software that is personal by nature, built by individuals for themselves not for anyone else to use, no need for scale or anything like that. both form and function are relevant here (more often you see this only with form and not function) Link:: https://web.archive.org/web/20040411202042/http://www.shirky.com/writings/situated_software.html
“Situated software isn’t a technological strategy so much as an attitude about closeness of fit between software and its group of users, and a refusal to embrace scale, generality or completeness as unqualified virtues. Seen in this light, the obsession with personalization of Web School software is an apology for the obvious truth — most web applications are impersonal by design, as they are built for a generic user. Allowing the user to customize the interface of a Web site might make it more useful, but it doesn’t make it any more personal than the ATM putting your name on the screen while it spits out your money.”
“Situated software, by contrast, doesn’t need to be personalized — it is personal from its inception. Teachers on the Run worked this way. Everyone knew that Paul and Keren built it. You could only rate Clay and Marianne and Tom and the other ITP professors. You didn’t even know it even existed unless you were on the ITP mailing list. The application’s lack of generality or completeness, in other words, communicated something — “We built this for you” — that the impersonal facade of RateMyProfessors.com doesn’t have and can’t fake.”
- most applications are designed for a generic user by necessity to scale
- if you don’t care about scale you can design much more locally which makes it personalized inherently
- customization doesn’t solve this problem because in the end you are still designing for them
- maker control vs. user control one size fits all vs. designed for local use case solutions require local context