Your interface sucks.
Today gnovis ran an article of mine I am particularly fond of. A dash of digital life, family, and The Ting Tings. What do you get? My thoughts a life full of crappy interfaces. Don’t worry. It’s not you, it’s the interface. Here is a taste to wet the appetite:
Talking on the phone with my sister several weeks ago, she began enumerating the reasons she shouldn’t join Facebook. This was hardly necessary. I am fairly certain that the mother of three young kids has very little time for updating her Facebook status or playing Photo Hunt. Still, I tried to play along:
“You could upload pictures of your kids,” I offered weakly. Little did I realized I had hit the issue squarely on the head.
Read the entire article on gnovis: It’s not you, it’s the interface.
October 26th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Good stuff, Jed.
Call me old-fashioned – and not to undermine the quality of the post – I’m coding up a Firefox plugin that capitalizes (at least) the first letter of each sentence. Hehe.
Seriously, though… Don’t you think this scenario translates to the workplace? And, if so, is your generation prepared to cope with the fact that some boomers won’t retire for another 5-10 years? And what about us X’ers? Are we expected to mediate all this?
Call me a whiner, but I’m exhausted. Help.
October 29th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Very funny Brian. One of the topic I specifically avoided is learned behavior. I am reminded of the recent debunking of the “digital native.” If teenagers aren’t more technically savvy, just more savvy with the technology they use (which makes complete sense), then it should hold that we can make interfaces for people of any age, provided it makes sense for the reality of their life.
I think one of the major problems is that socially we expect “older” users to be the same kind of user as “younger” users. “With enough time, they’ll get it!” In doing so, I think we actually end up placing the burden of cross-generational understanding on our interfaces. Perhaps the reason grandma can’t learn email has nothing to do with email, and more to do with her not understanding why you would ever write someone an email at 3AM.