Notices by Matthew Lyon (mattly@hachyderm.io), page 2

@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

@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 -> Obisidian

it 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

@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)

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

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

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

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 heard

This is a form of social work, but it exists nearly everywhere in places that build software

@puppygirlhornypost2 @jenniferplusplus you know, now I’m wondering how many of these inter-instance admin spats we hear about are caused by the poor design of the protocol & tooling in this area

@puppygirlhornypost2 @ada I also haven’t had enough coffee yet

@puppygirlhornypost2 @ada https://hachyderm.io/@mattly/113506363016855141

@puppygirlhornypost2 @ada oh wait I thought you were replying about the piece I published yesterday

@puppygirlhornypost2 @ada yeah, there are lots of ideas in there, but I tried to keep the piece towards a reasonable length and a sort of catalogue of problems

arbitrary, internal-use labels are something I see as useful for intra-instance context, and I think I cited a similar need for something for extra-instance communication but that requires building a shared dictionary of them. I’m aware of some work towards that end

Happy international men's day!

Reminder to be more like Black men!

Black men:
* Are seen as more masculine
* See themselves as more masculine
* But we do more stuff considered feminine?🙂🙃
* And no one says a damn thing!

Because this whole masculinity thing is made up and a scam. Stop hurting yourself!

https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/113051689610950204

No seriously, stop hurting yourself. Black men have one of the lowest age adjusted suicide rates.👍🏿 White men? One of the highest.

@technomancy I LLOL’d

I’ll also put it out there that this sort of “UX/UI/Prototyping/ The Human Part of Software Design / especially for technical/nuanced problems” is what I consult for, and I have availability

@technomancy many of the ideas that I’m coming up with for what I’ll call “situational context” across both individual flag activities and community awareness involve aggregate queries or things that would be difficult to define in any kind of standardized form

that’s not to say your idea isn’t good! it’s just, I think with things as they are now, it’d be like trying to communicate through a straw instead of something richer

@technomancy @jenniferplusplus yeah though I think that’d be a hard part to get right; my understanding is that there’s a lot of spread between the underlying data models involved

@technomancy @jenniferplusplus yeah, I remember you talking about this, I think such a thing could have some success if done right, but that’s gonna be *hard*; I have a much better idea as to what properties such a system should have now & also a better idea of some of the challenges that would exist across server softwares

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

This is the first step towards designing interfaces specifically to tackle moderation challenges, but we learned a *lot* and I typically summarize my interviews anyway, and we think those learnings are worth sharing:

https://letterbook.com/blog/post/2024/11/18/moderation-tooling-research.html

@technomancy I mean, I’ve described reduce simply as “a summarizing process” but I guess that’s about as helpful as calling a monad “the box your takeout food came in”