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Am I a (web) knowledge snob?
Interesting article on the BBC news website today about Britons being “bamboozled by tech speak“. I particularly found the bit about knowledge snobbery to be interesting.
As a consultant on web projects, I’m constantly coming into contact with people who know an awful lot about the web. About things like RSS, PHP, Flash and actionscripting, XHTML and CSS, the WAI, W3C, DDA and a bunch of other acronyms that probably don’t mean a great deal to the users of the majority of websites out there today.
Andrew wrote about RSS and Google Newsreader in an earlier post, and I think Google is doing a great job of trying to simplify some of the new bits of technology that we’re seeing, so that the average Joe or Jane can make use of technology just as much as anyone else. Whether they know what RSS stands for or not.
A lot of times people are blinded by technology, without asking “who’s going to use this?” and “what are the benefits?” It’s really important not just to dump technically “wizzy” things (and yes “wizzy” is the technical term) on sites because we can, but really to know how useful these tools will be to our users and just how informed our users are of these tools.
Its almost the opposite of the Field of Dreams approach, its not if you build it they will come, but rather will they use it if you build it? If the answers yes, then build it, if the answer’s no then why are you adding a feature or a function - because you can? Who does this really help? Tough questions I know, but answering them early in the process will save you from a lot of head scratching later on.
