Just Be Nice And Eat Your Own Dog Food

Just to make it clear before we start - Mr Rogers never recommended eating dog food, to the best of my knowledge.

Rafael Brown posted an interesting article revealing the depth of planning and editing that went into making Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and although I've only seen a few episodes, I can believe it. My kids do like the Daniel Tiger cartoon adaptation of his shows though, so I have watched a lot of those.

The article is definitely worth a look. The Daniel Tiger cartoons? Not so much if you're an adult, especially more than eight or nine times.

Fred Rogers thought very deeply about the language used in the programs he made, focusing not just on the concerns of his audience, but also the literal way they interpret what they hear.

Mr Rogers really understood his "user base", namely kids. He was a master of the user experience.

Pay attention to your neighbors

The software industry is notorious for failing to understand its user base, as evidenced by the mantra "move fast and break things", which is often proudly held up as an ideal to follow. To me, there has always been something crass about that, and I'll return to why in the last part of this article.

It's tempting to think that the production of a series of children's programs from the 1970s could not have involved the same kind of pressures that software development and managing a tech company does now. Surely they didn't have to deliver as quickly as we do in the busy, bustling 2020s?

They probably did.

I'm convinced the time pressures were just the same - these shows went out on a intensely regular basis. There are, however, some big differences between Fred Rogers and your average software developer. For example:

• Fred was in charge. As a software developer or UX designer you have boss making unrealistic demands, and an unrealistic deadline or ten that you are supposed to meet as well.
• Fred also had an educational background in pedagogy and several of the highest qualified advisors and mentors in the land supported him - these friends gave him the understanding and advice he needed.
• And finally, Fred was an unusual individual who was off the charts for EQ (empathy quotient).

So, as software developers, are we doomed by not having an EQ at the level of Mr Rogers? And a degree that is based around communication involving a lot of ones and zeroes or Fourier transforms, but no emotions or feelings?

I don't think so. There are some simple tricks you can use to get around these problems.

Tricks of the trade

The most obvious thing is to care about your end users in the same way that you care about yourself.

And the easiest way to achieve that is to "eat your own dogfood", as mid-level managers who have been on a training course like to say. Which sounds disgusting. Of course it does, because the mid-level managers don't actually understand what they are parroting back, and they don't explain it. So let me give you an example to clarify:

In the proto-metaverse project that I am working on as a hobby, you can build voxel creations in your own space (called a land), and you can save them. In simple terms - it's like a Roblox or Minecraft server, but you own a small portion of it, only you can build on that small portion, and anyone else can wander in and admire what you have done.

I thought I had all the functionality for that working nicely.

That was, until I spent several hours constructing a medieval fortified town in my own space. By several hours, I mean about eight. Or perhaps twelve. I lost track of time.

Initially, I thought that I would have better things to do with my life than pile voxel block on top of voxel block, but it turns out engaging with your software the way that users will is more valuable than writing any number of unit tests or drawing architecture diagrams.

And building stuff is one of the "big aims" of my project.

The first thing I discovered was that building things with the interface I provided wasn't as easy as I had thought. So I made some corrections to how the mouse wheel worked for the interface, and moved the build bar to the bottom of the screen. I got fed up of having to dump blocks to make space for other blocks, and then cleaning them up later, and therefore I added more slots for holding building materials. Very few people like cleaning up, after all.

The second thing I discovered was the abject fear of logging in one day and finding my hours of work gone due to some server error or file saving failure. And indeed, on further inspection I uncovered several bugs that could have resulted in my efforts being lost. One of which resulted in a 48 by 48 block maze I designed disappearing forever.

The third thing I discovered is that it is really easy to accidentally load a build when you are trying to save, and to save a build when you are trying to load one. This one I am still working on fixing, because it involves further interface work, and as it turns out, UX is hard. I am trying to resist the developer reflex of adding more modal dialogs and buttons.

This is why, instead of working on fun flashy things that would look impressive and might get the metrics for user engagement up, I have spent the last four weekends working on ensuring that building is easy (or at least, easier), and more likely to be persistent, and not overwritten.

In summary:

• I tried it out the software for myself, for hours and hours and hours
• I made sure that anything going wrong would affect me just as badly as other users - no special developer safety net
• I put a significant amount of time into my creative efforts to ensure that the loss of my work would be genuinely painful

Those three points are all the motivation I need.

All your user base are belong to us

Of course there is a reason why Mr Rogers' Neighborhood was created and broadcast on a publicly funded television service. Its primary aim was not to "increase shareholder value" or "make the founders and initial venture capitalists insanely rich."

Its fundamental aim was to provide children and their families with a moment of entertainment that coincidentally (or not so coincidentally, as it happens) also gifted them tools to help them deal with the difficulties of life in a constructive and compassionate way.

In comparison, companies like Facebook (give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected), Google (don't be evil), or in the web3 space OpenSea (build the world's most trusted and inclusive NFT marketplace) were required to shift from being "a fun project with users who were enthusiastic supporters" to "a money-making exercise that exploits that user base" by taking on board venture capitalist money, and for the first two, going public.

I wonder which of the above will be remembered longer, and with more fondness?

No I don't - the answer is obvious.