Mindy Preston
Identity Function, LLC
Principal
Identity Function, LLC
Principal
Or: Why I Design All My Cross-Stitch Patterns in the Terminal
I have a hobby that involves visual design and a lot of tedious arithmetic. In building a set of tools for automating this tedium, I’ve both discovered and enacted some principles for respectful software that I wish more software employed:
2D GUI visual design editors (think MSPaint) have difficulty with many of these aspects, but text-based imperative interfaces don’t! I’ll talk a bit about why I think CLI tools can have great affordances for design that respects the user, decisions that can undermine that, and why I find great joy in making art from tools that look distinctly non-artistic.