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.
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Speaker A: Welcome to Dialectic episode 21 with Jeffrey Litt. Jeffrey is a designer, engineer, writer, and researcher at Ink Switch. Ink Switch is an independent research lab focused on tools for thought. Essentially, how can computers give us more leverage as we think and work? His focus there is malleable software, the idea that regular non-technical people should be able to change, edit, and tinker with the software tools they use every day. Jeffrey's obsessed with spreadsheets because they're what you could call computational media. The idea that using software and changing or editing the software should be one and the same.
We talk all about how more software could feel like spreadsheets and what is required both from a design and an ecosystem and infrastructure perspective to make this true. As you might imagine, AI and LLMs are a significant lever to help make more software malleable, as in theory, anyone can edit code at the speed of thought. While I think this conversation will be particularly interesting for designers and those who make software, I also think that anyone who uses software will be challenged by and hopefully inspired by Jeffrey's ideas. At the root of all of this is a notion that we should care about our tools, our processes, and our environments, not as an ends, but as a means to working on and creating the things we care most about.
And while that applies to software, I think it applies to our lives too. Steve Jobs comes up at the end of the conversation, and I couldn't help but think of that incredible quote of his from years ago, where he says that the minute you can understand that you can poke life, and if you push in, then something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, that you can mold it. That's maybe the most important thing. I think Geoffrey embodies that deeply, and I hope you enjoy the conversation with him.
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