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Adam Silver has an article titled “Do you trust design advice from ChatGPT?” wherein he prompted the LLM: How do you add hint text to radio buttons? It gave various suggestions, each of which Adam breaks down. Here’s an an example response from ChatGPT: If you want the hint to appear when the user hovers on the radio button, use a tooltip for a cleaner design Adam’s response: ‘If you want’ Design is not about what you want. It’s about what users need. ‘use a tooltip’ If a hint is useful, why hide it behind a difficult-to-use and inaccessible interaction? ‘for a cleaner design’ Design is about clarity, not cleanliness. Adam’s point-by-point breakdowns are excellent. The entire article is a great example of how plausible-sounding ideas can quickly fall apart under scrutiny from an expert who reframes the issue. It’s funny how prevalent this feels in our age of fast-paced information overload. You read an argument and it seems rational — that is, if you don’t think about it too long, which who has the time? But an expert with deep experience can quickly refute these mediocre rationales and offer a more informed perspective that leaves you wondering how you ever nodded along to the original argument in the first place. Humorously, it reminds me of the culture of conspiracy theories where the burden of proof is on you to disprove the bare assertions being made (a time-consuming job). Hence the value of experience (and what’s experience but an investment of time?) to pierce through these kinds of middle-of-the-road rationales. Experience helps clarify and articulate what lesser experience cannot see, let alone articulate. That all leads me back to Adam: ChatGPT pulls unreliable, uninformed and untrustworthy design advice from the internet and delivers it with confidence. I mean you can certainly listen to its advice. But I think it’s better to develop the instinct to ask the right questions and be able to recognise bad advice when you see it. There’s no shortcut to gaining experience. You can’t consume enough content to get it. You have to do. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky
I recently finished Carlo Rovelli’s book “The Order of Time” and, of course, had a few web-adjacent thoughts come to mind. Who says lessons from physics can’t be applied to making software? (I know, nobody is actually dying on that hill.) A Weakness of Being Data-Driven Being data-driven is the most scientific way of building products? Hold that thought: The ability to understand something before it’s observed is at the heart of scientific thinking. If you can only imagine that which you can observe, understand, and measure, you’re limiting yourself. If you can only believe that which you can observe, then you’ll only ever understand that which you can see. Abstract thought can anticipate by centuries hypotheses that find use — or confirmation — in scientific inquiry. Beware the Prejudice of the Self-Evident The things that seemed self-evident to us were really no more than prejudices. The earth is flat. The sun revolves around the earth. These were mistakes determined by our perspective. There are undoubtedly more things that seem self-evident now, but as we progress in experience and knowledge we will realize that what seems self-evident is merely a prejudice of our perspective given our time and place in the world. There’s always room to be wrong. Children grow up and discover that the world is not as it seemed from within the four walls of their homes. Humankind as a whole does the same thing. Asking the Wrong Questions When we cannot formulate a problem with precision, it is often not because the problem is profound; it’s because the problem is false. Incredibly relevant to building software. If you can’t explain a problem (and your intended solution), it’s probably not a problem. Objectivity Is Overrated When we do science, we want to describe the world in the most objective way possible. We try to eliminate distortions and optical illusions deriving from our point of view. Science aspires to objectivity, to a shared point of view about which it is possible to be in agreement. This is admirable, but we need to be wary about what we lose by ignoring the point of view from which we do the observing. In its anxious pursuit of objectivity, science must not forget that our experience of the world comes from within. Every glance that we cast toward the world is made from a particular perspective. I love this idea. Constantly striving for complete and total objectivity is like trying to erase yourself from existence. As Einstein showed, point of view is everything in a measurement. Your frame of reference is important because it’s yours, however subjective, and you cannot escape it. What we call “objectivity” may merely be the interplay between different subjective perspectives. As Matisse said, “I don’t paint things. I paint the relationship between things.” Email · Mastodon · Bluesky
