💾 Archived View for low-key.me › gemlog › repeating-patterns.gmi captured on 2022-06-11 at 20:45:26. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2022-02-18)
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It's amazing just how many things I take for granted until someone points out that maybe it doesn't necessarily need to be that way. The list would be too long unless I narrowed it down to where I mean to go with this thought. Patterns in technology.
Until Drew called out typing indicators as something toxic [1], I never once paused to ask if it's something I want. Almost all modern chat apps have it and so I just went with it. When Signal finally got around to implementing it, I turned it on without a moment's hesitation, glad that Signal had caught up. Drew didn't really elaborate on why typing indicators are toxic, leaving it at something you'd realise if you bothered to critically examine it. All it took was a moment's thinking to realise how it added no value to my life while beholding me and others to pointless expectations and pressure. It makes a twisted kind of sense on platforms that are incentivised to keep you online as long as possible, to monetize every waking moment of yours but on a private messenger? I suddenly had newfound respect for Signal, because even though they caved into the pressure of public expectations (which as we've seen might exist for no good reason at all), they made it optional. You can toggle it off.
So I did and have lived a happier life since.
Drew also talks about how chat apps have this habit of cargo-culting bad ideas from each other. A problem I only now realised I have too when it comes to designing my desktop experience. I've actually read about how notifications are designed to hijack your attention in every way that they can, from the colors and iconography used to convey urgency, their prominent positioning and even their sounds. All of this is something I'm aware of and yet when it came to picking how workspaces on my desktop are marked if they have something new in them, I followed their playbook to a T. The worst part is that I did this myself, to myself.
I picked a bright orange color and picked an exclamation mark as the icon and it was no wonder that it would always draw my attention, no matter what I was up to and even if I'd disabled notifications temporarily. It was this way for a while but suddenly it dawned on me today that it needn't be this way. There was no need for an icon screaming for attention in the setup I use to get stuff done. Most people don't have the freedom to change this but I did. So I swapped that orange out for the same color as any active workspace, a deep blue and dropped the exclamation mark icon entirely, letting it have the same icon as the other workspaces. The difference was immediate and tangible. I can still see at a glance when there's something new on a workspace but now it's just there, waiting for me instead of demanding attention.
It's inspired me to take a look again at all of the design decisions that surround me and that I've surrounded myself with. Any findings shall be reported here.
[1] The next chat app by Drew DeVault
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CC0 low-key, 2021-11-02