Juan Luis

Re-discovered this paragraph from @pluralistic by @doctorow

pluralistic.net/2020/04/29/ban

What makes a software library or an API "beautiful" then, in a way that helps us overcome the unavoidable complexities and obscurities of today's software stack and motivates us to troubleshoot and debug rather than give up?

For decades, designers, engineers and critics relied on Donald Norman's classic "Design of Everyday Things" and its injunction never to put form ahead of function: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/design-everyday-things But in 2004, Don Norman reversed himself in a brilliant book called "Emotional Design," whose thesis is that most things in our complex world are mostly broken, and that means that getting anything done is as much about troubleshooting as operations: https://www.nngroup.com/books/emotional-design/ And troubleshooting is almost impossible when you're furious, and broken things tend to make us furious. Norman argues that making things really beautiful makes it harder for us to get angry at them when they fail, and that means it's easier to make them work. tldr: we are predisposed to be patient with beautiful things, and our patience is what makes beautiful things functional.
· · Phanpy