A Chantar, expertise, and the Early Music Police

Just three days before the deadline, I discovered something horrible. I had made a mistake with the subtitle “World Warrior”, mis-spelling it “World Warrier.”

• Akiman, Lead graphic design on SF2 (translated by Shmuplation)

It’s so emblematic of the moment we’re in, the Who Cares Era, where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore.

Three years ago, I wrote a rant about the problems of our current UI paradigm. The complaints I voiced were hardly new or unique, neither was the text what I’d consider my best writing. It was, honestly, mostly a way to blow off steam. It seems I struck a nerve, though, because it’s proven to be one of the most popular texts I’ve published here. For some time, I’ve thought about writing a follow-up, and a recent resurgence in the text’s popularity prompted me to finally do so.

Despite being endlessly fawned over by an army of professionals, Usability, or as it used to be called, “User Friendliness”, is steadily declining. During the last ten years or so, adhering to basic standard concepts seems to have fallen out of fashion.

I see a lot of bad system design advice. One classic is the LinkedIn-optimized “bet you never heard of queues” style of post, presumably aimed at people who are…

A short slice-of-life detail of what it’s like to use the commercial internet.

Enjoyable rant about the Internet.

This shell-game with surpluses is what happened to Facebook. First, Facebook was good to you: It showed you the things the people you loved and cared

Technology means the tools, inventions, and physical artifacts we create. Culture is what we do with our creations: our practices, skills, or methodologies. A club is a tool. How we use it — to wage war, to hunt animals, to collaborate — is culture.