A Spork in the Road

And this is a fabulous one, described by Campfire NYC’s Michael Monello:

…the b-movie producer William Castle is a hero of mine. Those of you who lack the appreciation for kitsch that I have might know him as the producer of the Roman Polanski film ROSEMARY’S BABY, but in his day he was known as the “King of Gimmicks.”

Gimmick is an unfortunate word, however, as much of what he did was bridge the gap between the safety of the silver screen and the audiences lives. His most famous invention was PERCEPTO for his Vincent Price film THE TINGLER. The Tingler was a worm that burrowed into your spine and would kill you. The only way to kill the worm was to scream as loud as you can.

During the film, the Tingler crawls into a movie theater and then the screen goes dark. An announcer is heard:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Tingler has entered this theater! SCREAM, SCREAM FOR YOUR LIVES!”

The seats were wired with PERCEPTO, which administered small electric shocks to your bottom. He didn’t just break the third wall, but turned his movie into a physically immersive experience.

— Michael Monello

(This reminds me of the Alien Encounter attraction at Disney’s Magic Kingdom, a ride which has since been replaced. I’ve heard friends pan Alien Encounter, but I loved it.)

Riddle me this, Batman: why in the world does any enterprise website use ASP at all?

Now, I’m a Firefox user, for reasons too numerous to describe here and now. I’m on the web constantly. I design for it, and I explore it for business and leisure. Most particularly for business, and here’s where I absolutely cannot fathom business websites that insist on utilizing a website framework that does not work on a significant portion of their user’s browsers.

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I love HGTV. I love decorating and choosing paint colors and buying accessories. To my great delight, it’s finally time for us to decorate our kitchen/sitting room area. I was inspired by a gorgeous throw we got from Maureen, and after a few iterations of paint color choices (the first pair of yellows we chose clashed with the blue-gray marble, for instance), we’re finally settled on a color scheme: Adriatic Sea (blue), Fortrace (gray), Ranch Red, and Crushed Pearl.

But I didn’t let my color fancies go to waste. I now have five AcePaint booklets and a slew of paint chip panels on file in my office, because I had a fabulous revelation last week: home decorating tools are a great tool for choosing website color schemes.

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I won’t pretend I’m not embarrassed to have injured myself sitting in a chair.

Of course, I’m not alone; as soon as I say “severe neck and back pain” to anyone who works at a desk, I get instant sympathy and advice. (Best advice from a colleague so far: crunches to build abdominal strength.) Sitting in a bad posture for 10-12 hour days and stressing out over work has installed a little pain machine in my back, and the pain machine is trained to work long hours and take its duties seriously. [sigh]

I’m sitting in a brand new chair right now, waiting for my brand new desk to arrive, and stopping once an hour to do my brand new exercises recommended by my brand new massage therapist. Chair, desk, and massage therapist are all things I’ve meant to find over the past year, but always with the thought that I’d wait “another month or two” because of time, money, etc. All those delay tactics were tossed out the window by the screaming agony that’s taken up residence in my neck and between my shoulder blades.

I’ve actually thought seriously about a neck-ectomy. Last night I fantasized that my neck could just be removed because - wow! - wouldn’t that feel good?

Instead, I take handfuls of ibuprofin and spend a lot of time sitting in a very precise position to minimize the anguish.

The communication gulf between designers and users can sometimes seem as wide as the one between species. Last night I was pondering the lessons my dogs teach me about user testing and usability planning (and the same principles apply when writing user documentation):

1. Unreasonable expectations: My dog isn’t going to “hold it” because I’m on the phone and it’s an inconvenient time for her to need to go outside. Neither are my users going to put extra effort into understanding a non-intuitive interface.
2. Shifting responsibility: It’s ridiculous for me to be annoyed with my dog for not understanding my instructions to her when I’m the one who hasn’t taken the time to train her properly. Likewise, it’s ridiculous for me to be annoyed with my users for ignoring a key section of a site if I didn’t design for them to find it easily.
3. Understanding the “other”: Dogs aren’t humans; they think differently, and I have to learn about their thought processes before I can communicate with them. That means reading books as well as spending time with them with an open mind to discover their way of doing things, rather than immediately trying to control their behavior. Users aren’t designers; they approach websites with different assumptions and will not stop to figure out what I did wrong and then explain it to me. I have to study how users think by doing my research (such as reading Steve Krug’s superlative book Don’t Make Me Think) and doing lots of good user testing.
4. Accepting Limitations: My dogs are never going to do my laundry, or serve out the right portion of food into their bowls at 6:00, or offer workable solutions for climate change. They are, however, going to be affectionate, fun, and will huddle for warmth on chilly days. Users aren’t going to spontaneously understand a labyrinthine menu structure, or sign up for updates from a site they don’t even understand, or send detailed and useful critiques of why your site isn’t useful to them. They will, however, act predictably if you’ve done your homework, and they will certainly tell you what’s not working if you do your user testing and can listen openly to their feedback.

Frustration is the enemy of clear thinking! Accept responsibility for doing your job right, and let your users be as “stupid and mindless” as we all are when faced with a new system, without resentment.