Jeremy Keith’s presentation focused on the tools that we use to evaluate the tools that we use – as technology is ultimately just another tool in the millions humans have used. Those tools build on each other just as human knowledge builds on that which came before.
Jeremy’s talk also focused on the resilience of technology – how fragile a particular thing is and what happens when it fails. (Everything fails eventually.) He outlines some new technology that fails particularly well, and ties it back to what we’re willing to do and learn for our users.
An Event Apart 2017 Evaluating Technology by Jeremy Keith (pdf)
We’re starting with @adactio talking about code – and Rosalind Franklin’s notes on the code of DNA #AEASEA
— anne gibson (@kirabug) April 4, 2017
Every life form around today is successful, the pinnacle of its evolution. #AEASEA
— anne gibson (@kirabug) April 4, 2017
Specialization, ubiquity, and cooperation are three keys to success in life #AEASEA
— anne gibson (@kirabug) April 4, 2017
Technology gave us the ability to augment ourselves. First technology is a hand ax #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
.@adactio begins #AEASEA day two with "Evaluating Technology." pic.twitter.com/LvFo3EW0gY
— Greg Whitworth (@gregwhitworth) April 4, 2017
Technology gives us a leg up on the slow process of evolution. It's our hack to stay one step ahead. #aeasea
— ? Stephanie seaotta Drescher (@seaotta) April 4, 2017
The pencil has a built in progress bar. ? #AEASEA
— ? Stephanie seaotta Drescher (@seaotta) April 4, 2017
The pencil is ubiquitous, it’s specialized, and it is made by a group – cooperation #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
You can’t do technology alone, you have to do it together with a group #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
“Curious tool” Chindogu society in China has butter sticks (like glue sticks), a fan on chopsticks, etc. #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
They also had a very early selfie stick. #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
In the 20th century we got a new layer between the hardware and the human – software #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
The human and the hardware speak to each other through the software #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
In the 20th century, we added a new layer between human interaction w/hardware. We can now manipulate hardware through software. #AEASEA
— ? Stephanie seaotta Drescher (@seaotta) April 4, 2017
An everyone-elsie: every human except the photographer is in the picture #aeasea pic.twitter.com/4Rslf2PDDp
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
One of the crowning achievements of technology is going to the moon #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
The World Wide Web was put together so that scientists could collaborate hardware-agnostic #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Specifically, it was built so scientists could communicate hardware-agnostically, starting at CERN with Tim Berners-Lee and then across the world. Turned out it was a pretty decent idea.
WWW
Internet
Computers
Electricity
IndustrializationBuilding on what comes before #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
The tweet above (and the side it was mirroring) are meant to be read bottom-to-top, in a sense. We could have no WWW without Internet, no Internet without computers, no computer without electricity and no electricity without industrialization.
Pretty much any time you see this structure in the slides, that was the meaning behind it.
Things start to feel inevitable – multiple people inventing radio at the same time – but the shapes may differ #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
The iPhone was not inevitable, but the smartphone probably was #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
One of my favorite parts of An Event Apart is that the speakers riff off of each other and make each others’ presentations stronger by sharing what they know.
