Interface Geography

I enjoyed the question Christopher Butler opens up for consideration in this post. Is it time to remap the territory of interface design? He begins with a description of software design I'm very familiar with.

We can count on the elasticity of the brain. The perceived topography of digital spaces -- how users actually navigate them -- often bears little resemblance to their intended architecture. Users create their own mental maps based on use patterns, memory, and intuition. A button might be "up there" in a user's mind, even though the interface is a flat plane. A frequently used feature might feel "close," regardless of how many clicks away it actually is.

I disagree with his suggestion, though, for how we could move best practices forward.

But perhaps it's time to move beyond physical metaphors entirely. Game designers have long created navigable digital spaces that don't correspond to physical reality, yet feel perfectly natural to traverse. What if productivity software took cues from game design? What if we stopped pretending our interfaces resembled physical spaces and instead embraced their unique properties? We need a new pattern language for digital space.

It's a fun thought experiment. But it makes a big, common mistake. Or a pair of them. It centers the entire premise on one kind of person, a young video game player. You could probably guess other narrower characteristics. If your user base is only that one kind of person, and your business model does not rely on growing beyond that person, then go for it. That's not true of many applications, and fewer which intend to one day grow. The reason we design our software according to familiar, real world mental models is because we are human beings who live in the real world and this is the existence we know. The reason we prioritize accessibility according to A11y best practices is because software which works for everyone works for anyone.

The challenge isn't how we might teach human beings to reorient themselves according to new geometry. The challenge is in solving interface design problems which people can navigate without learning much new.

In my opinion, software works best when the borders between it and the real world are as dissolved as possible. Familiar patterns work because they work. The most durable patterns are those which we've been using for centuries. Or, better yet, thousands of years.

No harm in taking the moment to reconsider, though, as Butler does. At any given time, the paradigm may change. We should be ready for it. An actual paradigm change is actually on the way with hands-free, AI voice interfaces. That's new, as far as computers go. But it's also not a new mental model. It's an even older one! Maybe the oldest. The spoken word.

Anyway. I appreciated thinking about this. At the end Butler says, "The enduring importance of place in human experience suggests that spatial thinking will always be part of how we understand and interact with information." So he hasn't fully convinced himself of his own argument. He has shown me how much its worth keeping the question alive.

Design as Art

Bruno Munari in Design as Art:

The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing. Instead of pictures for the drawing-room, electric gadgets for the kitchen. There should be no such thing as art divorced from life, with beautiful things to look at and hideous things to use. If what we use every day is made with art, and not thrown together by chance or caprice, then we shall have nothing to hide.

Anyone working in the field of design has a hard task ahead of him: to clear his neighbour's mind of all preconceived notions of art and artists, notions picked up at schools where they condition you to think one way for the whole of your life, without stopping to think that life changes - and today more rapidly than ever. It is therefore up to us designers to make known our working methods in clear and simple terms, the methods we think are the truest, the most up-to-date, the most likely to resolve our common aesthetic problems. Anyone who uses a properly designed object feels the presence of an artist who has worked for him, bettering his living conditions and encouraging him to develop his taste and sense of beauty.

I don't apologize for having a high-minded approach to my work in product design. I'm a laborer, and my output, if done well, is the bettering of my colleagues working conditions. [In that my job is to design the editorial tools used by the newsrooms in my company.] I like to think I do this well, and that's what gives me the most satisfaction at the office.

Farm Accounting

Kripal Interview in RD

From Religion Dispatches:

Laycock: Can you succinctly explain your theory of why impossible things happen and have always happened?
Kripal: Because this is what a human being _is_. The human being experiences "the impossible," because the human being, everywhere and always, is not the culture and history of the place and time. We exceed and exhaust our historical conditions, each and every worldview, _no matter what it is_. This is also what I mean by the "Human as Two." I don't mean there are two substances. I mean that _we are the splitters of reality_. We cognize, perceive, and imagine that there are "subjects" and "objects," but this is an illusion created by our very existence, by our very cognitions, perceptions, and imaginations. Reality is actually One, and until humanists can say that, we will not be heard. We will be ignored. And we should be.

I missed that Jeffrey Kripal had a new book out last summer, How to Think Impossibly. His career-long project on investigating the real versus the experienced is fascinating. This means talking a lot about the supernatural, though I often take his perspective as a means for making sense of persistant erroneous data of any kind. Sometimes the things which make the most sense logically are just not human enough for people to enjoy, or understand, or accept. Achieving the humanity in a project is really the goal, by which I mean the feeling of being alive.

Why All the Ranking

Jill Mapes, in Hearing Things:

The hierarchy of ranking music is a dude thing, an inherently anti-feminist approach: this is what some of my smartest women friends in music journalism say, and after years of doing it down to the decimal point, I have to agree. This is a subjective artform that, for me at least, is highly connected to memory and emotion. I don’t know how to write about or even listen to music while putting those parts of myself aside. There’s no unified theory of Good Music that creates an easy rubric by which to judge a song or album. It’s based on gut feeling, and educating yourself on music as much as you can, in order to understand what came before as you look forward.

