Author: schloss

I follow two tenets when testing products with people:

1. Any testing is better than no testing
2. Bad testing is worse than no testing

Even when you have the opportunity to do it, messing up is terribly easy. Whether you’re doing usability testing, business analysis, ethnography, or any research where you’re tasked with extracting deep insights about people, you’ve got to put as much work into setting up your tests as you do conducting them and analyzing them.

Here are some things to keep in mind when doing your testing, along with some usability horror stories.

Get the right people

Remember when I said that any testing is better than none? I lied. You have to get several people and the right people to make your testing work.

A software consultant friend of mine was in a situation where the client wouldn’t let any of his employees talk with my friend because the client knew exactly what the employees need. I can’t think of a worse situation for starting your work (except not talking to anyone at all).

Not convincing? Let’s take the OLPC laptops. Designed for children in developing countries, someone tested it with a computer literate, British child. Obviously getting kids in third-world countries for usability testing is difficult. But testing with a kid unrepresentative of the end users? Why bother testing at all…

What can you do to make your research better? Always talk to relevant people. In my examples above, the client and the British kid are not the appropriate people to work with.  Talk to the right people — people who will use the software, representative of the real users. Don’t let anyone else stand in for them.

Also, avoid an N of 1. Unless you’re designing an executive dashboard for an executive (and you’re talking with that executive), you need to talk to several people. If you’re not sure how many you need to speak with, keep interviewing until you don’t learn anything new.

Ask the right questions

Even if you have the right people for your research, it’s trivially easy to bias your results by asking the wrong questions, not following up when someone drops a hint about a related problem, or not having a goal for your testing.

For example, take Girlfriend Usability. Someone was interested in doing usability testing with Ubuntu Linux, so he got his girlfriend to sit down with it and test a few scenarios. Yes, he commited the “N of 1” error (see above), but this example also exposes other common problems you’ll encounter in your research.

First, you must have a target for your testing. Asking if Ubuntu can be “used easily by the mainstream” is far too broad to test, especially with only one subject. By the look of the tests performed, they seemed appropriate for a college student’s computer use but not appropriate for a business user or an IT professional. Figure out your target group, and build your interview/test/survey around the target users and their uses.

Once you have a target in mind, test the things that will help you draw valid, usable conclusions. Girlfriend Usability was a scattershot test of Ubuntu, OpenOffice, Pidgin, and an assortment of other applications and dialogs. Based on those tests, I can’t think of how those tests will help you draw any conclusions about the Ubuntu user experience.

A more appropriate test would be to get a group of people, give each a laptop with Ubuntu on it, and ask them to use it as their primary machine for a month. Record the desktop and their interactions, give them support as they need it, and have them note whenever they feel they have problems. Then review those moments with the person who encountered them and dig into the issues underlying the problems. Absolutely give time for those people to adjust to Ubuntu. Don’t expect someone sitting down with a new operating system to “get it” right away. (Can you say “faulty test design?” I knew you could.)

Discover underlying problems

After you’ve done your testing, you need to draw conclusions from your research. In the case of usability testing, your conclusions should be actionable improvements that will solve the problems underlying the ones you saw in your research.

Drawing any conclusions is impossible when you didn’t ask the right questions or test the right people. Say you tested one person; your conclusions may be based on the test results of an outlier or non-representative individual among the group you’re interested in. Your conclusions will be wrong; save yourself embarrassment and find more testers.

But even if you do your testing correctly, you can still sink your test by drawing the wrong conclusions and taking the wrong actions. For the best example of drawing the wrong conclusions, you need look no further than Windows Vista. Vista is a limp forward from Windows XP. That’s as far as most people get in their analysis of Vista’s poor reception.

Listen to Bill G on The Daily Show describing how Microsoft determined Vista’s improvements.

After spending time with 50 families around the world and 5 million testers, I cannot believe that Microsoft could create a product as uncompelling as Vista. Actually, I take that back. They could make an uncompelling product if they completely disregarded their research and built whatever they felt like instead. Or maybe if all 5 million testers colluded to sink Vista…

So if you did your research right, how do you avoid drawing poor conclusions? Look for the themes across your test results. Testing the Meez Facebook Application, every person mentioned “friends” but in different contexts — play with them, play against them, find them, etc. It’s a dead giveaway that friends are the secret sauce for the success (or failure) of that (and every) Facebook application.

