one mikro2nd
web2, net3, programming, design, business, and the fundamental nature of spacetime

Invisible Work    [ design/ ]

20.May.08  8:51 AM, SAST | Words (141) | 0 Comments | 0 Trackbacks

Quotable    [ design/ ]

"The Ark was built by one man. The Titanic was built by a team of professionals."

25.Apr.08  7:53 AM, SAST | Words (16) | 0 Comments | 0 Trackbacks

User-interface Reboot    [ design/ ]

This article by Mr Mirchandani gets it exactly right: UI again ...don't pretty up, destroy!

I have never forgotten the experience of early last year. Our car had been stolen, and we were jumping through the licensing department's hoops to get the old car de-registered, and our new car registered.  Well, 10-year-old, 2nd-hand car, since that's all we could afford with what the insurance company deigned to pay out -- another saga for another day.

First we could not de-register the old car, because it was flagged on the licensing system as "stolen", so no changes to its details are permitted.  WTF?  We could not unflag it, since that would require the police to mark the car as recovered, complete with verification of engine, chassis, VIN and registration numbers.  Eventually we left the matter in the hands of one supervisor who took pity on us as I crumpled in the face of this actively-hostile "information" system.  She solved the impasse by going outside the system: phone calls to a special contact in Pretoria -- "high friends in low places."

Then we had to register the new car.  The details had to get captured no less than 5 times!  Twice, manually by myself, the remainder by the clerk punching a terminal.  And two of those instance involved recapturing the vehicle details from a form still-hot from their system's laser printer.  The system already had the details, yet they still had to be manually recaptured.  This is insane!  Weren't computers supposed to save us work?


Technorati Tags: ui, iser-interface-design, hostile-IT

15.Dec.07  10:16 AM, SAST | Words (254) | 0 Trackbacks

Great Tools, Great Times.    [ design/ ]

Just as much as some software is a pain in the arse to work with (even though it may be totally essential) on the other side of the coin we discover things like the CSS editor in the Firefox/Web-Developer Toolbar!

Working on a significant look&feel upgrade for the farm website, I tripped across this thing today.  "Oh!" says Jason, "I've known about it for ages -- can't work without it.  I thought you knew..."  Well, call me Mr Slow...

Despite its few quirks and oddities, the ability to fiddle with CSS -- especially the somewhat complex CSS I'm working with, where there is a cascade of CSS files, each one overriding another -- and see the results as you type...

That rocks!


Technorati Tags: firefox, mozilla, css, webdesign

09.Mar.07  8:27 PM, SAST | Words (124) | 1 Comments | 0 Trackbacks

How to Screw-Up Your Web2 Application    [ design/ ]

If I were a marketing guy, I would keep you in suspense right up to the end of this post.  I would waffle on for ages about how and why I'm going to tell you "the secret," and what a super guy I am for letting you in on this.

But I'm a programmer, and time is precious.  All over the web I see this particular piece of egregious stupidity:

Apps that use email addresses as user-ids.

I strongly advise against the use of email addresses as login ids.  Consider the following 2 common cases:

1. The user changes their email address (due to changing provider or whatever). 
2. A user leaves the community.  Months/years later another user joins; they have the same email address as the old user, but are not the same person.  Are you going to refuse them entry?
   

In the former case, if you allow them to change their login to correspond to their new email address, you lose the trail of what they've done over time, since you've essentially changed their identity.

Worse, yet, if you're doing any kind of app that allows the user to build up a history, karma points, reputation, whatever, since you force them to throw away their entire investment in your site.  They may as well go elsewhere.  That history took the user time, energy and effort to build, and constitutes your only real barrier to entry against competitors who want to eat your userbase.

In Summary:

A login-id is an identity.  An email address is not an identity.  It is an address.


Technorati Tags: web2, web2.0, identity, design

01.Aug.06  1:52 PM, SAST | Words (259) | 0 Comments | 0 Trackbacks

Software That Makes You Angry    [ design/ ]

Isn't it peculiar?  Some pieces of software are actually an almost physical pleasure to use.  Others make one actively angry.  Or is that just me?

I will refrain from mentioning a specific piece of software, here -- it would just be a distraction.  The software in question has been pissing me off the whole afternoon.  All I want is to make a simple change to some templates.  But it turns into a huge bloody performance: hoop jumping, contortions, hystrionics and hysterics, all resulting in a Resort to Strong Drink.

The software itself is not such a terrible piece of work.  In some places it is excellent, and the rest of it certainly gets the job done.  But the thing taken as a whole just makes me angry.  Microsoft Windows has much the same effect on me.

On the other side of the fence are pieces of software that just slide effortlessly into your life.  When you stop and bother to notice them, they're just... effortlessly there for you.  No muss, no fuss.  They just get out of your way and work.

So what's the key?  I would certainly only like to write the latter kind of software and avoid foisting the former on the world.  I think it boils down to "Do things my way or else" vs. "Let me serve you; here's what I do... I'll stay out of your face, now."

What software pisses you off?  What software do you love?


Technorati Tags: software, usability, design, ease-of-use, love, hate, windows

05.Mar.07  5:44 PM, SAST | Words (246) | 0 Comments | 0 Trackbacks

Vista Sound    [ design/ ]

Zoli has an entertaining little anecdote over on his blog about how users cannot disable the startup sound in the current (beta) release of Microsoft's Vista OS.

Funny, back in the days when I still had a Windows machine (around 5 years ago), I never could be bothered to figure my way through their twisty-little-maze of configuration dialogues-for-the-brain-dead to switch off the startup noise.  I used to just jump in and delete the damn media file.

So I guess there is a way to turn it off after all...


Technorati Tags: windows, windows+vista, vista+beta, windows+sound, usability, zoli, this-is-broken, microsoft

26.Aug.06  11:17 AM, SAST | Words (96) | 0 Comments | 0 Trackbacks

Anything New Takes Time    [ design/ ]

I recently added "Crossroads Dispatches" to the ever-growing list of blogs I keep an eye on.  I liked the fusion of touchy-feely and hard-nosed reality.  Something like my lifestyle that attempts to fuse web entrepreneurship with self-sufficient living and growing my own food.  Something like Sushi - the blandness of Rice with the Bland/Salty fish and the BITE of Wasabi.

In Crossroads Dispatches: Living Takes Time, Thinking Big Takes Time, Ms Rodriguez writes about how many fast-paced people discover that going more slowly really enables them to go faster, but only after some (often severe) personal crisis.

This brings to mind the oft-touted common wisdom of Internet startups: "If you can't get something up and running within a couple of (days|weeks|months) you probably don't have anything. You probably don't understand what it is you're wanting to build."

What horse-shit.  Frequently this comes from people who are not programmers, and who have no clue of all the intricacies and complexities involved in designing, building, debugging, deploying, managing and enhancing an application; least of all a distributed application.  Now try this all by yourself. You get to do everything yourself.  There's nobody else to lean on to put together the graphics or to install the database or to spot the stupid mistake that's going to take you half a day to figure out by yourself.  There's no-one who will listen to your ideas and tell you when you're spouting crap or just in love with the smell of your own shit.

Its hard work, and it takes time.  Lots of time.  And you're better off going slowly than trying to meet the bullshit expectations of some alleged common wisdom. 

As you may gather, I have been working on a new New Venture for some weeks now (which also accounts for the sporadic and irregular blog posting) and am about halfway through the development cycle.


Technorati Tags: software, design, venture, time, haste, speed

17.Jul.06  10:42 AM, SAST | Words (315) | 0 Comments | 0 Trackbacks