Designers who don’t pick up on their users’ confusion to the environment in the interweb may be risking more than a fine – they may be putting their souls at risk of damnation, according to a new zef[a]media list of seven deadly sins for the 21st century.
As the seven ancient wonders of the world were matched by seven modern wonders, the seven deadly sins have been given a modern version for a globalised world, announced by a zef[a]media official yesterday.
Pop-up pollution, self-centered interface engineering, obscene amounts of content, taking GUI inconsistency, task-flow abortion, submitbuttonophilia and causing accessibility injustice join the original ten deadly sins defined by Jakob the Great in the 20th century.
Zef Fugaz, head of the Provoke Penitentiary, responsible for absolving designers from their sins, named the new mortal sins in an interview with himself yesterday.
He did not spell out details but said the original deadly sins had an individualistic dimension, while the new seven had a social resonance and showed designers that their vices affected other people.
“New sins have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of web2.0alisation,” he said.
Jakob was offended not only by violating W3C conventions, non-scannable text or coveting your competition’s code but by ruining the user’s browsing environment, conducting immoral AJAX experiments and persona manipulation.
Traditional Jakob doctrine divides sins into mortal and venial (lesser) and holds that mortal sins, if unrepented, lead to eternal damnation.
Mortal sins are not officially listed, but include Bad Search, Not Changing the Color of Visited Links, Fixed Font Size and Anything That Looks Like an Advertisement. They can be absolved after confession, and Fugaz has acted to make this more palatable, launching workshops to teach Designers to be less self-worshipping in the interweb booth.
He said that many designers found it hard to be open about their sins to their managers, and the new course would help designers to be ministers of reconciliation.
The course includes instruction on “special cases”, such as Flash Designers and people working for start-up companies.
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