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Subject:Re: Much Ado about Slamming From:Jody LaFerriere <JLaFerriere -at- INFOMAP -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 28 Mar 1997 09:35:06 -0500
Yours is my favorite response on the subject, just FYI. That and the
observation that maybe it's the volume of "corrections". Heck, if one
person wants to point out that I dangled my modifyer, I can handle that
and thank him/her for the pointer. If 17 people tell me, I'm going to
feel like an idiot.
I thought a "pat on the back" might be welcome in this thread.
>----------
>From: Beth Mazur[SMTP:mazur -at- MAYA -dot- COM]
>Sent: Friday, March 28, 1997 9:12 AM
>To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
>Subject: Re: Much Ado about Slamming
>
Beth Mazur said:
>
>My "leisure" reading recently has been Alan Cooper's "About Face: The
>Essentials of User Interface Design." In it (and for that matter, as the
>design tip of the day at his website at http://www.cooper.com/), he
>states a simple axiom:
>
> "Don't make the user feel stupid."
>
>The reason people get worked up is that they don't like feeling stupid.
>And being corrected in front of 2,500 (albeit faceless) people has a
>tendency to make many people feel stupid.
>
>Sometimes errors happen just because the fingers type faster than the
>brain. I got a chuckle out of Jennifer Kraus' "for all intensive purposes"
>because my mother once despaired of my intelligence after I wrote a
>letter home from college talking about the "girl next store to me."
>
>Other times, people just make genuine mistakes. It'd be swell if everyone
>followed a "correct off-line" policy, but in the same way that some feel
>dumb being corrected on-line, others feel smart correcting on-line. And
>given those two opposing needs, occasionally someone's toes are going to
>be stepped on.
>
>Isn't human nature a fascinating thing?
>
>--------------------------------------
>Jody LaFerriere
>Information Mapping, Inc.
>http://www.infomap.com
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