Wednesday, 17th May, 2006

Gooey

web usability random

You know, I guess sometimes it's really easy to forget that people who don't spend their lives messing around with web interfaces can sometimes find it hard to grasp concepts that to some of us seem perfectly reasonable.

I just had an email for a student user of a website that I've made, confused and belwildered by the whole process. The way I've designed it, you see, is that you upload Stuff™ to a main 'stream', and then you 'push' that Stuff™ into different places — you blog it, you collect it into projects and sets, you add it to your general research...

But the email read something like this:

hi Siobhan iv got into the web site, but it wont let me type anything on the page can i come and see u

Now, apart from it sounding like an email sent by One Of Them™, it suddenly struck me what was going on. This student user had managed to log themselves in and had been confronted by a (practically) empty page. They'd then tried to use that page as a word processor, click in it, and type in it — whereas me, myself, would have been straight at the 'Upload Shit' link.

My initial reaction was one of "whythefuckisitthathardtounderstand?whatthehelldoyouthinka'website'is?" FFS. But this is a reaction hewn from a day of frustration and infuriation. And also a reaction based purely on my own engagement with online things.

Just because I know that I need to 'upload' shit to fill a page, doesn't mean that everyone else does.

There was something really interesting on A List Apart (or 43thingumys, or Signal vs Noisiness) recently, about populating the first-view page of a site with stuff that would help someone understand what was going on. I think I've really failed in that respect.

My GUI sucks. I need to redo it.

...

WHAT?!

I am so fucking drained. I feel like I've been barraged from all sides today. Every five seconds there was someone else needing help, someone else needing a bit of technical advice.

I've spent most of today glaring at people, and saying "Do I look like I'm free?"

Obviously though, I'm in my total element. Earlier, I discovered that because of our general licenses, I could have Quark running on my laptop, and I had someone stare in wonder at me 'playing the Quark piano' as I knocked out a quick poster spread for them.

...

Last night, M and I watched Crash.

Wow.

Seriously wow. I found it challenging to say the least.

There was a moment when the pair of us (on swapped sofas, bizarrely) were gawped at the screen, hands clutched at our faces, not quite believing the power and intensity of what we were watching.

...

Also, last night, I had about half a bottle of wine.

My fears — my horrible fears — about not being able to sleep when slightly sober were realised, not because of the lack of booze, but because of some drunken shits that decided to shout their way up the street outside at two in the morning.

Then again at four.

In a bid to relax myself and prepare for a night of sleep without being trashed (it's been a while — as all those 'worried' about me will testify), I knocked back a couple of herbal sleep-aids.

I'm blaming them for the nightmares.

...

I know I said I wasn't going to "write anything big", and even though this isn't really "big" in the true sense of the word (or, at least, in the Grand Siobhan Scheme Of Things™), I found myself with a laptop and an internet connection, and fuck-all on the telly.

So sorry.

Wasn't The Line Of Beauty good though?

"And now on BBC2, bum-sex, Tories and swearing. Enjoy"

James, way to break my blog I know that article, but it wasn't the one I was thinking about. I'll try and find it later.

April, I think my student user was expecting Photoshop to be honest