Simplicity Rules

I’ve been doing “web stuff” in some form since 1995. I made websites, I put my thoughts online. When blogs first became popular, around 1999, I didn’t get it. A blog is an ordinary web page.

Around the same time, I helped start a college radio station on the Internet. We played music, talked about campus issues, and more. We certainly had the equipment to podcast, if there had been such a term. But, podcasting is just an ordinary MP3 file.

My most important point here is that I have a history of being dead wrong.

Web pages and MP3 files are old technology (relative to the fast-moving web), but they’re being used in new ways. Webheads invented a number of tiny tweaks that make blogs and podcasts more popular. RSS is used to automatically keep track of new posts or episodes. Structured content makes blogs and podcasts easier to search.

Blogs are more than just web pages. Podcasts are more than just MP3 files. Everything new is old. It’s time I start thinking before I use the word “just.”

Blend is one of my favorite coffee shops in Portland. It’s really easy to hang out there for hours. With more time comes a necessary trip to the toilet. For two years the lock to the bathroom opened the opposite direction. To move the deadbolt to the left, I had to turn the key to the right. This confused me for a long time, until finally I got used to it.

About a year ago, they fixed this broken interface. Now the deadbolt works as anyone would expect. Yet, every time I use their restroom, I still turn the key to the right before going the correct direction.

Do bad interfaces stick around because the user base is used to them? If the interface is improved, new users are happy, but will old users revolt?

This is a real question for the folks at Adobe (formerly Macromedia). I have long considered Macromedia’s user interfaces to be difficult to understand, but now I’m used to it. Will Adobe “fix” Macromedia’s UI now that it owns the products?

Invalid username or password. Seems like a pretty simple message and we’ve all seen it. Sure, it’s a pain, but remembering passwords is one of the tiny aches of life on the web.

I have no problem with the error message as a whole. I only take issue with the or. If you have a site that includes a registration/login component, give as good a message as you can. Don’t leave the user wondering, “is it the username or is it the password?”

Login error message at NewsGator

Login error message at Backpack (by 37Signals)

From the programmers perspective, I see how the or came about. They are probably taking the username & password entered and checking them both against the database at the same time. How about grabbing the password that matches the username and then comparing it.

That way, if you don’t get a return for the username, you can say:

Invalid username.

And if you do get a username, but the password doesn’t match, you can say:

Invalid password.

(Extra credit: rewrite those error messages to be even friendlier).

I’m not a security expert, so maybe there is a reason that more sites don’t do this. But as far as I can see, it’s just an extra conditional statement. Your users will appreciate having one less thing to guess.

Today Fred Wilson writes about VC Radar: “When I first hear of a company I ignore it.” He’s quoting someone, but his point is that it takes a few times of hearing about someone before they decide it means something. This is probably similar to product adoption for consumers, too. We hear about this “new thing,” but it takes hearing it from a couple different friends before we give it a shot.

The quote reminded me of something I read about feature requests over the summer: “How do you track all these requests? You don’t. Read them and then throw them away.”

The idea behind this is that the really important issues/people/companies/products keep coming up on the radar again and again. Ignoring everything initially is certainly the simple solution, but it also feels lazy. And there are a number of examples I can think of where this isn’t a good idea (like, say, manning a RADAR station).

Overall, it does seem like a good way to focus on the important stuff. That’s really where simple solutions work.

I’m working really hard here to understand what makes people do stuff like… start a fan site, dedicated to an 11 year-old actress, written in ALL CAPS, embedded with a MIDI of a Billy Joel song, and obviously cared about for over a week (news page spans Aug. 5 – Aug. 14).

I think once I understand this, I’ll understand the Internet. Insights? Anyone?

Seriously, this artificial attachment to a famous person makes many sites, including the famous encyclopedia I help with, tick. It’s the same sort of enthusiasm that has made so many people leave BackFence comments (good and bad) for Memphis and Minneapolis on BestPlaces.

I may not understand why it is so, but it’s a great lesson about the web, business, and business on the web. Find your visitors’ passions. And let them express it.