Worlds Touch

Normal Monday

I'm going to try to begin posting here about my job. What I do, how I do it, what my days look like. I may have some thoughtful ideas, but for now, I just want to post a list of what went by as I had a regular Monday:

• Reconfigured the fax machine so it will print confirmation of faxes sent and received.
• Set up a meeting with our education coordinator, set myself a reminder to remind her.
• Looked at blip.tv and revver.com and thought about video.
• Looked at Science Collaborative Framework and thought about online collaboration.
• Fixed a page on our web site.
• Did a bunch of data entries to the database, Salesforce, including some phone discussions with a partner or two about who to talk to at their house.
• Set up a meeting with the Red Cross to hear about their international programs.
• Had a meeting with a data entry volunteer who can really help with data cleaning.
• Did probably two total hours of training on donations and recurring donations and pledges with the staff member who is most responsible for it.
• Worked with a board member to use a Google doc for collaborating. This was a phone consultation.

Sort of mind-boggling, huh? Normally, I'd attribute the training with Mattie to the day's accomplishment, but not really count anything else. Wild and amazing, this great job.

World's Worst Web Site

I thought I had seen some terrible web design in my years of wandering the internet, but this is without a doubt the very worst I have ever encountered:

http://nchomeless.org/joomla/index.php

This is -- I think, because it's almost impossible to tell WHAT the dad gum thing does -- a system that is supposed to track the various services that America's homeless receive so that they aren't wandering around from agency to agency, mainly falling through the cracks.

Get this: The whole site is a series of standalone documents that you have to download just to see them, and it takes at least three and sometimes MORE clicks just to get to the documents in the first place.

Whoever put the site together is an idiot, as well as knowing almost nothing whatsoever about web design. Totally user insulting...unfriendly is an understatement!

I found it nearly impossible just to get an idea of what the system is supposed to be doing. Geez, maybe they could use my services! What they are mainly lacking is an information architecture that informs and then guides the user.

Interesting that Joomla, the web system they are using as the structure, could be used in such a terrible way. It may be a case of: It's so simple to use, even an idiot can use it. And then they find idiots who can and do! If I were the Joomla folks, I would quickly help these pathetic folks, or disavow all connection. They are giving Joomla a very bad name here.

My guess is that nobody will use this system longer than about five minutes. It will fall into disrepair and crumble, unless they figure out how to THINK about the people who are going to be using the system.