MC Connect Redesign

The Information Sage by Joshua Yaffa

This was more a story about a guy named Tufte who helped the government keep track of stuff.

This is classic working with the government stuff. However, I would rather work with the government than not have a government to work with. Been there done that. In working on the BadgerCare Plus program and that stupid first version of the program where it asked questions of employers that were impossible to answer all the while threatening them with huge fines if they didn't answer. Two and one-half years of that frustrating program, training over 70 people on how to use something that was unusable, countless meetings with the State of Wisconsin and how to better capture the information they needed,  and then finally getting involved with program re-do's only to get laid off and taken away from getting to use the new program when it came on line. This wasn't so much the problem of the State as it was the problem of the communication between the State and it's programmers and the companies that were hired to actualize the data capture (EDS  and then Hewlett Packard). It was crappy at best and horrible at worst, knowing that people's lives were somehow affected by our inability to answer the questions that needed to be answered in order to help them get the health care they needed. In the end, I figured it was--what do you call it--planned obsolescence or something like that--if it was difficult to get the information then it slowed down the process so that less people could be eligible for State provided health care so the State didn't have to cough up the money. How brilliant! In the end HP gets paid no matter what and they don't have to held accountable for a few messy lives that weren't helped. In the end every one can blame it on the government for inefficiency and justify more cut backs in jobs. This is what happens when you privatize government programs. IT DOESN'T WORK!!!!  You don't improve government by thinning it out or getting rid of it. It's like a relationship with someone. You don't hire someone else to come in and take over and try to fix any problems. Sure you can some consultants like Tufte in this article. But like any relationship, you can only improve it by working hard on it yourself and working with the partner to make it better. 

DMMT Chapters 8-12

Don't discuss religion or politics with coworkers. People tend to push those things they like and not the things they don't like. 

Everyone likes something based on what their particular training or background is. We create stereotypes to try understand large chunks of the world at one time. This short changes us.

If it's so hard to determine what web users like or dislike copy the usability designs of a large company that can afford to do the real research.

Best to design per application not to make a general overall design sense to be used for all sites.

Usability testing reveals that things web teams are arguing about aren't all that important.

The difference between a focus group and usability testing is the number of people involved and how the questions are asked. Groups tend react off of each other whereas a usability test is usually one on one. Focus groups are for early on in the process. Testing is for after the site is constructed.

Don't be too critical about the kinds of people that you get to do the testing. Just get them and do several tests.

Don't design so that only a target audience can use. Make it as simple and clear cut as possible. Avoid giving too much background information. Test two ways: ask if they understand the site and ask if they can use the site (with a task).

When asking for information on a site that is necessary to get the task accomplished be polite and considerate.Know why people come to your site and what they hope to accomplish. Don't insult them with bad design and useless steps. Printer friendly pages?

"When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the two will hover, spinning, inches above the ground. With a giant buttered-cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago." John Frazee, in the Journal of Irreproducible Results

(Not to talk politics, but somebody should tell Scott Walker about this. That would put to rest once for all questions about his poor judgement in accepting the federal money for rail in Wisconsin!)

AH-HAH! There's finally talk about accessibility and usability issues!

How many opportunities do we have to dramatically improve people's lives just by doing our job a little better?

In “Harrison Bergeron,” the main character, whose intelligence is “way above normal,” is

required by law to wear a “mental handicap radio” in his ear that blasts various loud noises

every 20 seconds “to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.” Kurt Vonnegut.

Gotta love Vonnegut!

To make sites more accessible and usable:

Fix the usability problems that confuse everyone. Recommended reading. Use cascading style sheets. Do obvious things: alt text, forms work with screen readers, skid to main content link, all content keyboard accessible, avoid JavaScript, use client side maps.

IPad Usability: Year One and Usability Ain't Everything - A Response to Jakob Nielsen's iPad Usability Study

Because I hadn't blogged about this article and also the Response to it, I thought I hadn't read them yet. So, I set about to read the articles and they seemed very familiar. As I continued reading them I realized that I began having this sinking feeling about the content of what I was reading and that, too, also seemed familiar. Now I knew why I hadn't blogged on these articles earlier. Both articles gave me this horrible depressed sinking feeling that you get when you realize the futility of something, that no matter what you feel or say, nothing is going to change for the better. I had put off blogging because I simply didn't know what to say.

