[Fly on the Wall] Paying attention to users, mow the lawn vs. cut the grass, chowder, HTML forms 37signals Jul 17
8 comments Latest by Nic
Some recent activity at our internal 37signals Campfire chat room:
Paying attention to users| Mark I. | You Mean There’s a Better Way?: “There’s a good lesson here that’s often missed; pay attention to what users are doing with the provided system and by unblocking minor bottlenecks you can become the hero.” |
| Mark I. | Great anecdote about paying attention to users. |
nice story MI |
|
| Ryan S. | i love the software-designer-as-sleuth angle |
| Mark I. | It always fascinates me how reluctant some users are to report issues and just work around things. |
| Mark I. | While others are amazingly willing. :) |
| Ryan S. | i bet 90% don’t even notice issues like that |
| Ryan S. | they just assume what they’re trying to do is hard |
| Ryan S. | / a pain in the ass |
| Mark I. | They’ve been trained to silently work around problems. |
| Ryan S. | yeah. and “i bet this could be easier” is a designer mindset |
| Ryan S. | more than a user mindset. if a user is thinking like that, they’re probably wearing the wrong hat :) |
| Mark I. | Those are the best kinds of issues for developers though. Low hanging fruit that has an immediate positive impact to the users. Very satisfying. |
| Ryan S. | totally |
Mow the lawn vs. cut the grass
| Mark I. | I just quickly cut the grass about 5 minute ahead of a torrential thunderstorm. |
| Mark I. | I did the front yard the same way yesterday, I was literally running for the last 3-4 rows while I was getting rained on. :) |
| Jamis B. | your use of “cut the grass” made me wonder about dialectical differences in the US (I say “mow the lawn”), so I googled it and found a really cool site that plots different uses and pronunciations of various words and phrases across the US |
| Jamis B. | |
| Jeremy K. | that’s a really fun survey |
| Jamis B. | here’s the results of “mow the lawn” vs. “cut the grass” |
| Jamis B. | |
| Jeremy K. | so many phrases I’ve never heard |
| Ryan S. | that’s awesome |
| Mark I. | Mow de lawn is how they say it in France. |
| Jamis B. | haha |
| Ryan S. | fun to find examples with a clear geographic split |
| Ryan S. |
Chowder
| Matt L. | was wondering how much to tip movers. found this thread and learned a mover term that’s great: |
| Matt L. | CHOWDER |
| Matt L. | link: What looks like a few unboxed things to you is what movers call “chowder,” and it’s always more than you think. Try really hard to get everything in a box except lamps, furniture, and other large pieces.
|
| Jeremy K. | nice lingo |
| Matt L. | another def: “Chowder” is mover argot for the loose, fiddly items that are unwieldy and take up a lot of time. |
| Jamis B. | that’s great, so applicable to programming, too |
| Matt L. | yeah, immediately seemed like a good development term to me. |
HTML forms
| Jamis B. | HTML sucks all the joy out of programming for me |
| Jamis B. | HTML+CSS, that is |
| Jamis B. | I’m so glad I don’t have to do the design work for our apps |
| Jamis B. | I’m trying to design a simple form |
| Jamis B. | and I’m hating life |
| Jamis B. | It’s seriously making me want to not work on this anymore |
| Jeremy K. | aw, man :) |
| Jamis B. | html makes it so easy to write forms that look like crap |
| Jamis B. | and SO HARD to write forms that look nice |
| Jamis B. | that’s so backwards |
| Matt L. | maybe this is helpful: http://wufoo.com/ |
| Matt L. | “Wufoo is the easiest way to collect information online. Our innovative HTML form builder helps anyone create beautiful forms, online surveys and invitations without writing a single line of code.” |
| Jamis B. | oh, awesome, thanks matt |
| Jamis B. | I’d totally forgotten about tools like that |
| Jamis B. | I’ll check it out |
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8 comments so far
jonas 17 Jul 07
another great mover term, oft used in conjunction with chowder, is “juiced.” you get juiced when you lift something too heavy and your muscles are spent. when that happens, it’s not uncommon to say, “i’m juiced. i’m gonna grab some chowdah.”
(my brother occasionally works as a mover.)
Dan 17 Jul 07
this post doesn’t come up well at all on RSS
decent article otherwise
Dylan 17 Jul 07
@Dan: it’s because tables vertically-align middle by default…
If they used dl, dt, and dd tags it would make these chat logs more portable to us RSS readers.
(It might also increase the readability).
Mrad 17 Jul 07
I love wufoo. Building a form is really fun.
lapinLove404 17 Jul 07
Ryan S. : yeah. and “i bet this could be easier” is a designer mindset Ryan S. : more than a user mindset. if a user is thinking like that, they’re probably wearing the wrong hat :)
Hehe :D I used to be an user thinking that way… And I am now writing the specs (argh, specs ! I know…).
Derick 17 Jul 07
Check out the documentary film “American Tongues” if you’re interested in regional variations in American speech – I use it in teaching introductory anthropology & it’s always a big hit.
Anonymous Coward 17 Jul 07
Hmm, I’m very disappointed that dialect map doesn’t map out “smoke up” versus “smoke out”. (Many folks will know what I’m talking about).
I’ve also noticed “hotbox” versus “clam bake”.
Nic 18 Jul 07
Interesting to see Jamis’ disillusionment with HTML +CSS, after David’s recent praise for it! That’s what teams are for… Time for a physical reunion?
Comments are closed