Websites Who Want To Remain Bad
from the um.--why? dept
Sometimes you have to wonder what certain companies or organizations are thinking. A few years ago, when Ellis Island put their records online, they had a dreadful interface. A genealogist with the skill and the time, created a new, much more user friendly front end that quickly became the preferred way for many genealogists to search the site. Of course, Ellis Island then threatened to sue him to shut down the site. The same thing seems to be playing itself out over in the UK, where someone who had problems with Odeon Cinemas' website built a better version (one that would actually work in non-IE browsers). For his troubles in helping them completely for free and bringing more business to them, he received a cease and desist letter. No wonder no one wants to help anyone out any more. You might get sued.
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Ellis Island Database
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Parasitic Cases
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Re: Parasitic Cases
Do any of those sites actually MAKE money?
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No Subject Given
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Re: No Subject Given
http://www.holovaty.com/blog/archive/2004/07/19/2210
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Re: Ellis Island Database
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Re: Ellis Island Database
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Re: Ellis Island Database
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Re: Ellis Island Database
Our initial designs were more along the lines of what Morse did but we ended up with the wizard approach in part because of politics and to allow for overlap between the site user experience and the kiosk user experience. And that's a pragmatic reality that usability vigilantes don't have to deal with. It's easy to design when you're also the client.
Anyway, like I said, it's not the vigilantism I personally have a problem with (in fact I was flattered/intrigued by Morse's work)... it's with commentary about vigilantism that isn't informed by practical realities of the workplace/project dynamics/client management/etc. or even familiarity with the specific site that's being discussed.
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Re: Ellis Island Database
We were all versed in genealogy research, but the critical goal was to make this database easily accessible to anyone who came to the museum. (Literally, anyone, and that was probably the key design issue.) Some even hoped that people who came over would use the tool. (This did happen at the Center on opening day. An 80-something and her young grand-daughter went through the search process and found the boat. The woman wept as the memories came flooding back . . . a moving experience that made the grueling 18 months I worked on the thing worthwhile.)
Does that mean that the wizard approach that was launched was the right one? Not sure. Was the goal to make it accessible to computer newbies and illiterates a worthy one? Absolutely.
But this is a dilemma: how broad an audience should we design for? At what point do we lose the first 80% while going after the last 20? We had discussed, but never acted on, a dual approach: step-through wizards for newbies, and single form advanced mode for those with some experience. No point in re-hashing why it didn't happen, it didn't and Steve Morse's interface proved that there was a substantial audience (if not the majority audience) that wanted advanced tools.
Nevertheless, Burt, I think your other point was right -- Morse's work and its success was something that should have been welcomed and learned from rather than rejected out of hand. In the case of educational, non-profit software, there's still a lot to learn about design.
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Re: Ellis Island Database
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