This feeling was further underscored by one of Carla's recent lectures in which she showed market predictions that by the year 2015 we will no longer use desk top computers, that all of our connections to the internet, to the world, will be through hand-held mobile devices. 

This struck a chord of horror with me. I love my new iMac desktop with a 20" screen I bought in September 2011 with my student loans. I bought it at the Apple store in West Towne Mall where I felt I was treated like a queen. This was the first large purchase I had made since co-signing to buy a 10-acre farm in 1995. None of my automobiles have been this nice and or cost more than this computer. I just entered the world of current technology and now they are telling me that it's already outdated and I will soon be looked at as an old fogey because of my attachment to it.  

Further more, I objected to the predictions of 2015 as totally exclusionary for people  with disabilities and diseases that prevent them from holding a mobile device or pushing the buttons. When I brought this up in class--what about people with disabilities--I got the same eye rolling and groans from my younger technologically adept classmates. (Like, "There goes the old person in the class talking about stuff we don't care about again! Why doesn't she just die of old age already?") (The first time I brought up the question of "Don't we have a responsibility when creating designs for technology to consider people with disabilities?" I received a resounding "NO!" from someone in the class.) Later, in the lecture about mobile devices Carla turned to me and said, "This is in answer to your question about people with disabilities [and the 2015 prediction] " and proceeded to read a section about how there will audio interfaces so that people who can't hold the devices or push buttons will be able to speak into them. "Well," I wanted to ask, "What if they can't speak either or their speech is slurred like what happens with people with severe MS?" but I didn't. I shut my mouth, kept quiet for the peace of the class and the expediting of the lecture. 

Things will work out as they will. Technology will eek it's way into our existences whether we will or not. Whether an iPad  has this function or not doesn't concern me. I don't own one. When I find that I can't exist without one or that my life is bettered by it's existence (like buying a cell phone so that I could call AAA if I got stuck in a snow bank out in the country) I will buy whatever it is that is the next great thing. Meanwhile, I am non-plussed by current changes and improvements on devices that I simply haven't found a need for. Furthermore, I am appalled at people who buy technology only the sake of owning the latest and the greatest. That is, to me, a shallow, meaningless existence.

My mother passed away last year. Recently my siblings and I began the task of cleaning out her house of 60-odd years of belongings in attempt to get the house ready for sale. We found out that she did not throw anything away, ever.  We came across magazines dating back to the 1950's or earlier. There was an army of coffee pots, some working, some not. Among them was a beautiful metal West Bend percolator with a glass dome from the 1940's. I was charmed by it and took it home cleaned it up and made coffee with it. Yes, we have a Mr. Coffee purchased a year ago. But, guess what? This old percolator makes the best darn coffee! And it smells better and I LOVE seeing the coffee percolating up into the glass dome. Yes, it requires a great deal of cleaning, more so than Mr. Coffee, but it is a price I am willing to pay for the experience. (I even figured out how to make my mother's cinnamon caramel rolls using frozen bread dough and they go excellently with the fresh brewed coffee in the old coffee pot.)

Also in that dig was an old waffle iron dating back to about 1930. It works, too, but my first adventure with it was not as successful as the coffee pot and after a miserable attempt leaving me with scorched waffle batter on a not easily cleaned iron, I took my batter and finished up the waffles in the new Salton waffle maker. 

So, what am I getting at? What's the lesson learned? New technology in moderation is okay but don't throw out the old just because it's old. Don't turn your nose up at old stuff just because it's old. It's all part of the whole. In order to get where we are today we had to go through all of that other stuff. Some it actually functions better and lasts longer than new stuff. Just because it's new doesn't make it better or right or what's new today is old tomorrow or… or…. or don't give up on us old farts. We still have some kicking to do. Besides, if you didn't have us around who would you have to roll your eyes at? Oh yeah! And always make design useful for people with disabilities or are older or who have disabling diseases like MS or arthritis. One day you will be old, too, if you're lucky……