Many enterprise products have bad design because they need to serve so many complex workflows, not because their design teams completely suck. It's just a hard problem (eg look at Salesforce and tell me how you'd design it well...)
Consumer products are like Chipotle: streamlined menu, built for efficiency and elegance. Enterprise products are like the Cheesecake Factory: you want a steak, pasta, pancakes, and a margarita? Go for it! Why is there a full f*ing bar in the back? Who knows!
It's hard to have great design when you have to do so much.
I would say Craigslist because it's not pretty but I can't say that an ugly UI is the same as a horrible design. The design has worked well so far for many types of people.
IMO it feels like AWS just makes slow gradual changes without trying to match the material design updates etc of other clouds - all while knowing the ideal usecase of their platform is automated through the API with tools like terraform.
Most teams look at the data, and see that a vast majority of their customers use the CLI. I'm sure AWS loses out on sales from non-technical folks who only see the console side of things, but I personally would way rather DynamoDB focus on performance rather than a pretty console.
That isn't true for all though, many AWS services seem like they are 'console first' and do wonky shit in the console that is hard to do using APIs. Those services are incredibly frustrating.
Most AWS teams own their own console from what I've read here. And the smaller orgs often don't have any designers - backend engineers build the first iterations of the console.
I just wish the read interfaces were better. They could not even build configuration/creation/update interfaces and I wouldn't even notice. In 2020 who is even manually spinning up resources. But looking at lists of resources and statuses is still something I do consistently.
All the cloud providers reached success with awful UIs (IMO), which was temporarily solved by abstracting away from their UIs with Infra as Code and other tooling. They're getting around to updating it in recent years, though.
I agree with your point - If a product solves a real problem, design/usability is a secondary concern. This is particularly dependent on the space, in my experience. In my fintech world, a bank will give you a massive amount of $$$ for a dead-simple form + button if it eliminates a workflow problem. They really could care less if it looks like it's from the 90s (most of their stuff looks that way, anyway).
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> I've managed to have a somewhat clean track record in my two years in the sport, with only two broken bones
...
> It does, and most BASE jumpers that I know / have met / have taught
2 years in the sport, already broke yourself twice, and already "teaching" other jumpers?
Don't forget to burn some sites on youtube and facebook, to complete the package. Remember - if you didn't get any likes for it, the jump never happened.
Watching people discuss BASE on a tech forum feels like watching technology being discussed on a knitting forum.
To clarify, it was one landing where I broke two bones. Made a bad decision at the bridge on my 9th jump and broke both sides of my ankle smoking into the side of the canal. I tell everyone I know exactly how I ended up in that situation, what my decision making process was, and how I assess jumps now in order to not put myself in the same situation again.
Also, I work at a large dropzone and with a well-organized group to help coach new jumpers along the way. Me breaking myself on my first weekend is a pretty strong coaching moment that I've watched shift people's view on the sport.
Happy to let you know who I am in real life if you feel this strongly that I'm part of the problem.
"Watching people discuss BASE on a tech forum feels like watching technology being discussed on a knitting forum."
I'm not so sure: BASE is expensive. Think about the demographic in here: tech workers, probably a lot of them doing reasonably well financially, and probably quite a few are outdoorsy.
Any of these hobbies is expensive when you really get into them: BASE, mountain-biking, motorcycling, climbing, skiing, snowboarding, paragliding, skydiving. Yet you find lots of techies doing all of them because they can actually afford to.
Except, I wasn't talking about whether or not people could afford to do it (though, BASE is only expensive if you make it expensive - or get arrested), or whether it was likely that some people in the tech industry were jumpers (I know for a fact that many jumpers work in tech).
I was talking about the actual content of the many cringeworthy comments coming from people who were clearly trying to sound informed on a subject they don't understand. Like a knitting circle discussing cryptocurrency.
