And I believe you on how hard the reliability/durability challenges must be in engineering these things — I've seen what the kids do to them.

BTW, I think the mechanisms themselves are no small part of the interest; kids don't just get to see whatever phenomenon is being demonstrated by the device, they get to poke at the thing that does it and try to figure out how it works, and that's a lot of fun for a curious kid; there are layers there.

> First up: "But these physical exhibits require maintenance, and I was dismayed to see that several are in bad repair; some of them weren’t even working anymore, some seemed worn out, or didn’t seem well-designed to begin with."

> This is probably the key reason why there are so many screens in this particular museum: he answers his own question. Physical items, especially things with motion, will degrade with time and use, and maintenance can get really expensive. Physical models like a human heart aren't something that you can generally buy off the rack: museums and similar institutions will work with a company to produce something like that (I'm guessing fiberglass?) These are things that can run thousands and thousands of dollars to repair or outright replace.

You may be right that this is the answer to my unstated question of "Why are these exhibits not in perfect working order?" However, I reject it as an excuse, because, for instance, the building also requires maintenance, and this maintenance is apparently kept up with: it was clean, the doors opened and closed without squeaking, the elevators function.

Both the building and the exhibits are required to serve TFI's mission and need maintenance to perform their functions. If an exhibit is worth conceiving, building, and housing in the museum, it deserves maintenance, just as the museum building does. So I'm inferring that adequate exhibit maintenance is just not being prioritized either in the cash budget or the "volunteer effort budget". Emotionally, it feels terrible to walk my son over to a thing and be excited to show it to him, and have it not work. I'd rather the thing not be there.

> We also put in an interactive with an iPad that allows visitors to explore a painting in the exhibit in a lot more depth.

I have no problem with that because it's adding something to the experience of the artifacts on display. My problem is with the exhibit itself being a touchscreen. I would say there is very little point to visiting a museum in this case, because the web can distribute software more cheaply. My complaint is that a touchscreen does not count as being "hands-on", and TFI is all about being hands-on; that's what makes it so special, and to me, wonderful and worth fighting for.

> Finally, there's nostalgia at play here: I have a ton of fond memories of visiting museums with interactives and huge displays, and I'm glad that I can take my kids to them as well. But I'm also happy to see that these museums aren't stuck in the past and the only thing that they're doing is rehabilitating old exhibits that are decades old or out of date: they still have some of those things, but they're also making sure to bring in new interactives, looking at new scholarship and best practices for museums (because museums aren't static organizations or fields!) to change as audiences change. Like it or not, there are a lot of people who use screens as a way to take in information: museums have to keep abreast of those trends, because if we don't deliver information to people in familiar and accessible ways, they probably won't come in.

This, right here, is the rub. Because to my mind there is a fine line between meeting people where they are, and pandering to perceived preferences or limitations of our audience, and in the process, losing sight of the mission.

If we know kids are on screens a lot, or worse, believe that kids "need screens to be engaged", and thus proceed to skew our museum exhibits toward screens, are we doing right by them? I would argue, vociferously, that we are not. When we try to serve everyone, even those with little interest in our mission, by diluting our fidelity to our mission, then we end up serving poorly those who really are interested in our mission. There's probably a term for this phenomenon, but I don't know it.

There's also a fine line between doing what must be done to survive, and bending the mission in the interest of cashflows to the degree the organization is no longer serving its mission. TFI needs cashflow to survive and there are doubtless many ways for it to boost revenue and reduce costs that I would argue go against its mission. I'm arguing that the touchscreen-based exhibits are so far outside its mission that they need to go. The Kinect exhibits are on the edge for me, but I think those can stay.

I completely understand the incentives re: Body Worlds, Harry Potter (I've even seen an Angry Birds exhibit). But there's a fine line between a non-profit doing what it must to survive, and drifting so far from its mission that it no longer deserves to survive. TFI is still far from that point, but the trajectory is worrisome to me, so I called it out.

