Rachel Mercer

I have an account on Formspring, an online tool which allows for people to ask me questions completely anonymously. Yes, there's a danger in it - high schooler's bully each other, and people can sometimes leave snarky comments. However, sometimes I get a gem like this one, which makes it totally worth it. The question has been copied in multiple parts below, with my responses beneath. It's not the best response ever, but it's the start of a very interesting conversation. 

I understand that you’re a UX / Web / Graphic designer. Would you care to share your opinion on why most people prefer to browse the web most of their time? In my opinion, the web is an open and ever expanding community. People not only use the web as a tool (e-mail, finding out news, learning fun facts), but they use it in a larger sense to stay connected and communicate with other people (though Bowling Alone says that we don’t interact as much as previous generations, I disagree in many ways because I believe that it’s shifted online). I’m a particularly active Tumblr user because I love the community and inspiration I get out of it every day. If I think about what I do with my internet access, I don’t particularly “browse”, I have my google reader, my tumblr, facebook and twitter, and beyond that I don’t need to play follow the links to find anything interesting at hand. I recently read an article in Fast Company which stated that your oxytocin levels actually spike when you tweet about yourself, this may not be totally relevant to your question - but I think it reflects that societally, we very much enjoy being online and sharing things about ourselves. 

Why “the web” is always associated with fun and leisure activity that people like. But the desktop is not? (besides games or iPhone apps) Besides the applications or programs that you download for leisure purposes, what services does your desktop actually perform for you? There are some Adobe Air applications which I really enjoy as a tool, and of course I use a lot of it to perform my work (I can’t work on my Illustrator or Photoshop files on just any computer). I think this, and the existing “cubicle farm” office environment, really turns off a lot of people to the concept of the desktop, where the best thing you can do in your downtime is play some Solitare or a fierce round of minesweeper. The cloud is a brilliant thing, the idea of having to download everything you want onto the desktop just seems silly to me.

Why there’s a “dotcom” era ? Why the web reach larger amount of people than the desktop apps (which could also access the internet). Why there are far larger amount of business to invest on web things? I don’t know if I fully understand this question, as it seems that to this point we’ve been comparing the desktop and the web. I mean, for something as simple as e-mail, I don’t use a desktop application simply because I can access it at any computer I go to (and as someone who commutes between school, work, and home, that happens a lot). The only use of a desktop application for me would be that a) I’m traveling a lot, so I need to respond to e-mails on the go, and b) it provides me with functionality and features not available already in my GMail account. Business invest in web-based things because I think that it’s easier for them to reach a broader audience. Though you could build applications that are useful to the user for them to download, I personally think that it is much harder to create software and encourage people to pay and download it. I use a lot of free software (except the creative suite), but the Creative Suite I could also easily get on a torrent site without paying the pay-check eating full price. 

What’s the major problem with desktop apps? In your point of view. Is it only because it’s a lot harder to find native apps that’s directly usable? Like finding things in the App Store? I just don’t download more than 20 applications to my computer. Just nosing around in my applications folder you’d see that I have three chat clients (Colloquy, Adium, Skype) all of which are free. Work related programs such as Keynote, iWork, and Adobe Stuff. Beyond that there’s not much, a dvd ripping program for when I’m travelling, Quicksilver, and some video converters. I know that there’s the option for me to get desktop feed readers, news sites, digg and the like, I can even use tools like Kuhler and TweetDeck as adobe air applications.  But I like the fact that I can get them all from three tabs in my Chrome browser, that there’s ColourLovers for my palette choices and with Twitter’s “Lists” feature - why do I need to have columns? It’s not that it’s “hard” to find native apps that are directly usable - it’s that most of them already exist online.