I thought of it today when I found myself skirmishing with Facebook, and realised a "Notes" button had appeared on my Profile page.
I hadn't ever noticed anybody using "Notes", so I could only guess that it would be something like the "Wall" feature, where you type short comments to appear on your (or someone else's) "profile" page. But how would it differ? Hmmm...
So I clicked the "Notes" button, and got a page that said
No recently added notes to display.
Use the Publisher above to add your own.
"OK", I thought, typed a test note into the type-in box above the message (the "Publisher"?), hit "Share"... and thus updated the main "Status" message on my Profile page to say that I was experimenting with the "Notes" facility. Which, while true, was not the thing I most wanted to tell the world about myself.
Use the Publisher above to add your own.
"OK", I thought, typed a test note into the type-in box above the message (the "Publisher"?), hit "Share"... and thus updated the main "Status" message on my Profile page to say that I was experimenting with the "Notes" facility. Which, while true, was not the thing I most wanted to tell the world about myself.
After a few minutes guddling about, I discovered that the button I had clicked is for controlling whether notes (anybody's notes, I think) appear on my Profile page, and so, despite the message above, the "Publisher" was nothing at all to do with Notes. And, eventually, that creating a note involved clicking a button to add a new tab to my Profile, going to that tab, and then clicking the "Write a new note" button that appears on that page.
By this point I felt I had a pretty good idea about why I'd not noticed anybody using the "Notes" facility! Without being big-headed, I think I'm smarter than the average bear, especially when it comes to understanding the world about me and figuring out how things work. And I've been using computers for a good few years. But it had taken me over ten minutes to figure out how to create a note.
The obvious question is "what is the point of providing a feature without providing any instructions or pointers to help you use it?"
Part of the answer, of course, is that there is no point in taking care and time to write instructions, because nobody will read them anyway. The typical attention span appears to be such that everything has to be immediate and obvious, or it's too difficult. Which is why, of course, so many stand-up commedians have their share of jokes about the impossibility of programming a video recorder without the aid of a ten-year-old.
And yet, video recorders still had the plethora of features that nobody could use.
So Facebook's notes are are just continuing a fine tradition of potentially useful features that nobody ever actually uses...