He's of the opinion that math should be taught not as jumping through hoops for "reasons", but as an art, enjoyable for its own sake, and that this would actually produce more confident and capable thinkers than the current approach. (I think the argument applies to almost all education but his focus is just on math.)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42012134

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

The app is responsive so you can actually use Flat on mobile, it's just not a great UX IMO. We're planning on building native apps in the future. If you give it a try on mobile we'd love to get your feedback on how to improve that experience.

Flat’s a lot like Trello, but with a cleaner, simpler, friendlier UI and real discussion threads. Flat also sports a first-class GitHub integration.

To take it for a spin without signing up, just go to https://try.flat.app. And there’s also a quick demo video here: https://youtu.be/NW2c9cZVaD0

We made Flat for ourselves, after a decade of wanting a simple, lightweight tool to stay on top of our work and not finding one. Trello is close, but we find it really frustrating to use in lots of ways. And most everything else is way too complex. We think there’s a need for a task tracker that prioritizes simplicity, clarity, and usability over bells and whistles that most users don't need.

And like many folks who are burned out on team chat, we also think there’s a need for a mode of workplace communication that’s lightweight, async, and attached to the work rather than chats in Slack or Teams where it’s too easy for things to get lost (and to be interrupted all day). Flat doesn’t try to replace Slack--chat will always have its uses--but it does offer a better venue for a subset of Slack’s workload, like asking and answering questions, making quick requests, and raising issues about things the team is working on.

Flat is aimed at small teams with basic needs. Small dev teams without a lot of process seem to love it, as do people who used to like Trello back in the days when it was less stressful to use, and people for whom Asana’s complexity is a non-starter.

Flat is still in beta, so it’s probably missing some things you expect, but what’s there is pretty baked. It’s available in-browser as well as Electron apps for Mac, Windows, and Linux (.deb)

Feedback is welcome and greatly appreciated! Either in the comments here, or if you sign up there's also a feedback button in the app navbar for whenever something irks you or you have an idea.

Thanks, Seth, Andrew, & Marcin

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39546771

Points: 30

# Comments: 7

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38861462

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

After a decade of wanting a simple, lightweight teamwork tool and not finding one, we decided to build one ourselves. We’re calling it Flat, and we have two main goals:

1. Everyone can figure it out in just a few minutes, from the intern to the zero-patience CEO.

2. It doesn’t create extra work for anybody. Everything written in Flat would have been written somewhere anyway; Flat just provides an obvious, consistent place to put it.

If you check out the demo, please let us know how you think we’re doing on these goals and where we could do better. (Mobile users, there’s a video for you since Flat is desktop-only at the moment.)

Also: we think it's crazy that work communication has become so dominated by synchronous chat e.g. Slack and Teams over the past decade. It's too easy for balls to get dropped, it’s hard to get real work done, and it's hard to find things. Chat is great for some things, but we don’t think it should be the center of our work lives or the system of record. So Flat includes async discussion threads that are as quick and easy as chat but without the downsides.

You can read more about why we're building Flat at https://flat.app/why.

Coming soon: private workspaces & quick edits.

HN FAQ

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How baked is this? We’re still in beta, but it’s pretty darn baked.

What’s your business model? No-nonsense SaaS. We’re currently in beta and free for all teams, but you can find our future pricing on our homepage.

Does this have a proper integration with GitHub? Yes it does, because we're using Flat to build Flat!

Is this an “alternative to Jira”? Ha, no. Though… some teams have in fact migrated to Flat from Jira. So, maybe?

Is this an “opinionated” tool? Yes and no. Flat eschews complex features in favor of a small set of simple primitives (workspaces, topics, tasks, and threads). But Flat has no opinion about how you should work.

Is there a dark mode? You bet. It's in the demo, try it!

What's your stack? React, TS, PostgreSQL & Replicache (all data’s local, and Flat works offline)

Do you have a mobile app? Not yet, but we will. We've been focused on making the desktop experience great first.

Hang on, is this an Electron app? You got us! Feel free to use Flat in-browser if that offends you.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38710159

Points: 10

# Comments: 2