In Praise of Ambiguity

When I was 21 and the fifteenth employee at a dot com startup in 1996, I thought the best way to fit in with my predominantly male coworkers was to be “one of the guys”. Because I’m a perfectionist, I strove to “out-guy” the guys by escalating their crude, offensive remarks. I thought it would earn me approval. Instead, I ended up feeling powerless when my expletive-laden, sexualized banter was met with responses that made me uncomfortable. Sometimes they were remarks that personalized the abstract acts we were joking about, sometimes they were physical advances.

When I read accounts of the PyCon debacle that claim Adria Richards has no grounds to complain about dongle jokes because she’s made similar jokes in the past, I think about my behavior in my 20s, and how maladapted it is to my career in my 30s. I think about how I believed I had to make a choice between being entirely one way (letting dick and fart jokes turn into rape and incest jokes) or entirely another (disconnected from my colleagues). Boundaries aren’t about having the door completely open or completely shut – they’re about finding a comfortable, consistent happy place where we can maintain mutually fulfilling relationships.

My challenge is to find that happy place, but I think everyone’s challenge is to accept that people are flawed, complex human beings who are going to have different boundaries than we do. Setting aside my feelings about her response, Adria is allowed to be offended by things that may seem inconsistent with her past behavior.

I’ve been reminded that as a woman working in tech, I don’t have to be a dichotomous screen onto which my colleagues project either “unassailable virgin” or “complicit whore”. I don’t have to be a caricature to be accepted. And regardless of what I’ve said or done in the past, I can call shenanigans when I need to.

So apparently QUOTES are “special” characters now. It’s called ESCAPE, Morgan Stanley. And you make me want to do it.

Visited link color? What’s that?

Seriously, people. I thought we covered this, oh, back in 1997. Really, this page? It’s called a:visited, motherfucker, do you speak it?

Forgiveness and Function in Form Design

http://www.flickr.com/photos/duncan/4588314213/

Luke Wroblewski talks about “forgiving inputs” in form design – allowing the user a little wiggle room in what format she wants to enter data.

I was immediately reminded of this yesterday as I was filling out an application for a creative staffing agency (I know, but a girl’s dog has to eat). I was asked to enter dates for past employment using a text input field and a calendar widget. I bypassed the calendar widget and entered MM/YY values, only to see an error on form submit that MM/DD/YYYY was required. Because I’m a lazy bastard and barely skim text, including error messages, I corrected to MM/DD/YY, only to be told that the year needed to be FOUR digits. Sigh.

So, the first problem here is validation – inline validation is dead easy to do, and it saves the user so much time and frustration. There’s really no excuse not to use it.

The second problem is how unforgiving the date entry fields were. Why can’t you append the “20” onto the “12” I submitted? Do you REALLY think I worked for that tech company in 1912?

Lastly, there’s the issue of function. I entered what seems standard for a resume – the month and year – and was told the date was required. I don’t know the date of my last period (much to my doctor’s chagrin), much less the date of a gig I finished a year ago. What value does the date have to the contract agency, other than perhaps forcing me to prove how desperate I am for work by scrabbling through old invoices and check stubs to forensically determine the EXACT dates of my employment?

In this case, asking for an exact date serves no purpose, and is inconsistent with standard practice for the closest analog, a resume. Don’t ask for information you don’t need. It just adds to the user’s burden and encourages her to bail or – in my case – enter completely made up data.

Side note: bad UI design by a creative staffing agency is kind of like a misspelled online personals ad – I’ll still meet you for coffee, but you’re going to have some work to do to overcome a bad first impression. Also, you’re buying the coffee.

Are we tired of being the product yet?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/inkel/58518662/

The recent change to Instagram’s terms of use and the ensuing outcry against yet another online company claiming ownership of our intellectual property (if one can call millions of sepia-toned photos of coffee “intellectual property”) got me thinking about the history of our expectations of internet services.

We, as consumers, have been trained to expect online services to be free. We get our email delivered for free, our photos and documents stored online for free, our games and crosswords for free. At the same time, we accept that we have to pay for stamps to mail our Christmas cards, cough up rent at the storage place to stash our old furniture, and pay for card games or the Times (if you’re a masochist) to go head-to-head with Will Shortz. When these services are virtual, they no longer have value for us – at least, not a value we’re will to exchange money for.

Instead, we’re exchanging ourselves for these services. I’ve long heard the saying “If you’re not paying for the product, you ARE the product.” Facebook is evidence of this, as is Google search, and now Instagram. At first, we were just exchanging our eyeballs, accepting that looking at ads was the price we paid. And that made sense, since we’ve been sitting through commercials on TV for yonks.

But now that we’ve given up more and more of our personal information in exchange for these “free” services, the ads are capable of emulating us and our friends and family, and insinuating themselves into our media. It’s an uncanny valley of “sponsored” and “promoted” content, slipped into the ticker-feed of updates from the people we know so seamlessly that it bypasses our defenses.

While the Instagram TOU is not unique, there are aspects of it (the implied consent of parents to share location content of minors is especially squirm-inducing) that might push users past their comfort zone. Personally, I’m making the jump to a paid Flickr pro account. Hopefully by paying for a product, I’ll be less likely to become one.

Mitt Romney, shame, and startup failure

photo: kevin dean

Reading an article in the Washington Post about Mitt Romney’s post-election life, I felt empathy for him for the first time. I may disagree with most of what he and his party stand for, but as I read, I started to relate to a man who is learning how to live in the aftermath of a completely unanticipated failure.

The sense of importance conveyed by a Secret Service detail was gone in a moment. There was no public office or job waiting for him after losing the election. After years of frenetic work and striving, he woke up one day with no goal or direction. It must have been a shock.

I can relate, because it’s similar to how I felt when I finally admitted the company I’d started had failed, and I took the final steps to wind it down.

I, too, isolated myself. I felt - still feel - a great deal of shame at my failures. I can understand why he’s seemed to avoid his party – feelings of abandonment and betrayal are hard to work with when the wounds are still fresh. Stepping outside the milieu or clique that cast you out is a defense mechanism against the feelings of inadequacy that are inevitable when you’re surrounded by those accomplishing what you couldn’t. Especially when it was your own misstep that made you a pariah.

I’ve been contracting, because it’s a fittingly uncommitted limbo for someone who feels the strangling weight of empty days pressing the life out of me but can’t imagine going back to a “straight” job where I have to play by someone else’s rules and risk the vulnerability of being a full-fledged part of a team. Contracting allows me to have one foot in and one out - I contribute, but I’m not invested. It obviates the pesky imminent tragedy of hope.

While I don’t have nearly the financial resources of the Romneys, I have the luxury of choosing when, where, and if I work. For a little while, at least. I’m grateful for that, and should take advantage of that freedom by committing to helping others in some way. If I think about why I haven’t yet, I start to feel exposed and raw and the risk of failing others again shuts me down. Volunteering is a humbling act in many ways.

Regardless of what he stands for, Mitt Romney is a human being struggling with a heartbreaking transition. I wish him peace and courage as he finds a new path forward. Who knows, maybe he’ll start another company.