Brooke Baldwin

It’s been almost a full year since my return to the Big Apple and much has happened:I’ve worked as Principle Usability Architect for DIRECTV Latin America and done things like created a mobile DVR scheduler interface, created a ‘My Account’ customer self-maintenance application for the websites,and  architected an entire sports portal. Not bad.On a personal note there’s been a lot going on. Trapeze has become a regular part of my week (trampoline, too!) which have left lasting marks in the form of : one broken finger, one high-ankle sprain, one strained bicipital tendon.  This has helped me form deeper and more meaningful relationships with my orthopoedist and my accupuncturist.So what’s ahead for me? Hard to know, hard to tell. I’d like to incorporate more user-centered approaches to my daily professional work. I’d like to stop getting injured at trapeze. I’d like to win the lottery.  And you?

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Facebook is one of the most compelling applications that I’ve been using recently. And yet, it’s usability sucks.Why oh why can they get some things so right, like how easy it is to tag someone in a photo, and still get some things so so wrong: I can’t remember if I’ve friended someone or not, and Facebook just ain’t telling. How come I can update my status from Home and from Profile but it’s not even labeled the same? Why can’t I show my friends something cool that another friend posted but they’re not linked to? What’s with the email notifications of a comment posted that I then can’t find if I login without following the URL in the email? Dear Facebook, stop making it so hard on me, I heart you.And why would I want to vote on an advertisement? I can see how powerful that is for advertisers but what do I get out of it? Nada.For as much as I can do on Facebook there is just as much that I want to and can’t.What’s the solution? There’s too little differentiation among the various views of content - and little value that I can discern from my usage to offer a logical reason other than some engineer thought it’d be cool to put the same stuff up again wrapped a little bit differently. Sometimes GUI designs promoted from the engineering team are a bad idea, sometimes they’re great.I think another indicator that the GUI was heavily influenced by engineers is the Status and Comment function. This type of inline commenting is typical of what you’d see if you read annotated code with notes from the engineers - and I’ve seen it a lot when I get emails from engineers.  It’s actually a really great way to provide a logical context to an electronic communication. But it subverts the paradigm that has been established by email clients for the past 15 years that most users are accustomed to - it doesn’t give them what they expect. And I’d guess that the ubiquity of Facebook may push that paradigm over.  It just hasn’t happened yet.

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Profound differences in generational cohort groups have been noticed and analysed at length in Strauss and Howe’s 1991 epic tome ‘Generations’.  The text has served as a directional change in my approach for differentiating appropriate design and interaction methods when creating new websites or applications. A couple of months ago I found myself flipping through the television channels and stopping on a channel that I NEVER watch: CSPAN-2. That’s right, not even CSPAN, but CSPAN-2. I paused and watched because my new boyfriend, Neil Howe, was discussing his research that has continued since the ‘91 publication to include further discourse on Generation-X and Generation-Y, or the Millenials. Yes, I heart Neil Howe.  And to my delight I ran across his path again today.   

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