Greg’s names for his tasks are very clever, so when I read “A Carlton Dance for the Dark Side!” I knew I had to take a look. Reading about Greg’s experience with the Inyerface was interesting, as his focus was to “stay on target” to complete the mission regardless of the frustrations and challenges. My experience was instead focused on seeing the interface with the eyes of a graphic designer, perhaps the reason why it took my half the time to complete it, as I was anticipating the “non-user-friendly” possibilities.
Having the graphic design background and literacy on user interface design provided me the advantage to understand the multiple issues with the interface better, and overcome those struggles faster, compared to Greg. In the field of graphic design there are too many amateurs that create websites, and in multiple occasions my clients have come to me because they shared similar frustrations with their site, as Greg did with this Inyerface. Therefore, I could perfectly look for what not to do on this site. Like Greg says professional or consumer sites PAY people to make sure sites work well, so for him having spelling mistakes on a site is unacceptable. For me using amateurs to do your site is unacceptable, you are saving some money in the short term, but now with the importance of business online a professional website is a need. If you were to hire someone to create your site and you end up with an interface like Inyerface, imagine how many potential clients you will lose, as even a spelling mistake is perceived as unprofessional.
Similar to Greg, the most frustrating thing for me was the super slow help window slide down, as there was nothing I could do to make it go faster, I just had to wait. For Greg the way to prove he was human was to select all the glasses, he used to be an optician, so you would think that this would be a piece of cake. Nonetheless, the play on words that the Inyerface used completely threw him off, especially the pieces of glass, which didn’t allow him to prove that he is human. When I had to prove I was a human, I had a different task, to select the bows. This one I didn’t see it coming as a trick or challenge, but as I was selecting first all the knots, I realize wait, this is crossbow, as I selected the crossbow, the only image left was one of people bending as a sign of respect, and then it him me all of the images were bows, and I started laughing at the ridiculousness and at the same time cleverness of the task. It takes a clever person to purposefully design and think of all of the what not to do, and the tricks.
Ultimately this exercise proves how much control interface designers have on us (Harris, 2017), as they bring our attention to specific areas. Greg’s frustrations and perseverance is what took him through the challenging inyerface.
You can check Greg’s post “A Carlton Dance for the Dark Side!” by clicking this link.
You can check my “User Inyerface” post by clicking this link.
References
Harris, T. (2017). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture
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greg patton
April 8, 2021 — 6:15 pm
Hey Adriana!
Thanks for using my task for your linking assignment! Both my sister and her husband are graphic designers and have talked about how annoying it is to “clean up” amateur work from sites of clients after the fact. Websites are text, just like books, and so need to be edited and created by professionals to make sure the best product is put in front of the public; even more so when there is an interface aspect. They need to be fluid and easy to navigate… as easy as turning a page!
Take care!