@scottjenson@social.coop cover
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

scottjenson

@scottjenson@social.coop

UX Strategy: Apple System 7, Newton, and Apple Human Interface guidelines. UX Director at Symbian, manager Mobile UX at Google, creative director frog design San Francisco. Head of Product for two startups. Returned to Google working on the Physical Web project and Android UX research. Now semi-retired

mastodon.social: 2017-2022

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance

scottjenson , (edited ) to Random stuff
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

I don't think we're talking enough about the UX limitations of LLMs. A chat is just too primitive and the 'randomization' aspect of each generation makes refinement nearly impossible. As a thought experiment, I'm suggesting there are three levels of :

Level 1: Chat in and out
Existing chat UX

Level 2: Masked Chat
Still chat based, but hidden behind an app that turns visual actions into chat prompts and renders it back to the user.

1/3

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

Level 3: Addressable output
A knowledge based API that allows for much more nuanced reference and refinement of an interaction.

Even things like Copilot are "level 1.2" at best as you're just taking the text in the IDE and pasting the chat output into another window.

Proper level 2 UIs are more like what TLDraw did with their sketching tool. There wasn't an ascii character in sight. (but it's still all ascii behind the scenes)
2/3

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

Level 3 is pure speculation on my part (and likely needs to be more nuanced) I'm just saying that when I'm asking an agent to do something, I want to tweak the output which is hard today. Having a more refined concept of the output as well as a means to reference and then redo parts of it would go a long way.

scottjenson , to Random stuff
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

The world needs some cross between Processing, HTML, and Google Docs.

Processing: A programming environment with lots of helpful libraries
HTML: a simple display model that can be viewed everywhere
Docs: an underlying sharing mechanism

There are just too many core problems that need to be solved over and over by each app. It's more than just getting the right library as there are services involved.

Surely someone has taken a crack at this?

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@sergi Certainly! But CRDTs by themselves are just really really good diff engines. The work I did an Ink&Switch (Upwelling) was all about a service that synced those changes. That's why I said you need more than libraries.

scottjenson OP , (edited )
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

And yes, HTML/JS/CSS can be used to build anything, but that's a bit like saying Assembly language can build any app: At some point you don't want to keep reinventing the wheel.

Of course, EVERY programming environment has tried this and it's nearly impossible to get something to work universally. I'm just asking for a very opinionated set of services and libraries on top of the web so it's really stupidly easy to build and SHARE things easily.

Kind of like Glitch but with a few more mix-ins

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@ian The same could be said for a Turing Machine

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@cameronneylon I've actually worked with the Bonfire team and it's a very exciting project. But I''d describe it really more of a "Mastodon playground" and highly focused. I don't know a thing about Emissary, looking forward to checking it out, Thanks!

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@octothorpe Glitch is amazing but focused (I believe) mostly on the individual page. Having that + an easy sharing service, chat client (and likely a few other services) Would go a long way to "add that extra stuff" you need to make a product. It's clearly not ALWAYS needed, just saying having the right subset of services above the page would be helpful.

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@csarven Thanks, does it have much capability for programming, e.g. could I create a dashboard type UI with it?

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@maximvdw Very cool. It appears to be very storage focused (which is a great start) but does it have a Glitch-like side that allows for programming that data?

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@joegaffey A good web framework is a great start! But we also need services like storage, users, chat, and sharing so I can add them (if needed) without reinventing the wheel. And while you may have implied it, a web framework often doesn't have the programming utilities that something like processing has, that allows for very creative/interactive widgets (Web components could encapsulate them of course)

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@calispera Ummm, no.

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@maximvdw very helpful, thank you

scottjenson , to Random stuff
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

Color me surprised.
Basically a walk through of a recent paper that shows performance of classifiers flattens out as you add more data which basically means things are NOT going to exponentially explode into general intelligence (using current models)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDUC-LqVrPU

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@troed Exactly. I'm just shocked that we've all seen Garner's Hype cycle literally 100s of times yet every few years ANOTHER killer tech that will CHANGE EVERYTHING comes along and no one expects it to have scaling issue.

