When I find a map on the web and I want to take it with me, I take a pen and copy the map onto scrap paper, because I have zero trust that the map would print out correctly.
I use the default font for everything, because I have zero trust that any font I choose would be reproduced correctly by the time my words reach the reader’s screen.
I don’t use bold text in email, because I have zero trust that it would show up right in the recipient’s email client.
I don’t take pictures with my phone, because I have zero trust that I’ll ever be able to get at those pictures in a usable form.
Is it just me, or does the behavior of computer systems rarely inspire trust?
July 1, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I wholeheartedly agree. I think things are getting better, but as tech support, I tell people “Until you actually see the computer finish the final stage of your process, don’t trust it.”
I think there are two problems:
1) Some developers are lazy and don’t make sure their system is compatible with other systems.
2) Most developers are NOT lazy, but they don’t have time to make sure their system is compatible with other systems.
July 1, 2009 at 6:04 pm
No, it is just you.
Afraid the map won’t faithfully be reproduced? Print it out and if it is good, you’ve saved a lot of time. If it is doo-doo, then do your manual scribbling thing on the back of the page.
You are afraid you might lose some of the pictures you take with your phone, so instead you don’t take them, guaranteeing you will lose the photo. Is that the logic? Or are you saying you always carry around a camera and a phone?
July 1, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Attempting to print is a nonzero cost in time and annoyance. So is attempting to take a picture with a cell phone. Maybe it is illogical of me, but I choose to simply live without certain features rather than paying the time and annoyance cost for something that I don’t think will work.
I guess my mental calculus is something like this:
if (effort of using feature) + (annoyance caused by failure)*(estimated probability of failure) ) > ( value of success) * (estimated probability of success), then I don’t use the feature.
July 1, 2009 at 6:37 pm
I mostly agree, except for Google Maps. Google Maps finally prints correctly with Firefox…including the highlighted route. (That was broken for a *long* time.) I /always/ use Print Preview to make sure it fits correctly, and that I’m printing the right page, though.
For more persnickety maps, I take screenshots, and either print them, or put them on a mobile device.
Printing photos falls clear under my ‘too hard’ category. I pick the images I want to print and put them on the teeny memory card that came with my camera (16 MB!), and then use that in an Epson “Magic” printer, and let it do all the hard work. Figuring out how to get edgeless prints is far too hard with software.
I’m rather traditional about e-mail, so it’s a very rare occasion that you’d catch me using any formatting in e-mail. The most I do is *embolden* and /italicize/ my text as found in this sentence.
July 1, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Excell is my bug bear “I’ll just print this spreadsheet” is ussually the que for a lot of paperwaste, that vital column always seems to fall of page 1, print preview always now.
July 1, 2009 at 8:49 pm
I think it’s just you. I routinely print maps without problems. I take photos with my iPhone all the time, and email the majority of them to other people.
I do send emails without special formatting though, mostly because I have no desire to receive non-plaintext email, so why would I want to inflict that on someone?
July 1, 2009 at 9:22 pm
I’m confused, would you not do a 1 time investment and work out how to print a map?
July 1, 2009 at 11:12 pm
I’ve come to develop specific trust relationships with a certain combination of applications.
HTML email in iPhone is a pretty good bet so I am comfortable that I’ll be able to open a random email on my phone on my way out the door, and I know I can print Google Maps on my browser+printer combination.
It feels like betrayal if there’s an update which breaks one of my trust associations.
July 1, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Ditto what Ted said.
July 2, 2009 at 12:35 am
We’ve all been burned by different sorts of broken tech, so our pet peeves will naturally vary. For example, I have never had problems with printing out online maps, so I’m comfortable doing that. But I have zero trust that the “print this receipt” link at the end of an online shopping session would produce a correct printout.
But I see the gist of your complaint as follows: systems that deal with more than one user interface are often much less reliable than traditional systems with just one screen, one keyboard and one user. Put that way, the complaint is of course true (or perhaps a truism).
July 2, 2009 at 1:12 am
You said:
“I guess my mental calculus is something like this:
if (effort of using feature) + (annoyance caused by failure)*(estimated probability of failure) ) > ( value of success) * (estimated probability of success), then I don’t use the feature.”
As someone who prints maps all the time (almost always google maps, always with FF), I guess the disconnect is this. Your “estimated probability of failure” is way higher than my experienced rate of failure.
Another difference is that your “annoyance caused by failure” factor is probably much higher than mine. I spent 90% of my life using maps the old fashioned way before google maps came to the rescue, and I still get great satisfaction every time I use it, and I don’t take it for granted. It isn’t perfect, but it beats everything else and I’m thankful for that.
As for taking pictures with phones — the problem isn’t getting the picture out of the phone, it is the miserable picture quality. The optics on most cell phones stink so I rarely use my cell phone for taking pictures.
July 2, 2009 at 8:03 am
I wouldn’t talk in 0-trust-vs-trust terms. I would talk about levels of reliability. Users have been forced to admit that most of the things on internet don’t work always as they sat they should be. Even though, most of the time they partially suceed —hence the reliability. I tend to think in a continuum from 0 (nothing happens) to full result. Most of the performances are not at the upper end, but near —beign near a fuzzy term.
July 3, 2009 at 5:01 am
Like graphical smileys! I hack around it with a space, which is more anatomically correct : )
I actually have a solution for printing issue, essential a 3d preview and a incremental search for features.
July 4, 2009 at 12:07 am
Google Maps print just fine, as others have pointed out. You can also print to PDF first to make sure it’s come out OK. It’s trivial to do on Mac OS X and easy on Windows with some extra software.
I think not trying is just reinforcing your lack of trust. You should give everything a shot every now and then and see if things have improved. Software often sucks (I know because I write it!) but it gets better with time.
July 4, 2009 at 3:30 am
It’s just you. But what do I know — I’m the guy whose friends make fun of him for putting too much trust in technology
July 6, 2009 at 12:14 am
Those are all just individual problems that can be fixed with a little innovation on the part of the developer, or a little effort on the part of the user. You can learn how to transfer pictures from your phone (probably with a quick google search and a trip to Best Buy for the cable), or the creators of the phone can make transferring:
a. Easier to learn
b. More intuitive, so there’s as little learning involved as possible
or c. Automatic, which is the pinnacle of intuitiveness that much of technology is embracing these days.
Imagine setting your phone down on your desk and having all of your pictures synced with your hard drive. Or imagine technology that can automatically adjust printed maps/pictures to fit a page. Or a standard email formatting protocol, or a standard font protocol for displays.
July 6, 2009 at 12:21 am
Or, perhaps, the developers can make the interfaces simpler. Currently, in word processors like MS Word, or other printable editors like MS Paint, allow you to go to File > Page Setup or something to configure settings, where you are met with all sorts of confusing input boxes and radio buttons for different things.. why not, when you hit Print, have a simple window pop up giving you small (I’d say like 300px by 450px) buttons with images of previews of how pages will print with different configurations, so you __know__ you’ll be printing your page/image/map correctly. Automagic and intuitiveness are essential to software today; the user should either have to learn [almost] nothing to do it, or have it done for them.
July 7, 2009 at 2:42 pm
It’s the companies I don’t trust; I trust computers to do what they’re told.