Comment by timdellinger | Hacker News Reader

Comment by timdellinger | Hacker News Reader

"It was clear that our research participants were not using and not seeking out specialized tools tailored to accomplish their specific goals. Why?"

While the Levi-Strauss explanation is attractive, there are other factors as well. The author seem to think that a kludge of things such as email, ms word, and screenshots is an inferior workflow, but it has virtues as well. Those tools are stable and reliable and have been around for 20 years, and can be expected to be around for 20 more. Nothing about them is going to fundamentally change, and the user can expect that everything about them is controllable by the user, and they they'll appear on any new platform that might emerge (smart phone, tablet) essentially unchanged.

Contrast this with something that the author sees as a better solution, say, Instapaper. It began as a paid app, then it was free but with a Pro version, then it was subscription-based... the whole situation just seems volatile - it could disappear tomorrow, and it stores the data god-only-knows-where. If you happened to go with Readability or Evernote Clearly then now you're back to square one and have to figure this stupid crap out all over again.

There are a lots of users who value stability and reliability over small efficiency gains, and who don't enjoy spending time navigating ever-changing marketplaces.

Author here. Perhaps we could be clearer in the piece about this, but there is no value judgement attached to our participants' workflows. On the contrary, we often marveled at how resourceful and clever many of our participants were in solving their tasks with technology.

Good to be talking to you. Thanks for intresting post. I am wondering if you have studied "juggad" philosophy in india. We practice bricoleurs in every sphere of life.

I have read about juggad! But I haven't studied it closely so my knowledge of the details is limited.

thanks for reply . you might want to read this https://gagandeep.org/2016/06/02/bricolage-jugaad-and-indian...

If you haven't read it, you might enjoy the book Seeing like a state. Your article reminded me of the material in that book.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State

users who value stability and reliability over small efficiency gains

The efficiency gains are often theoretical, not real. This is the essence of why the qwerty keyboard remains the standard, though it was designed to be intentionally inefficient to slow people down. There is a very real cost involved in retraining yourself to do things differently.

It only makes sense to do so when any gains in efficiency will be quite substantial, obvious and will meaningfully pay off in a relatively short time frame. Most new tech fails to meet that standard for most people.

> The author seem to think that a kludge of things such as email, ms word, and screenshots is an inferior workflow

I'm not sure where you got that. I didn't get that at all from my reading.

When we went into analysis, a tension appeared between our findings and what we believed was being asked of us to report on. Our original charge was to find ways to improve and optimize users’ browser workflows following software and design-oriented assumptions. Instead, we saw that users were doing just fine with the tools they were already using.

...

Thinking back on this, it was evident to us that there was nothing to “improve” or “optimize” here as a standardized “workflow.” The participants’ solutions were already clever optimizations using the tools and paths that they understood.

To me that's a fairly clear admission that the bricolage approach has benefits in certain situations.

Indeed the users may perceive the approach they adapted as a local maximum and don't consider the price of climbing down in order to climb up to a higher point to be worth the effort.

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