[thelist] DEBATE: Fixed Width Vs Liquid

Techwatcher techwatcher at accesswriters.com
Tue Jun 4 16:44:02 CDT 2002


Yes, one thing that helps me a great deal with my Web design/usability
issues is that one other thing I do every now and then is help complete
novices learn to use a computer! Last year, I had a small (3-hr/week)
gig in a retirement community, teaching older folks to read e-mail
and "surf the Web." Very enlightening. See if you can make a little
time in your week, or month, to volunteer with local novices.

Here's a funny one: Eventually I produced an "evaluation form" listing
all the things I thought they might want to do, so if they thought
there was one they didn't understand, they could ask me to review that
part. One woman, quite an intelligent lady, who had had a very
responsible job with computer experience, asked me to show them how
to "surf the Web." I think they were quite disappointed when I
explained what that really meant, and that they had already been doing
it for months! 0-8

Another thing I noticed when I reviewed stats: Most users of the site I
designed for our local Friends meeting (charlottefriendsmeeting.org)
apparently don't know that one is expected to click the little drop-
down arrow (in a "select" form box) to see options!

It's not that people are stupid, btw. What's happening is that as one
attempts to work at different cognitive "levels of abstraction" (my
term for it), one gets less and less able to function. A person who is
entirely capable of dealing with an unfamiliar interface when asked to
focus on that task will suddenly become unable to function when the
interface simply is present when s/he is trying to focus on the content
of the thing with the interface. The more levels of things one is
trying to work out (as in, "resize the browser window -- OS level"
+ "scroll -- browser control level" + learn about what the text is
explaining), the worse it gets.

Perfect example: While I'm focussed on which of my files were updated
and put on the server, versus which were updated but didn't get to the
server yet, versus which haven't been updated -- well, it can take me
several seconds to realize I can't print a copy of the Explorer window
on my machine and carry it over to compare dates with the Explorer
window on another machine! I'm sure all of us in the still-infant IT
industry have several of these happen to us every day!

P.S. I am a professional writer. As with all of you, everything I write
is instantly copyrighted. I hereby grant all of you the right to read
this freely, as often as you wish, but NO right to republish it
yourself for a new audience.



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