Post #3356495

2026-06-19 17:01 UTC

Here’s a new, super-interactive essay I wrote about making interactions really great for repeated use, motor memory, and so on. I wanted to share things I learned as a designer throughout the years, and highlight some of the nuances and great anonymous work but others, but do it in a hopefully interesting way. Also, I just… love this kind of stuff? I don’t know. My hope is that you’ll fall in love with this, too. *a big screen very, very recommended* https://aresluna.org/show-your-hands-honor

Replies (9)

@davepagurek@genart.social 2026-06-19 17:31

@mwichary@mastodon.online Great work on the UI showing the state of the machine, reminds me of VST UIs in audio software!

Open ##3379823
@Chancerubbage@mastodon.social 2026-06-19 17:53

@mwichary@mastodon.online Makes me wonder about buffer size. Playing ADVENTURE (Collosal Cave) days on a video terminal on a DEC PCP whatever (7? 11?), it was a simple and common habit to navigate through the game preloading the moves (waiting for it to load) up until XYZZY or PLOUGH or PLOVER, to receive a text dump of the narrative so far, and when it had loaded, placing us facing, or past, a dwarf with an ax, or in a maze of twisty passages all alike (different) before the system could even respond.

Open ##3379825
@lndf@merveilles.town 2026-06-19 19:53

@mwichary@mastodon.online Super impressive work, learned a ton of things thanks !

Open ##3379826
@jmissig@hci.social 2026-06-20 01:31

@mwichary@mastodon.online minor terminology quibble — F3 on recent Apple keyboards is typically Exposé, though your animation is showing Show Desktop. neither being Dashboard.

Open ##3379827
@tsturm@famichiki.jp 2026-06-21 01:44

@mwichary@mastodon.online A masterclass on UI design, from the keyboard up. Excellent work. The many hands-on (ha!) examples are great.

Open ##3379829
@jannem@fosstodon.org 2026-06-21 02:33

@mwichary@mastodon.online FYI, I'm on a large screen (10 inch tablet with keyboard and Firefox in desktop mode), and it still only pops up a message that I should use a computer or large tablet. Perhaps add a toggle to force enabling the playgrounds, for cases like this?

Open ##3379830
@slackline@mastodon.social 2026-06-21 09:25

@mwichary@mastodon.online Beautiful, thanks for taking the time to write and craft that. Muscle memory is so underrated but it's something that takes time to learn and develop. I've used #emacs for decades but still don't have all of the key-chords memorised. I do sometimes mistakenly use the #magit key-chords in the terminal though and clobber my commit messages (`C-c C-c`commits in Magit but erases the command line message I've typed!). I also abhor touch-screen UI for typing it sooooo slow.

Open ##3379836
@sknob@mamot.fr 2026-06-21 11:47

@mwichary@mastodon.online if I try to remember consciously how to play something I wrote on the guitar, I often can’t. I have to grab the instrument and finger memory takes over and remembers everything. It constantly amazes me and feels like an out of body experience. As for computers, since forever, I couldn’t stand using PCs being so sensitive to all the accumulated smarts of the Mac UI. Don’t know if it’s gotten any better. And touch UIs without proper scrolling physics feel plain broken…

Open ##3379837
@alex@social.alexschroeder.ch 2026-06-21 22:38

@mwichary@mastodon.online the essay reminded of the chords used to move and select and cut, copy and paste using the keyboard. Many years ago I switched to Emacs and used the weird key combos and now it pains me to go back to that other mode that has won everywhere else: shift arrows, control arrows, shift control arrows, ctrl x c v w q f – these used to be in my motor memories and now it’s all about ctrl or meta a b f e k d w q s oh dear lord above help when I try to reformat the paragraph and quit the editor instead, or save instead of search, and on and on. Switching between two such schools of motor patterns seems to be impossible to me.

Open ##3379838