Designers aren’t the Actual Internet
Reading Web Axe’s unoriginal post (as in a post that surfaces regularly) titled No To Text Resize Widgets one aspect of their commentary struck me as flawed. That flaw is the delusion of control over website consumers.
Because when I hear that we should retrain website consumers to behave in a certain way it starts to smack of the concept that we are the Internet (or the World Wide Web which is an Internet application). But designers aren’t the Internet. And nearly most of everybody on the Internet are not as computer literate as web designers / developers / specialists… most people just use stuff that happens to run on their computer.
Ask people in the street what a browser is (oh yeh that’s been done)… where the Internet resides (not in their bedroom)… well, you get the picture.
So I see it as an arrogant assumption – at best – when someone says that we should retrain users how to use the Internet. That’s absolutely preposterous. That’s placing our professional expectation onto the masses. Isn’t one of the huge and exciting challenges of our industry that we have no control over people’s software / hardware / behaviour?
The problem with all this designer-borne expectation is that people have generally discovered their own uses for things other than that imposed by the designer or developer… don’t argue with me on that one, it’s a given. What was a needle designed for? What else is it used for?
Anyway, like the prostitute said to the midget, “It’s your party once you pay the entrance fee – bring a chair – hey bring a stepladder”… well, you get the direction I’m headed. By all means rail against the practice of text-sizing widgets. I wish you all the best. But at the same time accept that you have zero control over third party behaviour.
Because I don’t see a business model in training people how to use your website properly. Hell, they can bring your website up on a cheap mobile phone and toss it over a waterfall… that’s their prerogative.
August 12th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
[...] recent article on Web Axe elicited a similar sarcasm from me several days ago when they wrote that people need to be retrained to use the Internet. [...]