Also preserve your tester’s words. Direct quotes from the testers are the best source for your analysis, and they’re the most powerful weapon you have to convince others that your conclusions are right. Record all of your conversations with your testers to get the quotes right. If you have to edit quotes, never rewrite them in a way that changes their meaning. Changing the quotes will bias your results and lead you down the wrong path.

In conclusion

Even if you dismiss all my other advice, remember these two things:

• Do your research poorly and you’ll end up with poor results
• Do your research right and you might still mess it up in the end

The “right” research is different for every case. Do your homework to figure out who the right testers are and what the appropriate tests are. With that done, you’ll be well on your way to discovering valid, actionable conclusions that everyone will love.

You know what a shmup is — a shoot ’em up like Space Invaders or Galaga or R-Type. I like those kinds of games, especially the modern versions like Raiden or Ikaruga or Einhander. One tiny little ship versus hordes of enemies, armed only with a pea shooter. I like those odds.

One reason I like shmups is because they teach you valuable lessons. Here’s some of the things I learned from shmups.

Don’t panic

The Hitchhiker’s Guide was right. There’s plenty enough to worry about on the screen; the last thing you need to do is freak out. Almost everything you see is harmful, so don’t worry about it. Spend your time obsessing about more constructive things instead.

On dying

You will die, so just accept it. Try to learn from your mistake though. If it was a huge attack from a boss that got you, remember what led up to that attack so you can plan for it next time. Dying sucks, but that’s why there’s change machines — to give you more quarters so you can continue again…

Always watch your ship

Staying alive is your top priority, and the most common way of dying is running your ship into a bullet. Note I didn’t say that the bullet ran into you. You have a chance to avoid every bullet coming at you, but not if you’re looking at the enemies flying in from the top of the screen. Always watch your ship and the surrounding area. It’s the bullet you didn’t see that will kill you.

Plan your moves

Beginning pool players shoot for their current shot. Pro pool players make their current shot and set up their next shot. Likewise, beginner shmup players dodge bullets. Pro shmup players move to where the bullets aren’t going. A spot that’s clear right now may be filled with bullets by the time you get there. Pay attention to the action around your ship, and move to spots that will be unoccupied once you get there.

Do not go straight for the powerups

Beginners often make the mistake of grabbing a powerup right when it appears. Always plan your move to get the powerups. They often hover around the screen, so first wait to see if it comes closer to you on its own. Otherwise, slowly work your way over to it. There’s no worse feeling than dying when trying to grab an item.

Know your weapons

The second worse feeling, besides dying, is having a super powered up ship and then grabbing a crappy powerup that nerfs your weapon. Familiarize yourself with your weapons, and learn the one that suits your playing style best. If you know the boss is coming up, you might change your weapon to pick one better suited for that boss.

Bomb = extra life

Three lives per quarter is hard enough, but some games are kind enough to give you extra lives from the start. A screen-clearing bomb is just as good as an extra life. Don’t be shy about using them. Your instinct that you can dodge every bullet is dead wrong; drop a bomb and elate in the feeling that you just saved yourself a quarter.

Ok ok, for the learning impaired, here are the real takeaways:

• Don’t panic. Use your energy on useful things instead
• Bad things are ok. Learn your lesson and move on
• You are your top priority. Don’t let the noise distract you
• Plan ahead. What you didn’t expect will get you in the end
• Be wary of quick wins. They may bite you in the ass
• Know your strengths. Adapt when it’s not to your detriment
• Use your bombs. Don’t let the machine steal your quarters

Got it? Now go give it a try for real — arrow keys move, Z shoots, X is bomb, delete takes you to the menu.

Why do you show up for work everyday? I don’t mean the naive, “because they pay me.” I want to know what gets you out of bed every morning. What is your motivation for going into the office every morning instead of sleeping in an extra hour, watching soap operas all day, and eating peanut butter straight from the jar.

Three senses

Motivation is more complicated than, “I do it for the money.” You may like what you do. Or you might not like what you do, but you put up with it. Or you may really hate what you do.