I see it constantly when anything about flying comes up as well. One or two actual pilots will show up, and 500 people who did an intro lesson or got to take the controls in a friend's plane once, will start trying to share their vast knowledge of the finer points of powered flight.
Active BASE jumper and wingsuit pilot here. Instructor of both.
2016 was by far and away our worst year on record. We lost newbies, heros, and damn near all levels in between. Since then, a few sites have taken a more locked-down approach where we used to be welcome, and as a community we've made progress to band together to push education and conservative decision making over 'dude that was so sketchy.'
A lot of people have brought up the why - why do people do this when they know it's so dangerous? Well, that's a question that everyone needs to make for themselves, but for me it's quite simply that it's the only time I've found my mind to be quiet. It forces me to be present, assess everything in a level of detail that is unparalleled in any other time in my life, and quiet down every other distraction.
Also, it's beautiful. Being in the mountains, on top of buildings, out on bridges, climbing antennae, all with some of your closest friends? It's incredible. There's absolutely nothing on the planet like that level of adventure.
With all that said, it's fucking dangerous. I've managed to have a somewhat clean track record in my two years in the sport, with only two broken bones, but I have probably 20 of the people on the Base Fatality List still in my phone, four of whom I'd call great friends. It's fucking awful losing friends like that, but it's who we are. If they wouldn't have lived a life like this, would they have been them?
A little while back I had the lightning strike closest to my family, when we lost Ian. Here's his story:
It's funny, the closest I ever came to a quiet mind was barreling down the back straight of Road Atlanta at 135mph in an open wheel racer. When more things can go wrong than are possible to comprehend, the mind appears to delete-all and focus on the task at hand. I'd call it psychological minimalism.
If you need your mind to be quiet, and to feel present to your life, there are non-life threatening ways, like mindful meditation and psychoanalysis, or maybe even working in a charity.
To bring a strawman into this: Would you die for your commute? What about a burger? A beer? All of these things kill people, and all of them can be avoided. People don't, because they like them. They accept the given level of risk by mitigating it as best they can, and going on about their lives. Risk is omnipresent.
The real killer is when you don't understand the risk. If you think something has a 1:1mm risk of serious physical harm, you'll probably be alright with it. If something has a 1:100 risk of the same level of physical harm, you'll probably think twice (or you'll prepare yourself differently).
Risk management takes two forms in our world: Unknown Unknowns, and Normalization of Risk. For newbies, unknown unknowns kill them. Thinking something is a 1:1m risk when it's 1:100 provides a real easy way to put yourself in a situation you're unprepared to handle. For experienced jumpers, normalization of risk is what seems to be killing us. If you take a shortcut that increases risk 10x, but you've taken it 1k times, in your brain it just becomes 'the way' and you forget that you're actually multiplying your risk. Do that enough different times and what in your brain is just 'the way' is actually the summation of a complex web of risk-multiplying shortcuts.
Remember both of those things, and you might make to your next birthday. Maybe. Maybe you'll get killed sitting at a stoplight by being rear-ended by a drunk driver, like my first base jumping mentor was.
I almost died choking on a chunk of meat once. It was quite interesting how my mind went blank as soon as I realized I had to do something or I was dead. No thoughts, no fear. Just absolute focus and the will to do anything. I'm not sure if it was me sticking a fork down my throat or a guy who was there who started to hit me on the back to do the trick. But after 20 or so seconds I was once again able to breathe. I was red, sweaty and in tears due to the stress and I couldn't speak but I was ok. I realize anything can happen at all times and I'm trying to be always alert and ready (chewing my food like a mofo and warning others to do the same - and to call themselves lucky I'm now trained to respond and keep them alive in case they pass out). So far, so good.
What I'm afraid of as far as base jumping is concerned is that you can't react to what's happening or you have just a few seconds. What if the chute doesn't open properly? What if the wind slams you on the rocks?
