Dan Russell writing at Creating Passionate Users has some thoughts about designing effective user interfaces (UI). Now the target audience for the post is software designers, but I think the message applies very well to those people who set up a wiki for a group to accomplish something.
Anyone who sets up a wiki for a group to do something is, in effect, creating a user interface. The group will form an impression based on their first view of the wiki which can have a crucial 'make or break' effect on the usefulness of that wiki in facilitating the group's purpose.
We all have a tendency to create things (documents, spreadsheets, wikis, plans, powerpoints, etc) based on our own instincts and sense of intuition and, more often than not, we are disappointed when the group doesn't go bonkers with joy over what we did.
You might feel intuition is the best way to understand the problem of designing an interface. You rely on your intuition, you trust it, maybe you even feel that it’s the source of deep insight and creativity.
But you’d be wrong.
The problem is that our disappointment is misplaced. We are typically disappointed in the group for not seeing the beauty of our creative thinking when, in fact, the fault lies with ourselves for not understanding the group's intuitive nature.
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