Web developers have been waiting years for traction in styling HTML form controls. Is it possible the day has come? Here’s Jen Simmons on Mastodon: My team is working on a solution — you’ll apply appearance: base and switch to a new interoperable, consistent controls with easy to override default CSS. They inherit much more of what you already have going on. And then you can override (even more of) those styles using new pseudo-elements. If you want the details, check out the working draft. It’s pretty cool what they’ve come up with, especially in the face of what is undoubtedly a Herculean task to balance developer desire against user preference while preserving accessibility standards. I applaud all involved 👏 That said, I have thoughts. Not new ones. I’ve voiced them before. And I’ll do it again. As developers, we’ve long been clamoring for this functionality: “We want to override defaults, give us more control!” But I wish there was equal voice for: “We want better defaults, not more control!” More control means you have to do more work. I don’t want to do more work, especially for basic computing controls. There are too many edge cases to think about across the plethora of devices, etc. that exist in the world wide web — it’s overwhelming if you stop to think about them all, let alone write them down. I want to respect user choice (which includes respecting what hardware and OS they’ve chosen to use) and build web user interfaces on top of stable OS primitives. Give me better APIs for leveraging OS primitives rather than APIs to opt out of them completely. That’s me, the developer talking. But there’s a user-centric point to be made here too: when you re-invent the look, appearance, and functionality of basic form inputs for every website you’re in charge of, that means every user is forced to encounter inconsistent form controls across the plethora of websites they visit. I’m not saying don’t do this. The web is a big place. There’s undoubtedly a need for it. But not all websites need it, and I’m afraid it’ll be the default posture for handling form controls. I don’t need different radio controls for every healthcare form, shopping cart, and bank account website I use. As a user, I’d prefer a familiar, consistent experience based on the technology choices (hardware, OS, etc.) I’ve made. As a developer, I don’t want to consistently “re-invent the wheel” of basic form controls. Sure, sometimes I may need the ability to opt-out of browser defaults. But increasingly I instead want to opt-in to better browser (and OS) defaults. Less UI primitive resets and more UI primitive customizations. I want to build on top of stable UI pace layers. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky
Heydon Pickering has an intriguing video dealing with the question: “Why is everything binary?” The gist of the video, to me, distills to this insight: The idea that [everything] belongs to one of two archetypes is seductive in its simplicity, so we base everything that we do and make on this false premise. That rings true to me. I tend to believe binary thinking is so prevalent because it’s the intellectual path of least resistance and we humans love to lazy. The fact is, as I’m sure any professional with any experience in any field will tell you, answers are always full of nuance and best explained with the statement “it depends”. The answers we’re all looking for are not found exclusively in one of two binary values, but in the contrast between them. In other words, when you test the accuracy of binary assertions the truth loves to reveal itself somewhere in between.[1] For example: peak design or development is found in the intermingling of form and function. Not form instead of function, nor function instead of form. Working on the web, we’re faced with so many binary choices every day: Do we need a designer or a developer? Do we make a web site or a web app? Should we build this on the client or the server? Are we driven by data or intuition? Does this work online or offline? And answering these questions is not helped by the byproduct of binary thinking, which as Heydon points out, results in intellectually and organizationally disparate structures like “Design” and ”Development”: Design thinking, but not about how to do the thing you are thinking about. Development doing, but without thinking about why the hell anyone would do this in the first place. It’s a good reminder to be consistently on guard for our own binary thinking. And when we catch ourselves, striving to look at the contrast between two options for the answer we seek. There’s a story that illustrates how you can reject binaries and invert the assumption that only two choices exist. It goes like this: A King told a condemned prisoner: “You may make one final statement. If it is true, you will be shot. If it is false, you will be hanged.” The prisoner answered, “I will be hanged.” This results in the King not being able to carry out any sentence. The prisoner manipulates the King’s logic to make both options impossible and reveal a third possible outcome. ⏎ Email · Mastodon · Bluesky
