Peek: User-Testing my website.

I have been using a new tool on my new website before I properly launch it.

It's called Peek: http://peek.usertesting.com/

The idea is, that you submit a website, and one of Peek's community of users will use your website for around 5 minutes, while recording their screen and voicing their thoughts out loud. Peek also has a couple of prompt questions to elicit useful responses from them. The idea is that you get real-world feedback about your website: how it looks, its usability, any issues with it, what stands out about it, etc.

Here's one of mine: CLICK

It has been massively useful for me, and surprisingly nail-biting, watching and hoping they like it, hoping they find the things I've put there. Even watching where the person's mouse moves to is useful. I can see when they seem a little lost about where to go next and tweak things to make it clearer. Watching the video and seeing my website with that heightened level of anticipation and hoping people find what I want makes it glaringly clear where my website needs tweaking, even before the users start talking.

I'm not being paid for this, but I would recommend running your own website through it at least once (you get three free goes a month) because just watching the video almost and knowing there's a fresh set of eyes behind it gaves me a whole new view of this website that I've become so familiar with since I set it up.

#useability #user #testing #website
Get a peek into your site's usability.

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My thoughts on the passing of Terry Pratchett.

Sir Terry Pratchett has died. I’m very sad about this – surprisingly sad.

Don’t get me wrong – I find death can be a very sad occasion but it is a necessary one and one that is a unique experience to none of us. I don’t know why I’m so saddened by this person’s death. I didn’t know him. I’ve never so much as met him in passing. I didn’t follow him particularly. I knew little about his life. My daily routine won’t be affected by the fact that he’s not around any more.

I do like his writing though. I did wonder if I’m just being selfish and sad because there will be no more Discworld books for me to read. The truth is that’s part of it. It was nice to know there could always be more and it is sad to know that now there will not be, although that had been off the cards for quite a while now.
Pratchett’s writings ushered me into adolescence and manhood and I still maintain that of all the fictional characters I’ve read, Terry’s collections of witches, trolls, wizards, werewolves, anthropomorphical entities, deities, and other creatures are the most human I’ve ever read. They are fantastical creatures flawed, half the time, in such boring ways that they just feel so real.

Growing up, I tried my hand at writing. In fact, I devoted huge swathes of my time to it. Most nights I sat up way past my bedtime hunched over my little Psion palmtop computer, under the duvet, typing away furtively by the light of its screen.
I have pages and paged of unfinished novels, short stories, and filling several notebooks with ideas for plots, characters, and scenarios from my teenaged mind and he was the kick. He was a spur and a goal post each time. He was very often consciously in my mind as I wrote and reading back through some of it, this is embarrassingly obvious.
His books shaped the way I think in some ways and are certainly present to some degree in the things I find funny. The Coggingtons may well not exist without seeds dropping from Terry's imagination and implanting and germinating within my own.

But I haven’t yet gotten round to reading half the books he has written so I’ve a wealth of reading to do before I need to worry about there being no more for me to read.

Maybe it’s because it had been reassuring to know the mind that gave life to this wonderful collection of people, fictional though they were, was still ticking over and giving them fresh breath.
But more than that, I think it just felt nice to know that mind was out there; one that seemed to understand what it was to be human so well, and was able to continually synthesise it into heartbreakingly hilarious prose. It felt like each new book might shed more light on life.

Terry just seemed to get it.

And now I’m not sure there’s anyone out there who does.

I'm sure he was bluffing it just like the rest of us, but it felt like he knew. Either way, he wrote about it well.

I’m feeling inspired to start huddling under my duvet with my laptop at night again, to see if I can’t at least have a bash at figuring it out.

‪#‎TerryPratchett‬

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Head down.

When did this happen to me?

I used to play more. I used to draw and write and give reign to my imagination. My jobs were fun and I set my own hours. I could stay up late and get up late and do what I wanted. Sure I seemed to work a lot and I was always broke and maybe I'm wrong but it feels like I used to be happier. 

Now I'm the kind of person who hates Sunday nights. I hate them for two reasons: firstly it's the end of the weekend. That period of time where I feel like I can be me again. That one night and two days of endless possibilities. Where I can draw and write and bring all the ideas that get backed up in my brain during the working week to life and go on all those fun adventures that have occurred to me in the week. Although, in actuality, it's that time where I'm knackered and sluggish and just about manage to do the chores and make those phone calls I needed to and do those favours I promised and make a token gesture towards doing something creative while lamenting the fact I am so broke I can't go off on an adventure. I don't even hate Sunday nights for  being the end of my free time. I hate them because it's the time I inevitably lie awake cursing myself for having done nothing to further myself. 

Secondly, I know that tomorrow, I get to go back to work and do that job where I talk to children about how the big company I work for makes billions of pounds that I will never see and how some people in it use some of that money to do worthwhile stuff that I will never be a part of. My part is to turn up, punch in and earn just enough money to ensure I can sustain myself well enough to turn up and do the same tomorrow.  At the same time, I will be utterly frustrated by a veritable treasure trove of creative ideas, plans, and designs that I can't act on at the time. So I put the ones I can remember at the end of the day off until the weekend.

And I don't know how to break this cycle. 

Until I die. 

And so what if I do?

And so what if I don't?

Either way, my grave will be the same size. 

This is not me. This is not me. This is not me. This is not me. This is not me. This is not me! THIS IS NOT ME!