Designing Amiable Web Spaces: Lessons from Vienna’s Café Culture
October 16, 2025
Today’s web is not always an amiable place. Sites greet you with a popover that demands assent to their cookie policy, and leave you with Taboola ads promising “One Weird Trick!” to cure your ailments. Social media sites are tuned for engagement, and few things are more engaging than a fight. Today it seems that people want to quarrel; I have seen flame wars among birders.
These tensions are often at odds with a site’s goals. If we are providing support and advice to customers, we don’t want those customers to wrangle with each other. If we offer news about the latest research, we want readers to feel at ease; if we promote upcoming marches, we want our core supporters to feel comfortable and we want curious newcomers to feel welcome.In a study for a conference on the History of the Web, I looked to the origins of Computer Science in Vienna (1928-1934) for a case study of the importance of amiability in a research community and the disastrous consequences of its loss. That story has interesting implications for web environments that promote amiable interaction among disparate, difficult (and sometimes disagreeable) people.
Source: Designing Amiable Web Spaces: Lessons from Vienna’s Café Culture
I’m a sucker for drawing lessons from historical periods, maybe those that have been overlooked or somewhat forgotten.
I’m also a bit of a sucker for sitting around in cafes and having pleasant conversations.
This article on A List Apart, which draws lessons from Vienna’s cafe culture of the interwar years (the first part of the 20th century), really caught my attention.
It’s often observed that things that make folks angry are the things that get more clicks, and in a click-driven, attention-scarce, advertising world, it’s no surprise we often get content and experiences that one wouldn’t characterise as amiable.
And yet, do people really want to live in a world driven by anxiety, conflict, contradiction, and argument?
Take a moment to draw some lessons from a more civilised time and space. One that ironically ended very soon after in one of the worst episodes of human history.
