Thoughts by Jake

These Are Our Users

Dunce

A post from Signal vs. Noise titled "Computers shouldn't make people feel like idiots" has been open in a tab for nearly a week.

Reading it, and other iPad coverage, has me torn. I know that I exist in a world populated by geeks, and I know that many outside this world are uncomfortable with computers. I have seen these people IRL and helped them.

But how uncomfortable are they really? Comfort is impossible to quantify, Sleep Number bed notwithstanding. 

Well, this post helped a lot. You should read it. 

The short version is:
  • ReadWriteWeb posted "Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login".
  • Google indexed the post.
  • The post became the top result for the keywords "facebook login".
  • People using Google to find their way to Facebook were misdirected to the post.
  • The comments on the post were littered with unhappy people, unable to login to Facebook.
There are more than 300 comments on this post, the majority of them from confused Facebook users. 

Despite the fact that RWW added bold text to the post, directing users to Facebook, and the fact that the post is no longer the top result for "facebook login", people continue to arrive there by accident, looking for Facebook.

I wonder how many people made this mistake and didn't leave a comment, either giving up or recognizing their error. 

Thousands? Tens of thousands?

It's easy to laugh, but take a second to read the Signal vs. Noise post now, or read it again. I'll wait.

I think it's fair to say that computers shouldn't make people feel stupid. After all, they dominate our lives more every year, both at work and at home. It's impossible to avoid them.

The people who made the Facebook login mistake should be frustrated and angry. They had figured out a way to get to Facebook, and it wasn't working anymore, without warning. 

Turns out computers are hard and using the intertubes is no exception. Remember when Google asked people on the street what a browser is?

These are our users, like it or not. 

Thoughts? Find the comments.

Evolution of Design

Evolution

Thought of something interesting (see disclaimer) yesterday, namely observing the evolution of how design solves problems with software.

Take a common requirement for the interwebs and its viewer, the browser, like wanting to view more than a single web page at a time. In the first few iterations of browsers, this was possible only by launching multiple instances of the browser. I'm not even sure that was possible with some of them like early versions of Netscape Navigator and IE 3.
At some point, the HTML spec updated to allow new windows to be opened by clicking a link or just viewing a page, and the dreaded pop-up was born. Spammers and advertisers everywhere rejoiced.
Yeah, I'm glossing over the technical details.
Unbridled window propagation, the hallmark of IE 6, was always something I have always intensely disliked. So, the primary feature that attracted me back to Netscape and then to Firefox, was tabs, which IE would not have for several years.
Tabs elegantly solved the root problem of having multiple web pages open at once.
However, tabs created new problems, like massive memory consumption, which limited the utility of the feature.
Lately, stream-focused apps like FriendFeed, Facebook, Brizzly and Google Buzz (and Connect) have evolved the design even further with inline viewing.
By providing a viewer for content like photos, videos, audio, and other known file types and adding web page previews, stream apps have removed the extra click required to view another web page.
So, to recap, we've gone from single web page only, to multiple windows, to multiple tabs, to inline viewing.
And I doubt this will be the final design iteration.
Anyway, this type of design evolution fascinates me because I guess I'm that guy.
Do you have favorite examples of design evolution?
Share them in comments.

And Now, Google the ISP

Tisp_diagram

So, Google has been busy announcing products this week. Lost in the Buzz news was this bit that Google is planning to build its own high-speed fiber network.

Mmm, fiber.

Their goals are

We're planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.

Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for everyone. Here are some specific things that we have in mind:

  • Next generation apps: We want to see what developers and users can do with ultra high-speeds, whether it's creating new bandwidth-intensive "killer apps" and services, or other uses we can't yet imagine.
  • New deployment techniques: We'll test new ways to build fiber networks, and to help inform and support deployments elsewhere, we'll share key lessons learned with the world.
  • Openness and choice: We'll operate an "open access" network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy, we'll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory and transparent way.
Sounds pretty sweet, but as will all Google products, lingering privacy concerns, well, linger.

Check out the video and rally your state and/or local officials to bring the Google pipe to your neighborhood.

OK, am I the only one who remembers the April Fools' 2007 and the Google TiSP? 

Where's the Middle?

Dinosaurs-lasers

Writing and maintaining a blog requires a fair amount of effort. Hence the rise of micro-blogging, which is almost frictionless (one of my favorite interface-isms), creating mountains of content, a long tail for blogging as it were.


That's actually pretty funny, since blogging was initially the long tail of online content publishing, which was kind of the long tail of publishing in general.

Makes you wonder about how long that publishing tail really is and where you are on it.

Anyway, there has to be some tool between the blog and the micro-blog. I'm hoping Posterous can help me find it.

As the experiment continues, find the comments to let me know what you think.

Oh, and picture is unrelated, but awesome. Wish I knew the credits.