Tell the Difference Between These Three Pictures 1878

tell time

I wasn't going to go into that (I was replying to only one point), but since you've opened the door... :)

And I don't mean to imply you don't understand what I'm about to say, but as they say "We're just talking here."

The multiple choices are to simplify (read "make possible") processing the information in large, faceless quanbreasties. Nobody has to think about what you've said, since you're not really allowed to SAY anything. "On a scale from one to ten..." is easy to process, and the suit with the final results can say "Well 90% of the 300 people we asked ranked this feature 7 or above."

But often, if I could just say one paragraph, they could forget all the questions. Of course, that would require real people actually read all our comments and apply some brains to the subject. But then rather than the above, you might get final results like "Well, most people think this features is pretty good, but did you know that something like one in ten think it's dangerous and it even crashed some of their computers?"

Often, yes.

Right. I've had discussions (sometimes arguments) with one of my banks. They always seem surprised when I tell them that I work with computers and that I don't trust them. It's an oversimplification, of course, but it does bother them, which is what I'm after.

I got one of those surveys. They had a "comments" section. I asked them what made them think the feature they were asking about was an improvement? What did it do that the older, safer, HTML compliant version didn't?

I'd like to be able to do that. Sounds like the original outfit knew what they were about.

When I complained that some confirmations were Internet Explorer specific, and thus choked Opera, they were mystified why I didn't just use IE to access their site. My response that I didn't trust IE, and was suspicious of anyone who coded their site to require it, led to one of the arguments I noted above. They kept insisting that there were things they couldn't do without being IE specific, and I kept asking them why they thought they NEEDED to do those things? Every example they tossesd at me what a "bells and whistles" sort of feature. After fifteen minutes of this he was getting tired of the argument so I gave up on him.

Nice question. I'll have to remember that.

I haven't hit those yet on either of my banks sites.

I get this picture in my mind of the web designers talking over coffee: Bob: "Hey, Mike, you remember that warning box you were talking about yesterday?" Mike: "Yeah, I got it to work with a text pop up." Bob: "Well, how about an ANIMATED pop up? It's to much cooler." Mike: "Hmm. Sounds good. We can get the art department to do a cartoon saying..."

flexibility.

I keep trying to get people to automate the stuff they have pages of instruction on how to do. They're doing these things WITH the computer, I argue, why not let the computer DO it for you? It won't forget to do step 5 of 40, and you can always have it cry for help if something unexpected comes up. No go.

- Bill