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I have found that, in general, the more conventional is someone's thinking, the more blind they are to the inefficiencies in interfaces. Here are many issues that people seem to dismiss quite a lot:
[1] Telephones don't connect to the web.
Tele-something or other (*rrrriiinnngggg*, "ah shit, another one"): "Hello this is blah blah from blah dee blah, blah dee blah ga ba?"
You: "Can you email me, instant message me, or in any other way interface with me?"
Tele-something or other: "No we don do dat kinda new-fandangled thang"
Why??!!
Please consider how obsolete tele-whatever jobs could be. Please consider how disruptive it is to deal with phone calls from idiots on a regular basis. Please consider how UNDER-UTILIZED is the web in actual tele-communication.
Yes, there are lots of stupid people in the world. Yes, they should be (indirectly) forced to change (somehow, not through government intervention).
[2] IM networks don't inter-operate and don't connect with email.
Most people just accept it. This is not cool. We are smart enough to be concentrating on other problems, but we often need to say things like: "email me at blah blah then I'll call you and you instant message me there", or "I tried to message you but you weren't there, maybe your blah blah window was below your blah blah"
[3] Every shitty product expects you to install their crappy shitty software that wastes your time.
Nearly every product with an external software interface has to re-invent the wheel. You are forced to install some butt-ugly software that doesn't inter-operate with any other softwares.
[4] Microsoft Windows is designed for morons with an IQ of 50 and only one finger on each hand.
Keyboard short-cuts? Oh there are few of those. But in between you need to grab your mouse and, say, click inside of a window or something. Text editing short-cuts? Install some shitty software that doesn't work very well and you can use text-editing short-cuts some of the time, but not all of the time.
CAN YOU THINK OF SOME MORE?
I have chosen a term for all of these kinds of things: LONG PRESS. A LONG PRESS is when you need to click and hold for the interface to register. Android makes ample use of the long-press, unfortunately. A LONG-PRESS is like waiting for a long stop-light, or picking up the phone and telling a tele-marketer to piss off. It is distracting, it reduces productivity, and it demonstrates that we are UNDER-UTILIZING TECHNOLOGY and most of us are not considering some very obvious changes in industry and human-computer interaction that should be made.
Yes, computers should work for the convenience of humans. No, despite what idiots say, the status quo is NOT always more convenient. People need to be (indirectly) FORCED to change the way they do things.
I say DEATH TO THE LONG PRESS! |
