One of my basic Web beliefs is to be nice to the user. Make things easy for visitors and they’ll use your site. It’s a painfully obvious statement, but as a whole the cobblers of the Web (myself included) aren’t doing a good job.
Sometimes we have roadblocks, like security. I have so many site registrations that it can be a lot of work to guess my username and password. As a defense, I know many who have the same login for every site. What would security experts have to say about that?
I want my bank to care about online security. Paypal, the IRS, and my email provider should all look out for me. But… that’s about it. Most sites should care more about my experience than my security. Heck, maybe you don’t need registration?
Then there’s online mapping and driving directions. I use these so often, I have quick searches in my browser to make it faster. But, it could still be easier. I live in Portland. Over 90% of my map searches are in Portland. When I search without typing in a city, Matthew Hurst thinks they should take a wild guess. If I ran a mapping solution, I would track the city and start making smart assumptions. Maybe I’d even fall back on mapping IP locations.
But I think the problem here is privacy. When machines start getting too smart, some people feel a little weirded out. So, even though the user experience is better, we hold off on making the right decision to avoid the cantankerous few who think we’re listening to their thoughts and sending cranial transcripts to the government.
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