I'm a bit of a cynic really. Anyone that's trawled through the depths of this blog will know that I have a fairly acid tongue when it comes to technology. I am a walking example of the phrase "familiarity breeds contempt".
One of the projects I've been involved in rececntly has started generating press just by virtue of it being better than anything that has preceded it in this particular industry - I personally would have preferred them to be commenting about the content but any press is good press as they say.
By rights I should have a nice warm fuzzy feeling about having a site people talk about and it's always great to receive recognition for a job well done - especially for my more junior staff who have worked damned hard on the site - however it is disappointing that we still exist in an age online where just applying some good design, good information architecture and some well balanced technology is enough to turn an entire sector on it's head.
Apologists will hold up their hands and say "we're a young form of media - it's going to take time". I however am not in this camp - how much time do we need?
Personally I find it untenable that there are still sites being built using non-standards based HTML and CSS, that sites beyond a couple of holding pages are built using things like Dreamweaver and not content managed, that good structural web design is something that still amazes people rather than being the norm and that information architecture still hasn't found its way to the hearts of 95% of the digital agencies that service the web.
I am constantly lamenting the state of most industries' websites generally. Take a tour around the leisure industry and find a website for a hotel anywhere in the world. Look at most ecommerce sites for even big retailers and certainly go anywhere online in the government, volunteering or political sectors and you are sure to be assaulted by bad design, bad technology and most importantly bad information architecture.
Even five years ago there were excuses that bore merit - changing web standards and platforms, variation of internet connection speeds and different levels of web penetration in different markets. These excuses don't exist any more. And to be honest why was it when I was learning my craft as a developer all those years ago that I was told about things like usability, information design and later information architecture but the junior developers and designers now are not...
This is why there are still industries to revolutionise if you have the contacts, the desire or the contracts to do it. Here is my short list of the biggest problem industries:
1. Tourism and leisure - get some good design and photos, don't use bog stanard templates and for goodness sake stop sending my credit card details in unencrypted email.
2. Holiday / travel booking - get some fuzzy logic in your scripting. If I can't fly tomorrow but I can fly the next day tell me without making me guess. Also make it easy for me to bounce back and forth between different trips without having to start again. Remember all those lectures about how to maintain the state of a system in Computer Science... this is what they were for.
3. Retail - Keep your site updated with accurate stock levels. I also shouldn't have to go to the end of the check out process to find out what the shipping charges are. Do a detection on my regional settings or IP address and take a best guess and say it's a guess. 95% of the time you'll be right and I'll stop having to go back and forth.
4. Service Media - When will you learn that a flash site turns off most people as does a splash page. At least have an alternative HTML site so I can find your phone number / contact email or address. Also remember that table based design was around in 1997 - time to get with the times guys.
5. Volunteering / politics - Yes I know you are on a budget but just because someone you know or your favourite intern just happens to have a copy of dreamweaver doesn't make them a professional web designer or developer. More harm than good is done by casual development - find some budget, find someone aligned to your cause and they'll do it cheaper or for kudos value and develop a site worth looking at.
6. Government - Just because a turd is shiny doen't make it worth anything. Above all make sure someone in the procuring department knows the difference between HTML and CSS and you won't get shafted. Government expenditure online is extortionate for the value achieved. Given the amount of paperwork done for any bit of government work it is amazing that Information Architecture isn't put right to the centre of the brief... how many people using direct.gov.uk would that help?
So get stuck in and lets see some other industries and sectors turned on their head. It's about time the biggest information resource in history got a bit of a spit polish and had all the kinks straightened.
Showing posts with label general. Show all posts
Showing posts with label general. Show all posts
Tuesday, 12 February 2008
Wednesday, 9 January 2008
The warm glow of site launch
I've been in this game a long time but there is still nothing sweeter than launching a site after spending a months building it with your team and the client. As a TD, site launch brings a mix of emotion - fatigue from the lack of sleep for the 10 days prior to launch, relief that the site is launching on time and on budget and the client seems happy with it all and finally worry about whether the thing will work as expected, what will everyone else think about it and by god I hope the server doesn't fall over on Day 1 under load...
My grandfather was an engineer for Philips and he described to me the same feelings when they were launching a new product so I have a sense that irrespective of discipline, team based endeavours in engineering always foster the same heady mix of emotion fuelled by relief, adrenaline and fatigue.
Whilst I am an old hand at this within this industry these days, having been here since the dawning, it is great to watch members of the team for whom this is the first of many site launches in their career and their happiness that it is done and their complete pride in their work.
Having seen photos of workers completing railways and other major constructions in the 19th and early 20th century one can't help notice the parallels of young engineers completing a job regardless of whether they are working with steel, glass or lines of code.
