Good interfaces help users achieve their goals as easily as possible. "Evil interfaces", on the other hand, are meant to trick users into doing things they don't want to.

Professor of Computer Science Greg Conti offers serveral examples in the video below:

Giving people the gift of discovery is a noble pursuit, but clearly there’s room for improvement in recommendation engines.



Nick Cernis watched a video about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in YouTube, only to be recommended this video.

Why YouTube recommends heroin







Reza Behforooz was looking for a metronome in Amazon. Apparently their recommendation engine was at loss at what to suggest as a cross-selling item:



Better Together: white & red!



Read also: Tapping the Power of Recommendation Systems to Build a Broader Web 2.0 Audience

Another great (and funny) example of how just adding new features without proper user interface considerations can cause user frustration:

We're talking money here and all of a sudden my ATM is giving me practice questions for the SAT. If all men eat turnips and John is a man, does John eat turnips?

Read the article at The Humane Experience.

Photo by srboisvert

If your company is so big and impersonal that you call the people you have assets, resources, bodies, or any of the many other degrading terms available, you’re doing it wrong.
The language of staffing

Some say dysfunctional workplace behaviors, such as bullying and aggression, are just part of work, that they don't affect the bottom line, and that people should just "knock it off," and get back to business. But the results of this thinking deeply negatively impact business.
Does your office need an intervention?

Today's post is a contribution from Josh Hanagarne, the twitchy giant behind World’s Strongest Librarian, a blog with advice about living with Tourette’s Syndrome, kettlebells, book recommendations, buying pants when you’re 6’8”, old-time strongman training, and much more.

Typos In Graffiti

By Josh Hanagarne, World’s Strongest Librarian

Graffiti is lame, unless it’s cool artsy graffiti, the kind that gets its own coffee table book. But most graffiti is just dumb and ugly.

Two months ago I was managing a library branch in Salt Lake City. A large part of my job was cleaning up graffiti. There were the predictable locations like windows and desks, but I was constantly staggered by the places people chose to tag.

The typos drove me nuts.

The dumbest place I saw graffiti was on the leaf of a potted plant. “Snowflake 17” had claimed that territory and the worst of fates awaited anyone who trespassed on that turf.

There were others, of course:

Carved into a shelf were the words, Reading is dum.
Sprayed onto the mirror in the restroom: Totaly Samoa.
There was a great drawing of me on a desk that said, Ugli dick!

The list goes on an on. I know that rigid grammar laws are not on the minds of those who vandalize public property. However, it was hard for me to take declarations of I-own-this-table very seriously when the spelling was bad, even though the font was pointy and scary.

I must add that I saw one act of vandalism that I absolutely cherish. It will make me smile until the day I die. Maybe longer.

It was carved into a desk in the tutoring room:

I love math!

One other thing: I refuse to be intimidated by anyone whose street name is Snowflake.

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