[_exec]

Would you please elaborate on this part "...his highly-symbolic visual language demonstrates what I understand as a telltale lack of nuance common to those suffering from certain mental illnesses, but the impressive part to me is that he really maximizes it"? I'm really interested in the intersection of mental health issues with various fields (I've commented elsewhere in this thread), and this is the first time I hear a review in the context of UX+{non-NeuroTypical}.

While we're at it, by "flow", do you happen to mean flow in a "workflow zen" sense [yes, I'm aware that the word zen has been abused to death :) ] know ?

Thanks!

[themodelplumber]

I'll give it a shot :)

I was told by a doctor friend that one of the side-effects of heightened anxiety is a tendency to view things in black and white. "I'm a failure." "I am a failed human." "She hates me." "I suck at life." "That guy is so perfect and I'm not." etc. Such hyperbolic interpretations are common to teenagers, stressed-out university students, and even more so with people who suffer from chronic anxiety. I know very little about schizophrenia, but I think I recall that it is, or parts of it may be, part of the general anxiety disorder sphere. Along with OCD, bipolar disorder, and more.

One of the signs of less-than-mature visual thinking is a hyperbolically-abstract way of representing things. Sky is blue, people are torso + arms + legs + head, sand is yellow. In real life of course, the sky might use many colors from any part of the spectrum of hues--a sunset might use violets, oranges, reds, all together in a spread of gradients. The color of sand depends on atmospheric conditions (fog, erupting volcano nearby, time of day--what color is sand at night, if you were to paint it?), intermediary surfaces (rose-colored glasses). A human might have one leg (seen from the side), one big fat leg with two feet (three-quarters view), or even three arms (if you count the dark shadow that the one arm happens to be producing at the time due to the light source).

So I'm taking it for granted that a hyperbolic view is pretty much a constant current in this guy's life. It's pretty much always there, and he seems to be coping with it enough that he is not out causing damage to society (well, not physically). But along the way it has informed his entire visual language, which he relies upon in his interface design. Everything you see on screen in his creation has gone through his hyperbolic mental filter to become something very iconic. Because his disorder seems to put a lot of pressure on him to communicate, we are able to see this rich visual outcome. Even the interface chrome is a clue. There is apparently no need in his mind for a refined way to express antialiased curves or subtle lines in the interface. High-contrast, blinking characters will do. In my rather direct reading, I feel like I am seeing his brain open up. Everything goes through this threshold filter before it gets output to the screen, written down, expressed verbally, and so on. So rather than depth, we get breadth.

The sound works the same way. "This basic sound is good enough" probably never entered his mind. My guess, of course. But I'm thinking it's more like, "I am now playing a hymn".

I guess the use of the bible is a great example of this too. More culturally-refined religions that mesh very well with mankind's search for meaning tend not to be the ones that condemn people or rely on the harsh words of the old testament so much.

Whether in art, music, or religion, many of us wish we could be happy with a more basic, gets-things-done approach. We fill our movies with people who make quick, brutal decisions that most people could never force themselves to do. We may listen to hard & heavy music, but simple beats alone will never do--we crave detail, texture, gradations, refinement. We draw simple pictures, then wonder why we aren't happy with our representation of our mother's face as a simple smiling curve and two dots for eyes. These things feel like they trip us up, but our struggle with them is real and important for our maturity. To talk to an artist who creates great abstract works, visually, with music, or with words, but who cannot express his journey through life's gradations, is to hire a novelty artist; someone to whom we can only relate by tangent. I can relate to this OS creator by tangent. That tangent is my childhood; the innocence I left behind some time ago. But I have to acknowledge that I am drawn to it. I can't just let it go because I see part of myself in there, and I wonder if I am seeing in his beautifully abbreviated forms what would have happened to me if I have stayed content as that version of myself for a longer period of time. Why was I in such a hurry to see the gray areas in life? He is in a sort of flow (yes, workflow zen like, or alpha-stage like--and that's where I wonder if, since this alpha-stage, vanishing-fears, creative flow stuff is so sought after--if this stability he found to develop a whole OS rather than harass people in the streets all day is due to his home & family environment / physical needs being met) that is not so scatterbrained--it's focused. But it (unintentionally) sacrifices a closer look at reality in the process.

Well, I went a bit overboard and decided I needed to explore this a bit myself. So nothing definite, but I hope this gets my direction across. I am more of an intuitive personality type so I build thoughts starting from a hazy recollection of learning experiences that seem to align nicely ;)