Some of you love your job. You talk about your work in the positive sense. You say acclaims like:

I love my job because…

Some of you aren’t that happy with your job, but you still find a glimmer of hope that draws you into the office every day. When you describe your job, you say something like:

I’d work somewhere else, but at my job I have…

Some of you have already accepted defeat. You fear going into the office every day, but work provides you with something so important that you have to go. You say things like:

I have a panic attack riding the elevator to the office for fear of what will happen when I walk in, but I still go because…

Five factors

Here’s a short list of the factors that motivate you to do your job along with an example quote to see what your perspective is on that factor. Take some time to think about how they apply to you. They are:

• Compensation
• Your tasks
• The company mission
• Empowerment
• Culture

Compensation

You go to work each day because of the money. This includes benefits and other kickbacks too. You measure your time worked in dollars. The best day at work is any day you get your paycheck.

Positive sense: I get paid a fuckton of money to do my job and I love it.

Negative sense: If I wasn’t getting paid a fuckton of money to do my work, I’d be gone.

Defeated sense: I can’t make rent unless I go to work.

Your Tasks

You go to work each day because of the work you do. Every day, you can do your thing in the office. It doesn’t matter where you work or what you get paid as long as you can keep doing this task or use these skills in your job.

Positive sense: I get to do what I love everyday at work. It doesn’t feel like work at all.

Negative sense: They’re screwed if I quit. I remind my boss about that daily.

Defeated sense: This is the only place where I can do this kind of work.

The Company Mission

You go to work each day because you’re part of something bigger than yourself. Together, you and your coworkers do things that none of you could do individually. It’s not about any one of you; it’s about what you do together.

Positive sense: We do great things everyday. I love being part of it.

Negative sense: It’s a crappy business, but someone has to do it.

Defeated sense: What we do is disgusting. I can’t believe that I work for a company like this.

Empowerment

You go to work each day because you can cause great changes at your office. Whether you have a high ranking title or you have lots of freedom to do your work, what you say goes. Nobody is breathing down your neck.

Positive sense: I don’t have to check with the management; they trust me to make the right decision.

Negative sense: Everyone does what I tell them. How could I ever leave?

Defeated sense: I have eight different bosses. That means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. My only real motivation is not to be hassled.

Culture

You go to work each day because of the people and environment in the office. Put aside the benefits, your work, your company’s goals, and the money, and you’re left with this set of intangibles that makes work tolerable, maybe even enjoyable.

Positive sense: I love the office. It’s like a second home to me.

Negative sense: If it wasn’t for my friends at work, I would have quit long ago.

Defeated sense: It’s quiet hours in the office from 9AM to 6PM. We’re forbidden to talk.

Your managers’ lesson

If you’re a manager and don’t get the point, maybe you’re not cut out to manage people. As a manager, you need to understand what motivates your employees. If you haven’t had a talk with your employees about how happy they are at work, then don’t get angry when they aren’t contributing their maximum effort to the company. Or when the quit unexpectedly. Or unleash a virus that rounds all the pennies down and sends them to a Swiss bank account.

Besides that talk, you need to:

• properly compensate your employees
• let employees do what they love
• clearly define the company goals
• empower your employees to create change
• establish a positive company culture and office environment

Your lesson

The lessons for you, the working stiffs, are pretty straightforward. You should find a job where you’re always talking about these factors in a positive sense. If you’re talking about your job in a negative sense, put some feelers out for a new job. If you’re talking about your job in the defeated sense, quit. Now.

Find a job that:

• properly compensates you for your contribution
• lets you do what you love
• has a mission in line with your ethics and interests
• empowers you to use your skills to the fullest
• you’re comfortable with the culture and your coworkers

Finally

Work should be fun. If you’re not having fun at work, give my Guide to Slacking a read. It’s full of advice on how to kill time in the office without really trying.

Seriously though, discover what you love to do. Then find a job that lets you do that. That will take you most of the way through this list. Then negotiate a big salary for yourself and the rest will take care of itself.

“Social graph”

When something becomes popular, you have to give it a name. “Social networking sites.” “Crowd-sourcing.” “Collaborative filtering.” “User-generated content.”

“Social graph” is the new name for you, your friends, your coworkers, and everyone else you know, stored in a computer-manageable format. It’s how you know them and how you’re related to each other. And it’s coming to a web application near you.

