challenges the current emphasis on machines and bindings in software development, advocating for a focus on enriching communication and user experience. This shift aims to enhance software's clarity, context-sensitivity, and user-centered design.
The Importance of Contextual Awareness in Software Design
Software designers emphasize the significance of context awareness in tool development, aiming to enhance user experiences by tailoring information presentation to specific contexts. By focusing on real-time context recognition, such as displaying relevant code changes when debugging or offering location-based suggestions in apps, designers strive to optimize efficiency and learning. This approach promotes a user-centered design philosophy where software interfaces adapt to users' needs and behaviors, ultimately enhancing usability and engagement.
Exploring Graphic-First Design in Programming Tools
The essay advocates for a shift towards graphic-first programming tools that prioritize visual communication and interaction design over traditional text-based interfaces. Examples like mock mechanics and Pane highlight the potential of integrating graphical elements into programming environments, offering concrete representations for programming tasks. By emphasizing concreteness in interface design and promoting interactivity as a means for enhancing user engagement, these tools challenge the status quo and pave the way for a more intuitive and visually appealing approach to software development.
Before the time-travelling talks, the programmable rooms, the ladders and rocket launchers, we had the first real Bret Victor essay: Magic Ink. It set the stage for Bret's later explorations, breaking down the very idea of "software" into a few key pieces and interrogating them with his distinct focus, then clearly demoing a way we could all just do it better. All of Bret's works feel simultaneously like an anguished cry and a call to arms, and this essay is no exception.
For the next episode, we're reading Programming as Theory Building by Peter Naur, with a little bit of Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind thrown in for good measure.
Links
Four Hundred of the most Chart-Topping Thoughts of All Time:
Paper Programs by JP Posma was inspired by Dynamicland.
"Computers aren't the thing. They're the thing that gets us to the thing." from Halt and Catch Fire
Charticulator is Microsoft Research's take on a _Drawing Dynamic Visualizations_-esq tool.
Jimmy's Fender Jazz bass looks like this, but red, but like a decade older, but like $600 at the time.
We could probably post parts of this episode as Boyfriend Roleplay on YouTube.
Fitts's Law is but one thing we've learned about the industrial design aspect of building good software.
The Witness is a game where communicating ideas through (essentially) graphic design is the whole entire point of the game. If you haven't played it, know that it comes highly recommended by plenty of folks in the community.
A "red letter Bible" is a Bible in which the words spoken by Jesus are colored red, to make them easier to identify.
Toph Tucker has a pretty cool personal website. It's rare to see these sorts of sites nowadays, and they're always made by adventuresome programmers, trendy design agencies, or their clients. In the Flash era, it felt like everyone had a website like this, for better and for worse.
tldraw is a beautiful little browser-based drawing tool by Steve Ruiz. What few things it does, it does exceptionally well.
John while Henry had had had had had had had had had been my preference.
#devlog-together is the channel on our Future of Coding slack community where members post small, frequent updates about what they're working on.
The (Not Boring) apps are arguably a counterpoint to Bret's theses about information apps and harmful interaction, where the interaction and graphic design are balanced against being maximally-informative, toward being silly and superfluous, to great effect.
Did you know there's a hobby horse, but also a hobby horse? I didn't!
There are a few examples of folks doing FoC work that, in Ivan's view, align well with the values Bret outlines in Magic Ink:
- Szymon Kaliski's projects for Ink & Switch, summarized in his Strange Loop talk, Programmable Ink.
- Mock Mechanics is an environment for building mechanisms by Felipe Reigosa.
- PANE by Josh Horowitz inverts the usual node-wire programming pattern by putting data in the nodes and data transformation in the wires.
Robot Odyssey was a 1984 game for the Apple II (and some other, lesser systems) in which players would go inside various robots to reprogram them.
Music featured in this episode:
- Wash Machine, from the unfinished 2014 album Sneaky Dances
- Shaun's Amaj Rebirth, created in November 2022 for a friend named — you guessed it — Shaun.
Hey! Send us questions we can answer on the show. Like, "How do you keep bread warm?" Or, "What's so great about concatenative languages?" We'll answer them. Send them here:
futureofcoding.org/episodes/060
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