14 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2022
    1. What does a Functional Design have to offer? https://en.itpedia.nl/2019/01/16/wat-heeft-een-functioneel-ontwerp-te-bieden/ A functional design is a specification of the functions of the software that the end_users have agreed to. Many companies have a software_developer handbook that describes what topics a functional design should cover. This article looks at the steps of functional design in the context of software development.

  2. Feb 2021
  3. May 2020
    1. One huge advantage to scaling up is that you’ll get far more feedback for your Insight through making process. It’s true that Effective system design requires insights drawn from serious contexts of use, but it’s possible to create small-scale serious contexts of use which will allow you to answer many core questions about your system.

      Even though a larger user base will increase your odds of getting more feedback, you can still get valuable contextual feedback with less users.

    2. WhyGeneral infrastructure simply takes time to build. You have to carefully design interfaces, write documentation and tests, and make sure that your systems will handle load. All of that is rival with experimentation, and not just because it takes time to build: it also makes the system much more rigid.Once you have lots of users with lots of use cases, it’s more difficult to change anything or to pursue radical experiments. You’ve got to make sure you don’t break things for people or else carefully communicate and manage change.Those same varied users simply consume a great deal of time day-to-day: a fault which occurs for 1% of people will present no real problem in a small prototype, but it’ll be high-priority when you have 100k users.Once this playbook becomes the primary goal, your incentives change: your goal will naturally become making the graphs go up, rather than answering fundamental questions about your system.

      The reason the conceptual architecture tends to freeze is because there is a tradeoff between a large user base and the ability to run radical experiments. If you've got a lot of users, there will always be a critical mass of complaints when the experiment blows up.

      Secondly, it takes a lot of time to scale up. This is time that you cannot spend experimenting.

      Andy here is basically advocating remaining in Explore mode a little bit longer than is usually recommended. Doing so will increase your chances of climbing the highest peak during the Exploit mode.

    3. This is obviously a powerful playbook, but it should be deployed with careful timing because it tends to freeze the conceptual architecture of the system.

      One a prototype gains some traction, conventional Silicon Valley wisdom says to scale it up. This, according to Andy Matuschak has certain disadvantages. The main drawback is that it tends to freeze the conceptual architecture of the system.

  4. Dec 2019
    1. With Storybook, we have been able to build our React components gradually in isolation without having to worry about having the final component version or environment ready from the start. It has doubled as a staging and planning tool for us.
  5. Nov 2019
    1. you need to see and feel the interactions rendered by software to know if you’ve nailed the experience.

      And if at all possible, you need to the interaction to be infused with your data.

    2. Regardless of the method you use, prototyping is no longer just a nice-to-have. Aligning a multi-disciplined team and ensuring that everyone comes away with a completely clear picture of the intended interaction design is key to successful product development, and building experiences that customers will ultimately love.
  6. Jun 2019
  7. Jan 2019
    1. Try something crazy

      DAWs typically don’t mesh so well with prototyping culture. When Ableton brought clip launching through Live, its flagship DAW, it had some of this effect: experiment with clips then play with them instead of just playing them. Of course, Cycling ’74 has been all about prototyping, long before Ableton bought the company. But “Max for Live” devices are closer to plugins in that users expect to just be able to use them, not have to create them from scratch. What this marketing copy is emphasizing is that this really is about getting a box of LEGO blocks, not just about getting a DIY kit to create your own instance of something which somebody else designed. The framing sure is specific.

  8. Nov 2017
    1. They pulled it off by hiding a fast typist (with a keyboard) in another room. The microphone output was fed to a speaker, and the hidden typist translated the speech into keystrokes which appeared as text on the monitor with amazing speed and accuracy.

      This reminds me of the Mechanical Turk a fake chess-playing machine from the 18th century. This is called a mechanical illusion.

    2. He carried the block of wood with him for a few weeks and pretended that it was a functional device in order to get insights into how he would use it. If someone asked for a meeting, for example, he’d pull out the block and tap on it to simulate checking his calendar and to schedule a meeting reminder.

      This is an excellent way of researching how this "pretotype" would integrate into ones life. However for this simulation to make any sense I guess one would have to have a pretty clear idea of what it means to "check your calendar", "set a meeting reminder", etc. Playing our the interactions, also means having an idea of the actions they would involve.