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andy_matuschak's profile
Andy Matuschak
Andy Matuschak
Andy Matuschak
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@andy_matuschak

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Andy MatuschakVerified account

@andy_matuschak

Wonder, blunder, salve, solve! Working on tools that expand what people can think and do. Past: led R&D @KhanAcademy; helped build iOS @Apple.

San Francisco, CA
andymatuschak.org
Joined November 2007

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    1. Andy Matuschak‏Verified account @andy_matuschak 5 Dec 2019
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      Software interfaces undervalue peripheral vision! (a thread) My physical space is full of subtle cues. Books I read or bought most recently are lying out. Papers are lying in stacks on my desk, roughly arranged by their relationships.pic.twitter.com/ee7lo0mdLv

      41 replies 351 retweets 1,508 likes
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    2. Andy Matuschak‏Verified account @andy_matuschak 5 Dec 2019
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      Peripheral vision spontaneously prompts action. If I need to fix a door, I’ll be reminded each time I see it. Digital task lists live in a dedicated app. I have no natural cause to look at that app regularly, so I need to establish a new habit to explicitly review my task list.

      4 replies 19 retweets 225 likes
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    3. Andy Matuschak‏Verified account @andy_matuschak 5 Dec 2019
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      Peripheral vision emphasizes the concrete. Unread digital books and papers live in some folder or app, invisible until I decide that “it’s reading time.” But that confuses cause and effect.pic.twitter.com/3iHuLIEZYq

      1 reply 5 retweets 128 likes
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    4. Andy Matuschak‏Verified account @andy_matuschak 5 Dec 2019
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      If I leave books lying on my coffee table, I’ll naturally notice them at receptive moments. I'll read a book if I feel an actual, concrete interest in it. By contrast, the motivation to read a digital book comes from abstract interest in the habit of reading.

      4 replies 13 retweets 204 likes
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    5. Andy Matuschak‏Verified account @andy_matuschak 5 Dec 2019
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      Peripheral vision offers context. If I mark up a physical book then later flip through to see my margin notes, I’ll always see them in the context of the surrounding text. By contrast, digital annotation listings usually display only the text I highlighted, removed from context.pic.twitter.com/OLlkjLpipe

      2 replies 5 retweets 103 likes
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    6. Andy Matuschak‏Verified account @andy_matuschak 5 Dec 2019
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      The primary “unit” in such systems is a single highlight or note, but that’s not how I think. Marginalia have fuzzy boundaries, and I often think of a page’s markings as a single unit. LiquidText is a lovely counterexample: it works hard to display annotations in context.pic.twitter.com/A5rz26mppH

      5 replies 14 retweets 243 likes
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    7. Andy Matuschak‏Verified account @andy_matuschak 5 Dec 2019
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      In digital note systems, the UI centers on the experience of writing one note. The core operations and representations fixate on “the note you have open,” not on larger structures. I often can’t simultaneously see another note I’ve just finished writing—let alone the last four.

      2 replies 7 retweets 90 likes
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    8. Andy Matuschak‏Verified account @andy_matuschak 5 Dec 2019
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      Most systems barely support multiple windows, but even if I can open multiple windows, it’s awkward to arrange them into the spatial relationships I might naturally use for physical index cards. Rather than peripheral vision, it’s like I’m wearing horse blinders and mittens.pic.twitter.com/1akRdeFfv2

      5 replies 5 retweets 98 likes
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    9. Andy Matuschak‏Verified account @andy_matuschak 5 Dec 2019
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      Backlinks are a weak peripheral vision, and they help, but they’re generally about switching the one note you have open, not an effective means of sense-making across many notes. Contextual backlinks help, but if you navigate, you lose object permanence.

      2 replies 1 retweet 72 likes
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      Andy Matuschak‏Verified account @andy_matuschak 5 Dec 2019
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      If I read an old digital note, I get the unnerving sense that it’s part of some “whole” that I can’t see at all—no matter how much hypertext is involved. Working with physical notes, I’d shuffle notes around to make sense of the structure. There isn’t a digital equivalent.

      10:57 AM - 5 Dec 2019
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      8 replies 5 retweets 119 likes
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        2. Andy Matuschak‏Verified account @andy_matuschak 5 Dec 2019
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          What are the best examples and design patterns of peripheral vision in software interfaces?

          64 replies 8 retweets 119 likes
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        3. Andy Matuschak‏Verified account @andy_matuschak Mar 19
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          Linking my corresponding notes on this topic:https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Peripheral_vision …

          2 replies 1 retweet 20 likes
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        4. End of conversation
        1. Andy Matuschak‏Verified account @andy_matuschak 23 Dec 2019
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          Relatedly, there are lots of fun attempts at simultaneously showing the forest and the trees in dense graph visualization. The general approaches alone don’t seem to be enough, but maybe combined with some domain-specific semantics... This is a nice one: http://www.yunhaiwang.net/infovis18/fisheye/index.html …pic.twitter.com/bDqPDfYTW5

          2 replies 0 retweets 21 likes
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        2. Louis Harboe‏ @spiralstairs 5 Dec 2019
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          Replying to @andy_matuschak

          when i’m designing on paper this is why notebooks rarely work for me. i don’t care how nice it is! i always prefer a stack of printer paper that i can rearrange, put side-by-side, spread out in front of me, hand to someone, etc. notebooks always cover up your last thought.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        3. Louis Harboe‏ @spiralstairs 5 Dec 2019
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          Replying to @spiralstairs @andy_matuschak

          also: i always wanted an iPad in college just to use liquidtext. they don’t have it for mac, so for my research papers i would end up screenshooting snippets of PDFs, arranging them in Sketch, and then manually drawing line connections. but no link back to the original PDF 😞

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
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        2. Marcin Ignac‏ @marcinignac 6 Dec 2019
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          Replying to @andy_matuschak

          I was quite successful with Keynote when working on presentations reflecting on eg work in the past year. The speed at which i can move slides around, copy paste content to create WIP scratchpad slides allows such flow that i'm starting to "think with my hands".

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        3. Marcin Ignac‏ @marcinignac 6 Dec 2019
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          Replying to @marcinignac @andy_matuschak

          Buy yes, i can't see whole picture. It's just the browsing and rearranging is so frictionless that i can rebuild the mental map of content very fast from scratch every time.

          0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
        4. End of conversation
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        2. James and the Giant Peachoid  🍑‏ @JimmyRis 5 Dec 2019
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          Replying to @andy_matuschak

          The original definition of "copy and paste" in the newspaper or book manuscript sense has never been returned to us. Cutting out paragraphs, rearranging them by hand, arranging notes and text in space, then capturing that. This seems digitally doable but hasn't been

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. James and the Giant Peachoid  🍑‏ @JimmyRis 5 Dec 2019
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          Replying to @JimmyRis @andy_matuschak

          I want to build a text editor in @worrydream's DynamicLand, a fully hybrid digital/analog manuscript editor with as many pages as you like, visible connections, the works

          0 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
        4. End of conversation
        1. Shane Kilkelly‏ @shanekilkelly 6 Dec 2019
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          Replying to @andy_matuschak

          It's for this and similar reasons that working with most software feels like simulating a dissociative memory disorder.

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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