The notion that people choose to use computer applications because they are useful at accomplishing tasks is extremely outdated. The vast majority of software use is not voluntary.
We choose or are required to engage with a person, organization, business, government. They dictate what software to use for the interaction based on what is most convenient and advantageous to them.
I have been thinking about this ever since years ago Julie explained to me that the reason she dislikes graphical user interfaces is they feel like prisons because to a much larger extent they are an experience fully orchestrated by somebody else.
@chris__martin I saw a video from an old smalltalk-like system from 40 to 59 years ago where one could compose GUI apps the way one does shell commands. It is telling how that feature has not been emulated
@xerz@fedi.xerz.oneit turns out most people couldn't care less if an UI is terrible and alienating however, and the masses determine what lives or dies — so usage has been limited to corporate with things like FlutterFlow, Retool, Microsoft Power Apps, FileMaker, something halfway like Enso or straight up hacks with Wordpress... we should still do better and I have plans myself, but don't think this is corporate sabotage or anything like that
@xerz @chris__martin @hugoestr It's only tangentially related, but recently I realized that apps like Excel and Obsidian are user-friendly application development frameworks that let you develop your own custom-tailored accounting or task management apps. You don't have to live in someone else's UI, they let you build your own with sticks and tape.
@xerz@fedi.xerz.one@KekunPlazas @chris__martin @hugoestr yeah, Excel is the development environment for people who don’t know how to code… it’s an extremely rough tool, but it is very usable for local purposes due to its limitations, in a way similar to 8-bit systems
@MeDueleLaTeta@awoo.fai.stLike you do a calc and it gets visualized immediately with all the previous stuff, however with a python script it wouldn't be so interactive.
@chris__martin in a way, the whole UIUX movement is totally misguided, it makes people like their apps and computer interfaces, and this in turn causes people to become attached to them in various emotional ways, and this disparity is upsetting when interfaces which one didn’t choose personally have to be engaged with
It might have been better to have everything ugly and military and utilitarian and brutalist so that we all hate everything equally
After all, machinists on an assembly line or farmers milking cows or violinists playing various strados have to just get on with the job whether the equipment is bare bones or prettified, the only real improvements over time have tended to be safety ones, the dressing-up of industrial gear with cosmetic coatings is just cake icing really
UI is overrated (and that’s what I’ve spent a lot of my design life doing) – after all, I tried a violin once and it was shit, couldn’t get anything musical out of it at all, the UI is appalling, how on earth do they ever sell any of them
@technobaboo@ordinary.cafe@chris__martin if only we had standards that were actually USED BY ORGS gndwaslkjgnsadl;kjgndsak what the hell, we could have avoided the proprietary GUI hellscape
Most (all?) GUI specifications for both UNIX-likes and the Microsoft systems suck in comparison to what BeOS' enabled. They simply do not allow as much even when actually implemented.
@technobaboo@ordinary.cafe@lispi314 @chris__martin oooh do tell! what makes the BeOS display server protocol so good?
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] @platypus@glammr.us@chris__martin so in library systems, we still have folks who knew how to do certain things by like—typing 5 keystrokes in order to navigate a menu. And even if they don’t want to lose stuff they can do now, some people very justifiably miss navigation that didn’t involve clicks or longer combos of shortcut keys.
@chris__martin FB is blue and your cannot change it because Zuckerberg is color blind.
Kids don't know, but the reason MySpace was cool was because you could customize it beyond usability.
@chris__martin The reason I dropped MacOS. Fantastic OS... as long as you used it exactly as Steve Jobs envisioned (it was early 2000s). Stray outside those lines and it was nothing but frustration.
I went back to Linux which was ugly and needed some extra hacking, but at least I didn't feel like the OS was fighting me.
@chris__martin
I have a child in school and they use Chromebook.... My stomach churns because I was part of the introduction of Chromebook to education and it was not supposed to end up this way.
It seems criminal that with all the open source UX tooling that we impose a brittle UX intended e-commerce and office automation.
