
Users are not programmers, Amazon expects pipe character for user input - ceyhunkazel
https://medium.com/@ceyhunkazel/users-are-not-programmers-amazon-expects-pipe-character-for-user-input-d56c6d178515#.as7hc8tti
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kazinator
The developers of Anroid likewise think users know what it means to "unmount"
a volume safely when they abruptly remove an microSD card. (I suppose they can
just Google for the man page, so no big deal, right?)

There isn't much wrong telling users to separate search terms with the |
character as such; what is laughable is the (pipe) remark after it. Users will
be scratching their heads at why the word pipe appears in parentheses after |,
which doesn't look anything like a pipe.

Users can learn to use funny characters. By now, "everyone" knows that # is
called hash, thanks to Twitter. It just has to be set up properly.

"Dear user. The | character is called 'pipe' in geek culture, due to a certain
historic use[learn more link]. We think it looks nice when you use it for
separating pieces of text. In this search box, you can enter multiple terms
separated by this pipe character. The software will search for matches for all
those terms simultaneously as if they were independent searches, and give you
the combined results."

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ceyhunkazel
I don't think a normal user can find pipe character. Small "L" is "l", capital
"i" is "I" which looks like pipe character and I have a Mac Pro with Turkish
keyboard and pipe character is not even printed on the keyboard. Users are
accustomed to split things with comma so natural choice would be comma.
[http://superuser.com/questions/416472/how-do-i-type-the-
pipe...](http://superuser.com/questions/416472/how-do-i-type-the-pipe-
character-on-a-macbook-pro-lion-with-a-turkish-q-keyboa)

