Modern Website Layouts and How We Interact With It

 Lately, many businesses have uniformly chosen long scrolling, wide pages as their main website layout, justifying it by a great way to tell a story, reducing click fatigue, and the ability to present a large amount of information on one page. Those decisions appear to be backed by some user research, however, it is a well-known fact that a person can absorb information in fragments, and not in its endless flow. Just like we need time to digest one book page at a time without any distractions, before flipping to the next page, in the same way, we need to be able to concentrate and not be visually distracted or overwhelmed by any other visual elements, such as giant photos that take up most of the space, and/or a scroll bar (without borders, so to speak) that moves the wide page with its heavy content endlessly up and down.

It seems like most of the businesses that make such choices are merely focused on the trendiness of visual representation, and not necessarily on its friendliness and digestibility. I personally get scroll fatigue when I view some of these trendy websites, filled with large, attractive commercial photos that are scrolled with text endlessly up and down. 

Traditional print designers and a more contemporary digital design expert, Jacob Nielsen, suggested that a user can read the content comfortably when it does not exceed 45-75 characters (700-800 px) per line. In this case, why do so many UI and web designers make such strange choices of dispersing the content, text + image mixtures, throughout the page horizontally? Shouldn't we try to keep the text more or less at the center and ensure that it does not exceed the 700-800-pixel threshold? 

...And what if we try to keep it more organized by reintroducing and emphasizing a center-forced three-part layout, where we still use the spaces on either side of the centered content in a more organized and readable manner? This way, a reader understands what the page's primary content is, and where he can find secondary sources to aid him with information when needed:

Job Search in Globalized AI Systems and Time Drain

Students are encouraged to beat the path to such job platform doors as LinkedIn, and they do, just like to other job marketplaces where companies post descriptive job openings to attract a larger candidate pool. At first glance, it looks very promising because a job seeker can easily set the criteria through filters to match his interests and area of expertise. 

It feels convenient for a job hunter to send Resumes through the available shortcuts that such platforms offer, for example: Quick Apply, Easy Apply, or Express Apply. It saves a lot of time and is somewhat promising.

But then there are a lot of companies with matching job posts that require candidates to apply externally, in their own HR systems or adjacent enterprise-level systems such as ADP, Oracle, or PeopleSoft. In this application journey, candidates are sometimes asked to reply to questions that seem overly extensive and even unnecessary, such as the exact street address. ethnicity, disability status, date of birth, or social media profiles. Besides that, there are fields with additional questions where candidates must repeat what they already articulated in their Resumes, which plainly voids the purpose of the latter. 

Because of how nationally accessible and easily discoverable these job postings are, candidates from every corner of the country can apply, meaning that recruiters and hiring managers must spend a lot of time selecting, filtering, interviewing, narrowing down, and then interviewing again the selected candidates. But even before the select pool of candidates reaches the sight of recruiters, ATS (Applicant Tracking System) uses algorithms to narrow this pool down. And because AI does not deal with ambiguities, proximities, or allegories, it only selects the ones whose applications or resumes have literal matchings to the job criteria, word by word. And on top of it, we've seen cases when the AI selection systems were trained on biased historical data, which deprives many deserving candidates of being noticed.

The analogy that comes to mind when I think about this Globalized and yet restrictive and inflexible selection process is the professional version of dating fatigue, where there is an illusion of plenty, and yet, nobody in particular who really matches you, regardless of how algorithmically compatible a candidate may seem.

Job hunting these days resembles gambling, where you put a lot of time and effort applying to countless jobs, to only receive a reply from a few employers, or even none. With such regular time drain, one may start thinking: is it even good advice to tell someone to keep pushing? Not to give up when you get rejected or unnoticed by tens and hundreds, and even thousands of employers on the global marketplaces? This just does not feel right. There must be an alternative, more realistic, and less time-draining approach. How did we interact with each other before the age of technocracy, and how did we find the right people to help us with something? By word of mouth. 

Perhaps it is a good idea to stay local and practice authenticity with your network, expanding it gradually and slowly, without any mechanical or overly generic substitutions. But this is just a vague idea of how to make the job hunt more meaningful and precise, without the bitter aftertaste of time loss and meaninglessness.

Technology: A Pure Surrogate to Relationships or a Potential Aide?

When we engage in heavy texting with our potential partner, it gradually and seamlessly replaces a real interaction; it becomes the ultimate surrogate to real intimacy, and because of the amount of effort that is put into these texts, there is a deceitful sense of accomplishment that demotivates further efforts to meet in person.

By the same token, if you step onto the path of a complete digital experience, eliminating even the remotest sense of connection, such as texting someone you know already, you build yourself an alternate reality, where your world is built of appealing male and female avatars and where you play by rules that do not necessarily replicate the rules, norms and traditions of real world. It may be creative and very inspirational; however, if this becomes the world to which you resort during most of your idle hours, it can be concluded that most people from your nearest circles and a potential love partner have all lost you to the world of pure fiction.

In this alternate world, you satisfy all of your urgent needs: from camaraderie interactions to intimate fantasies and love aspirations. By the time you exit this reality and find yourself back in the very physical, pragmatic, and even cynical environment, you may find yourself unprepared and exhausted in advance. 

But what if we design tools and spaces that would, on the contrary, aid our relationships and make them more enriching and satisfying? The kind that would encourage you to always stay present and explore more of it, instead of resorting to the alternate reality that is built on pure algorithms?