Here’s Gordon Brander in an article titled “Don't fork the ecosystem”: Most of our software has been shaped by chance decisions made in haste by people who could not have predicted how the system would end up being used today. And if we could rebuild those systems today, knowing what we know now, we’d invent a whole new class of problems for ourselves twenty years from now. Software can be rebuilt, because software is a machine. But a software ecosystem is not a machine. It is a living system. When we attempt to rebuild the ecosystem, we’re making a category error. We confuse the software for the ecological process unfolding around it. Seems akin to hiring and firing. People are not cogs in a machine. Team dynamics are disrupted when people leave, as an ecosystem is being tampered with. When I was a kid, I did not understand why we couldn’t “just” go back to the moon. We’d already done it once before. So if we’d done it before, can’t we just do it again? I thought of it like riding a bicycle: once you know how to do it, can’t you just do it again whenever you want? Only as I grew older did I come to understand that an entire ecosystem of people, processes, tools, organizations, experience, storehouses of knowledge, and more made it possible to go to the moon. And you can’t just turn that back on with the flip of a switch. I was confusing the artifact (a human being on the moon) for the ecosystem that made it possible (NASA, contractors, government officials, technology, etc.) Carrying forward old baggage offends our sense of aesthetics, but hey, that’s how evolved systems work. Chickens still carry around the gene for dinosaur teeth. This is because a living system must be viable at every evolutionary stage. It can never pause, reset, or make a breaking change. The path of evolution is always through the adjacent possible. Lesson: the web isn’t an artifact. It’s an ecosystem. Don’t break the web. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky
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There’s a psychological burden of digital life even heavier than distraction. When the iPhone was first introduced in 2007, the notion of an “everything device” was universally celebrated. A single object that could serve as phone, camera, music player, web browser, and so much more promised unprecedented convenience and connectivity. It was, quite literally, the dream of the nineties. But the better part of twenty years later, we’ve gained enough perspective to recognize that this revolutionary vision came with costs we did not anticipate. Distraction, of course, is the one we can all relate to first. An everything device has the problem of being useful nearly all the time, and when in use, all consuming. When you use it to do one thing, it pushes you toward others. In order to avoid this, you must disable functions. That’s an interesting turn of events, isn’t it? We have made a thing that does more than we need, more often than we desire. Because system-wide, duplicative notifications are enabled by default, the best thing you could say about the device’s design is that it lacks a point of view toward a prioritization of what it does. The worst thing you could say is that it is distracting by design. (I find it fascinating how many people – myself included — attempt to reduce the features of their smartphone to the point of replicating a “dumbphone” experience in order to save ourselves from distraction, but don’t actually go so far as to use a lesser-featured phone because a few key features are just too good to give up. A dumbphone is less distracting, but a nightmare for text messaging and a lousy camera. It turns out I don’t want a phone at all, but a camera that texts — and ideally one smaller than anything on the market now. I know I’m not alone, and yet this product will not be made. ) This kind of distraction is direct distraction. It’s the kind we are increasingly aware of, and as its accumulating stress puts pressure on our inner and outer lives, we can combat it with various choices and optimizations. But there is another kind of distraction that is less direct, though just as cumulative and, I believe, just as toxic. I’ve come to think of it as the “digital echo.” On a smartphone, every single thing it is used to do generates information that goes elsewhere. The vast majority of this is unseen — though not unfelt — by us. Everyone knows that there is no privacy within a digital device, nor within its “listening” range. We are all aware that as much information as smartphone provides to us, exponentially more is generated for someone else — someone watching, listening, measuring, and monetizing. The “digital echo” is more than just the awareness of this; it is the cognitive burden of knowing that our actions generate data elsewhere. The echo exists whenever we use connected technology, creating a subtle but persistent awareness that what we do isn’t just our own. A device like a smartphone has always generated a “digital echo”, but many others are as well. Comparing two different motor vehicles illustrates this well. In a car like a Tesla, which we might think of as a “smartcar” since it’s a computer you can drive, every function produces a digital signal. Adjusting the air conditioning, making a turn, opening a door — the car knows and records it all, transmitting this information to