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Dynamic documents as personal software
Tuesday
April
 
25
th, 
16:10
 - 
17:00

Today, personal computing is organized around apps: prefabricated units of software developed by professionals for the masses. How might we reorient computing so that people can deeply tailor software to meet their unique needs?

This talk presents Potluck, a research prototype that enables people to start with regular text documents and gradually enrich them into interactive tools for managing recipes, workouts, household chores, and more. I'll show how Potluck represents one step towards a broader vision of personal, malleable software tools that users can reconfigure on the fly.

Watch the full talk below:

Geoffrey Litt

Geoffrey Litt

Researcher and PhD student @ MIT

Geoffrey is a researcher who wants everyone to be able to create their own personal software tools. He's currently a PhD student at MIT in the Software Design Group and collaborates with Ink & Switch, an independent research lab. Prior to that, he was an engineer and designer at an education technology startup. His interests include browser extensions, spreadsheets, and large language models.