Stroke Me

I'm learning to use TypePad on the Misbehaving.Net site and it's very interesting to me. Let me say up front, that I am the most impossible customer in the world. If something doesn't work the first time or maybe the second, I'm instantly bitching and moaning.

Now the problem is, of course, I am the one defining "work" -- that is, if you user interface guys put a button in a place that you think is reasonable and I think is stupid ... I say "It doesn't work." I guess I mean "It doesn't work for me."

So here are some simple ones. And I plan to kick Blogger in the ass just as much as Typepad here. So here goes.

Blogger just to clean up some unfinished business. What the HELL is the story with the absolutely microscopic SIGN OUT x button up there in the corner? When I used to do a lot of blogging at work, the one thing I really needed to find fast was the SIGN OFF button. It used to be bigger. Now, it's much too small. If this were a car I was driving, the driver's door (the GET OUT button equivalent) would be the size of the gas cap cover door and the interior of the car would be as big as an 18-wheeler. What gives? When I want to get my hands on the GET OUTTA HERE BUTTON -- I want it big and I want it obvious!

Meanwhile, TypePad's type font is too small all around for me -- even with my good eye, I don't want to be reading the frigging Rosetta Stone to find things. So many little words.

Here's what I mean by the title of this post -- stroke me. It doesn't mean whatever you thought it meant. I was thinking about User Interfaces in general. When I learn a new UI, which you can assume I DO NOT WANT TO LEARN BECAUSE MY LIFE IS COMPLICATED ENOUGH, why do I have to spend any time learning it, why isn't it learning ME ... in other words, as I start using TypePad and I keep hitting certain buttons on a regular basis, or stroking certain keys, why doesn't it make those keys grow larger? Just like WORD remembers the last documents I was working on and has them in the bottom of the file menu -- can't a good UI learn me and remember what I do? Come on UI guys and gals, take a cue from the natural world. God's a fine designer. He came up with a great piece of hardware that gets bigger when you stroke it.

In other words, why doesn't Typepad remember I keep embedding pix and I want to remember how to do that and so make that button bigger? Make it grow when I stroke it.

Or at least store my stroke info and at the end of the session, show me what my personal UI would look like (buttons I use a lot bigger, buttons I don't care about , the same) and let me choose whether to use that new UI or not. There may be times I really don't want a certain button enlarged. There may be times I do. Why isn't it anticipating my needs as well, like Amazon does ... "other users who liked to use the embed image key, also found this HTML cheat sheet handy, want to check it out?"

I know some products do this TOO much and they can be annoying, but I'd like to have Typepad start morphing to fit me. Think natural world again. My shoes do that after a few wearings. They know who's boss -- my feet. They don't insist on fitting every other human's feet -- they're MY shoes.

[UPDATE or should I say footnote, speaking of shoes: I got email from a very helpful TypePad person pointing out that there is a CUSTOMIZE button on the lower right-hand corner to do many of the things I'm talking about here. Duh, opps, thanks. Still, I'd love to have Typepad make those suggestions and changes for me -- or at least offer to make them without me having to think of it.]

One other Typepad thing I find really disconcerting. I like the two screen interface of Blogger -- simple and obvious. Upstairs I'm building a post, downstairs I'm getting the WYSIWYG of it. I see the building area. I see the preview area and only after all that, I can PUBLISH. [This is all about me being a visual learner, as I'm sure you have guessed by now.]

With Typepad, I see the building area, AND THIS FREAKED ME OUT THE FIRST TIME I DID IT, I saw the button called SAVE, I thought I wasn't PUBLISHING, but just SAVING the text somewhere ... but I had PUBLISHED. Wow! I didn't feel very safe doing that. I didn't realize what I wanted was PREVIEW. The meaning I associate with SAVE is to "put away". Save money in the bank -- put it away. SAVE a file, put it in a safe place. SAVE face, retain dignity. I do not associate SAVE (a hiding away motion) with PUBLISH (a putting out there in the world for all to see motion).

Perhaps I'm just too used to Blogger, which feels sturdy and safe to me, but with Typepad I'm having trouble knowing where THINGS ARE GOING ... by seeing all my posts in the window below, this feels like I have my blog right there to hold onto. With Typepad I feel like my blog isn't within arm's length. It's a bunch of little pieces (the list of titles of posts) and I want to feel I have control over it. I feel it's more of an abstract idea, than a realworld billboard with stuff I'm slapping up there and hammering to the wooden backing with a nail at each corner of the post.

Still with Blogger I don't know what the hell there's a "POST & PUBLISH" button up there on the far right for. I get POST and I get PUBLISH, bright orange, middle right, but I was very thrown off in the beginning with "POST & PUBLISH" -- honestly, I still have no clue what it means and never use it, unless the orange PUBLISH button is totally messed up and invisible -- which happens, I have no idea why -- and then I just start clicking any key I can get ahold of.

Other things I love about Typepad -- learning to post pix and realizing how easy it is has been incredibly fun. I love the color scheme of the UI. It has a simple design (but still too many words I think). It feels cool.