brightly colored food

From LucDesk

Web designers have been involved with the Internet for a long time, at least in Internet years. We begin to take the users for granted and expect them to know all the tricks of surfing Web pages.

Terrible name for the article, but a good reminder to see the web through the eyes of those less indocrinated with our interface oddities and internet-jargon.

I bring this up because I love my mother. She’s great - just what you’d expect from a mom. And being my mom, I was given the honor last night of explaining the difference between an email address and a web address. They both end in “.com”, so what’s the difference? She does her email and web-browsing in the same application, so why shouldn’t she expect to put her son’s email into that input box that’s labeled “Address” and send him an email? Her explanation made perfect sense to me.

We get so used to this stuff that we forget how idiosyncratic it is, how much of it is learned culturally, tips and clarifications between friends and relatives, things that aren’t so easy to figure out the first time. Now might be a good time for everyone to post a picture of their mother right next to your monitor, with the words “you are not your user” below, just as a friendly reminder.