Remote

Scott Jenson

@scottjenson@social.coop

mastodon 4.5.18

Product Strategy Advisor to Mastodon Core team.
Previously UX Strategy: Apple System 7, Newton, and Apple Human Interface guidelines. UX Director at Symbian, manager Mobile UX at Google, creative director frog design San Francisco. Head of Product for two startups. Returned to Google to lead the Physical Web in Chrome and explore multiple UX research projects in Android. Left 2024, now advising part time.

mastodon.social: 2017-2022

6966 Followers

516 Following

50 Posts

Joined November 07, 2022

Blog:

https://jenson.org/about

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjenson/

Chat with me:

https://jenson.org/go/meet

Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 3mo ago

Boosted by @trending@homestead.social

I visited the Helsinki Library and it has a frigg'n makerspace in the middle of it! Laster cutters, 3D printers, Vinyl cutters, all for nearly free. It also has "video game rooms", general meeting rooms, 2 cafes and a restaurant! It's astounding what you can have if you fund public works.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 2mo ago

RE: https://social.coop/@scottjenson/116913589001924603 I've been in UX for 40+ years (I started at Apple). Recently, I've been working on bringing UX to FOSS projects, and I see this attitude far too often (but not always!). It's terribly exciting to see this thread get so much support and love. There is hope yet. https://bsky.app/profile/lookitup.baby/post/3mqkllnokgk2d

Quoting

@scottjenson@social.coop

I like this post from Ian Coldwater. Slagging off users isn't a growth strategy. Now, you may not want growth, perfectly fine, but this is specifically calling out apps that want mainstream consumers

Open quoted post

Scott Jenson: "I like this post from Ian Coldwater. Slagging off…" - social.coop

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 2mo ago

RE: https://social.coop/@scottjenson/116856536251575471 A slot opened up for the @kde@floss.social Akademy 2026 conference this September so I'll be in Graz speaking on the "future of destkop UX". I'm so happy this worked out as the KDE community has always been so supportive of my ideas. https://conf.kde.org/event/11/contributions/332/

Scott Jenson: "I was so looking forward to pitching Part 2 of my…" - social.coop

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 2mo ago

I like this post from Ian Coldwater. Slagging off users isn't a growth strategy. Now, you may not want growth, perfectly fine, but this is specifically calling out apps that want mainstream consumers

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 2mo ago

My LocalFirst talk is up!
How the Desktop UX needs to evolve

This is a "part 2" of my @ubuntu@ubuntu.social talk last year. This time with more demos!
#ux

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IOLRcFC6OY

Scott Jenson — How the Desktop UX needs to evolve to keep up with Local-first

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 2mo ago

Replying to

I've now sorted my cables. A rather tedious process that resulted into 4 bags:

Legacy 2.0 cables (most of them)
3.1 cables with higher data and modest power
3.2/4.0 cables that did more data, power and video
Thunderbolt cables. (there are even variations within each camp but I don't want to bore you further)

What I'd like to see is some color coding on the plugs...

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 2mo ago

I have one last thing to share about my Skoda rental car. (the running gag of #UX design) This last example is just chef's kiss:

Grammatically incorrect
Use of a proprietary word which is guaranteed to confuse
The verbless assertion to fix #2 by reading the owner's manual

This just fails in so many ways.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 2mo ago

Boosted by @tchambers@indieweb.social

I've been experimenting with Claude Fable 5 and have to say, as a #UX designer who is just trying to build simple prototypes, it really is valuable. I've tried 6 different explorations of my demo and it nailed it every single time. Being able to rapidly test out my own ideas is incredibly liberating. While the utility is there, the current landscape of these frontier corporate models comes with massive ethical and environmental baggage. This is not a long term solution! That’s exactly why my hope is that ethically trained open-weight models will eventually catch up and that in the next couple of years, we'll have something with this level of capability that can run locally. That feels like a much better place to be with this technology.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 2mo ago

I've found LLM tech to be useful in limited, controlled conditions. Its current mass deployment is hard to support for ethical and environmental reasons. However, I want to keep exploring how best to use it, and of course, when NOT to use it. I'm not a freaking fanboi here. This tech has serious limits! I've now installed pi.dev so I can work with a local model for small things, an open model for medium things, and a frontier model (which I'd rather not use) for a limited number of high-level tasks. Is this perfect? Of course not; it's a process. As open and local models improve, I'll transition over. IMHO, it's inevitable that I'll eventually be 100% local, but it might take a few years. This setup allows me to keep working with and learning the pros and cons of the tech while steadily reducing my reliance on frontier models.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 6mo ago

My wife and I are heading out to a #NoKings march in SF! This is shaping up to be the biggest demonstration in US history!

social.coop

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 3mo ago

"Oh no! We forgot Timmy!"

