Re:The Design is the Implementation
by beaconstudios on Wednesday August 15, 2018 @08:47AM
(#17765590)
Absolutely. I think it's a fundamental fact of human psychology that we are attuned to subconsciously figure out the underlying rules behind a system and then plan and act based those rules, meaning that a system that does in fact follow fundamental rules is both predictable and a pleasure to use - that's probably partly why systemic games are so enjoyable. With the corollary that systems without an underlying and consistent ruleset are harder to understand, provide less venue for the user to produce innovative use cases, and seem to come (at least for me) with an unconscious sense of unease with using them. It's like UX but at a more fundamental level.
I agree with your post SO much. It is usually easier to have a system with a couple of simple rules that are extremely robust and that can be composed and reused than it is to have a system with a separate toggle or setting for every scenario.
In general, I'm finding that I prefer very small systems that favor consistency over bigger systems that are supposedly more 'intuitive' because they have a bunch of extra layers on top of their internals. It's kind of amazing how much simpler and easier it is to teach things like testing, browser automation, build tools, and so when you strip out all of the stuff that gets shoved on top of them and just start working at the implementation level.