Autistic Savant, 'J-Mac', Shows Basketball Prowess

I'm not wholly convinced by the autistic-spectrum (AS) relevance of this item but the kid's prowess on the basketball court is worth celebrating anyway. I'm going to dig around a bit more to find out the background (such as it is) but in the meantime, go view the video highlights of the game and read up some more about my thoughts on AS disorders.

Some more info available from Scott Pitoniak at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle site

Technorati Tags: j-mac and Jason McElwain

Improving The Experience of Ownership: Is Integration The Answer?

There’s no point pretending any more, writing blog entries on a daily basis is impossible. I spent three days and a weekend a few weeks ago on holiday and one of the tasks which I set myself on the train home that Friday was to spend at least some of the time writing good blog articles. Yet here I am on the 07.42 from Ipswich punching into my laptop in a desperate bid to keep the legions of readers sated.

Having spent three hours (count ‘em) at a florist on the Saturday morning talking through her designs for our wedding (last mentioned in this blog some time ago) I was just about ready to begin suggesting I make daisy chains for each table and surround them with cow parsley and hen’s teeth. Seriously, the combinations became ever more ‘personal’ and had started to ‘take references from (y)our backgrounds’ … there’s only so much of this level of floral granularity you can take. It put paid to Saturday’s attempt to blog anyway. The rest of the time I was either ensconced in the Winter Olympics, watching Deal or No Deal, on a treadmill or in a record office looking at dusty parish registers. It certainly was a mindless few days and exactly what I needed to re-focus on what’s important.

Of course, coming back to an inbox swollen and engorged with the gentle ramblings of colleagues and customers was a joy and I tucked in with gusto.

Something which did catch my eye was a (now dated) article about “Why Features Don’t Matter Any More”. Evidently my observations on the iPod had caught someone’s eye and this piece by Andreas Pfeiffer provided just the sort of pseudo journalistic guff that fuels my imagination. The central tennet of this article is that marketeers are focussing on the experience of ownership or use of a product rather than simply relying on a technological pissing contest to show whose item has the most features, best capacity or fastest processor. The success, it contends, of Apple’s iPod has not been the size of the memory, the sound quality or, to be honest, the ease of use, it has instead been the wider integration of the iPod into our digital lifestyle. Here is a device that despite being cutting edge is roundly taken up by traditionally late adopters of technology – the middle aged and the retiree. Not for Apple the skewed market share of the moneyed young, their blissfully effective support through iTunes has allowed them to reach a far wider market share than their nearest competitors. They simply made owning an iPod integral with simple, unfettered access to the biggest and fastest growing music library on the net, regardless of platform and in so doing providing a complete user experience.

Ok, ok, so clever marketing played a part but the product sold itself when word got around that ripping music and downloading cheap tracks was child’s play with iPod and iTunes. I’m interested in how this extends to other products and services. Will it, for example, be more effective for mobile phone companies to begin packaging better control software with their phones, allowing people a smoother route to upgrading ringtones, sending messages and accessing organisers? My phone came with software but it was pretty basic stuff, synchronise with outlook and tinker with files/folders. I wanted to be able to make calls on it through my laptop, send texts and manage settings … to do that I have to get third party kit such as Float’s Mobile Agent. The user experience of the phone should extend across the different channels with which I interact with it.

eBay Causes Royal Mail To Change Operational Model

Another blog I read (this time on the intranet so no hyperlink I'm afraid) raised an interesting point a few days ago. I'd often considered on my long queues in the Post Office weighed down with eBay and Amazon Marketplace dispatches, that they must have boosted Post Office coffers. Odd that something so 'new' as eBay has caused a resurgence in traditional postal services. Well, it turns out that doing so has meant that Royal Mail has had to make some changes.