I know I'm on a tear right now with Automobile #UX but messages like this just have me scratching my head? Yes, I know, baby's have been left in cars but two extremely obvious points:

It is a statistically insignificant number
This message wouldn't help anyway.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 6mo ago

Boosted by @tchambers@indieweb.social

Replying to on social.coop

As this conversation is spiraling a bit I want to make a few things clear:

I'd like Mastodon to be MORE inclusive and bring in more voices
Some people don't seem to want that
This is core problem to solve: How do we let more in, but not "pollute" your feed?
The solution is NOT "gatekeeping", revelling in the fact that AI journalists aren't welcome
This is the same reason we lost "Black Twitter" when it came over in 2022

Yes, a lot of you don't want AI posts in your feed (or pick any other topic) but the solution isn't to keep "AI People" from joining Mastodon, any more than it is keeping marginalized communities off of Mastodon.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 3mo ago

Now THIS is a museum! The Lennusadam maritime museum in Tallinn. This was fun....

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 4mo ago

RE: @stefan@stefanbohacek.online

I've heard so many stories from the "Great migration of 2022" that people were literally chased off of the Fediverse for these very reasons. I get it, CWs and ALT text are very helpful and I sincerely hope people do use them. But if they don't, then don't follow them. It's really that simple. Anything else has proven to be a net negative.

stefanbohacek.online

Stefan Bohacek: "Applauding @admin@blorbo.social for taking a stro…" - Stefan's Personal Mastodon Server

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 2mo ago

I'm REALLY trying to move off of foundational LLM models and would like to run something locally. For the moment, that's just coding. I've heard that Qwen2.5-Coder or CodeGemma are SLMs that are targeted on just coding so are much smaller, and in theory anyone can run on a 16GB Mac. Has anyone tried this? Are there better alternatives?

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 5mo ago

Boosted by @tchambers@indieweb.social

Sure, this is funny but what bothers me the most is that we don't even have a good way of talking about this. This is a foundational error state and likely implies other problems in how it works. There is something very boring and yet important about this and we can't discuss it easily. /ht @andrewhinton@jawns.club

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 4mo ago

RE: @bruces@mastodon.social

This was so funny and spot on. Being "Balanced" about AI gets you nowhere. The Techbros think you have no vision and the "burn it with fire" people think you're a Techbro.

mastodon.social

Bruce Sterling @bruces: "*First, generate 100 Agentic buzzwords. Next, pr…" - Mastodon

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 6mo ago

FOSSism · /ˈfɔːʃɪzəm/ or fawsh-iz-um · noun
A militant branch of the open source movement that delights in telling absolutely anyone that 'they are doing it wrong'. One of the fundamental social problems holding the Fediverse back. Nearly always a white dude.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@johannab@cosocial.ca @benpate@mastodon.social @thisismissem@hachyderm.io I've been fighting this in my own small way for a while now. Whether it's culture policing or yelling at anyone that dares use the word LLM (even in a neutral way), there are people here that are making it their mission to eject the heathens. My hope is that it really is just a small number and if enough people support posters when they see this behavior, they'll realize they'd just be better off just unfollowing.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 5mo ago

RE: @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net

I really wish "Less than 1 year" was a higher number

social.wildeboer.net

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:: "For how long have you been on the #Fediverse? Fee…" - social.wildeboer.net

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 5mo ago

My latest blog post about "Ma" and how it affects our understanding of AI flows. We’ve been looking at this problem entirely from the technology’s point of view. The LLM is driving us, pushing a specific interaction model and veering us towards making mistakes. We are not computers; going fast isn’t our superpower. Ma is what makes us human; it’s what allows us to think like humans, not machines.
https://jenson.org/ma
#UX #LLM #AI

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 5mo ago

Good example of the particle-wave aspect of LLMs: These tools appear to do amazing things quickly, but they are often the wrong things. Something is still missing.
https://annaecook.com/writing/2026/ai-prototyping-harder-worser-faster-wronger

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 2mo ago

Replying to

I've heard about this show for years of course. I've known of it's impact but to actually sit down and watch it from the start is quite fun

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 3mo ago

Boosted by @tchambers@indieweb.social

Personal Information access is the achilles heel of LLMs. They can do amazing things if you feed them all your stuff. (This is why Local LLMs are so promising, your data stays put) The problem? It's nearly impossible to get! It's locked behind proprietary silos.This is why every foundational model is making such a big deal out of "memory": it allows it to have so much more context to do things. This, of course, also locks you in as the memory isn't exportable. It's a race for the data. It's also why system extensions like ScreenPipe are interesting. It's a HEAVY lift but it's a form @pluralistic@mamot.fr 's "adversarial interoperability" But open local first data of all my contacts, meetings, emails, etc would be SOOOO much easier. (it's just wicked hard to pull off) https://github.com/screenpipe/screenpipe

GitHub - screenpipe/screenpipe: YC (S26) | Open Computer History | Record your screen continuously locally and provide context to your agents (Claude, Codex, Openclaw, Hermes, Runner...)

