Human users prefer systems that let them fudge things a little. They want to be able to bump the pinball machine just a little bit—not enough to tilt the game, but enough to have some positive influence on the outcome. This fudgability is what makes our manual systems work so much better—albeit more slowly—than our computerized ones.
— 📖 The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
- summary/idea derived from ~ calendar software misrepresents how people think about meetings
- the opposite paradigm comes up often in tech circles, e.g. "we should fully automate bureaucracy" (= leaving no leeway because there are no humans to talk to)
- I also find that if you pay close attention to many real-world systems in action, a lot of stuff would just straight up not work without fudging a little here and there
- excellent example: Work-to-rule