I'm an optimistic person. Title is there just to missguide you. Anyway, what's the difference? There's so much of missguiding and bullshit around, that my little post isn't going to harm you much. At least not much more than some other smart brains will.
OK, the point. Just today I've discovered that Skype installed a little extension (plugin) in my Chrome browser. The plugin that I didn't want, neither have I clicked anywhere to allow it being there.
Few things piss me off. But this one did. Especially since it was really really stupid extension that just highlights phone numbers. But I don't want highlighting of phone numbers. I want the websites to look like the designer made them. And I'm sure he didn't intend to have phone numbers exposed.
But Skype is only one software. One company. And I'm one person. Well, at least one I'm aware of.
But let's scale this to millions of applications that are out there now. For web, windows, android, apple, whatever. And billions of people using them. And there you have like zillions of little frustrations every day. I'm sure that every single one of us makes some kind of remark in his head each day:
"Now why didn't they do this easier and simpler?"
"Well, why isn't there an option to pay with my credit card?"
Imagine that again: billions of people, being frustrated every day. How many frustrations is that? Per day.
As I can see that technology gives us more and more options to simplify our lives, I'm just impressed with the mass of problems and frustrations it raises in people. And we can't just blame bad applications here. We can take the best of them and see that people are frustrated with them as well. Why isn't this link working? Why can't I click this button?
Even more, the best applications actually just raise our expectations. If I can find few years old data in my gmail in seconds, why is this girl in a local store taking 20 seconds to find my customer information using my last name? What's that piece of shitty software she's using?
So the waitress forgot that I've ordered salad without tomato? Why doesn't she use some android smart application to write down orders and have them transmitted into kitchen? Well, actually, they could have known my eating habbits just as I've entered.
In reality, I'm really not that kind of person. I eat those tomatos and when there's a bug in some software, I kindly try to contact the authors to make it better. But most of the people are not me. Actually, there are Skype product managers that are sure I want that extension. And there are people that even don't want Skype just because they have normal phone and never want to use another.
And what worries me is that in this mix of people we just might find out that we don't like some ideas. And people don't like our ideas. That there's a lot of difference between what we think people want and what people really want. And it just might become very very frustrating for a lot of people I know. How are they going to handle it? Peacefully, changing themselves? Or agressively, changing others? Well, 2011 is near. Let's see.
Update: Facebook changed email template for notifications. Now there's a big green button "See comment". When I click it, I come to the Facebook front page, not to the comments. Frustration not, but a little "why the hell..." is in my mind.
Few things piss me off. But this one did. Especially since it was really really stupid extension that just highlights phone numbers. But I don't want highlighting of phone numbers. I want the websites to look like the designer made them. And I'm sure he didn't intend to have phone numbers exposed.
But Skype is only one software. One company. And I'm one person. Well, at least one I'm aware of.
But let's scale this to millions of applications that are out there now. For web, windows, android, apple, whatever. And billions of people using them. And there you have like zillions of little frustrations every day. I'm sure that every single one of us makes some kind of remark in his head each day:
"Now why didn't they do this easier and simpler?"
"Well, why isn't there an option to pay with my credit card?"
Imagine that again: billions of people, being frustrated every day. How many frustrations is that? Per day.
Even more, the best applications actually just raise our expectations. If I can find few years old data in my gmail in seconds, why is this girl in a local store taking 20 seconds to find my customer information using my last name? What's that piece of shitty software she's using?
So the waitress forgot that I've ordered salad without tomato? Why doesn't she use some android smart application to write down orders and have them transmitted into kitchen? Well, actually, they could have known my eating habbits just as I've entered.
In reality, I'm really not that kind of person. I eat those tomatos and when there's a bug in some software, I kindly try to contact the authors to make it better. But most of the people are not me. Actually, there are Skype product managers that are sure I want that extension. And there are people that even don't want Skype just because they have normal phone and never want to use another.
And what worries me is that in this mix of people we just might find out that we don't like some ideas. And people don't like our ideas. That there's a lot of difference between what we think people want and what people really want. And it just might become very very frustrating for a lot of people I know. How are they going to handle it? Peacefully, changing themselves? Or agressively, changing others? Well, 2011 is near. Let's see.
Update: Facebook changed email template for notifications. Now there's a big green button "See comment". When I click it, I come to the Facebook front page, not to the comments. Frustration not, but a little "why the hell..." is in my mind.