In the recent past, sending parcels and small packages meant a few major distribution centres , such as catalogue companies, sending out to a wide range of locations. This naturally required large transporters picking the orders up in bulk and, through the delivery chain, transferring them out to increasingly smaller vehicles as they got closer to the delivery point. So, one lorry equated to a few large vans, more smaller vans and quite a lot of cycles.

However, today the rise of eBay has meant that the smaller vans can't cope with package sizes when they pick them up from (scarce) sub Post Offices and post boxes, hence a need to reorganise the delivery/collection fleet. Furthermore, the planned change to parcel size pricing (as opposed to the historial weight measure) is an indication of the ripple effect of eCommerce on traditional service industries.

Well, I thought it was interesting. Because every blog should have a link, here's a vaguely relevant article on the bankruptcy fears for Royal Mail.

Build A Submarine in 2,455,033 steps ...

Following a recent post where I mentioned the 'build an xyz' magazine series that are promoted at this time of year, I stumbled across the link above this morning. One does have to wonder whether this piecemeal sale of military hardware is strictly legitimate.

Either way, worth a punt for £20?

Inspirational Adventurers

Following the safe arrival of atlantic rower Chris Martin this week, my eye turns towards more wintery endeavours. It's difficult sometimes to see how the actions of people like Chris and Jim McNeill have relevance to the 'ordinary man' or indeed the actions of the thousands of athletes preparing to compete in Torino at the Winter Olympics. To my mind, however, it's these people that represent something we seem to forget exisits in the human condition, the desire to explore, to challenge what we can physically do and in so doing expand our awareness of our own evolution. Where we've come from, and where we can get to.

I know it's a bit trite but one of the things that Jim McNeill's expedition will forward advances in is face care. Clinique, the premium cosmetics company, has been working with Jim to develop a face cream that will protect his skin under extreme conditions. Ok, so it's hardly the wheel or fire but only through doing stuff like this do we enable forward-thinking companies to develop prodcuts that will benefit us further down the line. What will Clinique learn from this that might, for example, allow them to develop a suncream that will be more effective and - perhaps - save a clutch of people from developing skin cancer? It's a long winded extrapolation that Jim's advendutres will stop someone getting cancer somewhere down the line but I still believe it makes the point that these endeavours enhance our human understanding.

Even if it has no physical affect on the vast majority of us, it certainly has motivating aspects on those interested in the efforts the likes of McNeill, Chris Martin, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Jane Tomlinson and so on. Since reading Chris' Blog and following Cracknell and Fogle across the atlantic I got back on the treadmills. I went to my local Sweatshop and bought myself some new Asics and am signed up for a half marathon. In some small way their heroism (and I'd defy readers not to call it that when they see what they all went through between the Azores and Antigua) has helped me get fitter, in time possibly fitter than I've ever been before.

Ok, enough moralising. Just a short note now to apologise to loyal readers for my lack of content recently. Many of you will know the extra time that's gone into the day job recently and despite all the inspirational reading matter I've not got any better at managing my time. I stilll make notes on stuff all the time (and not just who's spraying what on the walls outside my flat either, thanks MJA ...) and with any luck you'll see some more insightful guff on here about usability in the near future.

Waterfront Demolition in Ipswich: Update

Flickr: Photos from smorgasbord-design

These are some artsy pics I took of the demolition taking place on Ipswich waterfront. Comments appreciated as ever.

Technorati Tag : ipswich waterfront

Using Visio For Wireframing

I'm about to get more immersed in wireframing. Having seen the beautiful work possible with OmniGraffle it's my Mac jealousy has not improved. However, this wonderful interaction designer's site which I stumbled on this week has given me hope that I can, at last, ditch PowerPoint and get great results in Visio.

There's still some debate online about "What's The Best Application For Wireframing?" so you might want to take a look at all the options!

