Legibility
Understanding of a complex, opaque system.
Increased legibility does not mean increased predictability or knowledge.
Illegibility can be a strength in some contexts. status in groups is one example. Groups provide two types of status. the first is the us vs. them paradigm. the second is internal status illegibility. there is a clear leader, and a clear bottom, and everyone else is in the fuzzy middle.
Legibility Failure Model
- people look at a complex and confusing part of reality
- fail to understand the subtleties of how it works
- attributes that failure to the system, bot themselves
- come up with idealized blank slate version of what the system "ought to be"
- try to implement, fail miserably because they don't know what the hell they're doing
Legibility Bias
legibility is alluring. we tend to dislike complexity and prefer simple, easier to understand systems.
But Just because something is not illegible does not mean it is not intelligent or known. You can know something without being able to put it into words
Legibility and Tech Brain
programmers have to enforce legibility on concepts for a living. its one of the causes of tech brain, which is the primary failure mode of legibility.
precision is not accuracy - often people want precision because they believe it adds to legibility, but pretended to be able to predict what you can't isn't legibility, it's bullshit.
Legibility and Hourly Billing
time tracking and estimates exist to increase legibility for clients.
Hourly billing adds to additional project management time that accomplishes nothing but adding to the illusion of legibility. Time is spent talking about how much time was spent on tasks, and if it matches up with the estimate. hourly billing = bureaucracy.
increased legibility can cause disputes : “why did X take so long?”