So this week, our task is to play the User Inyerface game. Above is a printscreen of my completion (with horrible time).

So that was irritating!

On my first attempt, I tried on my smartphone. It is next to impossible to get past even the first screen using a smartphone! The chat window dominates the screen frequently, such that you only get a few seconds in between that and the timeclock popup. I eventually had to give up on the second screen, as the upload link did not initiate any selection option.

While it was easier to finish on a larger screen, it still took me forever.  As I had figured out the main tricks in the first and second screens on my smartphone, it was the captcha that caught me up.

I wish I could say these experiences were unique only to this game, but these are dirty tricks we put up with on a daily basis, albeit in lower doses. The game reminded me of browsing the web 10 or 20 years ago, when there were no tools like Wix or Weebly and anyone who wanted a website had to use HTML. The results were so mixed that when you visited a new site, you would need to spend some time orienting yourself to their design. Now standards are towards creating intuitive and user-friendly websites, so it is less like user inyerface and the annoyance is subtle. Unless you work in my organization…then every department wants to be different leading to the most confusing internal website ever!

Swinging back to the attention economy, it is pretty scary that most of us will fill out internet forms almost without thinking. Each field we fill out creates data points, which strengthens the segments advertisers and researchers can use to manipulate our behaviour. Even if you do not fill out forms like this, they are still able to get information about you through your friends. Almost Anytime you grant application access to your profile they gain access to information about your connections.

When we talk about literacy, I think this is one area where we are behind. Data, Security, Digital, and even design concepts are all areas that are becoming increasingly important that they should be included in literacy training.  In my teaching context as an instructional designer for a non-profit, more and more of my time is spent designing courses on data and digital literacy topics, as lack of knowledge in these areas poses a substantial risk to the organization. Most studies show that over 90% of data and security breaches are a result of employee error. And as the best practices in these areas change so much, one really needs an understanding of network and data architecture to be critical of new practices and make smart technical decisions.

Another question I think about a lot is whether advertising and internet data use should be regulated. I can understand both sides of the argument, but I am starting to lean towards pro-regulation.  The only people who seem to be getting any value out of advertisements and internet data are businesses–to the rest of us, it’s just background annoyances we put up with.