Everyone is up on the social graph. Nick Carr says it’s Web 3.0 (but how is it different from “social network” in Web 2.0?). Facebook promises they’re committed to the “sanctity of the social graph.” Google, Six Apart, and Plaxo are all on board with the social graph.

But names get in the way of what we really mean. “Post-traumatic stress disorder.” “9/11.” “Users.” “Social graph.” If we called these things what they really are, they evoke very different reactions:

The words “social graph” dehumanize you, your friends, your coworkers, and all the people you know. It’s as bad as the word “user” but now it’s not just you. It’s everybody lumped into a digital morass by two stale words. Your friendship of two decades becomes a database entry.

The social graph brings up a slew of privacy issues too. How can I control who or what can see my social graph? Can I stop other people from putting me in their social graph? How do I protect my social graph from impostors posing as me? I have two friends who hate each other; how can I keep them from knowing I’m still friends with both of them?

And where does the social graph end? Databases, videos, pictures, web sites, conferences, phone calls, emails, instant messaging, text messages… People I know from high school, college, work, parties, one night stands, trips to the bathroom… Things I buy, places I go, people I visit, drinks I drink…

All of this exacerbates my worries. We’re reducing our social relationships to computer-readable data, expressing the complexities of those relationships through computers that don’t understand human relationships, trusting the future of our social graphs to companies and applications that will protect them and use them only for good.

I shouldn’t be so down on the social graph. People will find great ways to take advantage of the social graph. New applications will spawn the next generation of Internet millionaires. Existing companies will struggle to understand then exploit this fertile ground.

But the benefits of the social graph are illusory. The real promise of the social graph is antisocial systems. More of treating people as data, more disregarding the privacy of personal information, more selecting of checkboxes to express your relationship between you and your friends but you can’t find the one that makes the most sense, more pissed off friends who can’t understand why you would talk with them face-to-face but won’t add them to your social graph.

And if the backbone of our next generation of social software is antisocial, we’re going to produce software and experiences that are antisocial too. It’s autistic software [pdf]. Yay.

So stop for a bit, talk to some people, and ask them what they want with their social graph. I’ll wager they don’t know what a social graph is. And if they don’t know what a social graph is, how can you design tools for them to manage and use their social graph?

One last thing… I have a question for all the companies who are turning me, everyone I know, and our relationships into bits of antisocial data:

Can I please have my friends back?

I call it “dousing for signals.” I’m sure you’ve done it too. You can’t get a good signal with your cell phone or wireless Internet connection. So you start walking around, pointing your phone at weird angles, tilt the lid of your monitor, all in the vain attempt to get one more bar of signal.

You might as well call the reception bars “dousing rods.”

Technologies have problems all the time. And people come up with methods to cope with technologies’ problems. Some work, like cell phone dousing. Some don’t.

These coping methods are signs that technology design is far behind when it comes to helping people diagnose and fix problems with their devices. It would be good enough if said devices actually made our lives better, solved problems faster, did what they claimed to do. But when the technologies hinder us from their benefits, we humans do the only thing we know how to do.

We speculate. We improvise. We get frustrated and give up.

Here are examples of computer voodoo that people try in the vain hope of making our problems all better.

• Reboot
• Hold the reset button down until the light turns red
• Turn off the power, wait ten seconds, and turn it back on
• Charge the battery to full
• Discharge the battery to empty
• Remove the battery
• Push reset
• Uninstall
• Reinstall
• Re-flash
• Downgrade to the last version
• Upgrade with the latest version
• Push the “esc” key
• Don’t push the “esc” key
• Push the power button harder
• Clear your browser cache
• Delete your cookies
• Check your drivers
• Add more ram
• Get a bigger hard drive
• Buy a new computer/phone/device
• Call Dave

When you see them altogether, they look pretty silly. You might as well add “toss salt over your left shoulder” and “shake the magic 8-ball” and “ask a unicorn” to the list. If any of these computer charms work, consider yourself lucky.

Compare technology problems to a running toilet. You can fix a running toilet yourself. Just check the flapper. It’ll cost you $5 at the hardware store to get a new one. Many are universal and will fit in any toilet. You can install it in a couple of minutes. And if that doesn’t fix it, certainly a plumber can fix it with a little work. Or you can just jiggle the handle.

