I saw a post today over on Reddit that was disheartening. The TodayILearned subreddit is banning all content from Gawker and its affiliates because of an article that contained some Redditor’s personal information.

The personal information was posted by the Redditor himself, but that’s not really the point here. Neither is the fact that the guy is a jerk who doesn’t deserve protection.

It was disheartening because it fits a pattern I’ve noticed lately, one which was summed up eloquently in a recent Washington Post article on how free speech is dying in the Western World.

The pattern goes like this:

1) A says something.

2) B decides that A’s statement or expression puts C in danger.

3) In the name of protecting C, B restricts A’s ability to speak freely.

Unfortunately, this pattern is at its worst when D enters the field. That’s when a person or group is supplying the danger to C. By carrying out step 3, A is often directly or indirectly furthering D’s interests.

Confusing? Basically, it goes like this:

When the TIL mods ban Gawker from the (not insignificant) hits from TIL, they empower the people who would go to lengths to harass this user online or offline. Could those users could have accomplished the same rule change with Reddit messages? Absolutely not.

When governments suppress blasphemous speech out of fear from violent extremists, they empower and encourage those violent extremists. Could those recent Youtube protests have brought about the same response from the White House with a phone campaign? I don’t think so.

If this were 70 years ago, we’d probably call it appeasement. Today, we shoehorn it into “Political correctness.”

Next time you see the pattern, speak up. Don’t let the jerks win.

Poor Superman. The guy can juggle battleships but he just can’t catch a break when it comes to technology.

First, there’s his job: Statistically, he doesn’t have one anymore, with newspapers folding faster than JLA members up against Doomsday. Sure, the Daily Planet is a big paper, comparable to the real-world New York Times, but they definitely can’t afford to keep that big globe. And I bet they’d can Jimmy Olsen, too, trading his photographic contributions for pictures stolen (“borrowed”) from social media.

These things aren’t cheap.

It’s probably for the best, though: That globe falls into the streets in every other issue. And Jimmy’s stuff was never much better than iPhone pictures, anyway. (He’s no Peter Parker.)

Speaking of iPhone pictures: How can Superman’s identity possibly hold up when everyone snaps a picture every time they see him? That’s not even getting into all the crazy facial recognition stuff that’s going on.

Can you imagine the TotallyLooksLike entry for Clark Kent and Superman?

“Damn, how’d they figure it out?”

If you’re looking for a new product idea for tech, just think of something that would make Superman’s life even more miserable, and you’re probably headed in the right direction.

A funny story has been circulating in the media the past couple years: Employers asking potential employees for social network passwords.

The formula’s always the same: A lede focused on the human interest angle, typically someone struggling in their job search. And then a few scattered examples of companies implementing the practice.

Then people tweet it, facebook it and blog about it. Hey, it’s an interesting story.

Here’s the real story, though: Every now and then, some upper management idiot gets the terrible idea to ask for Facebook passwords in a job interview.

That’s it. This is not a widespread thing. It’s not trending. It’s not growing. Asking employees for this kind of information is outrageously stupid for a variety of reasons, as any HR person, PR person or lawyer will tell you.

So what do you do if a non-story involving your company just won’t go away? Well, if you’re Facebook, you add to it. You go on the offensive and say you might just sue those companies. Confront the non-issue with empty threats and suddenly you’re the good guy. You’re the hero of the village, warding off all the monsters that lurk deep in the scary woods.

I have this to say to Facebook: Awesome move. Someone threw you into the three-ring circus and you learned how to juggle.

I hopped on the bus the other day to head over to the Mission. A young man hopped on right behind me. Unlike me, however, he decided to forego paying, which the driver noticed and decided to address. The driver, a short angry man, yelled at the kid for a full three minutes before the kid finally caved to the immense social pressure of 20 angry pairs of eyes on him. He nonchalantly hopped off. Life went on.

I was mad at this stupid kid who managed to waste three minutes of my time. But then I considered the other people on the bus and realized he had wasted an hour of time– all of it spread across 20 people, frustrated and bored on a bus. What a jerk!

And then I realized web developers do this all the time.

The next time you skip adjusting that lightbox height, or forego styling that button element, remember the extra time your users are going to spend paying for your laziness.

It’s safe. It’s easy. It’s greyscale.

I feel like people fall back on grey too much in web design. I know I used to.

Deciding to contribute instead of just complain, I turned my grey gripes into a website to help other grey users: Stop Using Grey!

