- as in: just because something has to represented this or that way in your software system doesn't mean that mental model should be pushed onto the user.
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or: the best way for how to map a feature﹖ is likely completely orthogonal to the way you represent the problem internally
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- come on, LibreOffice — I'm sure these are all different from a technical perspective, but how am I to guess where "as HTML" is?
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I think that this is a kind of software evolution; representing something as people (not computers) think about is hard, if only because representing things in tech is hard in itself. Some examples:
- ~ calendar software misrepresents how people think about meetings
- ~ django is for making apps that look like the business domain was an innovation — only now we can move towards software that looks like how people think about the domain
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on the other hand: ~ give meaningful error messages (not
:( something went wrong) — which may mean exposing some inner workings; I guess the point is to be aware of designer vs. user mental model differences, and keep communication in the world of the user -
see also: swimming duck
~ don't expose your inner workings to the user
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