Technorati Tag: information architecture

Gender Differences In Online Behaviour

Read some interesting stuff in New Media Age since being added to our distribution list for the journal. Picked up on an article looking at gender differences in online behaviour. Much of it is guff frankly and this sort of 'insight' is just some ropey stats and pop psychology cobbled together from piecemeal research. Much of this contradicted behaviours patterns which we know to be correct offline and I remain to be convinced that we fundamentally change our behaviour online.

For example, are women really more task driven online? Is this a result of their gender or their social circumstances? Are the two mutually exclusive and what has driven this statement? Warwick Cairns (planning director at Brandhouse WTS) isn't able to elaborate in the article.

Marketing differences I do concede exist. These seem to accord with offline research and I give them credence. For example, women appear to respond better to advertorial/editorial style marketing messages online. This would fit with our established awareness about the power of emotions in female interaction. Chris Price of ShinyShiny.tv (a blog-style "girl's guide to gadgets") clearly has a vested interest in this kind of stuff when he observes success marketing Sony TV's on his site, but it's no great leap to think the empathising brain will respond better to conversational sales and service messages. They begin, as the item says "making more lifestyle and emotional connections with the content they're viewing" [than the male, systemising brain]. To this end it perhaps informs us that we can be smarter about the type of content we serve online and think even more closley at segementation. Could we, for example, proactively serve live chat windows when an online form for a car brochure identifies a woman is completing it, or a page of technical data when a man is enquiring ?

It's really difficult posting this sort of stuff as you open yourself for criticism of gender generalisation. I would only counter that I'm basing this stuff not on one article in NMA but many years research and study in psychology and human computer interaction. I'm not saying this makes me right, just that it's worth thinking a bit more about.

----
(A bluffer's guide to theories of empathising and systemising and Simon Baron-Cohen's seminal work on the subject)

Lessons To Use The Blissfully Usable iPod, from Selfridges

Despite being one of the most celebrated gadgets in modern times and having been (almost) universally championed for its intuitive usability, the iPod is apparently still baffling to some.

I was astonished, as a recent purchaser of a Nano, to discover that there are people out there who would consider handing £60+ to Selfridges to be shown how to use one (The Register and MacWorld all have articles on this). This despite the fact that Apple stores operate a free Genius Bar (just down the road in London) where you can be shown the product by the company that makes it. Never mind the fact that the device is practically child’s play.

iPod and iTunes Workshop
Learn how iPod does much more than play music. Use it as a portable hard drive, store important info with the Notes Reader, or sync your contacts. Find out how its seamless integration with iTunes and the iTunes Music Store make iPod the world’s best digital music player.[Source: www.apple.com/uk]

It goes back to the idea, perhaps, that “All Users Are Stupid” … or does it just say more about the gullibility of the public and the skill of the marketers to shout loudly that people just need this stuff.

I normally consider myself to be an early adopter of technology but held off on the iPod front because they were expensive and bulky. The Nano is still expensive and under-specified in terms of capacity, but its sheer design quality (physical and interactive) was so overwhelmingly high that I had to have one.

What I wasn’t considering was how it would pervade my life. The blissful simplicity of synchronising tracks, rating favourites and creating playlists meant I was an expert within days. A vast user community (everyone’s got one!) meant there’s no shortage of people to ask about things like:

- Does my play count in iTunes take into account the play frequency on the iPod?
- Can I use two iPods with the same copy of iTunes?
- How do I rate tracks on the iPod?

It says so much about Apple’s confidence (even arrogance) in the interface that there is no printed manual supplied. In fact, the clickwheel does have its problems (sensitivity mainly) but it’s widely accepted that the device overall does its job effortlessly.

I should admit one thing, I seriously took my time in doing things right when installing my iPod … purely because I’m a bit anally retentive and wanted it to be filled with only the best tunes, to synch first time every time and to avoid cluttering up my laptop or iPod with anything unnecessary. I know, however, that if I’d wanted to be running tunes on it in three minutes I could have been.