My grandfather was an engineer for Philips and he described to me the same feelings when they were launching a new product so I have a sense that irrespective of discipline, team based endeavours in engineering always foster the same heady mix of emotion fuelled by relief, adrenaline and fatigue.
Whilst I am an old hand at this within this industry these days, having been here since the dawning, it is great to watch members of the team for whom this is the first of many site launches in their career and their happiness that it is done and their complete pride in their work.
Having seen photos of workers completing railways and other major constructions in the 19th and early 20th century one can't help notice the parallels of young engineers completing a job regardless of whether they are working with steel, glass or lines of code.
Wednesday, 19 December 2007
SMS Bamboozlement...
I'm doing some work for a client at the moment who's industry is particularly technophobic. The absolute cutting edge is a bit of YouTube video thrown willy nilly into a page. I'd also point out that design is something that rarely makes an appearance in this particular industry.
So it was pretty refreshing when we went to them with a series of ideas from the more commercial sectors of New Media and one of the things they latched onto was SMS. Queue annoyance though when we had already got everything ready to go other than to push the big green "launch" button and another company got involved and started talking about location aware services and high end data capture etc.
At this point the client dissolved into a mess of indecision - "Why weren't we doing all of this?" was the question, to which the answer was "Because you don't need to - primarily because your text messaging service is built around raising revenue through donations!"
I've had this happen in the past, notably with SEO companies. I do pity the poor clients who get stuck in these situations where they've finally decided to push their technology base along but then get waylaid by all the glittery, flashing and hypnotic LEDs.
At the end of the day it is important to remember why you are doing something and not get sidetracked (and not get ripped off). Once a strong foundation of technology is laid there is always something new you can build - you don't have to have every shiny present under the tree to have a great christmas.
So it was pretty refreshing when we went to them with a series of ideas from the more commercial sectors of New Media and one of the things they latched onto was SMS. Queue annoyance though when we had already got everything ready to go other than to push the big green "launch" button and another company got involved and started talking about location aware services and high end data capture etc.
At this point the client dissolved into a mess of indecision - "Why weren't we doing all of this?" was the question, to which the answer was "Because you don't need to - primarily because your text messaging service is built around raising revenue through donations!"
I've had this happen in the past, notably with SEO companies. I do pity the poor clients who get stuck in these situations where they've finally decided to push their technology base along but then get waylaid by all the glittery, flashing and hypnotic LEDs.
At the end of the day it is important to remember why you are doing something and not get sidetracked (and not get ripped off). Once a strong foundation of technology is laid there is always something new you can build - you don't have to have every shiny present under the tree to have a great christmas.
Tuesday, 24 April 2007
The things we take for granted
I had one of those amazing moments as a techie last night where you get so gobsmacked by something that you think about it even a day or so later.
I was doing something on a mate's computer. Fair enough he isn't the most computer literate person in the world but he gets by - he's online and uses the web, email etc to get things done - he's even bought things online too. So he falls firmly in the "average user" category - certainly into the definition of the average use we use when we spec out systems and I'd say anyone that works at a software house or digital agency would look at Dean in the same way.
So what gobsmacked me?
The scroll wheel on his mouse... I was editing a large file for him and scrolling quickly up and down using either the scroll wheel to flick me around the document or doing that windows thing where you depress the button and flick the mouse and you start scanning the document up or down at various speeds.
Dean was sitting there amazed and just said "I had no idea you could do that". Initially I thought he was talking about the editing in the config file I was hacking but it turns out he didn't even realise there was a little wheel in there - as far as he was concerned it was a place to rest his finger and was part of the design of the mouse.
This got me thinking about all these things we as techies take for granted - not the big things like being able to get your email on your mobile phone or being able to mashup 10 different data sources to produce something new and novel or even build a website from scratch using nothign but a text editor.
I'm talking about things like people not knowing their mice can do different things, that your phone probably can browse the web as well as make calls. My wife still can't even write a text message. I come across people even now who don't have internet connections and plenty who are still on dialup.
As our industry grows, how does this moving "average user" impact on the people who are below average? Do we create a digital divide not necessarily based on the "haves and have nots" but on the basis of "cans and cannots"?
Seeing things like this has made me wonder again about people's perception and their interaction with their computing environment. I remember sitting in on a user testing session way back and seeing someone have one of those moments where they "got" the way the web worked - you could tell because she said "That's why that text has a line under it - I always wondered about that".
Anyone who's got a relli who is a timid computer user knows that they don't do things with it because they are afraid they'll break it. Trying to get them to do anything outside their comfort zone is really difficult.
With computers getting cheaper and cheaper and the next influx of users coming on board, we that build systems and interfaces must be sure to remember that the "average user" isn't getting smarter or more stupid - they will initially be less experienced and turning away these less experienced users may result in less traffic / sales whatever further down the line if someone else comes along that will hold their hand and guide them through the process.
