To answer this question we should first consider why a user has arrived at your site. The path she usually follows is that she has a need for information (entertainment is also a form of information), types in this need in a search engine (a rather dull name for something that supposedly satisfies needs), and finds your site. Alternatively, if your site’s a brand, she’s heard about your site somehow and either directly types in its URL or again searches for you (you’ll be surprised at how many people search for Google on Yahoo and vice versa).
Debra (that’s her name btw), then either quickly finds the information she needs on your site, or quickly doesn’t find it and returns to the search engine. If she’s spent more than 1 week surfing the Internet she’s already trained her brain to make a thousand split-second decisions on whether your site (in comparison to the many sites she’s already viewed) will satisfy her need. If your site does solve a need it may indeed create new needs (which is good for you), and she’s likely to return. If not, you’ve lost her forever (unless she somehow stumbles upon your site again - and I use the word ’stumbling’ carefully).
Now comes the critical question: does it matter how well your site is ‘designed’ or for that matter how many ‘features’ and how much ‘functionality’ it has. Qualitative research has shown me that it doesn’t. Of course design comes into the equation: the information has to be presented in a certain way, for instance it can’t be upside-down or in wingdings font, and has to follow a certain structure, but that’s not the design I’m talking about.
What matters to Debra (and I suppose Bob and Jeremiah too) is the content. As long as the content is of good quality and is current, she will regard the site as a good one and maybe even come back. Everything else, and I’m talking about the pretty pictures, widgets, instant messaging and chat plugins, Flash animations, and such matters only to techies, web experts, and loonies. It does not matter to Debra.
Keep this in mind when you’re developing your site. The focus is on the content (remember sometimes images, videos, etc are content in themselves) not on the design or functionality of the site. The design of the site should be about keeping the focus on the content.
]]>The documentary started off well in Part I with a retracing of Jesus Christ mythology back to Pagan sun-god mythology, and questioning many Western biblical characters and stories. I think this was probably the most factual information they had, so they used this as a technique to win the audience’s trust, much like comedians who use their best material first to get the audience laughing, and then proceed to get less funny whilst still getting the laughs. Part I also had a very tenuous link to the rest of the film, and in fact it made no rational sense to include it (but the filmmakers were certainly not counting on rationality).
As the film progressed into Parts II and III, the left-wing bias became more and more conspicuous and factual bases became, contrarily, more and more hidden. Part II produced a conspiracy theory of absurd proportions, effectively saying that America’s goal is economic creation and justification through secret self-destruction. It began to question the story of 911, and claimed as fact the real ‘motives’ behind it and the real ‘terrorists’ involved (I’m being deliberately opaque here as I’m not going to do a retelling of the documentary). It proceeded to talk of manipulation and propoganda tactics used by governments on their own people. Only the subtle minds in the audience picked up that the exact some tactics of emotional language, extremely selective evidence, and sudden and abrupt changes in sounds and imagery was being concurrently used on them.
Part III devolved even further into a chaotic, selective mess that kept me looking at my cell phone and wondering when it would end. No doubt it contained elements of truth, but these were so scattered across a sea of nonsense that it would be easier finding the Titanic than the real facts. At one point of insanity in the documentary, I felt a mixture of dumbfoundedness and sleepiness at the absurd suggestion that the US government was deliberately making its population dumb.
When the film ended, the leftists (and by that time much of the audience was propagandized into temporary ‘left-istry’) clapped rapturously. Whether that sore feeling on their right hand is still with them remains to be seen.
]]>I’m glad that certain websites, so far the only one I know of is Visual Complexity, are being different by asking us to apply a different kind of analytical skill - in VC’s case: by asking us to count when leaving a comment.
I’ll be looking out in future for further little morphisms of popularly used web technology.
]]>The product or method would be sold to millions of office workers around the world, as well as students. Papers would say it would cause a loss of trillions of dollars of productivity - but that would be false. The people who would buy it aren’t productive in the first place. In fact it may increase productivity because workers would be more awake and alert after their naps.
So get inventing…
]]>Among my fingers
Then the sense of it
Rushing through me
Past me
Beyond me
]]>For instance, the sentence It is not uncommon to find organic food in supermarkets has a different meaning to the sentence It is common to find organic food in supermarkets . The former sentence supposedly rebuffs an assumption that organic food in supermarkets is uncommon, whilst the latter merely makes a statement about organic food. The former also makes a more eloquent case for organic food, while the latter is dry and says nothing interesting.
To take this further, consider the lyrics of the poorly written song I don’t want nothing. That colloquial expression, as Wikipedia also points out I don’t want nothing does not mean “I want something”. It just means the singer doesn’t want anything. And that’s it.
]]>Compare to Tennysson’s Ulysses who ‘mete[s] and dole[s] unqeual laws unto a savage race, that hoard, and sleep, and feed, and no not [him]’. Obviously not a coincidence and discussed in many journals, but connoting the need to copy consciously and subconsciously and build on that which has been created by others.
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