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Designing for hackability

Brian Oberkirch has a great article about designing for "hackability" - the article tends to focus on software, but it's equally applicable for (some) hardware too...

In a world where anyone can create, mimic, remix Web components, the ideas that spread most easily and completely, win. Simple. You want attention? Make it simple for people to give you attention and to retell your story. Designing for hackability means giving people the things they need to retell your story in their own terms.

Who do we want to hack?

• Users (customize look, add/drop features, data import/export, mash with other services they use, embed our app elsewhere)
• Outside Developers (your app plus my app sitting in a tree)
• Colleagues (make the system fungible to encourage max experimentation & freedom for your team; e.g. flickr api was essential for internal use first)

What are some of the ways we can leave the seams showing on our Web services to enable & encourage hacking?

Designing for Hackability at Like It Matters - Link.

Posted by Phillip Torrone | Apr 3, 2007 09:57 PM
Philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0)

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