Use and Useability

so, i’ve recently come to (what is to me) a brilliant realization.

information that is not readable, is not useful.

now, you may be saying “well, duh” (and it’s OK if you are) but now that you’ve mocked my intelligence, try this.

start paying attention to how readable the sites you’re visiting on the web are.

    • do you have to close 50 pop up ads to find the article you’re trying to see?

 

    • after you’ve closed those ads, are there so many other ones embedded on the page that you still can’t find the article, or, if you can, you can’t pay any attention to it?

 

    • on the other extreme, do you have to stare at a huge block of text with no paragraph breaks for 30 minutes before giving up in frustration because, no matter how hard you try, there’s just no way you can make sense out of the massive wall of verbage you’re confronted with?

once you start paying attention, you may be surprised as you discover that a whole lot of the ‘information super highway’ is paved over by billboards these days.

and we’re not talking some huge gaudy thing on the side of the road … oh no.

these things are smack down the middle of it, crossing all 4 lanes, and to make mattters even worse, you will often be expected to pay/subscribe/sell-your-soul so that you can have the privilege of running into them as hard as you can while you travel.

that’s just plain dumb.

and there’s probably a whole lot more i could ramble on about that is related to this topic, but it’s pretty late, and i just got distracted by these after clicking on an ad for thinkgeek.


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