I wonder what tags and categories are and what the difference is.
Time to try out Help…
OK. That is pretty clear.
Some more info: http://support.wordpress.com/posts/categories-vs-tags/
I got this from the wordpress feature of “possibly related posts”. All rather nice for incremental learnability.
So I’m OK with uploading screenshots.
Let’s try a load of them. Here are some I made earlier…
Duh. Guess what, I clicked on the “Upload” text, not the funny allegedly-a-picture icon next to it.
Try again.
Lower half of that initial setup page, showing it is pretty small
So the default of full size seems OK.
When you click on “Next->” you get this:
The next page of the setup process
And clicking on “Signup ->” gives you this, if I remember right:
The activation screen
Then somehow you do the activation, via the emailed link, log in and get to the powerful but initially a bit daunting dashboard:
Oh. I must have clicked something wrong there. I uploaded it, but it seems to have gone into the gallery and not here into the blog posting. So how do I rectify that I wonder?
well that wasn’t right. I think I inserted the whole gallery there. So what I think is going on here is that when you upload images, they also go into something called a gallery. But I don’t yet know what I did wrong. I must have clicked on something by accident when uploading the last image so it didn’t end up in the blog post but in the gallery. And now I don’t know how to fix it.
Well maybe the simplest way is just to upload it all over again. Let’s try:
that first experience of a daunting dashboard
OK that worked. This time I managed to click on “Insert into post”:
Problems with uploading images
So I think I know what happened. I must have accidentally clicked on “Save all changes” instead of “Insert into post”. That takes you into that gallery thing which for me at my current learning state is all a bit confusing. No doubt it will become clearer in time.
By the way, as I’ve been busily uploading screenshots in this post I’ve noted I keep doing the same thing wrong. I click on the icon, browse for the image I want (the screenshot I’ve previously taken, cropped and saved), and then I just sit there:
after browsing for the image I just stop
That is, I just sit there waiting for the interface to do something, and it just sits there waiting for me to do something. We’ve reached an HCI impasse. It is waiting for me to click on Upload, and I am waiting for it to do the upload, because I’ve already told it what to upload. So why do I just sit there like an idiot? Indeed why have I sat there like an idiot something like 4 times in a row? I think it is that for me, the act of specifying the file I want uploading implicitly means “Here is the file I want you to upload”. And so clicking on the “Upload” button, which means: “And I want you to upload it” is rather odd. Obviously the system wants me to say “Yes, I really really really want you to do this incredibly dangerous and expensive activity and I appreciate we have to say it twice just to make sure”. And frankly I don’t want to bother. Just do it for heaven’s sake.
Furthermore, it’s not like the interface makes it easy to do one last check: “OK here’s this file you want me to upload. Is it the right one? Are you really really really really sure?”. No I’m not, because the text box by browse is so tiny, I can’t actually see which file I have specified, so I’m not given any clue that is is a ‘one last check’ kind of conversation. So I just sit there for a few seconds until I realize that this is the interface that makes me go “Duh”. A lot.
I don’t like interfaces that make me feel stupid.
Right. New location, all firewalls off. Lets try Upload again…
the WordPress initial setup screen
So I think that worked. The previous problems I now blame on firewalls (somewhat superstitiously).
That one shows the setup screen that is pretty clear.
Upload was fine, though rather a lot of extra options I don’t want to think about for this first attempt. Still I think the defaults are OK, and they are pretty clear about what they do.
So there is that very nice simple startup screen. Though it isn’t actually a one-step form as it claims. It is simple and fast though.
Well it was all going so well. But now I want to add a screenshot to a post and I can’t see how. In the dashboard, the Media icon and link on the left seemed the likely suspect. That icon looks to me like a camera. But it seems to be all about sound and video. Nothing about static images like gif and jpeg. And it goes on about libraries which all sounds like advanced non bloggy stuff. So I wandered off and looked around elsewhere. But I can’t see any other more promising places.
Aha! now I see it. Maybe it’s in that row of icons just above where I am typing that says “Upload/Insert”. Yes, those words might be some sort of clue. I wonder why I didn’t see them before? I definitely saw all the text editing icons below them.
I see a musical note there, plus 4 other incomprehensible icons. Fortunately, hovering tells me what they are. The first is “Add an Image”.
So let’s click that and see what happens.
