Wikidbase and Emotional Software
August 5th, 2008
On the GeekUp discussion list I was surprised that Alex admitted that he was disappointed by the Delicious re-design, that he’d become emotionally engaged with Delicious’ clunky visual appearance.
What I found surprising is not the admission itself but the fact he felt that he had to admit it in the first place. Of course we all have emotional responses to software that are based on visual appearance, experience, style preferrences and various other voodoo means of deciding that something is good or not.
For example, I have totally emotional responses to any software that begins with the word “Omni” because, being a fan of OmniGraffle, any other tool that comes from the same family must be OK, mustn’t it?
I have a blanket dislike for most Flash/AIR apps because of the styling of the widgets (like buttons and scrollbars etc) that is not based on anything rational at all… I don’t think. I just get the feeling that although it looks like an interface, walks like an interface… it won’t quack like an interface when I need it to.
I have an emotional gut reaction to Drupal and Plone-based sites, because in general, they look like Drupal or Plone sites… and in the same way that seeing a boom mike appear in the top of a movie scene, it sort of beaks the suspension of disbelief, or in the case of software and web sites, seeing a Plone-esque icon sort of lets me know what I am going to get, that there will be no delightful surprises along the way.
Which brings me onto this… Wikidbase… which, logically has so many ticks for a wiki-fan, python-using, funky-data-model-ista like me. But take a look at it. My emotion response to the interface is so strong that despite it sounding like a worthy and interesting project, I can’t get past the huge header and the ugly colours and that TREE!. It looks like a great application but my personal visual preference is stopping me from downloading it.
I probably could quickly hack the CSS file myself, but the default styling is telling me that there’s something wrong here and that I should back away quietly…
What’s your emotional response to Wikidbase?…