Tammy takes a deep dive into our brains to examine the psychology of web performance. It opens with this:
If you don’t consider time a crucial usability factor, you’re missing a fundamental aspect of the user experience.
I wish that more UX designers understood that!
I have a very simple rule that serves me well: Don’t think too much about your life after dinnertime.
I went and spoke at an actual real live conference. As expected, it felt good …and weird. All at the same time.
It felt strange to be inside a building with other humans sharing an experience. At times it felt uncomfortable. The speaker’s dinner the night before the conference was lovely …and anxiety-inducing. Not just because it was my first time socialising in ages, but also just because it was indoors. I’ve been avoid indoor dining.
But the travel to Zürich all went smoothly. The airport wasn’t too busy. And on the airplane, everyone was dutifully masked up.
There’s definitely more paperwork and logistics involved in travelling overseas now. Jessica and I had to fill in our passenger locator forms for Switzerland and the UK. We also needed to pre-book a Covid test for two days after we got back. And we had to get a Covid test while we were in Switzerland so that we could show a negative result on returning to England. It doesn’t matter if you’re double-vaccinated; these tests are mandatory, which is totally fair.
Fortunately the conference organisers took care of booking those tests, which was great. On the first day of the conference I ducked out during the first break to go to the clinic next door and have a swab shoved up my nose. Ten minutes later I was handed a test result—negative!—complete with an official-looking stamp on it.
Two days later, after the conference was over, we had time to explore Zürich before heading to the airport to catch our evening flight. We had a very relaxing day which included a lovely boat trip out on the lake.
It was when we got to the airport that the relaxation ended.
We showed up at the airport in loads of time. I subscribe to the Craig Mod school of travel anyway, but given The Situation, I wanted to make sure we accounted for any extra time needed.
We went through security just fine and waited around for our gate to come up on the screen of gates and flights. Once we had a gate, we made our way there. We had to go through passport control but that didn’t take too long.
At the gate, there was a queue so—being residents of England—we immediately got in line. The airline was checking everyone’s paperwork.
When we got to the front of the line, we showed all our documents. Passport? Check. Boarding pass? Check. Passenger locator form? Check. Negative Covid result? Che …wait a minute, said the member of staff, this is in German. According to gov.uk, the test result needs to be in English, French, or Spanish.
I looked at the result. Apart from the heading at the top, all of the actual information was international: names, dates, and the test result itself said “neg.”
Not good enough.
My heart sank. “Call or email the clinic where you got the result. Get them to send you an English or French version” said the airline representative. Okay. We went off to the side and started doing that.
At this point there was still a good 40 or 50 minutes ’till the flight took off. We could sort this out.
I phoned the clinic. It was late Saturday afternoon and the clinic was closed. Shit!
Jessica and I went back to the gate agent we were dealing with and began pleading our case (in German …maybe that would help). She was very sympathetic but her hands were tied. Then she proposed a long shot. There was a Covid-testing centre in the airport. She would call them and tell them we were coming. But at this point it was 35 minutes until the flight left. We’d really have to leg it.
She scribbled down vague directions for where we had to go, and we immediately pelted off.
At this point I feel I should confess. I did not exhibit grace under pressure. I was, to put it mildy, freaking out.
Perhaps because I was the one selfishly indulging in panic, Jessica kept her head. She reminded me that we weren’t travelling to a conference—there wasn’t anywhere we had to be. Worst case scenario, we’d have to spend an extra night in Zürich and get a different flight tomorrow. She was right. I needed to hear that.
I was still freaking out though. We were running around like headless chickens trying to find where we needed to go. The instructions had left out the crucial bit of information that we actually needed to exit through passport control (temporarily re-entering Swiss territory) in order to get to the testing centre. Until we figured that out, we were just running hither and tither in a panic while the clock continued to count down.
It was a nightmare. I don’t mean that figuratively. I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ve had this exact nightmare. I’m in a building with a layout I don’t know and I need to get somewhere urgently but I don’t know how to get there.