@eatingice@ice.sophari.org@chris__martin if anyone needs another reason to dislike Steve Jobs
@chris__martin
I admit to avoiding graphical user interfaces.
@chris__martin Every time you use a GUI you are having to work within decisions that other people made for you. I've mostly lived a life in GUIs, but working with people who are working with them (and often frustrated by them) has helped me see just how CHAFING they are when the settings someone chooses as "defaults" for you are not the others you'd choose for yourself. Sometimes you can change them but usually not.
@hazelnot@sunbeam.city@chris__martin hm, I'm a UI/UX designer and while they are an experience orchestrated by somebody else, the trick is to turn that into a benefit rather than a drawback
A big issue is that a lot of UI designers feel like the user should be given as little control as possible though, out of a mix of fear of overwhelming the user and feeling like they know better than the user (which is heavily dependent on the specific situation)
For me (as a user, not as a designer) what seems to work best is a GUI with lots of customisation options but good enough defaults, but yeah if someone prefers using a command line that should also be available. I tend to fall into the category of people who get overwhelmed by that though, I've been using Linux for years but prefer using GUI tools whenever possible cause at least with those I usually don't have to spend 2 hours reading the documentation before I can use the program 
BeOS' BMessages enable full automation and scripting of GUIs, if one wants to.
As for dictated software, that is why one acquires a non-Free/untrusted device with the mandated malware, and other more trusted devices that one does not install such malware on.
@chris__martin most of the people on the other end probably did not decide either - someone in management decided for them.
@fluffy@plush.city@chris__martin I feel this in my bones. I have something like a hundred apps installed on my iPhone, and of those only a handful are things I *want* to have installed, the rest are things I *need* to have installed, just because of some dumb requirement for hardware or a community I belong to or whatever (like the spammy social media app that the clay studio I fire my pottery at uses for schedule notifications).
@fluffy @chris__martin
Yah.
I do find a lot of (Android) apps useful. But three categories I've come to loath:
* Apps needed only rarely, but absolutely required for some function when I do need them. Otherwise taking up space.
* Apps that duplicate the same function. The number of school-to-parent communication apps in particular seems to multiply.
* "This could have been a webpage" apps. A webpage might even exist and work better, but the company forces app use on mobile devices.
@PTR_K @fluffy @chris__martin
Well this has been a horrifying read. Maybe it's why some people still use clam-phones; 'I shall not install, here and no further'.
@chris__martin @mcc this reminds me of reporters talking about how the US immigration asylum app (CBP One) is full of problems, and that FOIA requests have shown most officials are aware of that but don't really care, probably because it serves the purpose of reducing how many ppl can actually apply for asylum
@chris__martin Dictators like tree-structures. I was taught Top-Down Design. Why does software need a top? Software design (mostly) isn't constrained by the limitations of physics, so why do we pretend it is and limit our thinking?
@KuteboiCoder@subs4social.xyz@hugoestr@functional.cafe @chris__martin@functional.cafe
I understand. I feel like the project I'm working on is boss-ware, aka communication platforms and data entry systems that employees are told to use by their boss.
#Misskey, on the other hand, is a perfect example of #software that people use exclusively for fun, that their bosses will never order them to use for any purpose.
@KuteboiCoder@subs4social.xyz@chris__martin@functional.cafe
Fun-ware like the #misskey project is a perfect example of software that nobody will ever be paid to develop. The #Japanese hikiko-mori #nerds who developed Misskey - a very impressive platform - never got paid a cent.
The only way I will ever earn a significant payraise is if I get better at interviewing and eventually hired at another boss-ware development job.
@chris__martin My grocery now requires an app to get most discounts. So I have an app to grocery shopping. Apparently just giving them my phone number with every purchase did not provide enough salable information?
@chris__martin that’s why I feel so strongly towards a #RechtAufAnalogesLeben (right to an analogue life), so that I can decide by myself which programs and services to use and paper is enduring
