The Yellow Line Effect

In the past we had a set of rules to cover parking in the Highway Code. They were generally commonsense and about safety to supplement your own commonsense. Then some Rodney thought up yellow lines to indicate where you could or could not park. Now people park where there are no yellow lines whatever the circumstances. Forget "at least 15 yards from a junction". I've seen cars parked actually on the corner, at 45 degrees to both roads, with two wheels on the pavement. But there were no yellow lines so it must be OK.
I call it the "Yellow Line Effect", a paradigm for a nanny state. Treat people like ignorant children and many will act accordingly.

People Who Design Things

Now you might think I should have put "designers" but "designers" implies a certain professionalism, an adherence to standards of good practice and knowledge of the wider implications of the problem at hand. I mean people who design things without any of those considerations.

I am prompted to mention this pet hate by the process of setting up this blog. First item is "description". It is a text entry box with the message underneath "500 characters maximum". I've done a bit of HTML and I know you can limit the number of characters the user can enter. But they don't. You just get an error meesage telling you you've entered too many characters. It doesn't even tell you how many you've entered.

I wonder how many people who designed supermarket tills have sat by them for 10 hours listening to that bloody bleep. It drives me mad and I'm only there for 10 minutes.

What idiot designed those PIN machines for use in supermarkets? The messages mean nothing to the people who actually use the things. They only meaning something to the techies who set it up.

Oh for more designers.