Over the weekend I submitted my thesis to the Media Studies department at The New School.  Barring any unforeseen circumstances, all that’s left for me to do is to graduate in two weeks.

The past five months’ worth of work have been difficult and challenging, but I’m pleased with the outcome and will be interested to see what comes of this work next.

If you are interested, the entire document (it’s over 140 pages all told, so be forewarned) is available for download.  I hope it’s as interesting for you to read as it was rewarding for me to write.

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From Stovetop to Screen: A Cultural History of Food Television

While browsing through the New York Times today I found an article that pointed out something that hadn’t occurred to me (not consciously, anyway)–there is no legal equivalent to medical information sites like WebMD or general knowledge sites like Wikipedia or MSN’s Encarta.  Of course, there are plenty of legal sites out there like FindLaw, but generally they’re difficult to navigate and confusing for non-lawyers to use.  (What’s a tort, anyway? Isn’t that a fruit-filled pastry?)  And sites like LegalZoom and NoLo aren’t designed to be legal references; they’re businesses that want to sell you their products.

The Times article is primarily about a new site called JD Supra, which aims to be a law “library” populated with documents contributed by lawyers of all calibers.  The idea is that Joe Schmo can go to the site, type in a search term, narrow the search by jurisdiction and benefit from what lawyers have had to say about it in various cases.  (The library is a bit sparse at the moment–a search for “tenant rights” in the 2nd Circuit returned exactly zero results.)  There are other sites mentioned as well, including PreCYdent, which aims to be a legal search engine.  The site is currently in beta.

It’s interesting to me that it’s taken so long for the legal world to embrace the Internet and to make it easier for consumers to explore and understand the judicial system and its proceedings, but then again part of me understands that lawyers operate in something of a black box.  Law has its own language and codes and complexities and it takes years to understand it all.  Then again, Americans have always had the right to represent themselves in court–nowhere does it say in the Constitution or Bill of Rights that “you must hire a lawyer whose billable hours cost at least $150, lest you lose your case.”  True, relatively few people choose to take this route since it is difficult to argue with a seasoned lawyer who is gifted with a strong grasp of rhetoric, but the whole point of the Internet is to make information more free and available to everyone.

As a designer that works full-time on a high-traffic website, I understand perfectly that without ample user testing it’s impossible to know exactly how users will interact with your designs. I’ve watched agape when, in testing sessions, users seem unable to decode new features that I’ve developed that made perfect sense to me.

What’s even more baffling to me is when users sometimes disregard simple instructions altogether, especially when they’re clearly presented. I can’t quite grasp why someone would ask someone else for help or give up entirely instead of simply reading the directions. There’s probably a psychological component in play but I’m not a psychologist so I’m uncertain to what that principle is called (if it has a name).

It would be ignorant to try to apply a one-size-fits-all explanation to why users seem to have problems with various interfaces, especially on the Internet. But user error is something you can count on with virtually any technology, even with devices as old as the telephone. Not cell phones, not wireless phones–the old-fashioned telephone that plugs into the wall.

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My latest article has been posted on the Black Star Rising blog, which is a little bit more procedural in nature than last time and speaks to what I do with photos as they relate to design. Here’s a bit of it:

Neutral areas can be critical in choosing stock photography, particularly with spot photos. In many cases I need to place text on a photo to create promotional images or advertisements, but if an image doesn’t have enough of a neutral area around the primary subject, then I’m stuck unless I resort to some Photoshop manipulation.

On more than one occasion I’ve had to create long rectangular promo graphics advertising events featuring specific political figures, but have only been given official government 8 x 10 headshots to work with. As a result, I have to slide the image to one side of the canvas, match the background color and fill in the rest of the canvas with that, using the retouching tools to hide any “seam” between the two.

I don’t prefer to go this route, of course; if I have a choice, I like to be able to have a custom shoot or to select the best photo I can find on the Web, regardless of price. Unfortunately, these days it rarely works that way, particularly for online publishers and small businesses.

If you feel so inclined you can read the entire article at Black Star Rising.

CNN.com posted a story today chronicling the difficulties that United States Census workers are having with new handheld computers that they are to use to conduct the upcoming 2010 census. Apparently the computer interface was poorly designed, thanks to a shoddy job on the part of the Census Bureau in writing out software specifications:

Census officials are being blamed for a poor job spelling out technical requirements to the contractor, Florida-based Harris Corp. The computers proved too complex for some temporary workers who tried to use them in a test last year in North Carolina. Also, the computers were not initially programmed to transmit the large amounts of data necessary.

While the government may be to blame in this case, especially by failing to provide adequate use cases to the manufacturer and proper, thorough training to census takers, the contractor isn’t much less culpable:

Harris Corp. spokesman Marc Raimondi said … the computers actually are easy to use, with a failure rate of less than 1 percent when tested in the field. “After you spend about 30 minutes to an hour familiarizing yourself with it, it’s as easy to use as a modern cell phone,” Raimondi said.

As easy to use as a modern cell phone?!  Well, that’s a relief, considering how simple to use most of the cell phones on the market are.  (Please note my sarcasm, especially in light of the fact that the Apple iPhone, which actually is easy to use because of a little thing called good interface design, doesn’t require you to spend 30 minutes to learn how to use it.)  This is laziness, pure and simple–either that or a blatant ignorance of how people actually interact with computer interfaces–and Harris Corp., which I’ve never even heard of, should be ashamed of itself for making a strong effort to make these critically important devices as easy to use as possible.