Meanwhile, “digital” means “you can’t fix it.”* Application crashed? Send in a bug report. Then check for an update. Also make sure your drivers are up to date, you have all the patches for your operating system. What browser are you using? We don’t support that any more; try an earlier version. And turn off your firewall and anti-virus too. And there’s no way you could possibly fix it without help.

But there’s a plus side to an otherwise hopeless struggle against technology. “Digital” also means “new excuses.” Something bad happens that defies your ability to explain it, so you come up with an incantation to stop the pain from spreading. It’s a ward against evil — evil caused by technology problems:

• My spam filter ate it
• My anti-virus program ate it
• The power went out and I didn’t save
• The application crashed
• I can’t find that file again
• I know I sent it
• My battery died
• The hard drive died
• It won’t boot
• It won’t shutdown
• I had no signal
• I was on the other line
• I was on the telephone
• I was away from the telephone
• Dave did something to it
• I don’t know what’s wrong with it

Digital incantations are symptoms of a larger problem — poor design. The reasons for poor design are varied — planned obsolescence, incomplete testing, releasing products with bugs, the cost of supporting infinite software and hardware configurations, designing AT the people who will use the products instead of designing FOR them.

The cynic in me says that companies prey on the digital ignorance of most people. This attitude is embodied in the technologies those companies produce; most are difficult to use and impossible to fix for the average person.

The realist in me says if technology was well designed, people would be able to diagnose (and maybe even fix) their problems as easily as fixing a running toilet. Then the realist in me says, “but no company would ever do that.”

Technology should not be this inept.

Of course, sometimes you’ll need someone to help you fix your technology problems, just like sometimes you’ll need a plumber to fix your toilet. I know lots of people who can fix plumbing, cars, and wiring without trouble. But I know almost nobody who can fix their own computer problems without help.

As long as technologies aren’t designed to fail gracefully, and are designed to fail in a way that isn’t usable or fixable by normal people, I’ll still be able to bitch about it. So here’s to the hope that technology designers will take greater care to hold the hands of their users even when their shit breaks.

Design for the disaffected masses; they’ll appreciate the attention.

In the mean time, my cell phone is broken. It keeps rebooting right after it powers on. But I found that if I hit certain keys at the right time, it won’t reboot…

* And before I forget, open source software can’t fix this. Just because you can fix open source software yourself doesn’t mean my computer literate relatives can. They call me for help. And if you thought commercial software was unusable…

How many software and web applications do you love?

I mean really love. I mean love like love for your favorite song or pet. You love it because it’s perfect the way it is and there’s nothing that could ever replace it. The kind of love that everyone knows about because you keep telling other people to use it too.

I mean the kind of software love that makes you happy when you use it. Not “my first cigarette of the morning to sate my addiction” happy. I mean happy like heart flutters that you get anxiously waiting for the app to load. It’s the kind of happiness that comes from realizing that you’ve used it for hours but you didn’t notice the lost time because you were having so much fun.

I honestly can’t think of any applications that I love. One reason is because I’m forced to use many applications that I hate. That’s not love; that’s suffering. MS Outlook — I mean you. It’s no fun to be forced to do anything, especially being forced to use a crappy application.

And I definitely don’t mean the love of an experience versus the love of an application. Teens don’t love MySpace or Facebook. They love the interactions and connections that those sites facilitate (and they don’t necessarily love that either). That’s not true love; that’s playground love. That’s why Friendster, once loved by millions, was displaced in time by MySpace. And that’s why MySpace and Facebook will be replaced by the next new .com in time.

Why don’t we love the software we use?

We don’t love the software we use because we’ve become accustomed to mediocrity. By “we” I mean both application developers and application users. The developers settle for mediocre applications by removing the best and most desired features, not testing with their users, and releasing applications with known bugs and useless error messages.

When confronted, developers handwave the problems away. “It works for me.” “It was designed to work like that.” “I know what our users want.” If the developers felt the pain that their users feel, maybe they would produce better software.

