The Joy of Silly Useless Software
Metadata
Highlights
- As you may know, I’m an experimental game designer, and make weird software that kind of exists in the space between games and “something else”. It’s the type of work that is difficult to classify, or really describe because it often does not serve a “use”. Calling something a “game” means that there will be goals, a story, something larger to justify its existence. Calling something “software” means that it will serve some kind of use to the person running it. There is this very niche area of programs that you run just for the joy they may bring, the sake of a practical joke, or the novelty of how they behave, that I’m going to discuss…
- Software can be silly, useless, and dumb, just like games!
Software can bring joy to our otherwise cold and utilitarian digital world. I am talking about the things that exist just to brighten up our otherwise impersonal productivity related spaces…
- Things like this serve the wonderful function of making our digital spaces feel less alone.
They have a transformative quality to them. I’ll be saying that word a lot…
I would go so far as to contend that it even helps “productivity” when there are these tiny intentionally sought after distractions: like a digital friend that you chose to run.
- It also speaks to the power of something like Clippy that, even with how people joked that it was annoying, it still is remembered. There is something to that. Why don’t we necessarily remember the word processor, but we remember this silly annoying little digital entity?
- . People have a desire to extend what they have. To add some life to these spaces. This desire manifests anytime you give someone some digital environment they should exist in.
- However… modern social media, and most modern environments like the iPhone, have shifted to be a space that protects the brand of whatever you are on. It’s harder to make a space “your own”, and you get a sense that when you are on Twitter, you are browsing Twitter, not necessarily your corner of the web.
- It’s worth underlining that it’s a writing app with lots of visual feedback. In itself, if you said that out loud, it would sound like a bad idea, but it’s necessary. It offers an environment that is visually stimulating, the opposite of calm, to help people that need extra stimulation.
This one I think is valuable because it’s a very self-aware solution to help neurodivergent people who need this type of space to make work in, and it also underlines how standard software can fail. The one-size-fits-all solution to UX and our usability rules are often not as inclusive as we thin
- I’d like to highlight that, with the Electric Zine Maker, creating a playful and silly environment that stands as a strong contrast to other productivity oriented art software was important. Software has this looming pressure to create output, with the fixation on quality.
Something like the Electric Zine Maker is intentionally designed to make you feel like this is low stakes, and it’s OK to just tinker in it.
Most of the tools are designed to feel like “toys”. It’s a space that encourages you to click around, see what happens, laugh a little, then find use for the silly things. It exists in this space of balancing actual functionality expected of art software (drawing, writing text, importing images), but offers extras that encourage you to play (glitch tools, a water feature so you can splash around in your art, animated gif brushes…). The UI is built to make you feel like this is different. There’s visual feedback…
- type of mentality, that can translate into the way our games or software occupy a space on our desktop… in an intelligent and self-aware manner that can better a person’s digital life.
When you make a tiny little thing that runs in the corner, making silly noises, or just built for the sake of a joke, you are empowering people to break out of that uniformity. It’s transformative.
- I like this example because, to get this desktop friend, you play an online game to find it. This friend is essentially the reward for finishing the online game.
This way, the game can live on in this new context of “a friend existing indefinitely on your desktop”.
- A while back I was exploring ways of making the website cursor behave like a “playable character”. Most things out there use javascript to hide the cursor then change it to a graphic. I wanted to use the actual CSS cursor property.
Pet_cursor.js uses the CSS cursor property to create something like a “flipbook” for your cursor, and control states based on mouse direction (the cat running up, down, left…), what it’s hovering over (the cat will scratch links or other things), or if your mouse is still (the cat cleans itself and falls asleep).
- This is the transformative power of this type of software. It changes the way we perceive our systems and exist in our digital spaces.
They delight. They exist just to bring joy to people!
- “their old pet” and suddenly it has a massive influx of interest.
People want to make a home of their digital spaces. Software can and should be more than utilitarian or purely functional.
I would go so far as to contend that software that is designed to be purely functional or utilitarian “fails at good UX” too. I’m not necessarily saying that one should go all out and make work like mine (with screaming sounds, and maybe too much animation), but I’m saying that there’s a balance to be had. That we can have silly little things and people love them.
- We often look at work that nods back at the early web, or early computer culture, as “nostalgia” but I think it’s a lot more than that. Saying “nostalgia” is kind of missing the point.
It’s about an era who’s values we can still learn from and reflect in our current work… Bring back the weird. Make useless software.
Let’s bring joy to people’s spaces!
