Buttons and the Tailoring Culture

Buttons was an early project at EuroPARC exploring collaborative customisation (MacLean et al., 1990).
Buttons were on-screen objects that encapsulated code. Pressing the button caused the code to be activated.
Buttons could live on the desktop, or be encapsulated into documents, which also allowed them to be
collected together (lots of buttons on a single document), incorporated into software documentation, and
included in email.
Early versions of buttons included simply the Lisp code to be executed to perform their actions. Later
versions introduced customisable appearances, so that buttons could be distinguished from each other and
given a personal flavour; and separable “parameters” so that the buttons could be tailored more easily by
non-programmers. Along with the ability to pass buttons around through electronic mail, these features
made it easier for people to share their buttons and adapt those of others to new or specialised purposes.
Heavy users of buttons might end up with as many as fifty buttons on their screen, specialised to all sorts of
different personal needs.
One thing that turned out to be crucial in the Buttons project was the fostering of what MacLean et al.
describe as “a tailoring culture”. Not only was it critically important that the technology of Buttons was
easily shareable and malleable, but it was also necessary to develop a workgroup ethos that encouraged
tailoring. This included, for example, establishing that a button you received through email or copied from
a colleague was “your button”, and hence, available for you to modify (and not still “their property” and
inviolate).