So, this whole “right sided” business, huh? It’s funny how some things just stick in your head, not always for the best reasons. It really takes me back to this one job I had. Man, that place was something else.
We had this manager, let’s call him Bob. Bob was absolutely, positively obsessed with things being on the right. Not just, like, text alignment. Oh no. He had this whole philosophy that the “stronger” elements, the “decisive” actions, they all belonged on the right. Don’t ask me where he got it from, some weekend seminar, probably.
Anyway, we got this project to redo our main internal dashboard. And Bob, he was all over it. “The main navigation,” he declared, “must be on the right. And the primary action buttons for every module? Right side. User profile? Top right.” You get the picture. Everything had to be shunted over to the right.
I remember trying to argue, just a little. You know, standard usability practices, user expectations, all that jazz. Pointed out that most folks are used to nav on the left or top. Showed him some heatmaps from our old system. He just waved his hand. “No, no, this is about a bold new direction. Right sided is strong. It’s assertive.” Right.
So, I got to work. Spent weeks wrestling with the CSS, trying to make these layouts not look like a complete mess. Had to override a bunch of default behaviors in the framework we were using. Everything felt clunky. The code started to look like spaghetti because of all the specific “right sided” exceptions we had to build in. My teammates were grumbling. Coffee consumption went through the roof.
We finally rolled out a beta to a test group. The feedback was, well, predictable. People were confused. “Where’s the menu?” “Why is this button over here?” Productivity for the testers actually dropped because they couldn’t find stuff as quickly. They kept saying it felt “backwards” or “awkward.” Exactly what we told Bob would happen.
Did Bob listen? Nah. He said they were just “resistant to change.” He insisted we push forward. We did a few more tweaks, trying to make it less painful, but the core “right sided” mandate stayed. The final version went live, and it was… okay, it wasn’t a total disaster, people eventually learned to live with it, grumbling all the way. But it was never good. It never felt intuitive. And the amount of extra effort to maintain that “right sided” design was just bonkers.
I didn’t stay there too much longer after that whole saga. It just showed me that sometimes, “right sided” isn’t about being correct or strong; it’s just about someone wanting things their way, practicality be damned. I learned a lot about picking my battles, and sometimes, just doing the job and then moving on when the philosophy is just plain weird. So yeah, “right sided.” It’s a thing, alright.