Houdenbako Blog

The Computer, Enemy of the User

I have never really had a computer that could help me focus on a task.

Some of this is accidental: Any time I'm running a lot of programs and it takes 5-10 seconds to switch, I get bored. Nothing irks me more than being able to think faster than a PC with a 3GHz clock.

Some of this is deliberate - a conspiracy theory waiting to happen, if you will: Many of the so-called "Productivity Tools" on my computer are administrative time-sinks, and on the Internet, I have to wade neck-deep through advertisements for 1kB of text that didn't offer much more information than the page title.

Once I read that users want to concentrate on "the task at hand", and not on the computer's inner workings. For me, those inner workings are the part that fascinates me most. So, I'm a bit torn on the issue.

I can't avoid computers. On the other hand, they seem custom made to scatter my attention. The main reason to be a power-user - to write your own software - to customize your operating system - is so that you can take control over the useless, resource-hogging "features".

Web Designer: Author or Criminal?

What You See Is What You Get... This is a desktop publishing concept. It doesn't work so well in cyberspace.

Reality needed an upgrade. Or, so a lot of people thought... Why should ideas be limited to physics? Stuff won't move fast enough. Stuff can't be altered on a whim. Stuff slows ideas down. So abandon it!

On the other hand, we all have experience with stuff in the physical world. It would be a shame to render all that experience useless... So a lot of designers borrowed features of reality and altered only some aspects. That's how operating systems got "Desktops" and "Folders". That's why the web has "Pages", and why, despite hyperlinks, a lot of pages are numbered and kept in order, just like a book or a newspaper. The analogy is brilliant that lets you use most of what you know. But, after a while, every analogy is limiting.

It seems to me that there were some arguments about webpages, and the browsers that render them. A graphic designer is, rightly, concerned with exactly how the design will look. Web designers are not graphic designers, no matter how much they want to be. Web browsers have always offered the user some choices about presentation, and that means the designer cannot be a despot.

But, the designer wants to be a despot. Wouldn't you? The subtle question here is: What exactly are they designing?

Time was, a brochure could not be altered by the reader. And, when a finished product cannot be altered or updated, some serious concern goes into getting it right. When such serious concern is involved, the "end user" couldn't possibly be given any say in the matter.

With information flowing over the Internet, there is nothing to stop the "end user" from altering the finished product - except maybe some sternly worded warnings. A designer in this medium has to give up forcing the product to have a precise look, and has to settle for communicating useful information. Graphic designers see this as part of their job too, so it shouldn't be too hard to find the relevant wisdom there.

There's one small problem: if the browsers made available to us are put in service of the designers, all this falls apart. Are you capable of writing your own web browser? Most people aren't. They have to settle for what the market will provide. And, the cheaper, the better. In fact, it's precisely the free browsers that will be most beholden to the needs of designers, not users, since users didn't contribute anything. These are the programs most likely to run on your computer and act on someone else's behalf. Taking control away. I know it seems innocuous now, and I sound crazy to suggest it, but if designers were not forced to respond to the users' needs, why would they?