While traveling to Sweden, I’ve discovered a UI flaw in Google Calendar that illustrates some of the pitfalls that will need to be understood as people design more “live software” (that is, software that learns from and adapts to its environment in real time — not just the Microsoft branded version of same).
Despite the fact that I’m a logged-in user, Google Calendar uses the country of origin for the browser’s domain to set the language:
This kind of “intelligence” seemed clever when Google was used anonymously, but it’s irritating when they know who I am. I’m logged in, and I don’t see why the country where I’m located should override Google’s knowledge of my identity in setting the location. (FWIW, neither Gmail nor Google Docs and Spreadsheets override my normal default of English when I am logged in, but Google Search and Google Calendar do.)
My guess is that there are going to be many similar kinds of “aha” (or “ugh”) moments in UI design as software becomes more alive and responsive to sensors of all kinds. It’s worth thinking ahead about the proper priority, or “firing order,” of various signals (to steal a term from Alfred Korzybski.) Indeed, Korzybski’s General Semantics provides some useful insights for thinking about how to map external realities onto symbolic systems, and the kinds of errors (including much human psychopathology) that occur when the mapping is done badly.)