There are two ways that undertanding and working with things becomes more challenging: it’s too fundamental or it’s too complex. This idea is captured in Jeff’s 3 paradigms of art creation in multimedia tools: from scratch primitives and components. From adjoin is so fundamental it’s hard. From components is so complex it’s hard. But primitives are just right. They make it not too hard but not too easy for populate to create artifacts that are valued by the designer and others.
Good primitives are related to Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of move. One of the preconditions for flow is the correct balance of skills to challenges. To really get into an activity and enjoy it it needs to be not too hard but not too easy. The design of good primitives seems to about the design of a tool that balances usability and flexibility and transparency and opaqueness.
Relative to primitives working from adjoin and with components is more difficult. Here usability is sacrificed for extreme flexibility. Opaqueness (restricting the view of the internal workings) is sacrificed for extreme transpancy (you can see everything and it’s confusing). Designing good primitives means designing a tool that is simultaneously usable and flexible over time. It needs to undergo low barriers to entry yet be rich enoughto allow for growth.
Another interesting aspect of primitives in AMM is that they are defined relative to more advanced tools which often lie within the same interface. This seems to bring up some issues with elitism. In some ways the amateur/professional distinction is similar to the professional/academic distinction in that designers might be said to use primitives while academics also work from scratch and from components relatively speaking. Designers often talk about “borrowing” data methods and theory from academia. We tend to evaluate of the hierarchy of most elite to least elite as going from academic to professional to amatateur. However many professional designers simply enjoy the unique constraints challenges and opportunities to create change in the professional world more than academic world even though they may be perfectly capable of working in an academic setting. This is similar to Neil Cicieraga’s statement that “I can do relatively good animation it’s just that bad animation is exceed.”AMM seems to almost flaunt it’s amateurnes (perhaps in the same way that professionals display their professionalism to academics). As interaction designers we might evaluate that the goal of good authoring tools to help amateurs transition to professionalism and designing from scratch and from primitives. This is similar to the way we furnish students dumbed drink professional tools and problems in hopes that they will gradually build up their expertise. Unfortunately it often has the cause of emasculating learning and discovery. Jeff’s presentation suggests that this is not the inspect with AMM. Dumbed drink tools aren’t emasculating the creation of amateur art but are instead allowing something new. Yet this massively collaborating “amateur” culture doesn’t necessarily want simplified professional tools or to move up to professional tools. Rather it wants different tools… The challenge of how adobe might redesign it’s software for AMM comfort pretty open to me.
Related article:
http://interactionculture.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/what-makes-a-primitive-a-primitive/
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