Even the reason for this panicked situation felt like it had a dream logic to it. You know when you wake up from a bad dream and you examine the dream in retrospect and you realise it doesn’t actually make any sense? Well, that’s how this felt. You’ve got a negative test result but it needs it to be in one of these three languages …I mean, that sounds like the kind of nonsensical reasoning that should dissolve upon awakening.
Time was slipping away. Our flight leaves in twenty minutes.
Finally we realise that we need to go back through passport control. On the other side we run around some more until we spot the location that matches the vague description we’ve been given. There’s a sign! Covid testing centre!
We burst in through the doors. The gate agent had called ahead so we were expected. The young doctor on duty was cool as a cucumber. He must have to deal with this situation all day long. He calmly got us both to start filling in the appropriate online forms to pay for the tests, but instead of waiting for us to finish doing that, he started the testing straight away. Smart!
This felt like another nightmare I’ve had. I don’t mean having a swab shoved up my nose until it tickles my brain—that was probably the least uncomfortable part of this whole ordeal. I mean I need to fill out this web form accurately. On a touch screen device. And do it as quickly as possible!
Well, we did it. Filled in the forms, got the swabs. But now it was less than fifteen minutes until our flight time and we knew we still had to get back through passport control where there were lines of people.
“You’ll have the test results by email in ten minutes,” said the doctor. “Go!”
We sprinted out of there and went straight for the passport lines. Swallowing my pride, I went to the people at the end of a line. “Our flight leaves in ten minutes! Can we please cut in front!?”
“No.”
Right, next line. “Our flight leaves in…”
“Yes, yes! Go!”
“Thank you! Thank you so much!”
We repeated this craven begging until we got to the front of the line and gave our passports to the same guy who had orginally stamped them first time we came through. He was unfazed.
Then we ran back to the gate. Almost everyone had boarded by this point, but the gate was still open. Maybe we could actually make it!
But we still needed our test results. We both stood at the gate with our phones in hand, the email app open, frantically pulling to refresh.
The minutes were ticking by. At this point the flight departure time had arrived, but the gate agent said there was a slight delay. They could wait one or two minutes more.
Pull, refresh. Pull, refresh.
“I’ve got mine!” shouted Jessica. Half a minute later, mine showed up.
We showed the gate agent the results. She stamped whatever needed to be stamped and we were through.
I couldn’t believe it! Just 15 minutes ago I had been thinking we might as well give up—there was absolutely no way we were going to make it.
But here we were boarding the plane.
We got to our seats and strapped in. We were both quite sweaty and probably looked infectious …but we also had fresh proof that neither of had the ’rona.
We just sat there smiling, looking at each other, and shaking our heads. I just couldn’t believe we had actually made it.
The captain made an announcement. They were having a little technical difficulty with the plane’s system—no doubt the cause of the slight delay, luckily for us. They were going to reboot the system in the time-honoured fashion of turning it off and again.
The lights briefly went out and then came back on as the captain executed this manouvre.
Meanwhile Jessica and I were coming down from our adrenaline rush. Our breathing was beginning to finally slow down.
The captain’s voice came on again. That attempt at fixing the glitch hadn’t worked. So to play it safe, we were going to switch planes. The new plane would take off in an hour and a half from a different gate.
As the other passengers tutted and muttered noises of disapproval, Jessica and I just laughed. A delay? No problem!
But oh, the Alanis Morissette levels of irony! After all that stress at the mercy of the ticking clock, it turned out that time was in plentiful supply after all.
Everything after that proceeded without incident. We got on the replacement plane. We flew back to England. We breezed across the border and made our way home.
It felt good to be home.
I had a double-whammy of a stress dream during the week.
I dreamt I was at a conference where I was supposed to be speaking, but I wasn’t prepared, and I wasn’t where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there. Worse, my band were supposed to be playing a gig on the other side of town at the same time. Not only was I panicking about getting myself and my musical equipment to the venue on time, I was also freaking out because I couldn’t remember any of the songs.