My final admission is that, ironically, I have had to swathe the iPod in layers of iSkin to protect its screen and body from even the most minute damage. Completely undermining the quality of manufacture, I just want it to look brand new for ever. They might as well have made it with a bomb-proof silicon case.

Anyway, back to the point, why on earth moneyed individuals feel they should part with cash about how to learn to use their new toy remains beyond me but fortunately this says far more about an individuals’ susceptibility to marketing initiatives than it does to the quality of product from Cupertino.

Links (also in article above)
http://kaedrin.com/weblog/archive/000994.html iPod Usability
http://www.unc.edu/~bretd/222ipodusecritique.htm Bret Dougherty’s Usability Critique
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable/frog-design-mind-124912.php Physical design and perception of cleanliness.

Articles:
http://www.vnu.co.uk/vnunet/news/2148636/selfridges-offers-ipod-survival
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/16/selfridges_ipod_tutorials/
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?home&NewsID=13599

More evidence of CAPTCHA's failings for impaired users.

Since yesterday's post on the inaccessibility of CAPTCHA, I've been made aware of two additional links. One from Slashdot entitlted "How Would You Design a CAPTCHA for the deaf-blind ?" ... which seems like a heck of a challenge. And another, more militant one, calling for signatures to an online petition to remove the inaccessible CAPTCHA on their services.

On a lighter note one The Register reader noticed that they'd be asked to enter (the word) minge during one application.

I'd be more than happy to accept further correspondence on this issue, add your comments by clicking the links at the bottom of this post. Thanks!

The Usability And Accessibility Problems With CAPTCHA

I’d never considered this problem before as anything other than a frustrated user. And that’s why working in usability and customer experience gives you a different outlook on problems to just wandering the web passing comment.

Then a few months ago I (like many others) started experiencing problems on this blog. Rogue comments were appearing, I was getting fed up with being spammed and I turned to Blogger for help. They recommended I turn on the verification feature whereby users have to complete a challenge-response question based on a distorted image above it. And I did, and the rogue comments have been almost stopped.

The ‘almost’ comment is very important because it means it hasn’t fixed it. The common belief is that it solves 95% of the problem.

This CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) system is designed to ensure that only humans are completing forms online. Apparently it’s a simple process to develop a program (internet bot) that automatically completes and submits forms and these are used to abuse this functionality on a range of sites. Blog comments is one, insurance quotes is another, loan applications, search engines, online banking and so on. These malicious scripts can then pass data back to attempt work out insurance ratings, banking passwords or even set-up thousands of free email accounts to send spam with.

The problem for the user is that it requires them to do an additional task – and one that does not, at first, appear to benefit them in anyway. Of course, deeper reflection might allow them to realise that the additional server load and security issues that automated form completion causes does actually affect them in the long run but that really is still the form owners’ problem – not theirs. Anything that requires the user to perform increasingly more complex assessments of visual or linguistic perception (other implementations ask natural questions such as Q: what type of food is a banana? A: fruit.) is open to serious accessibility issues. How are the visually impaired supposed to complete such tasks, or individuals with low levels of literacy of linguistic comprehension. When a site requires this sort of challenge-response for every visit, this provides an insurmountable obstacle – potentially leaving the site developers open to litigation for non-compliance with local accessibility law (UK: Disability Discrimination Act and Web Accessibility) . As countermeasures technology improves and the CAPTCHAs get ever more complex, even sighted and educated users can find themselves up against an undecipherable task. There is an excellent document on the inaccessibility of CAPTCHA by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

Finally, the problem can be (if not particularly easily) circumvented. Sophisticated Artificial Intelligence and peculiar schemes whereby people are employed to solve them have been suggested by the W3C alongside more straightforward automated attacks like PWNtcha as methods of bypassing this type of test.

Given that the implementation is clumsy for the user, breakable and therefore ineffective in at least 5% of malicious attempts and that it presents serious (potentially litigious) issues of accessibility, it is my opinion that CAPTCHA is not a viable solution to the problem of automated form completion.

