[Fly on the Wall] Paying attention to users, mow the lawn vs. cut the grass, chowder, HTML forms
Written by on July 17th, 2007 in Ajax News.
Some recent activity at our internal 37signals Campfire chat room:
Paying attention to users
| Mark I. |
You Mean There’s a Better Way?: “There’s a good lesson here that’s often missed; pay attention to what users are doing with the provided system and by unblocking minor bottlenecks you can become the hero.”
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| Mark I. |
Great anecdote about paying attention to users.
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| Ryan S. |
nice story MI
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| Ryan S. |
i love the software-designer-as-sleuth angle
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| Mark I. |
It always fascinates me how reluctant some users are to report issues and just work around things.
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| Mark I. |
While others are amazingly willing.
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| Ryan S. |
i bet 90% don’t even notice issues like that
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| Ryan S. |
they just assume what they’re trying to do is hard
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| Ryan S. |
/ a pain in the ass
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| Mark I. |
They’ve been trained to silently work around problems.
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| Ryan S. |
yeah. and “i bet this could be easier” is a designer mindset
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| Ryan S. |
more than a user mindset. if a user is thinking like that, they’re probably wearing the wrong hat
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| Mark I. |
Those are the best kinds of issues for developers though. Low hanging fruit that has an immediate positive impact to the users. Very satisfying.
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| Ryan S. |
totally
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Mow the lawn vs. cut the grass
| Mark I. |
I just quickly cut the grass about 5 minute ahead of a torrential thunderstorm.
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| Mark I. |
I did the front yard the same way yesterday, I was literally running for the last 3-4 rows while I was getting rained on.
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| Jamis B. |
your use of “cut the grass” made me wonder about dialectical differences in the US (I say “mow the lawn”), so I googled it and found a really cool site that plots different uses and pronunciations of various words and phrases across the US
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| Jamis B. | |
| Jeremy K. |
that’s a really fun survey
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| Jamis B. |
here’s the results of “mow the lawn” vs. “cut the grass”
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| Jamis B. | |
| Jeremy K. |
so many phrases I’ve never heard
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| Ryan S. |
that’s awesome
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| Mark I. |
Mow de lawn is how they say it in France.
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| Jamis B. |
haha
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| Ryan S. |
fun to find examples with a clear geographic split
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| Ryan S. |
Chowder
| Matt L. |
was wondering how much to tip movers. found this thread and learned a mover term that’s great:
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| Matt L. |
CHOWDER
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| Matt L. |
link: What looks like a few unboxed things to you is what movers call “chowder,” and it’s always more than you think. Try really hard to get everything in a box except lamps, furniture, and other large pieces.
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| Jeremy K. |
nice lingo
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| Matt L. |
another def: “Chowder” is mover argot for the loose, fiddly items that are unwieldy and take up a lot of time.
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| Jamis B. |
that’s great, so applicable to programming, too
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| Matt L. |
yeah, immediately seemed like a good development term to me.
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HTML forms
| Jamis B. |
HTML sucks all the joy out of programming for me
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| Jamis B. |
HTML+CSS, that is
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| Jamis B. |
I’m so glad I don’t have to do the design work for our apps
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| Jamis B. |
I’m trying to design a simple form
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| Jamis B. |
and I’m hating life
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| Jamis B. |
It’s seriously making me want to not work on this anymore
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| Jeremy K. |
aw, man
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| Jamis B. |
html makes it so easy to write forms that look like crap
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| Jamis B. |
and SO HARD to write forms that look nice
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| Jamis B. |
that’s so backwards
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| Matt L. |
maybe this is helpful: http://wufoo.com/
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| Matt L. | “Wufoo is the easiest way to collect information online. Our innovative HTML form builder helps anyone create beautiful forms, online surveys and invitations without writing a single line of code.” |
| Jamis B. |
oh, awesome, thanks matt
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| Jamis B. |
I’d totally forgotten about tools like that
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| Jamis B. |
I’ll check it out
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Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/495-fly-on-the-wall-paying-attention-to-users-mow-the-lawn-vs-cut-the-grass-chowder-html-forms