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Robert Haisfield Profile picture
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6 Mar, 4 tweets, 1 min read
I wonder if DSLs are just the next logical step for apps built for power usage. Let people directly input data and manipulate it, following your apps data model.
That’s not to say that GUIs shouldn’t exist. This thread on designing for power usage makes the argument that there should be a smooth learning curve from beginner to power user. Ultimately, no GUI is gonna be faster or more powerful than a well-designed domain-specific language
If onboarding is the perceived problem... then whatever, they can absolutely be designed to be learnable. Clear feedback loops, affordances for different stages of the learning curve, and minimalist language design. That’s basically been my work w/ GuidedTrack for the last year
And even after the dramatic improvements we’ve made to its learnability and perceived learnability by new users, there’s still a ton of green space I would be thrilled to explore

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Robert Haisfield Profile picture
5 Mar
Okay now imagine you have a keyboard where you have low height twin control sticks on your space bar that could move independently of each other. What would that do for you?

Maybe holding a modifier key changes the output of your stick movements. Image
Slow vs. fast movement based on how far you push each stick? With adjustable stick sensitivity? Image
Fighting game like gestures? Force quit an app by inputting a Shoryuken? Image
Read 4 tweets
Robert Haisfield Profile picture
5 Mar
What if, instead of a food journal app, I just had a domain-specific language and the ability to create templates for myself?
I'd love to just write, "I ate a burrito, which in this instance means beans, pork, onions, and sour cream, and guac." I already set a variable for guac, which means ingredients include avocado, onions, tomato, and it assumes the general ingredients unless otherwise specified
Templates would allow me to enter other forms of data as I wish in a consistent way. For example, my template for meals might also include how I felt before and afterwards.
Read 6 tweets
Robert Haisfield Profile picture
5 Mar
This is an interesting point. Some apps are designed for power usage and some aren't, which raises the question of "How can you design for power usage?"
One thought is that a high skill ceiling is necessary for it. Take my example of Whimsical vs. Figma here:
An app built for power usage should also reward investing in that high skill ceiling. There's a trend (will be writing more about it soon) where power user applications go from more GUI to less over time. This really lets users get into the flow of things
Read 5 tweets
Robert Haisfield Profile picture
2 Mar
I see a lot of online course creators content to place a bunch of videos and reading material into a linear sequence and call that a course. A playlist with sections. Or are they not content with that, and they only see things like Teachable or Podia as options?
Who are the course creators who want to provide individualized content based on student comprehension/goals? Who want to give homework and create exercises that could be done from anywhere (eg in a course about well-being a mood journal)? Who want student feedback as they learn?
This is fair, many course creators simply host content in a linear format but don’t leave the course at that. I’m just saying though that content doesn’t need to be linear for people who want to do a bit more “course architecting”
Read 4 tweets
Robert Haisfield Profile picture
27 Feb
Great “weird part of YouTube” videos to watch tonight?
Wtf, but fits the prompt. Surreal art.
an animation classic. Wish I had that range of motion.
Read 5 tweets
Robert Haisfield Profile picture
26 Feb
This is a really interesting point to consider. Makes me think about how Typeform needed to make UX flows for every part of this, whereas a domain-specific language only requires you develop the logic for how things work. You can make the "flows" after, like we did w/ the toolbar
Also makes me think about how much less flexible GUI first tools are. Here I'm trying to:
Ask the user's goal (multiselect)
Ask what they were doing prior for each user goal

GuidedTrack doesn't have a prebuilt UX flow to generate this, but it works emergently and I can just type
On the other hand, Tripetto has a prebuilt functionality and user flow for iterating on each multiple choice response, it ended up taking me 3.5 minutes to write (when I already knew how to do it!), and still requires me to understand conditional logic. cln.sh/axtKCe
Read 5 tweets

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