Note to Startups: Get Your GUI (and your help pages) Right.

Summary:  Stop this nonsense about completely cryptic methods of sharing and interconnecting, especially through (and to) Twitter. 917 people posing the same question should raise some eyebrows.

I am truly annoyed.  Furniture-throwing kind of annoyed.  I just spent an hour trying to get Twitterfeed to work, which required me to create a NEW OpenID ID (no, they would not accept my usual one) and still it would not permit me to post my blogs to Twitter and the help pages took me to another place (Get Satisfaction) where I had to get ANOTHER ID to post my question-and I was one of 917 people with the same question.

My comments here should indict four groups of people and their management teams and their VC backers:  Twitter, Twitterfeed, OpenID and Get Satisfaction.  Stop it.  Now. I won’t even get started on Tweetdeck.  Or Twitterberry.  Oh yes, and FeedValidator.  It is simply evil.  Unless you have a degree in computer science.

What is it with the technology world and GUIs and help pages??????????????????? Is it some supercilious sense of superiority????????????  Is it supposed to be some kind of computer science exam when you go to the page on why your feed won’t parse on Twitterfeed?  When will they figure out that 99.999999 % of us DO NOT WANT TO SPEND OUR LIVES TRYING TO FIGURE THIS STUFF OUT???!!!! And I do not want to pay for our IT department to spend one minute on it.  Stop it.  Now.

Note to Get Satisfaction and OpenID:  Translate your sites into Romanian or Urdu.  It would be just as useful to me in those languages as it is in English.

Note to Venture Capitalists:  If you can figure out Twitterfeed, it does not mean it will be successful.  Try out its GUI on someone on, say, Main Street (or its equivalent) in Merced, not on Sandhill Road.  For brownie points, try the GUI of Get Satisfaction or OpenID. Come on.

Facebook as an Object Lesson. The reason that Facebook is so successful (not to mention LinkedIn) is that its GUI is really, really, really simple.  What’s the number of users:  220 million?  Twitter is fast catching on but it is sort of like a Microsoft product:  No one knows how to use all the horsepower inherent in the apps.  Very nearly 100% of the users only know how to post tweets and NOTHING ELSE.  Very nearly 100% of the Facebook users know how to use everything on their profiles.

Now, true, Facebook’s GUI is kind of dumbed down.  So it is not a model for Twitter but it ought to be an object lesson.

I have been in the business (technology) since 1989.  I am not stupid.  For most of that time I have considered myself a beta testing group of one person.  It is simple:  If I don’t get it then something like 90% of the desired market will not get it.  And you know what?  My track record has been pretty impressive.

OK, so my blogs are not read by gejillions.  But they are accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.  And they do not have to go to OpenID and create an ID through my vidloop.com.  and Twitterfeed cannot parse them and someone in Nairobi can read what I write.  WHAT IS GOING ON??

Note to Twitter, Twitterfeed, OpenID and Get Satisfaction.  Pack a bag and go to Cincinnati.  Knock on the door of Proctor & Gamble and ask for help on determining consumer preferences for GUI design and, just as important, your help pages.  Help pages should solve the problem and if they do not, have a backup plan-for example, a screen capture button.

Anyone tried some of the Google apps?  What about Google Voice?  It isn;t a great GUI but, you know what???? It works.

Better yet, call up Apple.  They’ll help.

GUI design has been a science for over a decade.  Now make it an art for the masses.  Quickly.  Your competitors will overtake you.

Or I might start throwing furniture.  Along with the limited partners of the venture funds.

And remember this and only this if your brain has been addled by these efforts:  I was one of 917 people who posted the same question about parsing twitterfeed URLs.  Shame on you.