Originally titled What does “emotional software” look like?
See the first comment for more
Those of you who know me as a software engineer have no doubt heard me talk repeatedly about how if you look at computer science as a social science, it’s clear that there are a lot of consequences to the lack of diversity in the discipline. One of them is that a lot of the design space just isn’t getting explored.
Most software today is designed and developed by teams and companies (or open-source projects) where the power is with white guys whose cognitive style is analytical and reductionist. A lot of developers would agree with the Microsoft Technical Fellow my former Ad Astra colleagues once worked with trying to design an asset-based thinking workshop: “I’d much rather not talk about emotion”.  Functional, sparse, flat designs with limited configurability in the style of 37 Signals are great for people who like that kind of interaction. A lot of us don’t, and our needs are badly underserved.
So when Cindy Gallop left a comment in my thread Guys talking to guys who talk about guys …
My startup http://www.ifwerantheworld.com – a simple web-meets-world platform designed to turn good intentions into action, one microaction at a time – is what I describe as ‘emotional software’: the synthesis of technology and psychology.
My startup team is 4 women, 3 men. My head of user experience, my designer and my programmer are all female.
Emotions? Psychology? Moving people to action? Sounds like social sciences to me. I was intrigued.
So I checked it out, and talked with Cindy and superhero Giovanna Mingarelli, then had a total mind meld with design goddess Oonie Chase via Skype, talking about Seductive interfaces, agile software terminology and so much more. Now I’m even more intrigued — and very impressed.  If She Ran The World … on Tales from The Net has more.
So what does “emotional software” feel like?
What other software (apps or web sites) do you think of as “emotional software” and why?
jon
PS: thanks to Kyra Gaunt (aka @kyraocity, author of The Audacity of Humanity) for the term “Emo-ware”, and to oonie for burgling it and dropping the hyphen. fistbump. Read on for more …
May 2018: minor updates, fixing some grammatical errors.
jon | 13-Sep-10 at 10:27 pm | Permalink
This post was originally titled ‘What does “emotional software†look like?’ When Kyra RTed it with I liked the term “emo-ware” so much I asked if I could use it in my title; she graciously agreed. Then IfWeRanTheWorld’s blog linked back here (thanks!), with a great picture, and ø commented, among other things:
Good point! So I revised accordingly. Thanks, ø!
Rumi | 13-Sep-10 at 10:54 pm | Permalink
Emo-ware = awesome term.
What would you do if you ran the world, jon? 🙂
If Women Had Designed Facebook | 30-Sep-10 at 9:38 am | Permalink
[…] don’t have a full picture of what a social networking site that reflected a different world view might look like, I need some help imagining what it could […]
Liminal states :: Life imitates art imitates life? | 17-Jan-11 at 12:58 pm | Permalink
[…] PS: for more on Quora, see Michael Arrington’s Quora has the Magic and Beth Kanter’s Is Quora Yet Another Social Network or Something Different? For thoughts about how a diversity-focused Q&A sight might be different, see CV Harquail’s If Women Had Designed Facebook and Designing for Feminists vs. Designing for Women: Different vs. Revolutionary as well as my Emoware: What does Emotional Software Look Like? […]