Notes from the driver's seat
What old cars taught me about feedback, constraints, and joy.
An old car talks to you constantly. The steering loads up before the tyres let go. The engine note changes a half-second before anything is wrong. None of this is on a screen.
Latency is a feeling
Modern interfaces mediate everything. That mediation is usually an improvement — until it removes the direct line between what you did and what happened. A hydraulic rack tells you about the road surface because it is physically connected to it. There is no sampling rate.
Software has the same property and we mostly ignore it. A button that responds in 40ms feels connected to you. The same button at 400ms feels like a request you filed.
Constraints as design
The car has no traction control, so I have to be smooth. The constraint made me better, not more frustrated. The trick is that the limitation was legible — I could feel exactly where the edge was, so I could work with it.
Illegible constraints are just walls. Legible ones are a teacher.