Buying a video game, like the upcoming Mass Effect 3, is really complicated these days.

First, there’s stuff like this:

“Origin exclusive” means I get the in-game item if I buy the game a certain way. There might also be a Best Buy exclusive. Or a credit card exclusive. Or a second-Tuesday-of-the-month exclusive. Some exclusives are mutually exclusive exclusives, with a different bonus for Gamestop and Wal-Mart customers.

Origin is, of course, EA’s new Steam knockoff, another digital distribution platform for games. It’s required to play Mass Effect 3 on PC. As a PC gamer, that’s another piece of software I have to download and worry about, but for EA it’s a new way to sell me games. I’m sure the marketing guys are thrilled about it. I’m less excited.

Now they’ve announced DLC (downloadable content) that will be available upon the game’s release. It’s yet another thing to fuss over. Another thing to worry about. I have to decide if having an extra character in the game is worth the 3 dollars or 10 dollars they’ll be charging for it. For him.

Is he crucial to the story? Will the game still be good without him in it? Will he be a good squadmate or someone I end up not really liking? The answers are irrelevant, because having to even ask the questions is what’s bothering me.

At this point, it’s not about money. It’s about convenience. Buying a video game is too damned annoying. It’s like stopping at a toll both; It’s not paying the 75 cents that bothers me, it’s having to slow to a stop, wait in line, and then throw change in the bucket before I can be on my way.

It’s a pain.

In their rush to make money, game companies like EA and Bioware have inadvertently made their product harder to buy, increasing friction at the ever-so-crucial point of the financial transaction.

I’m not taking a principled stand against the game. I’m just not buying it because I can’t be bothered. I’ll be back when it’s easy.

So, what does that have to do with JC Penney?

They’re going the other way by simplifying the process of buying what they sell. They’re simplifying sales by just slashing everything by about 40% and doing away with the constant barrage of promotions. They’re making tags easier to read and easier to use.

They’re rounding prices to the nearest dollar.

JC Penney has essentially said the extra burden placed on the customer by all the 8.95s and 19.99s is no longer outweighed by whatever bullshit marketing benefit the practice had.

They strive to build trust and simplify the buying process in a brick-and-mortar retail environment. Meanwhile EA is trying to recreate all the typical brick-and-mortar consumer abuse in a digital environment.

I can’t help but think EA has everything hopelessly backward here. I just wish they didn’t have some of my favorite game franchises to sacrifice at the altar of marketing.

I’ve recently been playing Tribes:Ascend. It’s a wonderful game with a major flaw, one that digs into the roots of the game’s overall experience.

Do you see it? It’s subtle.

There’s no “random team” button.

A simple non-simple decision

On this screen, Tribes: Ascend forces the player to make a simple choice: Pick your team. For those unfamiliar with the game: There are no differences between the teams aside from the name, the look and some of the voice work. They each have the same weapons, classes, and abilities. The maps are mirrored and neither team ever has a stronger starting position.

For some people, this choice is simple. Pick the one you think looks coolest. Pick the team with less players. Pick the one you weren’t on last game. Whatever, let’s just play.

For some people, this choice is Kafkaesque. There are a million factors at play. Everything that happens during a match boils down to which side of the screen they clicked on at the beginning, whether it’s a glorious victory or a humiliating defeat.

Since I’m one of those people, let’s examine some of the factors.

Who’s playing? Press Tab and you can see that the two star players from last round just joined Diamond Sword.

Which team is in demand? Don’t worry about finding the data for yourself. Just watch the numbers and see which team is in higher demand, then try to join it.

Who’s winning? Press Tab as you’re coming in late to see the score. In a 4-0 match, the team with 4 is probably going to win.

Who’s good? Again, press Tab. The game conveniently ranks players, just in case you don’t have experience with a particular player. Join the team that has all five 20+ ranked players (a common occurrence).

The point here is: If you make me do something, I’m going to do the most informed, best-for-me thing I can possibly do. Every time.

Unintended consequences

I’m not alone in this practice; if I were, it wouldn’t work. I’d imagine there exists a population of Tribes:Ascend players who have a very good record– not because they’re stellar players, but because they’re good team pickers.

It gets worse, though.

So far I’ve just been discussing the in-game factors. Tribes: Ascend already has a thriving community despite its closed beta status. A recent high-profile game between Reddit and /v/ ended with a big defeat for the Reddit team.

