Change Conversations

Round about 2000, I stumbled across a software project that restored my will to live. The MAME project was developing software that made it possible to run old arcade and console games on any platform — in simple terms, I could download their free software and run old arcade games on my PC. I grew up on these games, and had been very saddened by their disappearance over the previous years.

Of course, as with most things, the situation wasn’t as simple as downloading and installing some software — for one thing, MAME provided the emulation software to make all this possible, but not the games themselves. Finding games (and games with proper licensing) proved to be a challenge. But by far the bigger challenge was with the physical interface between software and user.

Arcade games came equipped with a dizzying array of joysticks, buttons, and flywheels, and in many ways the games were designed with particular physical interfaces in mind. Try playing Tempest without a heavily weighted flywheel, and you’ll be sorely disappointed in the results.

Try playing Robotron with a keyboard instead of two joysticks, and you’ll be cursing at the computer screen in no time.

I speak from experience.

The solution — one I never undertook myself — is to build a control panel for your MAME emulator. If the computer keyboard and mouse don’t provide you with a good enough interface, build your own! Lots of people have done it. Check out this homemade rig:

The Right Interface

The lesson I take from this is simply that sometimes the right interface can, regardless of all of the wonderful features of a piece of software, hardware, or website, be the difference between a great user experience and a terrible user experience. While simple, I do believe that it is an oft-overlooked bit of wisdom.

Your website might hold the secrets to eternal life and happiness, but if users have to click more than two or three times to get to that information, your site will quickly be dead to them. If you’re building a new website, don’t rely on yourself to see if the paths to your information are good ones. Get people who aren’t familiar with the site to browse through it and see how they manage.

Your software might be the most useful programs in the world, but if it’s not also one of the most useable, you’ll have a difficult time selling copies of it. Again, good interface design and testing are paramount here.

Your hardware might do incredible things, but if no one can figure out how to use it, no one is going to buy it. Design and test!

Brilliant Interfaces I Have Known

iOS: Obviously, one of the great revolutionary interface schemes of the past decade or eight has been the operating system for the iPhone — iOS and its touch/swipe/tap interface. Scrolling by swiping, opening by tapping, selecting by touching, all has made the iPhone one of the great utilitarian and fun computer devices of all time.

Scrivener: Have you ever tried to use a word processing program to write a book? I have, and it’s not fun. Programs like Word and OpenOffice are good at handling one or two documents of a few pages each, but anything more and it’s an organizational nightmare. Luckily, I found Scrivener — an amazing piece of software that is built with the author and researcher in mind. It allows you to organize all of your research, drag and drop images from other sources, and provides you with a virtual corkboard that makes visualizing your project a breeze. When you’re done, you can export to Microsoft Word so that the poor suckers who don’t have Scrivener can see what you’ve done.

The Hand Blender: Tired of hauling out your huge, unwieldy blender, filling it with food, running it, and pouring it into a bowl? Break out your handy (literally) Cuisinart Hand Blender, and just bring the blender right to the bowl. Brilliant!

When my friend Launie first started writing her blog Teeny Tiny Kitchen two years ago, she picked a subject she cares about and a skill that she rocks; cooking food. She had been reading blogs for years on various subjects, but food was always in the mix. As the blogosphere started taking shape and the cream rose to the top, she began to see what separated a decent blog from a great one. She noticed that some of the more popular food blogs, and some of the more obscure ones she liked had great photography.

Writing great text is hard enough, but doing it consistently and on a regular basis is even more difficult (as evidence, I submit my string of posts on this site). Being a writer, Launie had this part nailed as well. She had been in and around photography for years, but it had always been a passive hobby. She had a natural eye for photography, but an occasonial experiment or a carefully framed shot was pretty much the extent to which she flexed her shutterbug muscles. When she started writing the blog she totally threw herself into food photography by studying the professionals and experimenting with lighting, misting and other techniques while using her high end digital SLR camera.

Food Blogging on the Cheap - Teeny Tiny Kitchen

The blog has been rolling along and steadily picking up steam since she began. Her articles have been published on Conde Naste, CNN and she’s part of the BlogHer Network among others. I guess she knew the day was coming when she would be popular enough to attract Comment Trolls, but was she prepared with a plan to deal with them?

Wikipedia defines a Troll as: In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response.

I asked Launie a few questions about her new problem.

Me: So what kind of Comment Troll posting was it?
Launie: Well, for my first time it was pretty gentle. He/she was the “questioning” type of troll. “Why would you make something from scratch when you can buy that in the store or on Amazon?” With the implied “Wow are you dumb,” tone.

Me: Were you able to find anything out about the Troll?
Launie: He/she is a restaurant reviewer in California.

Me: Did you leave the comment up?
Launie: It was benign, so I let it slide.
Me: Did anybody else comment on the post, or on the Troll?
Launie: It was the first time I’ve ever had readers use the “down fonze” on a comment. (“Down Fonz” =thumbs down.) And I had a couple of sweet comments. The strange thing is, you would think that food would be the most gentle of things to write about – and it’s not. In fact, last week I had a really bizarre experience. I do food writing for a cool community on line, and over the holidays I put up a recipe for a roasted fruit salad. Most people really liked it, but one person called me a “bitch” (jokingly at the time) because I had posted a “healthy” recipe. But for some reason, this person wouldn’t let it go, and then they suggested that they should write my next column because I hadn’t written an appropriate holiday post. Readers and the editors explained that I had been writing the column for close to a year and that – no, someone couldn’t just take over my food column. I apologized to the person, if only to keep the drama at bay because it was escalating quickly. And then the proverbial you-know-what hit the fan. The person who had taken umbrage with my holiday post quit the website with a dramatic (and profanity filled) exit. Other commenters kept the fight going for two days. I stayed out of the fray except for the initial apology and just watched this whole bizarre thing unfold. Two people stopped speaking to each other, and others came close to that. All because of a fruit salad.

It could have been worse though, I’ve read about food writers having their children threatened. And one woman food writer posted about  the frightening hate mail she receives. (Scroll halfway down the page.)
So, the first “troll” on our blog was harmless in comparison. And I know that it’s the Internet – and more importantly – I know everyone isn’t going to like what I write, but it’s amazing how worked up people can get over a recipe.

So the moral of the story is, if you write a blog and you let your readers submit comments, prepare to deal with the trolls when your blog starts getting to be popular. I included two good resources to help you below.

Related articles

How to Deal With Comment Trolls Both On and Away From Your Blog: Danny Brown

How To Deal With Comment Trolls: Amy Schmittauer