distant servers. By contrast, my 15-year-old Honda performs all of its functions without creating these digital echoes. The operations remain private, existing only in the moment they occur. In our increasingly digital world, I have begun to feel the SCIF-like isolation of the cabin of my car, and I like it. (The “smartcar”, of course, won’t remain simply a computer you can drive. The penultimate “smartcar” drives itself. The self-driving car represents perhaps the most acute expression of how digital culture values attention and convenience above all else, especially control and ownership. As a passenger of a self-driving car, you surrender control over the vehicle’s operation in exchange for the “freedom” to direct your attention elsewhere, most likely to some digital signal either on your own device or on screens within the vehicle. I can see the value in this; driving can be boring and most times I am behind the wheel I’d rather be doing something else. But currently, truly autonomous vehicles are service-enabling products like Waymo, meaning we also relinquish ownership. The benefits of that also seem obvious: no insurance premiums, no maintenance costs. But not every advantage is worth its cost. The economics of self-driving cars are not clear-cut. There’s a real debate to be had about attention, convenience, and ownership that I hope will play out before we have no choice but to be a passenger in someone else’s machine.) When I find myself looking for new ways to throttle my smartphone’s functions, or when I sit in the untapped isolation of my car, I often wonder about the costs of the “digital echo.” What is the psychological cost of knowing that your actions aren’t just your own, but create information that can be observed and analyzed by others? As more aspects of our lives generate digital echoes, they force an ambient awareness of being perpetually witnessed rather than simply existing. This transforms even solitary activities into implicit social interactions. It forces us to maintain awareness of our “observed self” alongside our “experiencing self,” creating a kind of persistent self-consciousness. We become performers in our own lives rather than merely participants. I think this growing awareness contributes to a growing interest in returning to single-focus devices and analog technologies. Record players and film cameras aren’t experiencing resurgence merely from nostalgia, but because they offer fundamentally different relationships with media — relationships characterized by intention, presence, and focus. In my own life, this recognition has led to deliberate choices about which technologies to embrace and which to avoid. Here are three off the top of my head: Replacing streaming services with owned media formats (CDs, Blu-rays) that remain accessible on my terms, not subject to platform changes or content disappearance Preferring printed books while using dedicated e-readers for digital texts — in this case, accepting certain digital echoes when the benefits (in particular, access to otherwise unavailable material) outweigh the costs Rejecting smart home devices entirely, recognizing that their convenience rarely justifies the added complexity and surveillance they introduce You’ve probably made similarly-motivated decisions, perhaps in other areas of your life or in relation to other things entirely. What matters, I think, is that these choices aren’t about rejecting technology but about creating spaces for more intentional engagement. They represent a search for balance in a world that increasingly defaults to maximum connectivity. I had a conversation recently with a friend who mused, “What are these the early days of?” What a wonderful question that is; we are, I hope, always living in the early days of something. Perhaps now, we’re witnessing the beginning of a new phase in our relationship with technology. The initial wave of digital transformation prioritized connecting everything possible; the next wave may be more discriminating about what should be connected and what’s better left direct and immediate. I hope to see operating systems truly designed around focus rather than multitasking, interfaces that respect attention rather than constantly competing for it, and devices that serve discrete purposes exceptionally well instead of performing multiple functions adequately. The digital echoes of our actions will likely continue to multiply, but we can choose which echoes we’re willing to generate and which activities deserve to remain ephemeral — to exist only in the moment they occur and then in the memories of those present. What looks like revision or retreat may be the next wave of innovation, borne out of having learned the lessons of the last few decades and desiring better for the next.
01 Intro Conversational interfaces are a bit of a meme. Every couple of years a shiny new AI development emerges and people in tech go “This is it! The next computing paradigm is here! We’ll only use natural language going forward!”. But then nothing actually changes and we continue using computers the way we always […]
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