You don’t have to be Sigmund freaking Freud to figure out the meanings behind these kinds of dreams. But usually these kind of stress dreams are triggered by some upcoming event like, say, oh, I don’t know, speaking at a conference or playing a gig.
I felt really resentful when I woke up from this dream in a panic in the middle of the night. Instead of being a topical nightmare, I basically had the equivalent of one of those dreams where you’re back at school and it’s the day of the exam and you haven’t prepared. But! When, as an adult, you awake from that dream, you have that glorious moment of remembering “Wait! I’m not in school anymore! Hallelujah!” Whereas with my double-booked stress dream, I got all the stress of the nightmare, plus the waking realisation that “Ah, shit. There are no more conferences. Or gigs.”
I miss them.
Mind you, there is talk of re-entering the practice room at some point in the near future. Playing gigs is still a long way off, but at least I could play music with other people.
Actually, I got to play music with other people this weekend. The music wasn’t Salter Cane, it was traditional Irish music. We gathered in a park, and played together while still keeping our distance. Jessica has written about it in her latest journal entry:
It wasn’t quite a session, but it was the next best thing, and it was certainly the best we’re going to get for some time. And next week, weather permitting, we’ll go back and do it again. The cautious return of something vaguely resembling “normality”, buoying us through the hot days of a very strange summer.
No chance of travelling to speak at a conference though. On the plus side, my carbon footprint has never been lighter.
Online conferences continue. They’re not the same, but they can still be really worthwhile in their own way.
I’ll be speaking at An Event Apart: Front-end Focus on Monday, August 17th (and I’m very excited to see Ire’s talk). I’ll be banging on about design principles for the web:
Designing and developing on the web can feel like a never-ending crusade against the unknown. Design principles are one way of unifying your team to better fight this battle. But as well as the design principles specific to your product or service, there are core principles underpinning the very fabric of the World Wide Web itself. Together, we’ll dive into applying these design principles to build websites that are resilient, performant, accessible, and beautiful.
Tickets are $350 but I can get you a discount. Use the code AEAJER to get $50 off.
I wonder if I’ll have online-appropriate stress dreams in the next week? “My internet is down!”, “I got the date and time wrong!”, “I’m not wearing any trousers!”
Actually, that’s pretty much just my waking life these days.
It me:
Writing comes naturally to me when I’m expressing myself on my own site, with no outside assignment and no deadline except my own sense of urgency about an idea. It’s easy when I’m crafting a brief text message or tweet. Or a letter to a friend.
But give me a writing assignment and a deadline, and I’m stuck. Paralysis, avoidance, a dissatisfaction with myself and the assignment—all the usual hobgoblins spring immediately to life.
If we continue as we are, who will maintain the maintainers?
In the world of open source, we tend to give plaudits and respect to makers …but maintainers really need our support and understanding.
Users and new contributors often don’t see, much less think about, the nontechnical issues—like mental health, or work-life balance, or project governance—that maintainers face. And without adequate support, our digital infrastructure, as well as the people who make it run, suffer.
I reckon it’s time for distressed type to make a comeback—CSS is ready for it.
It’s okay to feel stress in response to this rapid development. It’s natural. I hate change, I hate it so so much. I like things to be consistent and for it to have it’s own place. If it doesn’t, I get stressed and my obsessive compulsive tendencies run riot in a desperate attempt to preserve order. This both benefits and hinders my work.
Chimes very nicely with the latest episode of Ctrl+Click Cast.
Focus on what you want to learn; not what you think you should learn.
There is a lot of pressure out there: to learn new things, to spend all your time coding, to be the super developer. I now believe that to be impossible and unhealthy. It means you aren’t living a balanced life and it also means that you’re living under constant stress and pressure.
This is exactly the kind of timely research I need before next week's Ajax workshop.