The Joy of Silly Useless Software
Metadata
Highlights
- As you may know, I’m an experimental game designer, and make weird software that kind of exists in the space between games and “something else”. It’s the type of work that is difficult to classify, or really describe because it often does not serve a “use”. Calling something a “game” means that there will be goals, a story, something larger to justify its existence. Calling something “software” means that it will serve some kind of use to the person running it. There is this very niche area of programs that you run just for the joy they may bring, the sake of a practical joke, or the novelty of how they behave, that I’m going to discuss…
- Software can be silly, useless, and dumb, just like games!
Software can bring joy to our otherwise cold and utilitarian digital world. I am talking about the things that exist just to brighten up our otherwise impersonal productivity related spaces…
- Things like this serve the wonderful function of making our digital spaces feel less alone.
They have a transformative quality to them. I’ll be saying that word a lot…
I would go so far as to contend that it even helps “productivity” when there are these tiny intentionally sought after distractions: like a digital friend that you chose to run.
- It also speaks to the power of something like Clippy that, even with how people joked that it was annoying, it still is remembered. There is something to that. Why don’t we necessarily remember the word processor, but we remember this silly annoying little digital entity?
- . People have a desire to extend what they have. To add some life to these spaces. This desire manifests anytime you give someone some digital environment they should exist in.
- However… modern social media, and most modern environments like the iPhone, have shifted to be a space that protects the brand of whatever you are on. It’s harder to make a space “your own”, and you get a sense that when you are on Twitter, you are browsing Twitter, not necessarily your corner of the web.
- It’s worth underlining that it’s a writing app with lots of visual feedback. In itself, if you said that out loud, it would sound like a bad idea, but it’s necessary. It offers an environment that is visually stimulating, the opposite of calm, to help people that need extra stimulation.
This one I think is valuable because it’s a very self-aware solution to help neurodivergent people who need this type of space to make work in, and it also underlines how standard software can fail. The one-size-fits-all solution to UX and our usability rules are often not as inclusive as we thin
- I’d like to highlight that, with the Electric Zine Maker, creating a playful and silly environment that stands as a strong contrast to other productivity oriented art software was important. Software has this looming pressure to create output, with the fixation on quality.
Something like the Electric Zine Maker is intentionally designed to make you feel like this is low stakes, and it’s OK to just tinker in it.
Most of the tools are designed to feel like “toys”. It’s a space that encourages you to click around, see what happens, laugh a little, then find use for the silly things. It exists in this space of balancing actual functionality expected of art software (drawing, writing text, importing images), but offers extras that encourage you to play (glitch tools, a water feature so you can splash around in your art, animated gif brushes…). The UI is built to make you feel like this is different. There’s visual feedback…
- type of mentality, that can translate into the way our games or software occupy a space on our desktop… in an intelligent and self-aware manner that can better a person’s digital life.
When you make a tiny little thing that runs in the corner, making silly noises, or just built for the sake of a joke, you are empowering people to break out of that uniformity. It’s transformative.
- I like this example because, to get this desktop friend, you play an online game to find it. This friend is essentially the reward for finishing the online game.
This way, the game can live on in this new context of “a friend existing indefinitely on your desktop”.
- A while back I was exploring ways of making the website cursor behave like a “playable character”. Most things out there use javascript to hide the cursor then change it to a graphic. I wanted to use the actual CSS cursor property.
Pet_cursor.js uses the CSS cursor property to create something like a “flipbook” for your cursor, and control states based on mouse direction (the cat running up, down, left…), what it’s hovering over (the cat will scratch links or other things), or if your mouse is still (the cat cleans itself and falls asleep).
- This is the transformative power of this type of software. It changes the way we perceive our systems and exist in our digital spaces.
They delight. They exist just to bring joy to people!
- “their old pet” and suddenly it has a massive influx of interest.
People want to make a home of their digital spaces. Software can and should be more than utilitarian or purely functional.
I would go so far as to contend that software that is designed to be purely functional or utilitarian “fails at good UX” too. I’m not necessarily saying that one should go all out and make work like mine (with screaming sounds, and maybe too much animation), but I’m saying that there’s a balance to be had. That we can have silly little things and people love them.
- We often look at work that nods back at the early web, or early computer culture, as “nostalgia” but I think it’s a lot more than that. Saying “nostalgia” is kind of missing the point.
It’s about an era who’s values we can still learn from and reflect in our current work… Bring back the weird. Make useless software.
Let’s bring joy to people’s spaces!