Double bourbon. She looks back, waiting for a call. Make it hurt.
She sets a pint glass before me filled to a third of its height as I down the last of my blacksmith. And another one of these. Kill the bourbon, pen down on the back of the report.
1. Hypothesis
An ethical and existential crisis of web design.
The semantics of a “virtual” presence; the problem of “virtual.”
First three pages on modes of technology adoption and diffusion. Then it gets ugly.
There was strikingly little effort by offices to proactively assess what constituents wanted. In fact, only a single office indicated any type of research into what their constituents wanted.
She checks my beer, half down. “You alright?” I’ve had better days. “Work?” I take my beer down another inch.
To be better at my job requires my clients to be better at theirs. My clients are members of Congress. Being better at my job has tangible benefits for this world.
In short, search (and diffusion) largely takes place at the tip of the iceberg—offices looking at each others’ web practices, but not talking to each other frequently, and when they talk to each, rarely delving into issues beyond vendor-related issues. We do not have a definitive explanation for this. This may be partly because offices do not look at each other as prime sources of best practices, as one individual explains:
[Q: Have you talked to other people around the Hill who are running their websites] I haven’t really, because, to be honest with you, there aren’t a lot of people who really know web design that well.
2. Solution.
Core: empathy.
Ultimately, the process of building a better website relies on being a better person.
Two tumblers of Jameson. Another blacksmith, shrugs a “well, how did that get there?” as she passes. More Jameson, “I hope this puts the day in perspective.” Jagermeister for three as the fellow to my left closes out his tab—to the lady in black. We sing Sinatra with the juke box. For it’s hard, you will find, to be narrow of mind …
I am so rarely disappointed with research methods these days, though I don’t feel similarly about the conclusions these easy discoveries suggest. Join the right mailing lists and reports like this will find you. We do not have a definitive explanation for this … there aren’t a lot of people who really know web design that well. Pushed content, semantic web browsing, meta keywords, friend-of-a-friend algorithms—in the rush to customize and personalize, what is the value of a bad search? Look at all you’ll derive just by being alive.
What are the benefits of a democratic form of government?
And here is the best part: you have a head start … she lifts her left arm above her head, the handle of the umbrella tattooed over her radial and ulnar arteries just above a displaced lock of black hair, just as every incandescent bulb in the room dilates and my glass goes transparent.
“The name on the tab?” I paid cash for the first blacksmith, after: nothing. She disappears. Good money in cauterizing wounded minds if you’ve a blowtorch and charge by the ounce—it’s my fortune on this night that she minds the flame but not the bill, but before I can register my gratitude in cash, a tattooed neck above an A-shirt demands I leave the premises.
Anyone can pass their days with a modicum of sensitivity; to truly excel at anything requires empathy. Sometimes that manifests as real constituent service, and sometimes that leads to getting a customer kicked-out drunk for the price of his first beer. And sometimes, if a modicum of sensitivity pays the bills, it’s pragmatic to pass a few of one’s days rather than burn one’s goodwill for those who have little of their own.