Geoffrey Litt on end user software for cooking

Geoffrey is doing a PhD at MIT on Human Computer Interaction and end user programming. He also does research projects with the independent R&D lab, Ink & Switch. He is working on helping more non-programmers build their own software tools. We talked about: Potluck, Geoffrey’s latest experimental tool that lets a user start with a meaningful document (like a recipe) and progressively enhance it with computation (like automatically adjusting timings). Trade-offs between concrete use cases, building for others and giving research time to show results. Orienting thoughts around end user programming around the context the user is in, rather than who they are. The ways that different communities help foster research. Links: Formality considered harmful Geoffrey’s website Geoffrey on Twitter Christopher Alexander This podcast is part of Mary Rose Cook’s research to build software quickly.