Over the past few months I’ve been putting my UX Interviewing hat on and helping @jenniferplusplus’s Letterbook project, by talking to a variety of people doing moderation work, largely in the Fedi space
-
@puppygirlhornypost2 @mattly Hooray!
This gives me an excuse to put off trying to cobble together a new federation debugging solution (because docker keeps failing at this)
-
while writeups like this are sort of a byproduct of my process (writing is a way of honing thoughts), I’ve found repeatedly they accomplish two things:
1, illustrating to stakeholders just how bad a particular problem is
2, and this gives me great personal satisfaction, helping a bunch of people who *care* and feel neglected feel like they’ve been heardThis is a form of social work, but it exists nearly everywhere in places that build software
-
One of the reasons I decided to consult instead of go back into a salaried role after my previous employer was shut down is that I’ve found, repeatedly, that management often has *big feels* about anyone with an “engineering” title actually *talking* to practitioners: “Stay in your lane"
Sometimes you need the people asking questions of the practitioners to have a deep understanding of the technical issues involved, because *those matter a lot* in figuring out what’s possible/feasible to build
-
the other reason I chose to pursue consulting is because this sort of social research/discovery work, and the design that follows, very often leads to immense conflicts with engineers who have social capital with other engineers
by challenging their assumptions *and* being able to speak their language, I’ve committed the gravest of sins: prioritizing something not purely technical
*that* is perhaps the biggest source of burnout I’ve had in salaried jobs
-
@mattly Stupid management has those feels. Smart management understands that silos are artificial, sometimes necessary evils, but should not just be accepted as "the way things are done." Cargo cult management is everywhere, though. I'm not saying I'm a great manager but a more philosophical approach beats dogmatism nine times out of ten.
-
I haven’t done anything like this in public / for open source before, mostly because of time & dealing w/ burnout from the salaried job,
but also because I get the sense that many people steering OSS projects aren’t going to welcome the social research/discovery work for the same reasons
There are very few OSS projects that take interface design seriously, and I think this is the main reason you don’t get more designers contributing to those projects
-
@[email protected] it’s also why there’s not widespread adoption.
-
@[email protected] i mean this too, you see people commonly complain about software like discord for not adding X feature. It's corporate software, they provide enough "shiny" features and lean in a bit that people get over it. When someone is making an "alternative" to corporate software, and is hellbent on not listening to community feedback or ways of making the UI/UX more accessible... why pick the one that has drawbacks such as less features, or slow releases instead of the big popular one.
-
@tclark yeah, unfortunately it seems the vast majority of places where software is the product have taken on these cookie-cutter roles because that’s how it’s done or that’s how the big companies do it
and I mean, shipping software is hard enough as it is, why reinvent the management wheel?
(the answer “because the existing management wheel sucks” is not acceptable)
-
@[email protected] and honestly? I think this is a driving factor to why people are going to bluesky. Sure, it's not "decentralized" like here but it has features people want. It works good enough that it's a "why bother" for people when looking at mastodon, akkoma and the variety here. Why use half solutions that feel jank, broken in places when you can have something that feels seamless.
-
@mattly for the record, I really do appreciate how big and valuable a gift it is that you're doing this work
-
@puppygirlhornypost2 when I look at any program on my computer I’ve paid for (and there are lots) it’s because the OSS equivalent is comparatively terrible
in the Geordi no/point format:
Inkscape -> Affinity Designer
Ardour -> Bitwig
Emacs/Vim/VSCode -> Sublime Text
LogSeq -> Obisidianit goes on. Krita gets it right, but I think part of that is no one is more “this has to feel right or I ain’t usin’ it” than visual artists
-
@jenniferplusplus it’s part of what needs to be done if this space is to eventually flourish, and I want to see it flourish, and I’m happy to have found a place I can contribute this type of work where it feels welcome
-
@[email protected] @[email protected] I also appreciate the work you put in. Unlike conversations I've had with FOSS people before (not anyone on fedi thankfully) you actually respected what I had to say, you weren't ready to go "well, isn't $X enough?" you kept it an open conversation without downplaying or diminishing what I was trying to convey. You seem to care a lot about getting it done right and in a way that prioritizes the needs of everyone over the ease of implementation.
-
@puppygirlhornypost2 @jenniferplusplus Thanks; There’s a whole bunch of stuff that goes into that caring, but I Have Seen Some Shit You Wouldn’t Believe (well, *you* might, most people don’t)
I said
> I've learned a lot of things through this work, but perhaps the most important is: when you are designing for practitioners, you need to listen to the people doing the work.and I mean it. I really wish more people understood how important that listening is.