Users settle for mediocre applications by buying them, tolerating them, and not demanding more. There’s an old joke about what would happen if MS Windows was a car — how the car would break down all the time. Users accept the fact that their applications will have errors. And because (most) software errors aren’t life threatening (compared to errors with your car), there’s no mass revolt in the populace to demand better software.

But not all software is buggy; sometimes it’s simply unusable. You enter a command and it does something completely unexpected. You can never remember where the buttons are. It’s not your fault. However, most folks aren’t motivated to speak out about these problems. And even if you do speak out, why should they change it just for you?

Every hindrance further entrenches developer and user in their points of view. From the developer point of view, all users are stupid. From the user point of view, all applications are crap. So from the first moment that someone sits down with your application, you have to work that much harder to get over the users’ initial application pessimism.

It doesn’t have to be like this. In fact, it isn’t always like this. There’s only one application that I’ve ever heard someone say they love. That app is Flickr.

Why does Flickr succeed where others fail? Because it’s fun. And easy to use. Few (if any?) problems. It’s a pretty simple formula. Other app makers should try to understand the phenomenon of Flickr before they start their own application development.

There’s a similar reason why Apple products are so popular. It’s because they’re designed. By people with skills in designing things. Apple’s designs aren’t perfect. But their designs stand out because they design their products (unlike the rest of the computer industry which doesn’t design their products at all).

It doesn’t have to be like this because we know the best methods for creating easy to use, fun, well designed, bug free applications. Most people don’t follow those methods though. The result is another crappy application; it makes good apps like Flickr or good designs like Apple’s stand far out from the rest of the pack.

What’s your lesson from this? You can get people to love your software. You just need to put the time and effort into it. Users know crap software from the good stuff.

If your stuff is crap, don’t be surprised when your users flee when a marginally better competitor surfaces. Your users might not love the new application more than yours. But without love for your application, there’s no reason for them to stick around when something — anything — better comes along.

Dear Mr. Time Magazine Editor,

The site I work on was listed as one of your 5 Worst Websites — 5 worst of the year? Month? Hour? Doesn’t matter — it’s a backhanded slap from a distinguished magazine like Time.

First, let’s clear up something. There is no adware or spyware on our site. Putting the name of our site next to those words is insulting and deceptive. You’re journalists; you know the power of words as well as I do. Take those back.

But let’s get serious for a second. Here’s the opening sentence from your tirade against my site:

It has become trendy to tack poems, photos, icons, logos and other digital flotsam and jetsam onto email messages.

This sentence tells me everything I need to know about the person who wrote this article. You’re a late-30’s, early 40’s person who reluctantly has adopted these new web technologies. Email is still amazing to you. All the kids who are on instant messing or using “the blogs” are wasting their time on the computer when they should be reading books, going outside, or subscribing to Time Magazine.

Signatures “[have] become trendy”? It was trendy to add a signature to your email a decade ago, when email was in infancy and everyone wondered, “how do you make that little line appear at the bottom of all your emails?” Now it’s expected that everyone does it.

Regarding your specific complaint that people are putting Meez in their emails, it’s a rare thing. The only people I know who put a Meez on the bottom of their emails are me and my coworkers, only in our professional correspondence, and only because we’re damn proud about the site we’re creating.

Let me be clear about this; the people using our website don’t use email. Seriously. They put their Meez in their blogs, in their IM windows, on their profiles, but not in their emails because they don’t use email. Let me repeat that in terms you can understand — our core demographic doesn’t use email. Yours does.

Another way of understanding your panning our site is “pandering” to the email lovers such as yourself who feel that Meez and “other sites of its ilk” have sullied your fertile ground of emails. You can have email; we don’t want it back.

Our Meezers love our website, come back regularly, and always are inspiring us with great feedback, ideas, and encouragement. We love the people using our site, and we do as much as we can to make their time on our site kick ass. I doubt Time Magazine or time.com get glowing messages like these from your audience, or that you do as much as we do to make your users love your site. In your case, you should aim lower and first try to make your site tolerable. (You still have a long way to go until you get there.)

So why did you pick on our site?

Your comments said it all. You hate images in your emails, and you saw one of our Meez in your emails once. And then you decided to single out us among the many sites like ours to quell your email signature anger. I expect that kind of hack journalism from Bill O’Reilly, not from Time Magazine.