You are gambling with your fate. True that we all gamble with it when we eat, walk down the stairs, drive around etc. But at least in those daily circumstances we can take proper countermeasures and deal with whats' happening as it happens.
I would understand though if you know the risk of doing something and you still do it because it matters so much to you. If you could choose to die while doing what makes you happy wouldn't you?
I remember the first time I was on a plane. I was in such a joy that I thought "if I die now, I wouldn't care. I'm so happy I'd die happy."
We are all going to die. I believe it's better to die while doing what means the most to us, than not living fully and safe, ending up not appreciating our life cause we give it for granted.
Seriously. I sit in a cubicle all week and think about this. I just lost a friend, a skilled diver, while she was snorkeling for scallops. Nobody knows how she drowned, but she did. I am a rafter and climber and backcountry guy, and given the preference I would rather die at the ripe old age of 120 surrounded by friends and family, but as a second choice I'd sure rather fall out of the raft than croak at my keyboard or sitting in traffic. One is living, the other is simply being alive.
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Being able to convey information in simple terms and pass along the depths of your understanding are two independent topics.
As an example, when we teach people how to fly a wingsuit, we essentially teach wingsuiting (which is a massively complex pursuit) as a set of nested arrays of increasing complexity.
For example, for a first jump course, the goals are as follows:
- Exit safely
- Demonstrate ability to navigate in-flight
- Deploy
These are the most foundational aspects of flying a nylon dress out of an airplane.
After a few jumps, we'll add complexity to each of those, so to shift one point, it starts looking like:
- Exit in an unstable manner and gain stability in less than three seconds
In order to do that, you'll need to understand what causes a wingsuit to be stable, why it gets unstable, what happens when it gets unstable, and how to correct it. Additionally, you'll understand why I want you to do it in less than three seconds. However, at first, you just need to get out of the fucking plane. If I try to tell you all this extra shit you won't remember the foundational thing I need you to remember. You'll probably get unstable, you'll probably figure it out kinda, and you'll probably at some point deploy a parachute.
Is there a more stressful job than instructor for an extreme sport with such a high risk of death or serious injury? (I literally cannot imagine, though I hope I at least overstate the risk in my mental model.)
Jumping out of a plane wearing a wingsuit is reasonably safe. If something goes wrong, you deploy your parachute. If your parachute fails, you deploy your reserve. You have plenty of time to control with a spin or stall.
Jumping off a rooftop or a mountain wearing a wingsuit is practically suicidal. If something goes wrong, you die. The margin of error is simply too small.
The latter form of wingsuit flying is relatively new and highly controversial, even within the wingsuit and BASE jumping communities.
Off of a rooftop would be practically suicidal. Wingsuits need time to inflate and start flying, which for the best guys on the planet is around 300 feet. Normal humans require about 400. 'Margin' is a word that has a bunch of different contexts, most of which still put wingsuit base in a reasonably safe range. Terrain flying, which is the sub-discipline of wingsuit base where you're goalposting trees, is indisputably the most dangerous sport on the planet, and I've lost six friends to it in the last year.
I don't know that i'd describe it as 'controversial' but would rather describe it as 'that thing a bunch of people with nowhere near enough experience or currency to be doing it keep doing and fucking killing themselves.'
So as some people further in the thread have brought up, you start flying wingsuits out of airplanes, and you start in suits that are far more forgiving than the ones you'll end up flying. It's similar to how a pilot first learns how to land a Cessna before you try to land an F-18 on a carrier at night in a storm.
We do often (as instructors) talk about how nervous we get when we're with a student that we're pretty sure is just going to flatspin uncontrollably for like 8k ft and it's just like 'Okay heres everything you need to really have a bad afternoon. Dont? Please?'
Presumably all the good days make up for the very bad ones, else you wouldn't do it. Those must be really really good days (I find it impossible to imagine this as well.)
Oddly enough (and probably speaking to our mindsets as a community), it was the death of a good buddy of mine that pushed me to finally start base jumping.