UPDATE:
15:32 17.JAN.2007 Audio versions of CAPTCHA have recently been spotted. But (as the comments on that post show) they do have other associated problems.

Technorati Tags
CAPTCHA Usability Accessibility

Ikea Moves To High Street & Enhance Online Experience

The ever-useful Telegraph podcast revealed last week in an exclusive that Ikea were moving to the British high street (or read the BBC article). "Great" I cried on the 08.09 to Norwich. Great for several reasons. Economically the move to support Britain’s dusty, forgotten town centres is a good thing. Environmentally, the decision to accept the government's tougher stance on green-belt development is a noble one. And finally, for us shameful capitalists it's yet another opportunity to source flat pack with even greater convenience.It does also raise some interesting ergonomic considerations. The smaller high-street units will not be able to follow the same format as the gigantic hangar-style design that Ikea currently favour. For those of you that have not experienced the store you should know that the idea is that Ikea take you on a journey through their products. First through large mocked-up sitting rooms, bedrooms, offices and kitchens featuring their products in all sorts of (quite un-British) configurations. This whets the appetite and the customer is then fed (maze-like) down past the products in question, laid out in row after row of category-specific displays. Finally you end up in a huge warehouse with vast racks of flat-pack furniture on shelves. The idea is that you are, by this point, armed with reference numbers and you select the items you want and wheel them to the checkout and thence your car.These stores are not without their critics. The maze-like experience is drawn out (unless you're an expert and can short-circuit it), it becomes very crowded despite the hangar environment, it's so children-friendly that it encourages families more than other stores and it necessitates a car or van to make the most of what have to be scheduled trips. Quite how the central stores will attempt to solve these problems remains to be seen. One of the major stumbling blocks will of course be space. Will there be substantially less products but the same format, or a different format and an small reduction in choice? What would this new format take? The most obvious solution would be to have a small number of key mock-ups which change regularly and then have a limited homeware-style browsing area. Presumably any other items required could be ordered in or identified at out-of-town stores. The most challenging aspect is delivery. Town centres are clogged with traffic or pedestrianised, not really conducive to backing-up the family car to fill it with flat pack is it? Customer experience is a definite corollary of store design in the traditional retail environment – as much customer experience is of web site design. (Here's a good piece on store design and customer experience).

Currently, Ikea’s online experience has come up for some criticism. Take this observation for example (which holds true as at 16.01.06): "Take IKEA's search box. If you do a search for "sofa," you get 21 product hits, none of which are actually sofas. The hits include Ice Cube Tray SODA (for the uninitiated, IKEA names all of its products) and Pillowcase SOVA....If you navigate to IKEA's products page and pull up sofas, you see plenty: over a dozen fabric sofas alone. None of these, however, show up from the search box." [source: Line56.com]

Clearly here there is a disconnect between the in-store experience, where the Swedish naming convention is actually quite a quirky way of identifying a particular product, and the on-line experience where it hampers a natural search. There is, of course, a basic fix here – applying a category marker to products that is identified in the search but it the online team at Ikea haven’t spotted this in a major online marketplace such as the US, you do fear for their implementation in the UK. Ikea’s current UK site is a dumb product catalogue, where you can browse for items and find out id they’re in-stock at your nearest store. The most customer-centric element of their site is a Lingubot, ‘Ask Anna’, which, unlike some implementations, actually appears to be quite effective in solving problems and making suggestions – even serving-up relevant page content.

I look forward to seeing how Ikea progress online and in-town. My guess is though that they’d have to make some pretty big mistakes to dent what is perceived as being a very attractive, customer-centric brand.

Ikea, CAPTCHA and 2meninaboat

Will be posting an article in the next couple of days about Ikea's move to high street stores. It raises some interesting customer experience issues (in-store ergonomics). One to look out for.