You also put us in the same camp as other signature and smiley providers; we share more in common with avatar sites like WeeWorld and Gaia Online than those other sites you mentioned. Then again, I don’t expect you to know what Gaia or WeeWorld are or what an avatar is. I’ll write a description of them and email it to you (with my Meez in the signature).

When I’m thinking about the new features on our site, I think about the people who will use it on our site — mostly teens — who love our site, tell their friends about it, and spend lots of time on it. But our site is not for everyone. It’s probably not for you. When you to cite my site as one of the worst ones ever, to complain that we’re clogging up your inbox, and to insult our “cutesy creatures” loved by our users, you reveal that you don’t understand the appeal of our website. You just don’t get it. That bears repeating.

You don’t get it.

And that’s why I don’t give a fuck what you say about my website. And you should be honored that I spent this time to call you on your bullshit. I don’t waste my time on elitist idiots like you except to point out their idiocy and make them look like the idiots that they really are. So take your list and shove it until time.com becomes the top website on the web.

If you really want to see how much people are annoyed about email signatures, let’s put yours (with no Meez) and mine (with my Meez) side by side and ask folks which ones they like better. I’ll wager they’ll like mine better. If I lose, I’ll subscribe to your toilet paper roll of a magazine for a year. I’ll even read the whole thing every week. And if you lose, you have to put a Meez of yourself in your email signature for a year. Sounds good?

Last, and most important by far, your insult of my website isn’t an insult to me. It’s an insult to the millions of people who have come to Meez.com, registered with us, and proudly displayed their Meez on their websites for everyone to see. Is it really the Meez that bother your or the people putting Meezes in their emails? Just like dissing MySpace for the spammers who have made it an ugly place, you’re dis of my site is really a complaint about the behavior of people expressing themselves through the Meez in their email signatures. You can insult email signatures all you want, but I won’t let you insult my users.

Those are my users. Stay the fuck away from my users.

I hate what happened to Kathy Sierra as much as anyone. However, I’m not in a rush to solve an unsolvable problem — online anti-social behavior. So I’m throwing my website in front of the runaway Internet locomotive that is the Blogger’s Code of Conduct, supported by Internet stars Tim O’Reilly and Jimmy Wales.

If I don’t call this out as bullshit, who will?

It’s nothing personal. In fact, I’d be the first one to buy them a round of drinks if I ever get the chance. But the issue is serious enough that I can’t ignore it. These rules are poorly thought out and ineffective against the problem that they’re hoping to resolve. And the spotlight given to this by the BBC and the New York Times will only accelerate the terrible resolution we’re headed towards.

History is our guide here. After reading Tim’s article, I immediately thought of the Patriot Act written in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the internment of Japanese people during World War II. I don’t mean that this code of conduct is on the same level as those other events, or that it carries the same weight as a law.

What I mean is that humans have a tendency to overreact, and in retrospect acts like these are unnecessary. Need some modern examples? Look at the reactions to Gmail or RFID. It’s human nature to overreact in the midst of fear and uncertainty, just like setting the shower to the right temperature — too hot, too cold, too hot, too cold.

Can we work on these rules a year from now, after our tempers have cooled off? After we’ve really put some thought into this and created some good solutions to the problem? That would make me feel a little better about this.

When did we leave behind discussion and cut straight into codification? Some Internet elites making this decision over a beer followed someone putting it on a wiki for everyone to edit is no substitute for a serious talk about what’s the right course of action from here. I’m just trying to be a little more thoughtful about this problem before this potential blunder.

I could go through and pick apart their list of points one by one, but I don’t want this to be a nitpicking fight over intent or terminology; I’m certain these people had the best intent behind their actions. Instead I’d rather have a nice, intelligent chat about the goals of what you’re doing and how it will fix the underlying problem, whatever that is. That’s why I want to invoke rule 4 against you:

4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.

You’ve unfairly attacked me and the millions of other Internet citizens who don’t live in your ideal world, who will be affected by this. Please take action before jumping to conclusions and putting these terrible rules into place, because I certainly will take action if you don’t.

Overreacting is the first step towards getting scalded by the shower.

