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31 Dec 20, 5 tweets, 2 min read
This right here is a huge area of exploration for me since working on GuidedTrack, realizing that @worrydream had already written about live programming environments in the context of learnable programming, and even contemplating things I could build myself
Big open questions: what broken glass to get started could be offloaded to design choices? How can languages and IDEs be designed to be approachable and understandable, providing strong feedback on the impact of your actions, and encouraging you to engage feedback loops?
Part of what’s appealing about learnable programming is just how hard it is. I’ve worked on 6 onboardings so far, and working on a programming language/IDE (GuidedTrack) was by far the most challenging.
The first way we tried to do GT’s onboarding was with a gamified set of explainers/worksheets to go through. That felt unapproachable and didn’t work. A lot of people would skip through. Really, it’s about creating feedback loops to communicate through the language of design.
What do I mean by feedback loops? Show the user how their behavior affects the state of the tool so they gain a mental model of how to manipulate the program. There’s no value judgement of telling the user whether their behavior was good or bad. It’s just showing them causality.

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More from @RobertHaisfield

Robert Haisfield Profile picture
30 Dec 20
Multiplayer in @RoamResearch can be really powerful, but it's too process-oriented to work if users don't share some common language about its fundamentals. People ~need to already understand Roam in order to collaborate in it, for the whole range of small to massive projects
Onboarding was offloaded to a decentralized community, leading to a lot of divergence in understanding the core bits. People are learning from social norms set by influencers, who often communicate suboptimal messages. Roam has little in-app influence over the narrative.
Even the best community content explainers only hit a chunk of Roam users. Everybody needs to speak the language of indentation, filters, etc. so there's a solid foundation to layer multiplayer processes on top of. We won't disrupt Wikipedia-like projects w/o shared language!
Read 4 tweets
Robert Haisfield Profile picture
29 Dec 20
Hey @RoamResearch if I could query by unlinked references, I'd be able to query by "2020" or specific months so please, querying by string would go a long way
Example:
Querying by string would also let you query your screenshots.

It would let me search my URLs. {{query: {and: [[VC]] “www”}}} would bring in all of my URLs related to VC.
Read 6 tweets
Robert Haisfield Profile picture
28 Dec 20
Late entry: I'm gonna start a @threadapalooza now on the intersection of behavioral science, product strategy, UX, and game design. I'm shooting for 100 tweets w/ as many individual opinions as I can before the end of the year. This is a product of a lot of thought over years
1. Every app is designed for behavior change, intentionally or unintentionally. People have agency, but their default behavior is swayed by their context. The design, functionality, etc. all influence user behavior, positively or negatively, predictably or unpredictably.
2. User behavior is a major input for the success of an app. If people use an app in suboptimal ways, then they are more likely to churn than people who are able to achieve their goals as a result of their behavior.
Read 75 tweets
Robert Haisfield Profile picture
22 Dec 20
Coming soon: follow-up tour with @JoelChan86, where he showed me his tested workflow for using Roam for synthesis. Highly impactful on my own workflow.

The purpose of his workflow is clear, it works in @RoamResearch or other PKM apps, & has room for stylistic differences
Basically: organize around your questions. Read sources (context) in support of those questions, note down your observations, combine observations into claims, and combine claims to work through your answers to the questions. Everything is connected logically to its precedents.
So it's actually quite simple to implement. Connect your questions to your answers. Connect your answers to how you came to those answers. It's not rocket science, and requires only knowledge of linked page and block references.
Read 6 tweets
Robert Haisfield Profile picture
12 Dec 20
Just did a @RoamResearch tour with @beauhaan looking at his Zettelkasten. He uses block refs in a highly effective way that I genuinely have not considered before, so his database is VERY navigationally friendly when he’s trying to reuse his notes. I’m really excited to share it
Usually these tours are cool but don’t show me anything I’m too surprised by. This one was surprising! His style works w/ different mental models than mine, which are more query than structured navigation driven. His tour adds something novel to effective Roam usage discussion.
If you want to prepare yourself before I release Beau’s tour by watching other, more page-ref based implementations of a Zettlekasten for comparison, I recommend the following two tours:

First, @JoelChan86. This one helped convince @soenke_ahrens to try out Roam!
Read 5 tweets
Robert Haisfield Profile picture
11 Dec 20
Some of you may be aware that @obsdmd now has aliases. I've been using this for language learning! I have a Spanish journal, and using aliases, I can collect unlinked references to conjugations of verbs, rather than just exact text matches. I'm building up my own SpanishDict!
If there's enough interest, I may make a video describing my approach and share some markdown files I use as templates for things like verbs. I'm also using this vault to host my notes about various grammatical conventions for quick reference.
In case the concept of aliases is unclear, notice how the page title is "estar" but the unlinked references include times when I've said "estoy."
Read 4 tweets

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