General: Selfish?

I found this new item on the BBC, it says we're getting more "selfish and ruthless" when using the web. What this describes is not that at all as far as I'm concerned, it just seems we are getting fed up with the general detritus on websites that distract us from what we want to find out or see.

Have a read, see what you think. Is this just an eye grabbing headline in the same ilk?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7417496.stm

I think I've waffled on a bit.

Posted By: Mike

It's also why so many Washing Machines completely and utterly fail, the interfaces are often so unnecessarily complicated most of us men simply give up!

Is that also true of mops and buckets, hoovers, polish, dusters, soap, water, dish cloths, toilet brushes and bleach?

You'll learn.

I have to say, I like the way that not wanting to deal with trivial waffle (webspam, I call it) and such is described as "selfish". That's fabulous.

So from now on, if I cut into a queue at the supermarket, that's ok. That's not selfish. Bypassing Tesco's inhouse magazine (wetwarespam) is.

If only I'd known that earlier!

Seriously, though, this "waffle/webspam" that us ruthless and selfish people don't want to have to deal with... I use NoScript in firefox. It shuts down useless video's, adverts, flash animations, pointless banners, nasty java scripts...

I recommended it wholeheartedly. I just wish there was a site that listed all of the advertising agency websites so I could blacklist them (and all their subdomains) all in one go...

It's an interesting piece, but basically highlights my philosophy, not only to articles, but to websites. The unfortunate thing is, very few people "in the biz" ever agreed with me Partly because that attitude isn't going to make you as much money - especially when it comes to persuading advertisers.

But certainly, one thing is true - my biggest referrer is Google. I very rarely go to a website for something - I'll just go straight to Google. So why wouldn't my readers?

Loads of people turn off Flash and Javascript. Telling people they are selfish isn't going to make people turn it back on, instead they should be designing sites where the adverts are low bandwidth, topical and informative. Personally, I think Google Text Ads hit the nail right on the head - I regularly click Google Ads on other people's sites.

Hopefully, with mobile internet devices having lower resolution screens - this will force people to be more compact with their information and sleeker with their designs.

I remember a few years back, I published a review of a new graphics card that was 3 short pages, that I felt told the story exactly, while the competitors waffled on for 14 pages or so. According to my stats pretty much everyone that viewed the first page, viewed the 2nd and 3rd too. Yet I can guarantee, most of the people that read the the larger review, read the first and last paragraphs of the whole thing.

I always say that if they didn't read it, you may as well not have written it. Overwhelming sites or programs with too many options are often underutilised. Give them a site with only a few things to do, or a program with only 3 ways of doing something, and there is a much greater chance it'll get used. The iPod is a pretty good example of this - with a simple, easy to use interface.

If you can, keep a tabs on the amount of times you hear someone "But I don't want it to do X, I just want it to do Y!"

The part of this article I disagree with is that this is only happening recently. That's just not true because people have always wanted interfaces to be as quick and simple as possible.

I agree. The problem is, the people who make these decisions don't listen to the people using them.

I'm sure I have got a slightly more enlightened response lurking in my brain somewhere, but I've been doing solid mountain bike displays for the last three days and I'm a little frazzled!

Now, as far as washing machines. Give me a break! There are a couple of dials and buttons, with instructions written on the front. Anyone who has trouble with that is either stupid, or finding a great excuse out of doing their own washing...

The odd thing about my washing machine is when the button is depressed, that means it's on

Posted By: Spode

The odd thing about my washing machine is when the button isdepressed, that means it's on

Fair dos, but it's not always as obvious as that.
The buttons on the picture I've shown don't just have two settings, some have three, four, five, six.
Along with that, not all buttons can be used in combo. So you might set a setting with one button, and go to adjust something else with another, only to find you can't.
The point is, it is not immediately obvious from that interface, at least not to everyone, whether you can choose an automatic setting and then adjust it, or whether you have to use either manual or automatic, or if you have to still be on an automatic setting even if you want to use manual, etc etc.

It's just a hideous piece of design and only goes to increase cognitive load, when ideally, this should be kept to a minimum when designing interfaces.

I'm with Lorna - mine goes to "E" pretty much every time

However, Mike, you are correct - but you are leveraging off a single example. If you take a look around a white goods store, you'll struggle to find one with an interface that poor now.

Why can't hotpoint, hoover, bosh et al get together with Nokia and licence some of the interface technology that goes into mobile phones? The screens and IC's must be supercheap because of the sheer number going into mobile phones, so surely one (minus the actual phone bit) of those would mean it would be easy to build a logical control mechanism for a lineup of machines, and just flash it with different ROM images for different models?

That way the machine could explain to you in plain english what each and every option does, what's switched on, what's not - and just *work*. With minimum of fuss.

Well, non-competing companies have no reason not to...

Sometimes even competing companies do. The Ford Galaxy, VW Sharan, Seat Alhambra etc - one chassis, several companies developed it. The Toyota Aygo, Citroen C1, Peugeot 107 - same chassis, even the same engine (afaik) - companies sometimes do pool resources. And I'm suggesting that white-goods manufacturers get together with non-white-goods manufacturers, and licence some cheap technology.

The thing is, knowing white-goods manufacturers, they'll obfuscate the menu so much (and make it default to Afrikaans or something) that it's probably a bad idea to begin with...