The Reddit team who happened to be playing as Diamond Sword.

So now there’s an entire group of players– experienced, plugged-into-the-community players– who have this whole new, outside-the-game reason to pick Blood Eagle. I don’t have the stats, but I would guess Blood Eagle has just generally been winning way more games since the Reddit/4chan match. It’s at least been my experience. Jump into any match and you’ll see a few taunts after each round, almost always taunting the silly Diamond Sword “sandrakers.”

Since this behavior is self-reinforcing, you’ll see a surprisingly high portion of games end with scores of 5-0, as one team (lately, usually Blood Eagle) repeatedly steamrolls the other.

Sometimes it’s even more complex, with a group of highly skilled players jumping between teams but always playing together and stacking the odds in their favor.

These games are relatively boring for both sides. It hurts gameplay. It drives away newbies.

Is it all because there’s no “Random Team” button? Yes. At least for me. Give me that button and I’ll use it every time I play, never again worrying about joining the better team when I join a server or start a new round.

It’s a choice that I just don’t want to make.

Choices in web UX

The Tribes: Ascend dilemma reminds me of some others in UX for the web. (Tribes readers, feel free to check out here!)

Choose your password

8-12 characters. Has to include numbers. Cant’s use underscores or spaces. Rules, rules, rules.

We’ve all run into the situation where our password of choice, whether it’s the one we use all the time, or one generated for a particular site, just doesn’t work with the website’s password rules.

It’s a really, really stressful situation. The user now has to remember that a website is an exception to his/her password policy, however simple or complex it is. Should it be written down on a Post-it? Will that get lost? Will he or she be doomed to use your password recovery every time he or she wants to use the site?

Spare your users the stress and let them use whatever password they want. Make password rules as flexible as you possibly can.

Enter a coupon code

This might be the worst. You’ve committed all this time and effort to the buying process and you come across this gem right at the end, which throws everything in disarray.

“There are coupon codes?” you ask, along with every other user to ever get to this point.

Some people press on, slightly dissatisfied knowing that some jerk somewhere is getting a deal and they aren’t. Others open a new tab and Google around for coupon codes. And some people just quit right there, because they know they’re about to put in a lot of work for a 10% off and an aggravated compulsion complex.

Don’t use a coupon code field. It’s better to use specialized URLs which automatically apply the discount code.

Pick a username

If your online product doesn’t need user names, then don’t use them. Use e-mail addresses.

If it does need usernames, then try to make it clear to the user exactly what they’re getting into. Plenty of people have been burned by picking and being stuck with stupid usernames (SexyLance69@hotmail.com) and still hold on to sensitivity there.

Bonus points: Letting the user change their name, like Twitter does.

Be really careful with the small big decisions

Really tiny decisions made at the beginning can impact everything that happens afterwards. Be especially careful when you design these parts of your product’s experience.

And if it works, always give your users a “Random Team” button.

Ridejoy is a nifty site that connects drivers and riders for long trips.

Here’s a shot of their current front page:

The good:

The page has a simple layout with a strong call to action. It has a lot of information, but tends not to bombard the user with it too fast. The big button/big form combo is always a good one. If you’re going to have a form on your front page, make it extremely easy to fill in. (They also get bonus points for proper tab indexing and a helpful autocomplete)

The bad:

Centered layouts have a tendency to be unexciting. The lack of color makes the site feel sterile, which is a shame because the comapny seems to have a lot of personality. White backgrounds can have the benefit of lending professional credibility, but they do away with that with the handwritten font. Fonts like this have a place on the web, but it’s mostly in personal projects. Even when you do them correctly (and there’s nothing wrong here with the size or the spacing) you still have to work against your users’ preconceptions. And they usually aren’t good preconceptions. Some people see Comic Sans in every handwritten font.

The ugly:

On the big button’s active state, the shadow rises up to meet the button. There’s always some combination of padding and positioning that will let you have a button that presses down while maintaining its original clickable area.

The re-imagined front page:

Here’s the re-imagining. Click for a bigger one.

Keeping the good: The focus of the page is still the big form and the big button, although the button’s orange now. I tend to go with orange or red for the call to action. Red always seems to win over other colors in A/B tests, but orange felt more relaxed and a better fit palette-wise.

