The User Advocate

So there was an interesting discussion of a command alias function within an SSH client on Slashdot where most of the commenters completely missed the point, and it was an important one. User interface isn’t always based on gorgeous buttons and easy clickability – it must be targeted to the user of that application. In this case, SSH users who manage more than one computer… which is probably almost all SSH users.

Good SSH clients should be definitively targeted at the advanced computer user, and the lack of this feature is an odd decision. Really, the question comes to two schools of thought:

1. Always provide the same experience on the same server
2. Always provide the same experience to the same client

Implementing #1 is already done via login scripts on most *NIXs, and is trivial because the files and configs are local to the computation. Implementation of #2 does not seem to exist, and we need to ask why. Configurations can be captured locally to the client, and many MUD clients already implement the command alias features requested. Surely one is written in the same language as PuTTY and could be integrated, either as a plug-in or core code.

I question, though, if these ideas are mutually exclusive. Now that software writers are recognizing that people have multiple computers in use, there are sync capabilities all over – for example, in Firefox plugins where you want to have the same web pages open in two places. Why not do it for SSH commands? Push a versioned alias file to a location on the server you’re connecting to, so if you connect using a different client you can pull it down and still use all your commands, aliased as you expect.

Best of both worlds!

Technorati Tags: ssh, user+advocacy

From SaveTheInternet:

The financial industry is beginning to make noise to that end. According to a story in The Hill, the financial-services industry is weighing coordinated opposition to the telco-friendly language in the House’s bill, “fearing a financial hit if lawmakers allow phone and cable companies to charge banks more for secure Web service.”

This telco land-grab is not user friendly.  Join the effort and contact your Representative/CongressCritter now!

A great article on how to format written documents wisely, though he’s showing it as a way to make docs move from Open Office Writer to Microsoft Word and back. In fact, it is an equally valid point to preserve the prettification between Word versions, or even in the same version but across computers with different setups (like missing fonts).

So how come this is an insight? I believe it is because formatting styles in both Word and Writer are viewed as complex, and goodness knows it is not clear how to manage indentation either. Both applications are improving, trying to intuit when users really should be using styles or indenting when the same formatting changes. That’s a start, but we need to go farther.

An option – and it’s not really as user-friendly as I want, so offer comments – is to force people to use styles. Every time they change a typefont or size, apply it to all items that share the style. When styles start to be more obvious – like when the whole document font changes – then average users will care about them. Clearly there has to be a better way to manage styles, but you need to change the paradigm and the presentation. It will take a bold move to lead this charge with all the momentum built up around the old, bad, WordStar/WordPerfect markup philosophy and habits.

Technorati Tags: microsoft, formatting, user advocacy,

I had an entertaining Google Maps search that gave me better-than-should-have-been results and then a failure, showing that one of your systems knows more than the other and they aren’t 100% tied together.

First I searched for an address…
http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=firefox&q=1000%20lislin%20court%20pittsburg%2094565
and got back a page with one link on it to Maps, which is what I expected. I didn’t read it closely, or I would have discovered it was wrong, with the zip and state mismatched.
“Map of 1000 Lislin Court, Pittsburg, IL 94565″

I clicked it and went to

http://maps.google.com/maps?oi=map&q=1000+Lislin+Court,+Pittsburg,+IL+94565
which let me browse the map I wanted perfectly… never noticing that I was looking at California maps with an Illinois state label.
However, I clicked on the Driving Directions, entered my origin, and it refused to show me the directions since it was confused as to my destination. From this I draw three conclusions:

1. Your main search is not as smart in geolocation to be zipcode-aware and find the right Pittsburg from the zip.
2. Your Maps feature is pretty smart relative to finding the right results even when given some erratic information in the query.
3. Your driving directions don’t inherit Maps’ good sense but take things much more literally.

You’re known for good user interface, and Maps made it work very well – enough to fool me that there was no bad data. I suggest you work on your interapplication handoffs so they meet the shining example of the rest of your features.

Best wishes,

The Advocate
www.useradvocate.com

Last week I received my first comment – evidence that at least one other person in the world hears what I’ve been saying this year. When I investigated, wary of comment spammers who had recently hammered my logs, I found there is an entire community of people like me writing – except they appear to have figured out how to make a living at improving usability.

