Sigh
One of the oddities of working on user interface issues for an internet company is that every time I go online, I'm entering a potentially work-related situation. For example, tonight I was trying to figure out the best way to book a vacation (flights and hotel). To do so, I used a combination of five different vertical search engines. Guess what I work on? A vertical search engine! Granted, it's in a different field -- real estate, not trip planning -- but many of the issues are the same. How do we allow people to narrow their search? What kind of information do we offer about each property? What is the default order of the results? Are users allowed to post reviews? If so, how are they displayed? What wording do they use to direct people to other parts of the site? How do users register/sign in? (Expedia, FWIW, has a spectacularly bad sign-in system -- or possibly several very bad sign-in systems and really lousy error handling.) What information can be saved to their account, and how can they modify it? It turns ordinary vacation planning into a revisitation of all the stuff I'm in meetings about all day long. Aargh!
I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this. After all, writers read books and articles; chefs eat out occasionally; psychologists interact with people; etc., etc. In fact, you might even call it an advantage: as I go about my personal business, I'm also secondarily conducting competitive analysis. (And frankly, it's a lot more interesting to work on the kind of thing I might actually use than some obscure non-consumer-facing system.)
But still. Work demons, begone! Much as I like my job (and I really do), I'm not paid enough to come home and do it in my down-time.
Clearly the lesson here is that I need to be spending less non-work time on the internet. Now where did I put my novel again?
I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this. After all, writers read books and articles; chefs eat out occasionally; psychologists interact with people; etc., etc. In fact, you might even call it an advantage: as I go about my personal business, I'm also secondarily conducting competitive analysis. (And frankly, it's a lot more interesting to work on the kind of thing I might actually use than some obscure non-consumer-facing system.)
But still. Work demons, begone! Much as I like my job (and I really do), I'm not paid enough to come home and do it in my down-time.
Clearly the lesson here is that I need to be spending less non-work time on the internet. Now where did I put my novel again?