Notices by Scott Jenson (scottjenson@social.coop), page 2

For example, it's clear that #LLMs are great at parsing, summarizing, and composing text (both human and computer languages). If we were to have a range of "input bots" that gathered data from various places (e.g., banks, calendars, the DMV) and a series of "output bots" that visualized that information, LLMs could be the glue connecting these together, creating an enormous range of applications, triggers, and assistants. But we have to want this to be an open system.
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@bruces I just left Google, they have AI fever. This is NOT something driven by a user need. It is a stone cold panic that they are getting left behind.

The vision is that there will be an Ironman Jarvis in your phone that locks you into their ecosystem so hard, you'll never leave. That is just catnip and they can't afford to let someone else get there first. (Apple is no different)

When the emperor, eventually, has no clothes, they'll be lapped by someone thinking bigger.

For all of my complaining about the #ux 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.

I have never liked Steve Jobs as a person, and generally despise his management style (I know too many people hurt by him). But this video, especially as it relates to Google, hits far too close to home.
https://chaos.social/@obrhoff/112369907442905273

@thomasfuchs @danhon Agreed. It just started showing up with zero explanation (and we're the plugged in ones!)

@ATLeagle yeah but it's much more than that. You have only to look at crypto and it's silly utopian "post capitalist dreams" to see that it was WAY over shooting the mark. the same is happening with generations AI right now. Gartner hype cycle on steroids

Dear #HiveMind,

Has anyone written about the "Techbro Mindset"? It's when complex socio-political issues are reduced to simplistic "disruptions" that never live up to their hype. Examples include the gig economy, the sharing economy, the crypto economy, and, more recently, the generative AI economy.
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Each of these was supposed to change everything but ended up being far less capable than envisioned. My hypothesis is simple: the problem was far more complex than anticipated. As a #UX designer, this seems obvious to me—my job is to "know what we don't know," and I've found that deeply understanding the problem at hand is the only way to really solve it.
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However, this doesn't seem to be a concern for any budding Techbro. The problems are obvious, the solutions are easy, and the future is bright.

But surely, this has been written about and discussed by others, right? I'm looking for insights from people far more intelligent and insightful than myself. Can anyone share any links?
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@multiverseofbadness @laurenshof I found that thread and it appears to be pointed specifically at Mastodon and it's (originally) minimalist design philosophy. I'm talking about a problem that affects ALL software (including corp sw). However corp software, more often than not, at least tries to do good UX design, FOSS on average, still considers it an afterthought (or more often just 'pretty icons')

There is far too much 'walking on eggshells" in #OpenSource, mostly because the power lies with the people that are the most easily offended. I've been clobbered for saying the "#UX of opensource isn't great". The advice is always the same:
* Go slow
* Don't rock the boat
* Make small changes

That is great advice, for a dysfunctional relationship. To be clear, I'm NOT saying be dictatorial! I'm saying we can't fix a system that doesn't want to be fixed.
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@eaton Loved that book! So many other parallels to today as well.

@tchambers "But it'll get better!" just isn't an answer. It *may* get better but I'd like these people to think more like an engineer and not an SF writer. BUILD SOMETHING! It will most likely fail and that failure tells you a tremendous amount about how deep the tech actually goes.

Pardon me if I'm not freaking out about "AI" like everyone else. I worked in AI in the 1980s, at Symbian when the first rule-based expert systems were built. The exact same types predictions and lazy extrapolations were given. If you don't know your history, you really are doomed to repeat it.
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Every single "design tool" I've seen with LLMs right now looks good at VERY SPECIFIC things. Push it just a tiny bit outside of it's bounds and it looses the plot. Every single time. This is still valuable, sure, but only at the low level tedious work.

I'm not a luddite! These tools are going to be capable, but mostly at taking routine tasks (e.g. layout in a known space) and making it super fast.
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I think I just found the worlds worst faucet design. Not only was it not at all obvious how to use it. Once I DID figure it out, you can't easily change the temperature after it's running!

#UX #IXD #industrialdesign

My most popular blog post was when I critiqued Telsa's v11 release to for hiding critical buttons. So it's no surprise to hear there is yet another UX problem with their no-physical-button approach to #UX:

https://indignity.substack.com/p/swipe-down-to-die

"Move fast and break things" doesn't work for cars!

I keep reading that #Mastodon usage is way down these last few months. This is surprising to me as activity, for me at least, has been going up. Things look great to me!

Is this likely that my community (mostly tech) is doing fine or even growing but the more "consumer level" users are just leaving?

Curious if anyone has a take on this?
Edit: spelling

Well, if there is one thing I learned today is that most #Fediverse clients make it far too hard to block someone. For one person it's easy, for 6? Not so much...

Of course, this #spam wave will hopefully be over soon, but one would think if we could block more easily, it would alert our admins faster? I just gave up after 5...

@edk
Incompetence:
Friction everywhere because I don't give a damn

Competence:
Things are frictionless because I do give a damn

Galaxy brain:
A mix of frictionless and friction

Friction isn't the goal, it's how to use it.

@Danc