Design Crime: Quiz

[andygates]

What happens when you click this button:

Blank Data

Answers on a comment, please.

Comments

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

No button there for me, guv. Just "Blank Data".

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Okay smartypants, I'll draw a little box around it...

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I wasn't being intentionally obtuse -- every indication on my end is that it's just plain ol' text. Or, rather, the original post was -- this seems to be an image.

Either way, clicking on it does nothing at all.

[skean.livejournal.com]

Ditto Thud

[justoneway.livejournal.com]

This is the funniest post I have read in ages. The comments are a whole new hilarity in themselves.


Sorry to break that trend :(

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

Moderately amusing, surely, but still and all, it coulda been the result of LJ defanging a snippet of Javascript or Andy futzing with something my browser was having no truck with.

Okay, not the second time -- I got an e-mail response with the raw HTML by way of notification, so I have no excuse for not knowing it was a joke.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

I wish it was a joke, it's far funnier than the basic design crime. The users have a button on a homebrew app, and the button says "Blank Data". There is no documentation, natch, and the author is snowboarding.

What happens when you click? Is "blank" a noun, verb, adverb? Adjective? Acronym? Place bets now!

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

Ah, so what you'd like to know is "If you saw this button on an app, what would you expect it to do?"

[stares at the button]

I'm sorry -- no earthly idea. Looks like a placeholder that is meant to be populated by some query or other, but outside a context, I couldn't even guess.

...and the author is snowboarding.

[Checks calendar]

Up in the high mountains or off in Australia?

[skean.livejournal.com]

And you'll be happy to know I still have no idea what the joke is

[justoneway.livejournal.com]

The thing that tickled me was the meta layers of design crime in the original psot. I had given Andy the credit doing this deliberately.

The original button is a design crime.
Andy's post has its own design crime of pretending to be a button when it is not rather than describing the original problem. But this was a joke so that is OK.
Then you and thudwacker missing the joke and stating the obvious, that nothing happened, was too much for me, but then I have been in a brain melting meeting all day so it does not take much.

I have probably now drunk all the vital humour from this with my exlpanation, so I will retreat to my coffin cackling evily for a days rest.

[spike150.livejournal.com]

Who knows what such a button would do, that's the worst wording for a button action I've seen in a long time.

Context goes a long way to helping you work it out, of course, but it's still utterly dire.

[spike150.livejournal.com]

One possibility I thought of - you press the button and get a little animated Terry Wogan saying "For this round of Blankety-Blank you have selected the caption 'Blank Data'. Our panel will now have 60 seconds to come up with a word to fill in that blank."

That assumes the button was alongside others that say things like "Edit Blank" and possibly "Blank Save".

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

It blanks your data?

I don't really get the whole joke above, sorry.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

The context is one of seventeen buttons that do various stuff to data in some tables "out there". This doesn't help. It opens a specific (yet unmentioned) table, and presents you with any row which is incomplete, so you can fill it in manually. Not blank, incomplete.

How hard is it to think like a user for just a moment? Bloody developers! Gah!

[flitljm.livejournal.com]

I would be scared to press it in case it blanked my data. All the data.

[gedhrel.livejournal.com]

It would at least be polite enough to ask

You sure?

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Is it a button?

It does nothing.

It does nothing and it does nothing for me.

Hell, I got drunk with Coyote last night and he fucking left me sleeping. What the hell do I care about "blank data".

Is this funny?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Yes darling, you are ;)

[sister-savage.livejournal.com]

Don't know.

I only press flashing red buttons that say "DON'T PRESS!"

Welll press mah buttons

[(Anonymous)]

Ok.
button.
result: new browser windows opens, weird stuff p0rn site. glad it's not thumbnails. sad it's not blank.

Where'd you get this stuff from Andy?


Regards,
Carl (have you got the dungeon address working yet?)