When all the things are in place that’s when the magic happens. “The adjacent possible” #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
(As usual it is incredibly difficult to keep up with @adactio’s masterful flood of ideas) #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
The hard part isn’t creating protocols. The tricky part is getting people to use it. #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Grace Hopper: “Humans are allergic to change. That’s why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise.” #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
The whole way we deal with time isn’t very logical. Base 60 math, because accounting in Babylonia set it #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
There was a proposal for a decimal time after the French Revolution, but humans are allergic to change #aeasea
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
There is a world standards day on Oct 14, except in the US when it’s on Oct 23. #murica #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Don't try to change people's behavior, just try to nudge it slightly. @adactio #AEASEA
— Kadush (@eLizz1e) April 4, 2017
WWW
HTTPURLsHTML
TCP/IPDNSSGMLPeople didn’t need to fully change their behavior #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
HTML elements aren’t always the best elements – you have to build on what’s come before – and they degrade gracefully #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Canvas allows for fallback to older tags by design, requires a closing tag for the fallback by design #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
You don't get to start from scratch #aeasea pic.twitter.com/IpeOHpwMkb
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
https://t.co/ETmGOXdGDG is @adactio’s collection of design principles. #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
https://t.co/ETmGOXdGDG is @adactio’s collection of design principles. #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
We ask “How well does it work?” When we’re evaluating technology. “How well does it fail?” Is a more important question #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
CSS shapes “fail” very well, so it’s safe to use even if it’s not supported. #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
"https://t.co/cTN1EmOmwT tells you how well something works, it doesn't tell you how it fails" — @adactio #aeasea
— ?|?|? ??? (@Una) April 4, 2017
Lots of folks in the audience have heard of service workers, but pretty much no one’s using them #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Service workers: server can send a script that is installed on the browser and can make requests to the server #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
The service worker can cache things and put the assets it gets from the server in the service worker. #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
The service worker then gets all requests from the browser and then passes them on to the server if/when necessary #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Service workers can save on performance via their cache, provide offline-first connections #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Service Workers
– Requires https
– No defaults
via @adactio #aeasea— Conor Meagher ??? (@conrmahr) April 4, 2017
Service workers – how well do they fail? Exceptionally well. If they don’t work, they’re ignored altogether #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
You literally can’t make a site that requires service workers because the behavior of the initial request is the same either way #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Web components: there isn’t a spec for them. It’s an umbrella term for a number of other technologies #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Web components are things like custom elements and the shadow DOM. They have hyphens (because HTML tags never do) #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
The HTML, javascript, CSS for custom elements is encapsulated. The styles won’t leak #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
You can write a web component and someone else can use it because it’s encapsulated #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Lots of unsupported browsers for custom elements. How well does it fail? It depends how you use them #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
You can just use a custom element, but if it fails it’s effectively just a span, so that fails badly. #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Alternatively, you can overload an existing HTML element with <nav is=“mega-menu”> for example and then you have fallback #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Or at least, fallback to a <nav> element, which is better than no fallback at all.
We could design our web components to fail very well. But often we don’t, there’s no thought given to the fallback #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
The power is in our hands with web components to ensure that we build something that fails well #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Web components give us the same power that previously only browser makers had — a blessing and a curse #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Service workers and web components are the poster children for the extensible web #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Unlike the slow messy work of browser standards, developers are exposed to the DNA of the web #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Whatever is most robust will find its way into the standards over time, in theory, but it’s a lot of responsibility for developers #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Once we had the word AJAX to rally around it really took off. Responsive Web Design was a rallying point. Extensible Web is next #aeasea
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Progressive Web Apps is a term for HTTPS + a service worker + a manifest file #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Progressive web apps – any web site can have them #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Right now the industry is treating progressive web apps like mobile URLs, when the whole idea is they’re the same thing #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
“Let’s treat websites differently depending on whether they’re Netscape or IE!”
“Let’s treat websites differently depending on whether they’re mobile or desktop!”
“Let’s treat websites differently depending on whether they’re progressive web apps or not!”
We are slow learners, apparently. ????
Any website can be a progressive web app, which means the current term is problematic #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Progressive web apps should not be a separate website. It defeats the purpose of building your website as a progressive web app. #aeasea
— ? Stephanie seaotta Drescher (@seaotta) April 4, 2017
Who benefits from a technology? #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
9 times out of 10 things benefits developers *and* users. Service workers are real benefit to users, but rough for devs #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
.@adactio’s favorite HTML principle: in case of conflict consider users over authors over implementors over theoretical purity #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Tools divided in 2 camps:
Your computer:
Sass
Less
GIT
Gulp
NvmDoesn’t affect the end user directly#AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
(This one is just a list, they’re not building on each other. Same with the next one.)
