21: Geoffrey Litt: Software You Can Shape

Geoffrey Litt (Website, X) is a designer, engineer, writer, and researcher at Ink & Switch, where he champions malleable software: the idea that ordinary people should be able to mold the digital tools they rely on every day. Ink & Switch is an independent research lab focused on how computers can help us think and work. While researching and writing, Geoffrey and team also build products and prototypes to explore how their ideas can exist in practice. Geoffrey got his PhD at MIT CSAIL, where he built on his inspiration around computational media like spreadsheets, hoping to push more software toward the ethos of end-user programming, but without the technical complexity. In a sense, why should using software and changing it be any different? Previously, he built software for teachers at Panorama Education, which he joined out of school as one of the first employees.Geoffrey and collaborators recently published a definitive piece on malleable software and we discussed it in detail. We dig into why most modern apps feel like sealed boxes rather than flexible tools and environments, and what changes when your app, document, or workspace, feels more like Lego than machinery. Geoffrey makes his case that we want software tooling to feel like a chef knife, not an avocado slicer, and we talk about how the best designed tools help users up a smooth slope of learning and ability. He argues in favor of deeper understanding, illustrated by one of my favorite ideas: The Nightmare Bicycle.