In 10-15 years this won't be an issue - but it is now.
I was doing something on a mate's computer. Fair enough he isn't the most computer literate person in the world but he gets by - he's online and uses the web, email etc to get things done - he's even bought things online too. So he falls firmly in the "average user" category - certainly into the definition of the average use we use when we spec out systems and I'd say anyone that works at a software house or digital agency would look at Dean in the same way.
So what gobsmacked me?
The scroll wheel on his mouse... I was editing a large file for him and scrolling quickly up and down using either the scroll wheel to flick me around the document or doing that windows thing where you depress the button and flick the mouse and you start scanning the document up or down at various speeds.
Dean was sitting there amazed and just said "I had no idea you could do that". Initially I thought he was talking about the editing in the config file I was hacking but it turns out he didn't even realise there was a little wheel in there - as far as he was concerned it was a place to rest his finger and was part of the design of the mouse.
This got me thinking about all these things we as techies take for granted - not the big things like being able to get your email on your mobile phone or being able to mashup 10 different data sources to produce something new and novel or even build a website from scratch using nothign but a text editor.
I'm talking about things like people not knowing their mice can do different things, that your phone probably can browse the web as well as make calls. My wife still can't even write a text message. I come across people even now who don't have internet connections and plenty who are still on dialup.
As our industry grows, how does this moving "average user" impact on the people who are below average? Do we create a digital divide not necessarily based on the "haves and have nots" but on the basis of "cans and cannots"?
Seeing things like this has made me wonder again about people's perception and their interaction with their computing environment. I remember sitting in on a user testing session way back and seeing someone have one of those moments where they "got" the way the web worked - you could tell because she said "That's why that text has a line under it - I always wondered about that".
Anyone who's got a relli who is a timid computer user knows that they don't do things with it because they are afraid they'll break it. Trying to get them to do anything outside their comfort zone is really difficult.
With computers getting cheaper and cheaper and the next influx of users coming on board, we that build systems and interfaces must be sure to remember that the "average user" isn't getting smarter or more stupid - they will initially be less experienced and turning away these less experienced users may result in less traffic / sales whatever further down the line if someone else comes along that will hold their hand and guide them through the process.
In 10-15 years this won't be an issue - but it is now.
Monday, 23 April 2007
busy busy busy
Damn time flies - and it's not always when you are having fun.
Too many projects going on over a variety of different activities. New clients coming on to our XML Infinity system as well as some natty IT projects for me to ply around with.
I'm going to try and be a bit more regular with my posting by going little and often.
So my Nokia N73 woes continue, even with some new firmware my phone is still crashtastic so I"m counting down the days until a new one arrives. On the plus side though my N700 Internet Tablet is being used for Sat Nav as I drive around the country and although you get the occasional crash when the mobile signal cuts out from my phone, it certainly gets you from A-B with no drama.
More coming on Fuzzy Logic, a chance meeting with someone who is into Social Networking in a BIG way and some other tech rants - this time on CSS.
Too many projects going on over a variety of different activities. New clients coming on to our XML Infinity system as well as some natty IT projects for me to ply around with.
I'm going to try and be a bit more regular with my posting by going little and often.
So my Nokia N73 woes continue, even with some new firmware my phone is still crashtastic so I"m counting down the days until a new one arrives. On the plus side though my N700 Internet Tablet is being used for Sat Nav as I drive around the country and although you get the occasional crash when the mobile signal cuts out from my phone, it certainly gets you from A-B with no drama.
More coming on Fuzzy Logic, a chance meeting with someone who is into Social Networking in a BIG way and some other tech rants - this time on CSS.
Wednesday, 31 January 2007
Finally got around to setting up a blog
So I've finally had time to set up a blog. Our company [ http://www.xmlinfinity.com/ ] has a no private publishing policy, which is fine as I can see why, but it does mean that when one needs to dump a whole load of info out of your brain there is no convenient way to do it.
Hence this blog...
To be honest, this is being set up more as a dumping ground for me to record information so I can find it again as a useful snippet rather than being entertaining. If you do find something on here that is useful then I'm glad.
So what is likely to be here: Most likely things to do with the technologies I am interested in, this is mostly XML and XSLT though will probably comprise other web dev things too - particularly if it is to do with mobile computing. Chances are there will be the occasional rant as well when things go wrong technology wise or I see ridiculous implementations of things.
Cheers
Hence this blog...
To be honest, this is being set up more as a dumping ground for me to record information so I can find it again as a useful snippet rather than being entertaining. If you do find something on here that is useful then I'm glad.
So what is likely to be here: Most likely things to do with the technologies I am interested in, this is mostly XML and XSLT though will probably comprise other web dev things too - particularly if it is to do with mobile computing. Chances are there will be the occasional rant as well when things go wrong technology wise or I see ridiculous implementations of things.
Cheers
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