One log had an entry about hypersensitivity to customer experience issues as an occupational hazard, coining it the “” or “PatPS”. He told a story about a problem experience and ended up feeling bad because of context unrelated to his experience. I admire his compassion, but I believe a business needs to be cognizant of the effects employees have when they’re having a bad day. It is essential to manage the employees so that issues like his are prevented. Move the employee off the counter, or give them time off, or figure out some other way to handle it.

It is important for him to not succumb to the inverse syndrome: “Oh it’s only a pea.” Too many businesses stop noticing peas and eventually the pile is big enough they keep customers away from that counter. Train your teams to see the peas.

And be thankful you have the ability to feel the peas… it is rare and should be valued.

Technorati Tags: Princess+and+the+Pea+Syndrome, user+advocacy, user+experience, employee+enagement

A couple of articles about a CD handed out in London which users installed on their work computers and then a discussion of whether the workers or the technology were at fault for allowing the security breach ends up missing the point. Both are at fault.

Schneier asks how many employees need that access. We should ask instead why do they have that access? He starts to discuss that with an example of how he is not a heating system expert but he can still manage the temperature in his home, and reflects that “computers need to work more like that.”

Sort of.

Some computers need to work more like that. From a user’s point of view, a bank teller’s world should be very limited… there’s no legitimate need to install software. This control was once in place – it was called “mainframe access” and nobody could install software unless authorized. However, the operating systems in use today on teller machines are generic (usually Windows) and have opened up all kinds of security nightmares because of their advanced capabilities.

Have you ever tried locking down Windows? Really tightly? It’s impossible – something always breaks. Try to build a kid-proof interface and then imagine keeping reasonable adults within that as well. Making a specialized interface is possible – witness all the kiosks or ATMs that run Windows NT (and bluescreen in public view) – it is just hard and not cost-effective.

A user could be tremendously more effective and efficient if they only had access to what they needed, but you then must create that for each class of users… not only bank tellers, but bank accountants and bank loan officers and auto mechanics and on and on. Right now this isn’t cost effective, but an enterprising company could figure out a process to make this easier. After all, Tivo did.

Technorati Tags: tivo, security, windows, user+advocacy

I was reading about neat Google Calendar stuff but didn’t really see anything interesting until the last paragraphs, where Mark Hurst reflects that people need a way to receive fewer bits – fewer messages, articles, alerts, and so forth. That is what I want… a filter. A personal agent that knows I don’t want to see my kids’ appointments on my daily calendar except if I am planning a vacation or trying to get home to catch their game. I want them there, and accessible immediately, but never shown unless needed.

Finally, more people talking about the real problem and how to address the information overload so common these days…

News yesterday out of Washington about the tighter than expected vote on Network Neutrality, the essential concept of the Internet – that all sites are served equally.  This is vitally important to everyone who uses or works with the Internet in their lives.

The breadth of people talking about it is amazing – look at the Daily Kos, Gun Owners of America, American Library Association, Professor Lawrence Lessig, and even Alyssa Milano. This is getting traction in the mainstream press and now we need to fight it in the Senate.

Why is this posted on a user advocacy/usability weblog?  Because every user will get a different behavior based on their ISP’s interpretation of “important traffic”, and that is a horrible idea for those of us who try to improve daily life.

I don’t have flowery words to add – everyone linked above says it very well, or read additional detailed accounts of the danger. 

This is important.  Take action now.

Technorati Tags: network+neutrality, savetheinternet, F2C, internet, stupid+network

When I was writing a new entry and wanted to look back at an older post in my log (all the way back to yesterday), I thought I would pull it up very quickly within Performancing For Firefox to see when it was posted. There wasn’t a date on the list item, so I clicked on the entry – and it overwrote everything in my editor. No save, no Undo, no warning dialog.

Bad! Always give warning!

Hopefully they fixed this in version 1.2

Technorati Tags: weblogging, performancing, user+advocacy

I have always hated how internet Explorer did not follow standards and early versions broke perfectly formed HTML code.  However, John C. Dvorak argues the bad design that I resent has had severe business implications.

This Dvorak rant has got to be the weirdest yet very compelling argument I’ve heard all year – that Microsoft made a mistake creating Internet Exploder.  Considering the problems I’ve always had with it, I would not be surprised if it was a net loss to Microsoft financials.  To point that out as a strategic mistake is a strange kind of insight…