{"id":1505,"date":"2009-12-20T05:06:01","date_gmt":"2009-12-19T19:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nsrd.wordpress.com\/?p=1505"},"modified":"2009-12-20T05:06:01","modified_gmt":"2009-12-19T19:06:01","slug":"pet-peeve-interface-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2009\/12\/20\/pet-peeve-interface-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Aside \u2013\u00a0My Number #1 Pet Peeve in Interface Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

At University, I had a fascinating lecturer. His typical mode of dress was a t-shirt, stubbies and to go barefoot around the campus. He had a great big bushy beard that barrelled along in front of him which at times looked like a mane. He had a reputation for reciting the entirety of The Ballad of Eskimo Nell (a rather ribald poem \u2013 I’m not providing a link) \u2013 though by the time I was at University, he could only ever be encouraged to let fly with a single verse.<\/p>\n

None of this though made him fascinating.<\/p>\n

What made him fascinating was his name. For your reference, his full name is:<\/p>\n

Simon<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

That’s right, Simon. Just a first name, no last name. You see, at some point in the past Simon had decided to legally remove his surname. So he literally did not have a last name.<\/p>\n

Simon was a fascinating case study in the implications of unexpected input in computer programmes. He was in fact a walking case study in the implications of unexpected input in computer programmes \u2013 almost exclusively due to his name. (This led me to having some joy in pointing out this XKCD cartoon to him<\/a> a couple of years ago.) Every year, the people who made the phone book struggled to work out where to put him. He confounded registration systems everywhere, and turned compulsory fields on forms to rubbish. Simon was a walking lesson in the lessons of designing interfaces to handle unexpected inputs.<\/p>\n

Not long after I finished University, I decided to change my name. Not anything so drastic as a removal of my surname; in fact, it was to add to my surname. You see, when my family emigrated to Australia several generations ago, they changed their surname from “de Guise” to just “Guise” so they could more easily assimilate. (So the story goes.)<\/p>\n

Not being all that interested in blending in, and having an appreciation of the long term history of the name “de Guise”, I decided to reinstate it. (Some might question why I didn’t remove my middle name or at least change it from “Macdonald” \u2013 but that’s another story, to be told another time.)<\/p>\n

It was at that point that I started to get an appreciation of the daily struggle Simon must have had in dealing with systems that were not adequately designed to work with non-conformist input.<\/p>\n

I’ve learned therefore over the years that there’s far too many programmers with names like:<\/p>\n