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.

I’m in the process of finishing up my thesis and won’t be posting links today; instead, I’d like to share this excerpt from the conclusion of my thesis containing my prognostications on the on-demand future of media. Keep in mind that the thesis is a cultural history of cooking/food shows, which should explain certain references that will likely make a little more sense in the overall context of the paper. I’ll post a link to the entire thesis when it’s completed, but in the meantime, your thoughts are welcome.

Over the next three to five years, as the USA completes the transition to digital broadcast signals, it’s likely that the volume of food-oriented programs will continue to increase. At the same time, it’s likely that more broadcasters will follow the lead of forward-thinking companies like Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, News Corporation and NBC Universal by offering full-length, on-demand streaming versions of programs on websites like Hulu.com and MarthaStewart.com. Special made-for-the-web segments are likely to increase in volume as well; some of these kinds of videos are already cropping up on BravoTV.com, where visitors to the Top Chef website can view bonus clips called “Choice Cuts” that are either specifically made for the Internet or that were cut from the broadcast episodes. Wisely, the networks are learning to monetize these clips by pairing them with short unskippable advertisements that play before each segment.

In ten to fifteen years, though, it is conceivable that Americans will begin to see a massive shift in the way that we all watch television. It is unlikely that the actual term “television” will vanish from our lexicon (witness, for example, referring to content on websites as “channels,” which is a direct reference to television), and it is equally unlikely that our computer screens will replace our living room television screens, but the method of delivery for the shows that we watch will change drastically. Three recent inventions are specific harbingers of this paradigm shift—the CableCARD, TiVo and the newly released Apple TV.

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