I'm not saying LLMs aren't important, I'm saying the hyperbole about them is predictable and frustrating.

scottjenson , to Random stuff
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

friends!
I'm trying to create a more reflective Years-at-a-glace diary, a way to have a simple visual overview of what I've done so I can reflect on where I put my time. Right now, I'm just doing it in a spreadsheet but it's very tedious.

Curious if anyone knows any notebooks/tools that make this type of visualization easier. Bonus points if it's easily sharable.

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@bernat That's getting there! Feels a little "code-ish" but it's on the right track, thank you!

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@bernat Life calendar is, of course your entire life so goes with the box-a-week style. I'm more interested in viewing the last few years of my life so want to see a 'box-a-day" style. That appears to be very niche and no one is doing that.

I'm building it in a spreadsheet as it's easy and it will pressure test some of my assumptions (i.e. is it actually interesting to see this?) So far, it has been, it's just quite tedious.

An alternative is to just use a calendar program with a year view.

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

Honestly, as I've played with using conditional formatting, I'm actually getting the spreadsheet approach to work. It's still a bit tedious, it's just that the conditional formatting makes the input far easier: it's just numbers in the end

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

But this is pointing out how hard it is to get EXACTLY what I want it to:

  1. understand calendar events
  2. be viewable on the web
  3. have restricted access

There are a range of foundational things I'd frankly like to have in ALL of my apps and asking each app to reinvent it is unrealistic.

Maybe we need to be rethinking how we're building our software (I'm not at ALL sure what the means, just feeling things could be a LOT better.

scottjenson , to Random stuff
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

I was 'kicking the tires" signing up for Threads and the VERY FIRST thing I noticed is that people I don't follow are showing up in my feed!

After so much time in the fediverse, this just feels like a violation. NOPE NOPE NOPE

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@jgordon hmmmm, that's not showing up on the Web UI

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@davew Yeah, I get it, it's the classic problem all social sites have. I don't hold that against them, it's the fact that I cant see only my followers that I have an issue with. Apparently the native app allows this (just not the web version)

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@ramsey @peterme

I finally found it, thank you. But that's really odd UX design...

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@jgordon I finally found it, thank you

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@davew I eventually found it but it's buggy. Apparently it's easier on the mobile app.

scottjenson , to Random stuff
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

For all of my complaining about the of kitchen appliances, my new Breville oven is actually astoundingly good.

Not only are the controls clear and easy to use but there are small little touches that are just very well thought out. For example when the timer gets close to zero the internal light turns on automatically.

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

Another example, there are magnets in the door that automatically pull the rack out and disengage as you get further out. It's simple and quite lovely.

video/mp4

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@mustamakkara Basic beep but it's easy to set it to off/low/high which is also a nice touch

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@bernat I got a refurbished one for $300

craiggrannell , to Random stuff
@craiggrannell@mastodon.social avatar

Looks like the UK weather has finally found the heating dial.

(For US folks, the high range here is approx 68–79 Farbalinoos.)

scottjenson ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@craiggrannell It's not just a math issue but also cultural (e.g. 28C isn't really the same as 82F). When I was in London years ago, there was a tube ad for air conditioning saying "No one can work when it's 24" (with an image of a sweltering office worker)

That was funny to me as 24 to most yanks is near perfect

davatron5000 , to Random stuff
@davatron5000@mastodon.social avatar

Big news: I’m happy to share that yesterday I started a new job at Microsoft where I'll be working on web components for Fluent UI.

I've had a long relationship with Microsoft – from Paravel helping to build the first responsive version of their homepage in 2012 to the whole 5 year "" stunt that Rey Bango coordinated for ShopTalk – and this feels like a nice new chapter in that story arc.

scottjenson ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@davatron5000 mamp mamp

scottjenson , to Random stuff
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

Reviewing documentation changes over is just hell, especially if you go back and forth even a few times:

  • The diffs become increasingly hard to follow
  • Markdown can make this harder
  • Previewing the changes is possible but you have to accept the suggestion first
  • Which leads to more comments

I get it, Google Docs isn't the answer either. I'm just saying this ROUGH and it likely locs out copywriters. There has to be a better way to review docs for repos?

