on luge runs & user error

User control and freedom
Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.

(...)

Error prevention
Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.

Excerpted from Jakob Nielsen's Ten Usability Heuristics
for Human Computer Interactions.

As someone who develops computer-user interfaces, I have a professional and ethical responsibility to design systems that users can use successfully.

Sure there's money to be made by doing it well, but the money is simply an artifact that flows from customer satisfaction. In my business, when you don't look after the customer they feel like idiots because they can't figure out how the web site works. If they can't finish the thing they set out to do they hate themselves and they hate you and they leave before they're done.

It's true that there are folks in my profession who blame the user for not being able to figure things out. Fortunately this philosophy is growing increasingly unfashionable.

I am responsible for seeing that my user doesn't leave for any of the wrong reasons. If I blow it, my client loses a sale. If I continue to blow it I will lose my job.

The stakes are higher in Vancouver, where a poorly designed, high velocity luge run led to the death of Olympic athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili on Friday.

It's bad enough that there was an opportunity for Kumaritashvili to fly off the course; worse that there were steel poles in close proximity to the icy run where lugers customarily reach speeds exceeding 90 miles per hour.

It is reprehensible that the Vancouver Olympic Committee and International Luge Federation would issue a statement which, in effect, blamed the accident on user error:

It appears after a routine run, the athlete came late out of curve 15 and did not compensate properly to make correct entrance into curve 16. This resulted in a late entrance into curve 16 and although the athlete worked to correct the problem he eventually lost control of the sled resulting in the tragic accident. The technical officials of the FIL were able to retrace the path of the athlete and concluded there was no indication that the accident was caused by deficiencies in the track.

Wrong.

How wrong? See the responsibilities inherent in: User Control & Freedom along with Error Prevention, above.

(So wrong.)

fuwa of fury

Major calamities, earthquakes in particular, were viewed in imperial China as a sign that a dynasty had lost the mandate of Heaven.

Lucy Hornby and Alfred Cang reporting on the Chinese Curse of the Fuwa fulfilled in a 19 June Reuters wire story.

The Reuters' story recaps the Chinese government's efforts to suppress Chinese bloggers who are floating the theory that the five cuddly Beijing Olympic mascots, the Fuwa, each represents a disaster to be visited upon China in recent months.

Blogadilla recaps the force of the Fuwa in full. They include:

• Huanhuan - The Olympic Flame - “The Bearer of Incendiary Strife”


• Jingjing - The Giant Panda - “The Lord of Angry Earth”


• Yíngying - The Tibetan Antelope - “The Creature of Righteous Unrest”


• Nini - The Swallow/Shayan Kite - “The Bearer of Unfortunate Wind”


• Bèibei - The Chinese Sturgeon - “The Bringer of Torrent and Flood”

Via Neatorama

seize me

Those of you who were around back in November may remember a brief New York Times appearance in which I spouted off about online accessibility.

Add one more example to the list: "a short piece of animation" designed to launch the London Olympics logo into the world (because ugly babies need all the help they can get) has been pulled down from the official site because the blink rate on the animation set off seizures in epileptics.

Right. Blink = Bad.

Or rather: "blinking text, objects, or other elements having a flash or blink frequency greater than 2 Hz and lower than 55 Hz" = bad, pursuant to Subpart B, § 1194.21 of the US Government Section 508 Standards. (Granted, it's a UK goof, but those guys are generally more enlighted than we are about these things.)

And don't even get me started on the Olympics, because I'm feeling cranky.

But on a little less cranky note: When I lived in LA my downstairs neighbor was a fiery octogenarian whose family fled China during the Cultural Revolution, and who escaped having her feet bound per the prevailing social norms because her father was particularly enlightened and wanted to see his daughter educated. She helped me countless times in extraordinarily generous ways, and was great company for sharing stories and passing time.

I don't remember what we were talking about when she introduced this little pearl, but it stuck with me and seems relevant here when we're talking about taking the time to design things right for the Web -- or to do things right at all.

She said simply: "I was taught that when you're walking down a path, and you see a branch in the way, it's not enough to step over the branch. You must move the branch aside, out of the way, because the next person coming down the path may not see the branch, and may not be able to step around it. That is just the way."

oh crap.

Chicago won out over LA to vie for hosting the 2016 Olympics.

Here's what I think about that »

Oh yeah -- and guess what? They plan to touch the lakefront.

crap.

olympic spirit

All there is is this
Originally uploaded by eyecatcher.

I’ve held a deep distrust of the Olympics and the changes they bring to a city ever since I met a small business woman from Utah whose livelihood was threatened (and the quality of her neighborhood destroyed) almost immediately by the changes that came to Salt Lake City when they won the right to host the games in their city.

This morning’s story on the changes that are coming to Beijing in anticipation of the 2008 Olympics only feeds that distrust.

“Does this look like a scene from quaint Beijing or more like a war zone?” asked Pan Jinyu, 64, a local resident, as he stood on a narrow street pockmarked by flattened houses. Not far away, a red and white propaganda banner fluttered over a razed building: “Build a New Beijing and Welcome the Olympics.”
...
“They are doing it in stages,” [Said Mike Meyer, an American who lives in the Old Beijing neighborhood and has written a book about it.] “It’s progressing like a wave cresting.” He said the gradual approach had left many residents elsewhere in the city unaware of the scope of the demolition. Comparing it to New York, he added, “It’s like one morning you woke up and Chelsea was gone.”

From «Olympics Imperil Historic Beijing Neighborhood» in this morning’s New York Times

My distrust stems from wildass theories about sustainability, I suppose.

Isn’t it important, when building something, that the construction be appropriate to the native environment and can be put to good use for some future duration?

I’m not convinced that the new construction demanded by an Olympic venue is enduring construction. Sure, it’ll always be put to some kind of use (infamously, there was the soccer stadium in Sarajevo, used during the war as a burial ground) – but it’s one-shot wonder construction that serves a single event in history and then can do no better than to be appropriated for something else that it wasn’t necessarily intended to serve.

And to bulldoze a historic neighborhood – paying lifelong residents paltry sums before kicking them out on the street (one couple received $174K for property valued at $1.4 Million) to make way for crap construction, seems to me one of the worst kinds of property crimes you can commit.

London is one of my favorite cities in the world. I wasn’t one of the ones cheering when they won the bid.

The Gay Games are in Chicago this weekend – which is a good thing. But I heard someone mention on the news that this was the first step in proving that our city has the mettle to host the big shot Olympics. That we’re getting ourselves into position.

Please. God. No.

[Photo Credit: eyecatcher]