But first, that handy “Save Draft” button on the right had probably better be pressed.
Hmm. That upload didn’t work. But I suspect that’s a firewall problem of where I’m connecting online from. So I won’t blame WordPress for that. Their part of the upload non-process seemed pretty clear.
The mystery remains of why I failed to see that Upload/Insert text and row of icons. Maybe it is because the icons are greyed out. That would imply they are currently not usable. But it doesn’t persuade me why I failed to see them at all when I was looking for a place to upload a screenshot. After all I quickly found the (wrong) media link over to the left, and the icons there are also grey. And anyway the Upload/Insert text is not grey. Maybe I tuned it out as being above the (useful) text editing icons and below the (currently not interesting) permalink. But I don’t find that particularly convincing. It remains a usability mystery. In retrospect all I can do is rail along with so many designers: “How can he be so stupid/dense/unobservant? How can he not see Upload? It’s right there in front of him!” Such is the frustration of design – it would be so much easier if it weren’t for the users.
More complex password duly entered and we’re off. A message telling me to expect an activation email in 30 minutes. So off to Eudora and hit “Check Mail” A mere 30 seconds later and it’s there:
|
To: twidale@illinois.edu
From: “WordPress.com” <donotreply@wordpress.com>
Subject: Activate twidale.wordpress.com |
Howdy,Thank you for signing up with WordPress.com. You are one step away from blogging at twidale.wordpress.com. Please click this link to activate your blog:–The WordPress.com Team(If clicking the link in this message does not work, copy and paste itinto the address bar of your browser.)
Isn’t that nice! I’m familiar with this kind of email-click validation/activation. So I excitedly click and am told
So I log in and then hit my first surprise – this great big dashboard. Now if I knew more, I’d show you a screenshot of it here. But of course I’m currently a newbie and don’t know how to do that yet. I’ll add it to my to do list.
Anyway it is a big screen of stuff and info and stats. I’m used to this from web pages and other applications. But the really odd thing is that it appears that I have already made one post and got one comment. How odd! So I’m intrigued and click on it to see and it is a “Hello World!” post that in its content explains that it can be deleted or edited. Very nice. Though of course it is a bit geeky – if you studied computer science you know that the convention is to write your first program in any new programming language to say “hello world”. Worse, I had already just planned to title my first blog post “hello world” At last – mind-reading software. I’ve been waiting long enough…
So all that led to the previous post.
Good. Before too long I’ll be able to blog about interfaces other than blogging interfaces. I currently feel like I’m in the usability equivalent of the bootstrap problem.
Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!
OK. Thanks very much. Well that was all much easier than I thought it was going to be. So far so good.
So given that I’m interested in how people learn how to use applications, struggle, get confused, cope, learn, improve, innovate, appropriate or don’t, what are my initial impressions of WordPress?
Registration was pretty easy. Before going to the website, my major problem was worrying about what to call this damn blog. Would I be stuck with some stupid inappropriate or banal name for ever. So I’ve deferred getting started for ages worrying about this. Finally I take the plunge and go to the wordpress homepage.
From there, there is a nice big friendly banner ad saying “Sign up now”
So I do. Next page is:
http://en.wordpress.com/signup/
and this is beautifully short. Of course maybe there are pages and pages of registration, but it seems that there are only a few things to enter and then a button “Signup”. So unless they are lying, I’m not going to get page after page of registration.
All pretty easy and familiar questions: pick a user id, password, email address, legal consent.
The worst part is Pick a password – the usual issues of making it less guessable (by others and unfortunately by me).
Now of course I failed to pick a secure enough password, so get bounced back with an error message to re-enter. It would have been nice to have that info provided dynamically.
Next page has just 4 more things and then I think we are done: Blog Domain, Blog Title, pick a language and a privacy check. Pleasantly, the pick a blog domain with a reasonable default – the username I chose from the previous page.
And now that that scary part (for me) The pick a name of the blog question. But fortunately some friendly small print: “The blog title can be changed at any time.” So that’s all right then.
But overall, really not bad. I think the issues of reassurance are underconsidered in experience design.
Next time I’d better talk about the activation process, and the writing of this blog post. All horribly recursive this self-user study business!
By the way, blogging this even right after it happened was a bit tricky because I forgot exactly how it all happens. I needed to go back and revise this post. I’m still not sure it is exactly right, as the act of registering may have changed some things.
