I suppose that's more of a category than a title, but what the heck. Between the time that I thought to write this post and now, there was a bit of a disagreement that distracted me. Sapped the creative juices, you might say.
My first thought was to write something about the Blogger add-on program, Hello, which apparently allows you to add photographs to your blog. I'm not a 'technology guy', but I did think of myself as unphaseable by programs like that -- programs that non-techies have mastered!-- but I was wrong. I tried four or five times over the course of a couple of days to fire that jewel up, each time muttering and finally giving up. Finally, about an hour ago, I discovered that when their instructions say to 'add a caption, then press Publish', they meant to say 'add a caption (this is required), then press Publish'. Why they feel that photographs need captions, I don't know -- but they clearly do; if you don't write a caption, the Publish button will remain hidden. Put a single letter in the caption box, and hey, presto.
One of the things that we've heard for years, to the point where it is an accepted part of the mythology of life (mythology is probably not the right word; I need a word that means 'stuff everyone believes, or almost everyone, or at least me and a couple of other people, and it might not be true, though it probably is), is that kids adopt technology easily because they are fearless (not so much that they're literally intrepid as they don't know that they should fear it) and because they're willing to bang around until something useful happens. In this case, I finally thought 'okay, dammit, I'll write a damn caption'...and you know the result. I know, that doesn't fit the description of being fearless or of just banging around, but I'll take it, because now I know the secret. But it led me to another transient thought. I wondered if the reason that people have trouble with software packages is because the people who write the packages essentially think in a certain way, making certain assumptions (well, of course the user will know this, well of course the user will know that, well of course the user will) when in fact no, the user doesn't, no the user didn't, and no the user won't. And the software, 'thinking' that the user will proceed along this 'clearly defined' path, becomes all flummoxed when the user doesn't.
You know how people will occasionally gripe at the idea that a software prompt will come up with a question and the button you push to get the prompt away is labelled 'Ok', when what you really want is one that's labelled 'OK, DAMMIT!' ? Well, in the case where the user gets sufficiently flummoxed, I think that the software should 'detect it'. How? Gee, I don't know -- though one possibility would be for it to 'know' that it takes the average user thirty seconds to fill out the screen, so if the screen is still being displayed after two minutes, maybe there's a problem == and at that point, perhaps it should pop a 'Hey, are you well and truly ticked off?' button. And if you pressed 'Why, YES', then it would do something useful, like showing you what the screen should look like, all filled it, or tell you where the info that you enter is supposed to come from, or define what it means, or something. Hey, I'm winging it here, but you see where I'm going.
Maybe that would help when people (like me, in this case) are ready to just give up.
6 comments:
Two comments:
1) Where's the picture?
2 I want one of the "TTO" buttons for my screen, too, or at least to change my escape key to read "sufficiently flummoxed."
Cate
No picture. I was just testing the functionality in case I ever did want to put a picture there.
I do a bit of reading -- not much at all -- on user design, and I am convinced that a good interface design is the result of careful analysis, seriously in depth understanding of the user, and a bargeload of luck. A large barge. An UltraLarge Crude Carrier size would be about right. I don't know how they do it.
And thats just the part you see. Conceptualizing the app's flow, designing and implementing its capabilities, making the app simple, elegant, and powerful....whoops, did I just describe a Mac ?
Wow, a 94 word sentence! Ya know, that why I keep coming back here....just to watch this stream of consciousness....(smile...)
I have a "Trivial Pursuit" game when you leave it to make a sandwich will make increasingly snarky comments about how long you are taking to get back to it. You don't usually hear them because, well, because you are in the little boys room....but the folks you left behind all hear the little comments. So, the technology is already here.
The word you were searching for would be presupposition.
Wow, a 94 word sentence! Ya know, that why I keep coming back here....just to watch this stream of consciousness....(smile...)
I have a "Trivial Pursuit" game when you leave it to make a sandwich will make increasingly snarky comments about how long you are taking to get back to it. You don't usually hear them because, well, because you are in the little boys room....but the folks you left behind all hear the little comments. So, the technology is already here.
The word you were searching for would be presupposition.
and no, I dont' know why it posted twice! Seems to be doing it on MY blog as well.
I think Blogger occasionally just thinks something is so interesting that it wants to post it twice.
Maybe not. It does it to me, too.
Post a Comment