Another one to look out for is a piece on CAPTCHA and usability. Basically, how do we strike a balance between presenting the user with an obstacle and reducing the volume of malicious scripts from reducing the efficacy of an online form? Most believe it's more of an accessibility problem.

> A piece about CAPTCHA being defeated easily

This weekend I've continued to track James and Ben. If you've got a social conscience and a bit of spare cash, donate to their Children in Need effort.

Read A Great Blog and Build An M3 GTR

Regular readers and friends may have noticed two things over the period of my blogging. I tend to have a rather erratic posting schedule and a fondness for my past endeavours of rowing. And so here it is, the third blog entry in 24 hours. But it’s here for a reason.

I’ve been following the Atlantic rowing race chiefly through the exploits of James Cracknell and Ben Fogle. Catching up with them via the Telegraph Podcast, their 2 Men In a Boat website and the official Atlantic Rowing Race site. Whilst their experiences are dramatic and an intense physical and mental struggle, what has fascinated me a little more this week are the tales of Chris Martin and his boat ‘Pacific Pete’.

Dealing with aching distances, fatigue, hunger, fear and technical malfunction when there are two or four people on board is bad enough. When there’s only one person it must be genuinely hellish. Then to read such pragmatic and entertaining blog entries from a guy going through it is genuinely inspiring. I have bemoaned rowing blisters, tendonitis and back cramps after intensive weeks rowing myself, but to multiple this by factors of 10 and add in all the other ocean-rowing factors is unimaginable and he has my utmost respect. I shall be glued to his, and the other crews, progress for the next two weeks to see what transpires.

As a starting point, read the entry for day 41 and work backwards.

---

On another note. A colleague obtained the first issue (‘only 50p’) of the much-advertised ‘Build An M3 GTR’ magazine series. It contained a chrome effect wheel, foam-filled tyre and a small plastic object. There are 95 issues in this series at a total cost of nearly £600. For that money I could buy a salvaged M3 and take I apart myself over 95 weeks. These things are a colossal waste of money. As typified by DeAgostini ... read the Watchdog report on DeAgostini here and the criticism levelled by Blagger.com.

That said, I could be swayed. By the end of the year I would be a qualified gemmologist, an expert in copperplate calligraphy and have Crimean War toy soldier collection that would be the envy of my friends and family.

In response, a friend writes:

“I find those adverts hilarious. It amazes me that people have so little going on in their lives that they might need a rubbish hobby generated for them.”

“[someone he knows] has been receiving "Build your own robot" by subscription for the last 12 months. I always have a look at it though the clear polybag when it comes. It’s hilarious. Last month it came with some kind of circuit board and some LED eyes. I don't know what it will do when it is complete. Presumably you will be able to press a button on the back of its head to make it say "I am a robot - bibbitty bibbitty bibbitty" and stamp its feet a bit.”

Lovely. Now go and read Chris’ blog.

Web Usability Seminar: London, 25th - 26th January

Posted to me on email today by David Travis of Userfocus:
This 2-day course provides you with tips, tools and techniques to help you apply usability throughout the development lifecycle. It will be useful for software developers, product managers -- and anyone else you want to convince to take your work seriously. Please pass this invitation on!

We have four places left on the seminar. One place is offered free as part of our pro bono work. More information about the course. To be eligible for the pro bono place you must work for a registered UK charity. More information about applying for the pro bono place

WHAT DELEGATES SAY ABOUT THIS COURSE
-"Practical techniques, clearly explained, which can easily be put into immediate practice." -"Lots of good examples of good/bad usability from real life, both web-based and others." -"Great practical tips to go away with."

--- ends ---

Poor Usability on GRO Website

About time I caught up on blogging. One of the dangers of doing this stuff – particularly when it’s closely linked to your job – is that you risk opening yourself and more specifically the people you work for to publicity. What I mean is that if I was to write about what’s interesting and occupying me at the moment, I would be talking about things that my employers haven’t agreed to being in the public domain. With that in mind, whilst I’m excited and busy with usability stuff, it’s not something I can readily talk about.