PC World announced their list of the Top 50 Best Tech Products of All Time yesterday. I have to say I was shocked at their number 1 pick — Netscape Navigator. Really, I was shocked at the whole list. Why wasn’t the iPod number one on the list? That single item has transformed entertainment as we know it. Hell, if Netscape was so important, why wasn’t the original IBM personal computer at the top of the list?

I know why. It must be because we as consumers (and the editorial staff at PC World) have lowered our expectations to ridiculous depths. That phrase — “Lower your expectations” — was my mantra at the first job I took out of college. It summarized everything I was aiming for in the output of my work — little effort, acceptable results. I should have put it on my office door, right next to my “Bang Head HERE” sign and the occasional notice from the American Cookie Council.

Really – have our expectations of computer technology gotten so bad that Napster is the fourth best tech product we as humans have ever created? Napster SUCKED. Sure, you could download all the music you wanted. But don’t you remember how crappy it was? It only showed 100 search results, the search results were never what you wanted, and if you did find something it took forever to download. “Best” technology my ass.

What about magnetic resonance imaging — MRI in the vernacular. It has countless applications including viewing blood flow issues, brain activity, bones and ligaments, and more — all non-invasive and it’s pretty safe. Now you tell me which technology is better — Napster, a miserable piece of software used largely by poor college students to commit copyright infringement, or MRI, which has helped doctors diagnose health conditions and save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. PC World editors — I hope the next time you get an MRI, the computer they use gets infected with a virus that was downloaded when someone used Napster.

On the subject of consumer technologies, based on this list we still have a long way to go. We can develop kick-ass technologies, but we don’t. Apple has done a pretty decent job of it. But let me be clear about this — Apple is not the end-all, be-all of great technology. We’ve been conditioned in the Windows/Office paradigm for so long that we’ve forgotten what good technology experiences should be like. Apple is a breath of fresh air, but certainly not the best that technology can be.

For you people out there in charge of making the technologies that we humans use throughout our lives, raise your expectations about how great those technologies can be. “It’s good enough” is the last thought that should be on your mind. What if the person who buys your product knew you gave up on making it better — gave up on giving them a better experience when using your product? You should march down to the nearest store that sells your product and personally apologize to each person that buys it. “I’m sorry. I gave up. It could have been better. It wasn’t good enough.”

And really — who is it good enough for? Is it good enough for you? For your coworkers? For some ideal of a user that you imagine in your mind? For your parents? For a real person using it? Is there anybody who it’s good enough for? Or is that an excuse to cover up for something else — not enough developers, too many bugs, not willing to put in the work, pressure from the executives, satisfaction with what’s already there, disagreement about the features…

I’ve got plenty of time to talk about all of those issues. But for now, your goal is to start ratcheting up your level of expectations. The next time you get frustrated when using a piece of software ask yourself, “how would I make this better?” and go see if that better thing is out there. Then go to the Apple Store, play with an iPod and PowerBook, and talk to their salespeople. If you don’t leave with a new computer and music player, you either have a tight budget or haven’t raised your expectations nearly enough.

In response to Kathy’s note…

I’ve been a fan of Kathy Sierra ever since I saw her speak at South by Southwest Interactive in 2006. For a long time, I had been struggling with my identity as a professional; a masters degree from UC Berkeley goes a long way towards advancing a career, but it wasn’t until I heard Kathy speak and read her blog that I found my own voice to describe what I had learned, to describe my feelings about digital design.

In a way, she changed my life.

That’s why I’m saddened and distraught to no end about what happened to her. I’ve seen terrible things happen to good people, and in that moment all you can do is react and empathize. So Kathy — if you end up in or near San Francisco again, let me know and I’ll happily lend my imposing visage to scare off the Internet scum when you’re out and about. It’s the least I can offer.

Also, I have to commend her on her willingness to write publicly about the ordeal. Others would be afraid to even speak of this, but she came forward with poise and clarity to describe the events and her feelings. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been, and I hope that it’s the first step towards living a normal life again.

I’m usually more verbose than this, but anything else I could say about how the Internet breeds malcontents or how humans interpret text communications has been said before (probably by Kathy, and certainly much better than I could state it). Kathy’s writings have meant a lot to me, but whether or not she returns to speaking and writing isn’t nearly as important as her health and safety.