Internet of bad daytime cable tv
In many ways, it feels like the logical endpoint for the current landscape of internet platforms is just a weird home shopping network where the hosts act like they’re friends with you.
— Ryan Broderick in Garbage Day
300,000 emails and the Bauhaus
In 1800, if you’d said that you wanted something ‘made by hand’, that would be meaningless - everything was hand-made. But half a century later, it could be a reaction against the age of the machine - of steam and coal-smoke and ‘dark satanic mills.’ The Arts and Crafts movement proposed slow, hand-made, imperfect craft in reaction to mass-produced ‘perfection’ (and a lot of other things besides). A century later this is one reason I’m fascinated by the new luxury goods platforms LVMH and Kering, or indeed Supreme. How do you mass-manufacture, mass-market and mass-retail things whose entire nature is supposedly that they’re individual, or convince people that a piece of mass-manufactured nylon and plastic is unique?
The Time (and Complexity) Tax
The issue is not that modern life comes with paperwork hassles. The issue is that American benefit programs are, as a whole, difficult and sometimes impossible for everyday citizens to use.
I’m running in to a related issue at work, not so much in Government but in commercial organisations. Computing has let companies have very complex policies about how they can sell services but they haven’t much considered how to get people through non-standard workflows.
There’s a tipping point after which the goodwill and effort of customer support staff stops being useful — unanticipated workflows become part of the standard workflow and throw out the assumptions baked in to the service design.
Robust Convenience
Christopher Butt disagrees with Eóin Doyle’s assessment of the VW ID.Life:
it truly is a ‘Volkswagen among electric cars’, with a focus on exuding longevity, ease of use and robust convenience, rather than pseudo-high-tech sophistication. Instead of making a song and dance about automatic doors, lids or a retractable roof in the usual concept car fashion, ID.Life features simple fabric covers on its front boot and cabin roof.
Burn
Eóin Doyle, with a stiletto:
Volkswagen are doing a neat line in sterility nowadays, doggedly working their way through the product range, excising every last screed of sentience, charm or stylistic merit.
The Usability Tao
Tao Eleven is my favourite.
Ursula Le Guin calls it “The uses of not”.
Thirty spokes
meet in the hub.
Where the wheel isn’t
is where it’s useful.
There are lots of other translations.
Baby Clothes Theory of Enterprise Software
There are two types of baby outfits. The first is targeted at people buying gifts. It’s irresistible on the rack. It has no fewer than 18 buttons. At least 3 people are needed to get a screaming baby into it. It’s worn once, so you can send a photo to the gifter, then discarded.
Other baby outfits are meant for parents. They’re marked “Easy On, Easy Off” or some such, and they really mean it. Zippers aren’t easy enough so they fasten using MAGNETS. A busy parent (i.e. a parent) can change an outfit in 5 seconds, one handed, before rushing to work.
The point is, some products are sold directly to the end user, and are forced to prioritize usability. Other products are sold to an intermediary whose concerns are typically different from the user’s needs. Such products don’t HAVE to end up as unusable garbage, but usually do.
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