Computers, Design, and a little Fun with Newsletters

During our STEMnet meeting yesterday, I had a moment where I realized that non-geeks might not know just how frustrating computers can be for the geeky too. In fact, when you're working with something all the time, the probability of having issues is even higher. And, of course, geekier.

Today, the point made itself clearly when I was setting up my Drupal dev environment on my local machine. I honestly could have banged my head against a wall. Come on, you know how that feels. I'm just willing to admit it on the Internet.

So we all have different levels of tech experience, yet certain basic human responses to computing give us common ground. It's comforting, really. It's also a reminder of how important it is to design for the the end user, the reminder of why software needs to be intuitive, and that by minimizing frustration, we're increasing productivity. So, where I can't eliminate the guesswork and frustration altogether, I'll take it for them. It's not only compassionate, it's good business.

These are sound reminders, as is doing something a little fun too. To balance the computer woes, I took a little time for a fun client today – the Baltimore Road Runner's Club. I put together a beautiful new Mailchimp template for them. A little more tweaking and they get to see how fabulous it looks!