Every time I turned around today I was confronted by the message in the title. Do you know what the heck it means? I certainly do not. It was a “caution” message of some sort I guess because it was yellow and didn’t seem to keep me from doing what I needed to do but still?

I was using a new corporate “tool”. The user interface is crazy nuts overkill with all kinds of navigation and obscure labels (and messages). Somehow after much flailing around I found where I needed to be and figured out which of the 1% of the functions available I needed to get my job done, which was to simply upload PDF files to a client-facing site. How about a simple “Upload” button? In the end, there was an “Upload” button but finding it and learning how to use it was not particularly intuitive.

At least I didn’t have to edit any html to make this thing happen like I used to have to do with the old tool. Mind you, I *love* to code and edit html. I am good at coding html and will happily do it until the cows come home. But this html was the kind of html that a “tool” generates and was total overkill. There were no line breaks so you were wading through a virtual sea of duplicative [correct word? not sure] tags and content and if you accidentally wiped out an ending tag or whatever, you totally broke the page and had to start all over again.

If you are designing web or phone or whatever apps, keep it simple. Make it easy for people to get in, find their information or complete their task, and git the hell outta dodge. That last sentence is not a direct quote from the GG but it is close to what he always says. As a user experience designer, I am on the same page.

Sorry about the work rant. I’m not even ranting against the company. I think these kinds of tools are pretty much ubiquitous in the corporate world. They are created (or purchased) to provide a wide array of functionality to many users with different needs. And to be fair, the company has replaced some of our older tools with better, more usable ones. In the end I get paid to master tools like this and I am pretty sure I earned my pay today oh boy oh boy. But “unbucketable”? That is not a word…

Hey, at least I’m not ranting about polly-ticks🐽

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 25th, 2019 at 6:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.