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ETL to QE, Update 88, Taking the User Centered Design Pill... Again

Date: 2025-12-11

First what is the User Centered Design Pill?

When designing something, designing anything, you must ask Who, What, When, Where, Why and How with as much context as reasonable.

There must be no egos in this process, any stupid question that arises in anyone's mind arose for a reason.

The User Centered Design process exists to enhance your awareness so your project doesn't end up in the as a dead end or in the Github Grave Yard.

What constitutes reasonable context? For that you must articulate what you actually want, and trust me you don't really know what you want. So I beg of you when you start a project, write down what the end goal of the project is so you have a goal post to measure yourself.

Oh, and all the code I wrote and posted on my github is going to die with me.

My Quest

On December 13th I signed up for,

By the last session (Dec 11th) I will have completed a research paper on human centered design knowledge garden use cases.

Pasted image 20251211172552.png (Picture Taken Nov 13th 2025)

First: Who wants a knowledge garden

I never researched or articulated a clear knowledge garden definition, I went to my friends and family and basically tried selling them on the idea of having their own personal wiki for people to get to know them.

Here's the problem, that's still way to vague. What goes in a personal wiki?, Who would be reading my personal wiki?, Who do I know that has a personal wiki? are all very relevant questions I should have started with and written about.

Turns out some people don't even have anything to write about, no personal projects, no media they feel passionately about, they don't post on Instagram, they don't see value in logging their diet things they cook. This Life logging or dare I say Life Articulating lifestyle is not for everyone. This was a lesson I had to learn by talking to people.

Second: How to Get Started

Deciding where to articulate your knowledge garden is a complex problem.

Odds are if you get someone to download Obsidian or just use Apple Notes, whichever use case they are trying to develop, they may write something useful down, but they will not integrate it into something productive. It's like taking notes for a meeting that you never look at again. Which brings us to the third point.

Third: Raw Articulating is not Life Enhancing

Even if people start articulating themselves somewhere, they will eventually ask, "What's the point" when they realize the act is not life enhancing.

At the end of the day memory, including notes in knowledge gardens, purely exists to help make decisions.

If you write a blog post that not a single person reads, what was the point of writing the blog post? The same applies to tracking workouts, diets, media consumption, bookmarking, journaling and so much more.

Articulating yourself can't be a goal in and of itself, it must be integrated within life enhancing goals.

For example,

  • ETL to QE, exists as part of my Cringe your way to self actualization moto. Nobody reads those because they are so scatter brained I find it embarrassing, these posts as bookmarks to measure my progress. The goal is to eventually produce posts that articulated (edited) well enough so that I am proud to ask other people to read them.
  • Paul's Favorite Media and Paul's Favorite Software work as great reference points to send people who are interested to get to know me more. I wish everyone had places online that tracked their preferences like this.
  • Conversational Questions is a part of this site I actually use regularly with other people and have iterated on via actual conversation. I often find people talking about the same boring things on repeat. These questions help me and my friends exist those loops and engage more meaningfully.

Conclusion

  • If I am ever serious about a project I need to fill out at Heilmeier Catechism
  • Focus on people not the technology, find what motivates and interests them rather than building someone for someone that does not exist.
  • Ones PKMS should be life enhancing, I can cultivate mine to be more so