On 30 Sep 98, Suzanne wrote:
> I'm still trying to recover from the mess my IPP made of web sites two
> weeks ago, and would appreciate it if some of you would check this page to
> see if you get error messages. I do but my IPP says she doesn't.
>
> http://www.endlessriveradventures.com/guestbookframes.html
Works fine from here. Funny you should mention how your IPP says it
"works at her end", thus implying that any problems are of necessity at
your end; I was just about to pen a wee rant on this very topic :)
<rant class="pig_headed_developers">
Was thinking, as I wrote my earlier critique of Julian's mini-site, how
sensitive I once was to any comments from users about problems with
sites of mine:
USER: "The navigation map was really confusing, I couldn't figure out how
to get to the table of contents".
ME: "You brainless git. A *chimpanzee* could figure that out. It's not
*my* fault you're too stupid to figure out my impeccable navigation
scheme."
Well, I exaggerate :) But the point remains; far too many of us fall into
the trap of assuming that, because *we* are perfectly clear on how
something is supposed to work, then everyone else on the face of the
planet will be too. Which overlooks the basic fact that our lengthy
immersion in the creation of the site has long since snuffed out any last
whiff of objectivity we may have had about its overall cohesiveness and
functionality. (And there's a corollary to this syndrome: "It works fine on
*my* browser/platform, guess *you're* just using the wrong one.")
My attitude to user complaints and suggestions is much different now.
(Guess I'm finally "maturing" :) Now when I hear about any least glitch on
a site of mine, I take it quite seriously, and go to considerable lengths to
fix it where justified. I've learned to accept gracefully the concept that I
can't think of everything, am not infallible, and will invariably overlook
some potential problems on any site I do. In which case user complaints
become an invaluable debugging tool.
Which takes me back to Suz's IPP. It is *not* productive, for anyone
concerned, when a sysadmin or site developer says, "Hey, it works fine
here. You must be doing something wrong" (even though the user
frequently *is* doing something wrong; still, it's the developer/sysadmin's
job to ensure that opportunities for user screw-ups and confusion are as
few as possible.)
I just went through this with a new search site, AskJeeves. There were a
number of apsects to the interface and results displayed that I found
confusing and/or unhelpful; so I wrote a detailed e-mail to them pointing
out the problems I encountered.
Their reply was not constructive. The gist was that I'm obviously none
too bright, and that in any case there's a Help section on the site that
explains how it all works. Some excerpts from our correspondence:
[in response to my observation that the engine identified words it didn't
recognize as "spelling mistakes":]
>> It doesn't mean that your word
>> is misspelled, just that it doesn't recognize it. That's how most
>> spellcheck programs work!
[my response:]
Yes, I know how spellcheckers work. But I didn't ask the service to check
my spelling, so it's confusing and slightly annoying to see a message telling
me I "may have misspelled" a word.
Spellchecking should only be invoked if a user specifically asks for it, and
the "error message" should be more helpful. If AskJeeves doesn't have a
match in its database for a term, it should say so, rather than call it a
"spelling mistake".
[replying to my confusion over the search results page, which seemed to
say "Here's the answer to the question you asked", yet displayed a
different question entirely from the one I asked:]
> No, you misunderstood! Jeeves is not saying he knows the answer
> to YOUR question, he's saying he knows the answer to the following
> questions (the ones from our database, like the Javascript one you
> quoted above).
... and so on. Not once in our futile correspondence did I hear, "Thanks
for your comments. They were helpful. We'll look into some of the
usability problems you mention." Rather, just indignant justifications of
"how it's spozed to work".
</rant>
Basically, if you ever find yourself writing a letter along the lines of, "No,
you misunderstand how the site is supposed to work...", take a deep
breath before hitting that Send button. Chances are that the problem is
more at your end than at the user's.
-----------
Brent Eades, Almonte, Ontario
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Town of Almonte site: http://www.almonte.com/
Business site: http://www.federalweb.com
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