I’ve never liked the idea of ranking art. It’s a goofy way to share the things you think are beautiful, or meaningful, or important, etc. That’s why I just use two groups to share. 1) I liked these records a lot! 2) These other records are also good! And I suppose a third group would be the records which were fine but not that impressive and but what’s the point of sharing those?

Bar Bayeux

The Music of 2024

Some kind of dam blew open this year, judging by how much music was released. So many records, and so many of them extremely good. I'll remember 2024 as a great year for tunes, despite it being a pretty shit year for other reasons.

Quite a few new albums by old favorites: The Black Keys, Bernard Butler, Blitzen Trapper, Camera Obscura, Guided By Voices, Iron & Wine, Kim Deal, The Libertines, Mount Eerie, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Sleater-Kinney, Vampire Weekend, and Graham Coxon via The WAEVE. It's so comforting to me to see artists continue to evolve and to stretch their careers into decades. I hope to have new music from these people for decades to come. As I get older, my taste matures, naturally. It helps me place myself within my generation to watch others mature with me, putting out music which reflects that growth. We're all in this thing together.

I made a few great discoveries in 2024. My favorite of these being Zach Bryan, Hovvdy, and Bon Enfant. I suppose I first began listening to Bryan late last year, but this year I went into his back catalog and found it full of treasures. The man is a rock solid songwriter, and judging by the record he put out this summer, he's got a lot left in him. Hovvdy are also amazing, with a quality set of records behind them, as well. Most of their songs are short little gems which sparkle with character. They're all so pleasantly relistenable. And Bon Enfant are psych-rock, or maybe funk (ish?), group from Montréal. Their songs are all sung in French — I suppose I found them when digging for music in French to listen to. Just a really solid band whom I think will keep inspiring me the deeper I get into them.

I also began to take seriously the top categories the Grammy's use to celebrate the best music of the year: Performance, Recording, Songwriting, and Song of the Year. Turns out, these are a pretty good way to focus on the quality of the craft and musicianship involved. Go figure! If you haven't actually taken the time to understand how these break down: Performance = the playing on the recording, as in the performance of the musicians present in the studio. Recording = the craftwork of producers and those involved in making the track sound amazing. Song = the songwriting. Song of the Year = kind of a popularity contest, but aimed at the best songs which made cultural impact and probably pushed the industry forward in some way. I started to make my own playlists with tracks that I personally find fill those buckets (but not tied to actual Grammy nominees)(I'll share these playlists at some point, when they're complete enough). Listening through this lens led me to more country, blues, jazz, bluegrass, etc. The kind of music made by people who really know what they're doing.

Of course, I'll never stop lending an ear to young kids who represent the best of the generations below me. I'm thinking about, like, Pillow Queens, Hinds, Waxahatchee, Ducks Ltd., Soccer Mommy. Odd that most of these are women-led groups, if not all women. I'm not sure if that's a trend which is really picking up, or if it's just something I'm coming into contact with more. But it's a welcomed thing. I hope to hear more independent guitar music from non white men in the years to come. When I think about the ways those genres can spread, the most exciting would come from new perspectives. I want to see my old world through new eyes. Or hear it through new ears? (That sounds weird.)

My favorite record of the year was from Phil Elverum: Night Palace. I wrote a post about it, so I'll point you there. But just to say again, it's nice to hear him returning to his old form. His music had always floored me, and this record was the first new release from him in awhile to do that for me. It's just so good.

What else is there to say? Ohio Players was a strong record by The Black Keys — not their best, but a very strong collection. Daniel Boeckner's record this year was incredible, top to bottom. I've really intrigued with what Charley Crockett is doing with his career, releasing music at almost Bob Pollard level speed, and testing out nearly every flavor of country music production. The Smile are great. Pillow Queens are incredible. Guided By Voices are quite unbelievably again at a strong point. It's wild to me that Pollard can keep it up like this. I hope he never stops.

With that, here's my list of best records for 2024.

Favorites

• Ohio Players — The Black Keys
• Boeckner! — Boeckner
• $10 Cowboy — Charley Crockett
• Strut of Kings — Guided By Voices
• Hovvdy — Hovvdy
• Night Palace — Mount Eerie
• Name Your Sorrow — Pillow Queens
• Little Rope — Sleater-Kinney
• Cutouts — The Smile

Also Great

• Death Jokes — Amen Dunes
• COWBOY CARTER — Beyoncé
• 100's of 1000's, Millions of Billions — Blitzen Trapper
• Demande spéciale — Bon Enfant
• Look to the East, Look to the West — Camera Obscura
• The Hard Quartet — The Hard Quartet
• Viva Hinds — Hinds
• Power — Illuminati Hotties
• Light Verse — Iron & Wine
• Passage du Desir — Johnnie Blue Skies
• Musow Danse — Les Amazones d'Afrique
• All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade - The Libertines
• Wild God — Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
• My Method Actor — Nilüfer Yanya
• Daniel — Real Estate
• Tigers Blood — Waxahatchee
• The Great American Bar Scene — Zach Bryan

And here are my end of year Apple Music playlists for Favorite Tracks (small list) and Best Tracks (bigger list).

For 2025, my plan is to sit with records a little longer. Long enough that I could write something thoughtful about them. The world could really use more blogs about the art they like. I intend to fill this space with that kind of thing. Share the love.