Inverted header: This re-imagining actually started as an excuse to do an inverted header. The vast majority of pages on the Internet aren’t a good fit for an inverted header, but I thought Ridejoy’s site would be. The big rule with inverted headers is that the site has to be small enough to be completely above the fold. Remember to use CSS3 media queries to uninvert for mobile.

Combining cities and trips: The original page had two sections for featuring the cities and current trips being offered through the service. The right side of the page here combines those two ideas into one slideshow. The idea would be to feature at least one trip from every offered city.

Offset footer: Inverting a header usually means it ends up awkwardly mashed together with the footer. To avoid this, the footer is made smaller and pushed to the side.

Logo rework: The original logo is pretty simple, and so is the rework. Remember that any time you do a logo like this, which can’t easily be ripped from the front page by journalists, that you should have an alternate logo easily available in a “press” or “about” section.

Tagline: Kept “friendly people” and added “awesome journeys.”

Background image: This great photograph of Highway 1 by Wouter Kiel serves as the example background image. The idea would be to use multiple (user-submitted?) images in a rotation on the main page. But this particular example works really well, so just one image is a possibility too.

Suggestions? Comment below or just tweet at me.

There was a blog post today over on HeyWhipple by Luke Sullivan that claimed good, creative people are NEVER (caps his) bored.

I feel like the piece relies on a few misconceptions about boredom, and fuels a few other misconceptions which can be harmful to the creative process.

Boredom is not the same as having nothing to do

Here’s a typical IM conversation for me:

Me: I’m bored

Friend: Go find something to do! Live! Breathe in the world!

Me: I have something to do. I’ve been working on it for 5 hours. It’s boring work.

Me: That’s why I’m bored.

In an ideal world, we’d all have super-exciting stuff to do, all the time. In the real world, though, we have to wait in line at the grocery store, fill out tax forms, listen to our friends talk about their newborns, and do all kinds of other boring things.

Even the fun careers have boring bits. We often see only the fun parts because, well, that’s what’s interesting. Nobody tunes in to see Evil Knievel and his team running tests on handle grips.

If you’re sitting around with nothing to do and complaining about having nothing to do, then that’s a problem. And yeah, that’s probably boring too. But that’s not descriptive of all boredom.

Which brings me to my next point…

Doing nothing is just fine.

Relaxation and downtime are essential to the creative process. There’s this manic compulsion in society today to be doing something all the time. It was bad before Facebook and other social media, and now it’s gotten even worse.

“Sat on a bench and stared at a brick wall” doesn’t make for a great status update, but it’s a perfectly fine thing to do. So is sitting on the couch and absentmindedly flipping back and forth between Trading Spaces and Mythbusters.

Just don’t do it all the time.

Moderation is the key. That applies to the do something compulsion, too.

Burnout

The real problem with the constant do something compulsion: Burnout. Burnout is the creative’s worst enemy.

People who think they can’t get burned out haven’t pushed themselves hard enough. People who have suffered from it know to constantly walk the thin line between their productive peak and their burnout point.

This social expectation of creative people to do something and do something all the time is a recipe for burnout.

Plenty of young creative people hit their first burnout and just give up. The clash between social expectations and the reality of producing creative work is just too much. That’s something we should protect against, because a lot of these young creatives would have produced something truly great on their second, fifth, or twentieth try.

There were a few things floating around the Internet today that caught my attention.

The first is a post on using social network analysis to detect less-than-legal behavior among landlords. It’s interesting because we have a small not-for-profit behind the effort, where just a few years ago it would have taken a much larger organization and a lot of manpower to pull this off.

Next up we have an insightful comment on Reddit from an ex-journalist. It details the why of journalism’s decline.

Conspiracy theorists will be disappointed by this one, as it primarily points to the increasingly harsh realities of journalism-as-a-business as the reason for, well, crap like FOX News. There are only so many hours in a day, and investigative journalism in particular eats up those hours.

But cuts happen. So it’s the first thing to go.

Changing, expanding technology has brought about a strange landscape where media outlets buckle under the weight of a deluge of information while simultaneously being liberated to do wonderful things with that information.

This is what had me excited about WikiLeaks. They used tech to shed light on the shadowy parts of the world. They were the organizational embodiment of the scrappy reporter getting the scoop and bringing the bad guys to justice.

Of course, now they seem to be the embodiment of the scrappy reporter mysteriously disappearing before the story is published.

There’s still hope, though, and I think it rests with organizations like the one covered in the first link. Truth is always in demand. We just need to figure out who’s going to carry the burden of digging up that truth.