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October 18, 2005
Making the right mistakes, part II
After writing up a review of Jakob Neilsen's article on blog usability, I noticed this in the summary at the top of the page:
Weblogs are often too internally focused and ignore key usability issues, making it hard for new readers to understand the site and trust the author.
First of all let me tell you as a technical writer, you must not trust the author. Never trust the author, even when the author is yourself. By its very nature, writing allows us to create mental plates of spaghetti, whose complexity can easily escape us even as we believe we remain in control. You may be sure you are too smart for that to happen. In that case, start writing software.
Weblogs are too internally focused and ignore usability issues not handled by the weblogging software, true. Most people who blog do so not because they have "vastly intelligent personal epiphanies and deep, stunning perception" (Matt's words) to share with the world, but because they feel like blogging, which they can do these days because blogging software is usable... for the blogger. The reader doesn't even enter into the consideration. If the blogger did have to consider the reader, most of us would not blog. When I think about you, Gentle Reader, it's usually because I worry that if I write down what I really think, you'll misunderstand and get upset with me. I rarely think about how usable my blog might be for you, focusing instead on the content. In fact, I don't expect you to read my blog through my blog anyway. I expect you to use an aggregator such as bloglines.com.
To new readers: "The universe is no place to start." Most of the way I understand that is in a fortune cookie I can no longer find. The author said, in essence, that progress comes not from the cutting edge, but from those things we can do without thinking about them. So Neilsen has a point there, the site needs to be so usable you simply find what you're looking for without noticing it. I don't know what you're looking for, and I sure don't know why you're looking here.
Posted by Mark at October 18, 2005 10:51 PM
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Comments
Well, all the things you write about are interesting to me, except for the technical stuff, which I don't know all the words for and therefore don't understand. But I guess that's because I'm your Mom and your doings are infinitely fascinating to me. It is one of the two things I do regularly on the computer. Read your entries and play Spider Solitare. I haven't played much Free Cell because I am usually on Dana's log-in and he doesn't want me to disrupt his stats. I'm too lazy, most times to switch user and Spider Solitare suffices for a couple of games, although you can't win them all.
Posted by: Teena at October 20, 2005 02:26 PM