73 karma · joined March 2, 2011
Gender was already in this.
The article starts with "In a groundbreaking effort to close the wage gap between men and women..." I do see what you were getting at but my guess (based on karma and skimming previous comments) is that the gender comment was sarcastic. I could be wrong though.
Other than that, good start!
The article seems to have been written by an outsider that has absolutely no idea how bike shops work. Bicycles themselves are loss leaders -- they make very little profit there. Their money is made from upsell, service, and repeat customers. The margins stated in that article do not reflect my experience. Not by a long shot.
Of the many shops I worked at, very few things made them truly successful:
1) Love, Time, and Knowledge: Easy peasy. know your shit. The best shop I worked at was owned and run by a guy that started the store at the age of eight. Yes, EIGHT. He sold chains and tubes out of his parent's wallpaper store. I live 3000 miles away and still recommend that shop.
2) Location: The worst shop I worked at was on the richest street in a popular tourist destination. It didn't matter how bad the service was or that there was another better shop a mile away. Foot traffic was the only thing that kept (and keeps) them in business.
3) Niche: This only works if your expertise is in a specific type of cycling. The biggest source of failure is that (a) you didn't know as much as you thought or (b) there was another specialty shop that's too close.
4) Outside interest: Someone (usually a company) gives you boatloads of money no matter how bad you do. One shop I was employed at was a BRAND landmark. That shop lost money every month for decades, but it didn't matter; they still sold more BRANDs than any other brand in that city combined. It was a brand recognition issue that was probably considered a marketing cost.
In the end, there's a common industry joke I heard many times: Q: How do you make a million dollars? A: Take two million dollars and start a bike shop.
If you use any excuse not to test on any browsers in any Windows environments, you're ignoring the fact that the vast majority of users are on the Windows platform -- ~90% worldwide, ~81% in the US. I'm talking OS, not browser. (If you think there's not much difference, try borrowing a Windows machine and viewing the way most @font-face rendering works on that platform.)
And if you prescribe to the thought "my users are mostly on Mac," your growth will be severely limited if you're ignoring 80-90% of the users out there.
Development & testing are two separate tasks. Don't confuse their respective toolsets.
Because you're not developing for yourself. You're developing for users.
Also, just because you're developing on browsers that exist on both platforms doesn't mean you're supporting all operating systems. If you tested on any WinOS you'd understand that.
I joined the bone marrow database and encourage everyone I know to do the same. The donor card comes with me everywhere I go. Whenever I hear about someone like Mr. Gupta, I try and think of every person possible that might not know one of two very important things:
1. Becoming a donor is not as painful as you grew up beleiving it was. 2. A single day of your discomfort could give someone the rest of their life.
Over the course of the next several years, Rich pretty much kept his immediate condition to himself except with his family and few very close friends. This did prove difficult for him since he was someone who was "notable" (a term those of us on HN would understand), but upon publication he would always see the silver lining since it helped promote his foundation.
On September eighth, 2010, Rich was only 36 years old when he passed away after suffering a stroke secondary to leukemia.
Please, do what you can. Every day, do what you can.
The clients I mentioned are organizations with thousands of employees, and (at the very least) dozens of very large departments. Their decisions are always made by committees made up by representatives from these departments, and they all want equal or more attention. You just can't teach clients like that and stay within a tasteful budget. All you can do is creatively mitigate.
It's not all bad, though. It's just another puzzle to solve, only this time the solution isn't in code.
(Sorry for straying so far off topic from the original article)
I'm seeing a growing number of comments here that read like "I can..." or "I prefer..." The article clearly states this is a decision arrived at by considering the end-user. It's all relative; all sites don't need to be that way. You should be user-testing every project with your target market anyways, and if you were and it was a problem you'd hear about it. I know I have, many times.
Another great article on this subject is one "Relative Readability" by Wilson Miner:
http://www.wilsonminer.com/posts/2008/oct/20/relative-readab...
http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Boiled-Wonderland-End-World-Inter...
Then, I actually did some research.
First, there are instances where reset buttons have a place. From Jakob Nielsen's post Reset and Cancel Buttons (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000416.html): Reset can be useful for forms that satisfy both of the following criteria:
- the form is filled-in repeatedly by the same user
- the data to be entered differs significantly from one use of the form to the next
For cancel buttons, my "never ever" opinion was flawed because I refused to see the reset or cancel button from the viewpoint of users unlike myself. I spend a lot of time building these things (as most of you do). I know how forms work. After actually sitting down with users that don't, and people that don't spend that much time online, I found another thing to be true: People are afraid that form data will be submitted even if you hit the back button. They want the Cancel button to ensure their data won't be collected against their will.
A point the article makes but then ignores is the button's layout & design. Layout for these buttons is key. If they have to be used, they shouldn't inputs or buttons. I've found that the best design for these is a plain text Reset or Cancel link that's opposite the Submit or Next button. An alert is also key. Using one can instill confidence, assuring the user that their information will be cleared and not submitted.
However, there are a number of reasons these buttons could fade out of use, not limited to the following:
- Users are becoming more familiar with the way the web works. They understand that form data isn't submitted until a submit button is clicked. Because of this, forms are generally a trusted interactive element.
- With the widespread use of AJAX, it's only a matter of time before form data is collected in the user session before a submit button is clicked. It's already being used in some places to track successful conversions & Lead Dropouts (Sitecore OMS is one). If this becomes common, forms will revert to being less trusted. Reset and Cancel buttons won't fix this, though.
The rule I follow is much the same as it's always been: Don't use Cancel or Reset buttons. Though now, I understand the exceptions and plan accordingly. Think about the target audience for each specific form and include the appropriate functionality.