JQuery
Bootstrap
Angular
React
EmberThese benefit the developer but possibly at the tax of the end user. Analyze closely#AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
#aeasea adactio https://t.co/wl1HZ682au
— jared bishop (@bishopart) April 4, 2017
The fallacy of assumed competency: you use it because some large company X is using it. “They must know what they’re doing” #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
These affect the end-user directly and not in a good way: needing to download libraries, etc. #aeasea
— ? Stephanie seaotta Drescher (@seaotta) April 4, 2017
Unless you’re google, what works for google may not to work for you. Never use a tech just because someone says you should #aeasea
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
“Not invented here” syndrome is the opposite end of the scale. Don’t throw things out just because you didn’t invent it #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Could just use HTML, CSS, and Javascript… but you may be more comfortable at a layer of abstraction up #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
All computing is abstraction (“are you writing in assembly language?”) #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
We have tricked rocks into thinking. #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Angular
React
EmberMonolithic frameworks make it hard to cherry pick the bits you like. Evaluate! #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
What’s the browser support like? What’s the community like? What’s the file size? #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
What are the assumptions built into the tools you’re using? What are the biases? Critical question! #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
It tends to be very hard to cherry pick only the bits you want to use from monolithic frameworks like angular, react and ember. #aeasea
— ? Stephanie seaotta Drescher (@seaotta) April 4, 2017
If your philosophy clashes with the framework of the philosophy you're going to have problems #aeasea pic.twitter.com/elc6cDIvL3
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Fractal – Clearleft’s tool for pattern libraries – wanted to make unopinionated software. It’s really hard #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Defaults show where your biases lie #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Technology inherently is biased & makes assumptions that come from the creators/coders of it. #aeasea
— ? Stephanie seaotta Drescher (@seaotta) April 4, 2017
When you use a technology, you don’t always use it the way it was intended. #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
(If you want to see “not following the plan” action, go talk to your internal users. They override intent *constantly* #AEASEA)
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Seriously. Design an application, have it rolled out to your internal users (the ones that never get budget to have problems in their tools fixed) wait six months, then go see how they’re using it. Guaranteed you will learn more workarounds for workflows you either didn’t know about or got wrong than you can possibly imagine. We talk about ourselves in IT as “hackers” but if you really want to see hacking, stick a customer service rep with tight call volume requirements on a shitty application and watch how they’ll turn your application’s intended use inside out to service their clients.
Heddy Lamar helps to design a technology to switch frequencies on guided torpedos in ww2. Now exists in wifi and Bluetooth #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Well, talked.
YASSS @adactio talks about Hedy Lamarr — inform yourselves about this badass woman: https://t.co/a6uUn1a7p2 #idol #aeasea
— ?|?|? ??? (@Una) April 4, 2017
This. #aeasea #womenintech pic.twitter.com/1C0qFPSq8H
— Kadush (@eLizz1e) April 4, 2017
James Burk of Connections showed the connections from Napoelon to rockets #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
The video link of James Burke: https://t.co/E3xXsZpfuL from @adactio pres #AEASEA https://t.co/nJ7eNVoQ1i
— Susie Hall (@suzillazilla) April 4, 2017
The tech singularity: there’s an event horizon in our future we can’t see past right now #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
We’ve probably had technological singularities in our past: hunter/gatherer to farmer, industrial revolution, information revolution #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
All those previous singularities didn’t replace what came before, they added to them. #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
No technology has ever gone extinct. Everything ever created is being used by humans somewhere today #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
we have the power to control the direction our technologies take if we evaluate technology #AEASEA
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Can vouch for this, since I went to college in Lancaster County, PA #aeasea pic.twitter.com/PzbyCIYJGI
— Anne Gibson (@perpendicularme) April 4, 2017
Questions technology folks should ask themselves more often. Thanks for the reminder @adactio #aeasea pic.twitter.com/UjvIZxHEsn
— A Brave New (@abravenew) April 4, 2017
Sketchnotes by Krystal Higgins.