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@Mayobrot Look at the author list... ;-)

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@mia Thank you. The project is using markdown with extensions so unfortunately very far from a wiki.

As a first step, I'd like to preview each commit without having to accept it. I appreciate there is no simple way to do this. (as it's basically code)

Honestly, I'm just whining ;-) But how do repos expect help when preview and discussion is so hard and requires deep git experience? The actual solution likely much more nuanced.

grigs , to Random stuff
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

I’m heading to Google I/O next week. My first big conference since 2019. Who else do I know that is going to be there?

On a somewhat related note, has anyone figured out how to save sessions on the I/O schedule this year? I can't find a way to build a schedule for myself.

scottjenson ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@grigs Having just quit Google 2 weeks ago I won't be there but as I live 4 miles away, I'll "be there" so happy to meet up for drinks if that's possible.

scottjenson ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@grigs I did leave, and then went back 50%. This time I'm REALLY gone. Pinky swear

scottjenson , to Random stuff
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

It's clear the "Turing Test" is failing, just as it failed with the Eliza chatbot back in the 1960s. People are just too easily fooled.

For me the REAL test occurs when an "AI" is NOT speaking to you. What does it do with it's free time?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

Before anyone chimes in, the answer is absolutely zero. These things ONLY do things when prompted. They basically are entirely Parrots. There is ZERO concept of awareness or even goals. That may come of course, but my point is that, at the moment, it's not even a glimmer.

ben , to Random stuff
@ben@werd.social avatar

What are you great at?

scottjenson ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@ben Identifying voice actors in commercials

scottjenson , to Random stuff
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

There is so much bad here that I hardly know where to start.

If you are a professor, this is an excellent design exercise: improve this. I'm sure ANY student could make this far simpler and easier to use.

I have a short video using this that makes it ever more clear this was designed by a dysfunctional design team. This is a if you're curious.

scottjenson OP , (edited )
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar
  • Tiny icons crammed up at the top
  • Max A/C and the same icon to the far right?
  • Tabs?😱
  • Auto Auto?
  • GIANT ICONS
  • Grid? What grid?
  • Oh, yeah, let's throw in some buttons underneath that do the exact same things but with some different icons just in case...
scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@octothorpe I know! It just shows zero focus! "Let's just do everything!"

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@jalefkowit I have used two cars on this trip. This one and a Lexus UX hatchback which is even WORSE if you can believe it.

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@octothorpe well put!

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

As someone asked for it, here is the video of the interaction. The icon interaction and the fan control are just odd. These are likely survivable but they are just clunky an so easily fixed. And this is just the most basic functionality

Me interacting with the Dodge Durango touch screen.

scottjenson , (edited ) to Linux
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

friends,

How hard is it to turn on/install file and screen sharing on a fresh install? My last distro required quite a bit of apt-get and configuration file silliness and I'd like to avoid that if possible.

I'm hoping things have moved along that I can 'just turn it on' or at the very least, install it from flathub.

I'd prefer to use Gnome (or variant)

scottjenson OP ,
@scottjenson@social.coop avatar

@qwazix is there a distro known for just having these things installed?

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • Mordhau
  • WatchParties
  • Rutgers
  • Lexington
  • cragsand
  • mead
  • RetroGamingNetwork
  • jeremy
  • neondivide
  • loren
  • xyz
  • PowerRangers
  • AnarchoCapitalism
  • kamenrider
  • electropalaeography
  • MidnightClan
  • WarhammerFantasy
  • Teensy
  • itdept
  • khanate
  • AgeRegression
  • learnviet
  • bjj
  • steinbach
  • space_engine
  • supersentai
  • mauerstrassenwetten
  • fandic
  • All magazines
    •