Wrote a piece about 'folk interfaces' – a term coined that captures the phenomenon of users reappropriating interfaces for their own needs
Touches on spreadsheet practices, power dynamics, and Mingei. Ends with gratuitous art ;)
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I'm riffing off Cristobal's original essay. Required pre-reading:
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I wrote about how software can expand (but often forecloses) one's imagination of what's possible to create with media!
cristobal.space/writing/folk
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If anyone reads this and is reminded of other folk interface examples, please do share them!
Happy to add them on with attribution. It takes a village to raise a well-documented phenomenon.
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A friend of mine from college used Excel to draft a conceptual floor plan of her dream house. The cells provided a grid structure. She used fills and borders to render walls, doors and windows. As someone who went to school for architecture, I was both impressed and horrified!
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Not computational interface, but a social one of sorts: cristobal.space/convivial :) thanks for mentioning my writing!
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people are out working up how to zero the cost of capturing brief videos of folk interfaces in action
odds on you've seen the videos inside cristobal.space/writing/folk
but promises of better video cameras to come soon pop up separately, in thread beneath my
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Replying to @b0rk
aye thank you
do you know how they shoot these little Gif movies of their Text User Interface (TUI)?
inside that link of
github.com/charmbracelet/
a frame of the first movie is
read image description
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insight for what interfaces folk can build by hijacking auto-complete is found here =>
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Replying to @pelavarre
Makes sense to me, hijacking autocomplete for one’s own variations of programs seems great. I’d love to see some screen recordings of your terminal as you do the typing!
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twitter.com/geoffreylitt/s
does this count?
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1/ Recording a talk and wanted my notes near top of screen, for better eye contact w/ webcam.
Super easy with "Customize Presenter Display" in Keynote!!! Just drag the widgets around.
Felt like a glimpse into an alternate reality where software is more malleable... ⇢
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Excel eSports youtu.be/x1RVNGDSdw4 is apparently popular in the math and sciences, but there are similar for PowerPoint. Those tools can be adapted to a lot of unexpected uses.
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Spreadsheets are really powerful tools even for people who can program.
Most of the Ubisoft F2P games' in-game items' details (pricing, power levels, etc.) were generated in the past from Excel sheets.