YC (S26) | Open Computer History | Record your screen continuously locally and provide context to your agents (Claude, Codex, Openclaw, Hermes, Runner...) - screenpipe/screenpipe

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 6mo ago

RE: @Mastodon@mastodon.social

UX work on open source projects, especially one like Mastodon that has so much legacy, is very challenging. @imanijoy@mastodon.social is going a great job navigating this

mastodon.social

Mastodon: "Following on from yesterday's blog post about the…" - Mastodon

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@jjdavis@infosec.exchange starting with Honor Blackman. To say her character is "ahead of it's time" is an understatement!

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 5mo ago

And now for something completely nostalgic: a 'landline for kids' concept that is gaining traction: https://tincan.kids/ I'm not endorsing this, just pointing out that this "analog trend" is certainly gaining momentum.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 6mo ago

RE: @juliaro@mastodon.art

I think a lot of UX designers feel this way right now. Hang in there people. We'll get through this.

Julia Racsko: "Hey! I'm waking up from my winter slumber and loo…" - Mastodon.ART

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 3mo ago

Boosted by @tchambers@indieweb.social

Replying to

@tchambers@indieweb.social completely agree! We can quibble about execution but the forces against BlueSky are broadly the same ones against the Fediverse.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mekkaokereke If you could think of anyone that would be interested in joining, please let them know. One of the biggest challenges in open source is that we can't offer incentives so need to lean on our community.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@fasterandworse @sab @froztbyte @zzt Thanks for that. I think this boils down to a reasonable goal "More inclusivity" that was poorly stated. I do NOT equate AI bros and Black Twitter but I can see how people might make that connection. That's my fault. I also don't endorse AI bros, I used them as a foil but again people assumed I was endorsing them. I want to be VERY clear that this mess is my fault. I made a complex point very sloppily and I shouldn't be surprised people are jumping down my throat

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@mwichary@mastodon.online That is an excellent suggestion and should be considered.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@ErikJonker@mastodon.social @thibaultamartin@mamot.fr Agreed. There are people here trying to a) find actual value and b) ways to make it ethical/viable to use (e.g. it doesn't burn down the planet) But it's worrying to even try to have that conversation.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@stefan@stefanbohacek.online @lalah@sakurajima.moe I'm sensitive to both concerns! Of course we want more alt text but we have to appreciate that the overwhelming "you're doing it wrong" feeling people get, especially if they do usually do it but forget once is overwhelming. That "tone policing" experience has proven to be a clear and strong negative to our culture. This is especially true as a common manta here is that "no one deserves a follow". If someone isn't posting the content you want, its a big wide world, just don't follow them. "Educating them" isn't as helpful as many feel it is.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 3mo ago

A surprising downside to the "mobile app revolution": 1) Many local communities have parking/bike/transit apps 2) no cash, all bank card 3) Local communities can't use big multinational credit card clearing systems 4) So non-EU cards are rejected I can't park or ride a bike (well I can if there is a kiosk, it's just the apps I'm locked out of) Rather hostile to non-EU tourists.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@mwichary@mastodon.online HALLT?

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@beep @Wilto That looks so fun. There is a story waiting to be told and I'm here for it.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@akademy@lemmy.kde.social That is very kind, thank you! I've put in my abstract for the conference. I would not want to give the same talk. To be honest, it might cover some of the same ground, but I'd like to pull in more specific examples from KDE. @Merritt @akademy@floss.social

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Merritt @akademy@floss.social @akademy@lemmy.kde.social I'm assuming you'd like me to propose my "Desktop UX hasn't changed in 20 years"? I'd likely have to be remote (as a flight from the US would be a bit pricey) but I'm happy to throw my hat into the ring. Thanks!

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mattferrell@mastodon.social Wacky but fun provocation!

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mia such great news! Congratulations!

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 6mo ago

Replying to

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@ramsey@phpc.social How good were the first 3 seasons?

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@tchambers@indieweb.social I think you’re right. But what I'm concerned about is that someone will create a layer on top of the models, e.g. access to specific data, connecting to specific services, that will create a moat.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@benpate@mastodon.social @johannab@cosocial.ca Second this request. I hear this "we just need better tools" request frequently actual solid suggestions are rare. But it's possible! For example, the ability to withdraw from a quote post completely defangs the quoter. It's a clear tool to combat harassment and is powerful as it takes power away from the quoter. But in the case of reply guys, I'm not sure there is much to do. Any "voting" type of solution can be gamed. Offering "no reply" posts is a powerful option (someday) but not for everyone. "Followers only" is also much safer but much less interaction. It's like we want there to be widespread posting but only 'the good people' can reply. Tricky problem.

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Scott Jenson @scottjenson@social.coop

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@brad_frost SOOOOOO satisfying!

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