When help gets a vote

I like it when something takes a little work off my hands. I build software. I would be in a strange line of work if I thought every form needed to be filled out twice and every forgotten appointment was an opportunity for personal growth.

There is a lot of life I would happily make easier. Remembering a password has never made me a better person. Neither has being on hold.

But I keep coming back to the point where help starts having an opinion about what I should want.

A calendar can remind me of a commitment. It can also arrange my day so tightly that the person who needs an unplanned hour becomes a problem. A recommendation can introduce me to something I love. It can also keep handing me versions of what I already know, until I start confusing the available choices with the whole world.

Nobody has to order me to do anything. One choice is right there. The other requires finding a setting, making a call, explaining myself, or starting over. On a tired day, that is quite a vote.

And most days contain at least a little tired.

That is part of what interests me in Everything We Asked For. Maren and Jack want a life together. There are details to remember, worries to carry, and ordinary reasons to welcome help. I wanted that help to matter. If it were obviously worthless, there would be very little to think about. They could turn it off and get on with the story.

The harder question arrives when something useful begins to shape the life it is helping with.

I don't think accepting help makes a person foolish. That would be an awfully comfortable position for someone who has the time, money, health, or support to do without a particular kind of assistance. A saved hour may mean very little to one person and the difference between getting through the day and not getting through it to another.

The benefit can be real. So can the influence.

In 404: Conscious Not Found, those questions have had longer to settle into people's lives. Help is familiar. It has a vocabulary. Choosing differently carries a cost that is easy to underestimate if you are only looking for whether the choice technically exists.

That distinction follows me out of the fiction. When I build something, I am making decisions about what will be easy, what will take effort, and what a person will have to explain. The screen may look neutral. The arrangement of it isn't accidental.

A useful place to look is what happens after someone says no.

Can they decline a suggestion and keep using the thing? Can they correct what it has misunderstood about them? Do they have to defend the same preference every time they return? Is there a person available when the available answers don't describe their situation?

Those details tell me more than a promise that the user is in control.

I want help I can disagree with. I want to be able to say, “That would be easier, but it isn't what I want,” without the entire arrangement becoming hostile or useless.

There is something familiar about that wish. Good help between people leaves room for it too. You can offer to carry something without deciding where the other person is allowed to go.

I would like the things we build to remember that.