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What is this site for, anyway?
Good question. The site is, ostensibly, a resource for web professionals and other interested
parties designed to educate on principles of interactive usability. It also serves as the "project"
required for a Master's degree in Communications.
There isn't enough / not the right kind of information here. Where can I
find out more?
Check out the resources page. There are links to all of the sites
referenced here, as well as the complete text and bibliography of the prospectus which preceded this project.
Ergo what?
The name "ergonaut" had its roots in the phrase "cognitive ergonomics,"
which I used in an early graduate paper that outlined the beginnings of what would
become my prospectus. Ergonomics is defined as "The field of study that deals
with the relationship between people and their working environment, as it affects
efficiency, safety, and ease of action." Cognitive ergonomics, then, is the
application of such study to thought, and thought pathways. Ultimately, that is
what web usability is about. But part of making something easy to think about
is attempting to define it in a pleasant way. "Ergonaut.com" is infinitely
cooler than "cognitiveergonomics.com." And it's easier to type.
So, uh, why all the gray?
Gray exists comfortably on the continuum between black and white, which are my
chosen colors for foreground and background, at least in terms of text spaces.
I didn't want a shade that had too much contrast or energy, in an effort to keep
attention on the more pragmatic aspects of the presentation. The gray is simply
fleshing out superflous contours and a tool to compartmentalize spaces of use.
Any desaturated color probably would have served the same purposes, but between
my personal Bauhaus sensibilities and a desire to maintain the construct of academia,
gray had to be it.
If this site is about usability, why am I having such a hard time using
it?
Are you? If so, let me know why. I would like to know, because frankly, in the
absense of solid user/audience research, usability is really just a mishmash of common sense, experience, and
intuition.
But everything you say goes counter to what guru x says!
I would venture to guess everything is probably an overstatement, but I imagine there may be some snags
with what others have said, simply because I've gravitated toward cognitive theory as the crux of my assertions.
This tends to make most of what is said open-ended and (often overly)dependent on the individual mind.
But what about principle x? You've completely ignored principle
x!!
The line did have to be drawn somewhere (see "too basic" below). But if there
is a point that you think is crucial that is missing, let
me know. If you have a valid point and evidence to back it up, it might warrant
changing or augmenting the site.
Why is this so basic? Where are the details?
Unfortunately, until super-adaptive megacomputers with a healthy dose of AI are developed, any self-representative
treatise on usability will be a slave to the bell-curve. And since the audience for this site is a bit wider than
might serve for a niche techincal journal, some folks might feel talked-down to. Plus, it did have to get done at some
point. Sorry. You may want to look at the resources page for some narrower discussions on
topics that might interest you.
How could any of this be important? A web page is a web page, right?
No, it's not. I have done my best to make the principles on the site accessible to everyone, but if you can't get past
thinking that they're pointless, you may need to get out of the interaction business entirely. If, for example, you
are the owner of a business with revenue goals of over $1000 a year and you're considering using the nephew of your
sales manager to do your site, think again. It's like saying "a building is a building." Not the case. Anyone can
build something. Enterprising youngsters have built some pretty cool treehouses, but the odds of your basing a successful
business out of one are not good.
So the only people qualified to do quality interactive design are old people?
No. The inverse isn't true, either. It isn't about age, it's about perspective.
Sometimes that comes with age, but not always. As much as you don't want a treehouse,
you don't want a mud hut, either.
What's running behind the scenes? Give me some of the technical details.
This site is on a Windows 2000 Server, running IIS 5.0. The server-side scripting is garden-variety VBScript ASP. The
"profiling" data is captured using a unique identifier written to a cookie, with the relevant data being piped to an
XML store.
WHAT!? WINDOZE!? A TRULY L33T @$$ HAX0R WooD USE LINUX and PHP!
Yeah. On the off chance that you understood that question and also happen to be
a reasonable human being, I will go into some detail about this. Frankly, the
OS and scripting platforms were chosen because they were what were available to
me. Plus, I have a lot more experience with ASP. Shortest path from A to B. But
I have no illusions about what I chose being "the best," and nor should you. The
root of usability is adaptability, and the minute a designer refuses to use a
technology because it goes counter to some kind of quasi-hacker pseudo-morality,
the project in question fails. Serve your target audience. And don't forget the
meta-audience. They can oft-times be more critical (in more ways than one).
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