So, I am struggling to find time to blog on personal usability gripes instead. However as one cost me money this morning I thought I’d share. My fiancée and I regularly do genealogical research as a hobby and with the recent upsurge in interest anticipated by the forthcoming second series of the BBC documentary “Who Do You Think You Are?”, we thought we’d get busy on the popular sites and get some certificates ordered in advance of the rush.

Like most UK-based researchers, we use the excellent (RedWeb designed, hullo guys!) 1837online.com to source the reference number of the certificate. Now, I knew that there’s an official place to order certificates from but couldn’t remember the URL so I Googled for PRO (Public Record Office) and ‘official birth certificate copies’ but I quickly realised I was going knowhere (I ignore pay-per-click ads as they are a distortion of my intentions). A quick scoot onto 1837 and I found the link, GRO (General Register Office), by the way. So, armed with GRO reference number and URL I went to the site. I recognised it as we’ve ordered certificates before and I guessed I’d have an account. Logged in fairly quickly (once I’d selected from my mental database of online passwords…). Now I was happily clicking away when I reached the death certificate form. I was dismayed to find I couldn’t exactly reference the index number that I’d obtained from 1837. This was a pain as it ensures you’re more likely to get the particular certificate you want. Without this code researchers have to do a semi-dumb search using details such as age at death and location. Disappointed (as I’d remembered I used to add it in the past) I proceeded to payment. Another shock. The advertised cost of £7 per certificate was now £11.50. Annoyed, I assumed this was the result of delivery charges which should be included in the total price. I paid anyway – I needed the certificate.

Unhappy with this I went back through the process to find out what I’d missed (or rather not been shown) … so, this is my route:

> GRO home page (click ‘Deaths’ image)

> Deaths Page (click ‘Obtaining death certificates’ in right nav box). Why is the right nav box formed of sentences? There are only 6 links here but it looks like a paragraph of text and the links aren’t obviously clickable because they aren’t coloured obviously. Would it not be better on the left of the screen (the most obvious place) and re-titled:


- Register a death…
- Change a death record…
- Register a death overseas…
- Remove a body from England or Wales…
- Find your local register office
- Get a death certificate

(The order should depend on what the metrics show them are the most accessed links)

I then reached:

> Obtaining death certificates page (scrolled down and clicked ‘order certificates online’ in the body text)

> Certificate ordering service page (4 clicks in now… clicked ‘order a certificate online now’ … thinking “I’ve already clicked on something that said this … am I going round in circles?”)

> Log-in page.

> Certificate Choice page. Now this is where I had the issue, I missed the selection radio button after question 7. This is defaulted to ‘no’ (the most expensive option) so if I miss it, I’m on to the £11.50 form straight away. As this is a key decision point, it should be highlighted and made clear. Ideally it would be the first question asked as it determines the application route you should take.

Overall the site is flawed from a usability point of view and provides a good example of where accessibility and usability are not necessarily the same thing. Whilst it is perfectly possible and reasonable to access this site in a DDA compliant way, for it to be more usable the customer has to configure their browser to amend the style sheet used. The failure here is in not anticipating the customer journey and considering the ‘user’ box ticked in their sign-off simply because the site’s design has passed a number of accessibility heuristics.

Of course, I’m at fault because I missed it but, in the words of Steve Krug “Don’t Make Me Think”. Trouble is, I have to use the site because I have to get certificates.

Interestingly, I believe the error occurred because I approached it as a familiar experience, not a beginner. I spent less time reading the pages and concentrated my energies on the transactional process of obtaining the certificate quickly. A case or more haste, less speed, but it does show you that there are alternative routes through the process depending on levels of experience and as many of these as possible should be supported.

Kate Moss: From QPR to Virgin Mobile...

Having been accused of being somewhat querulous recently with posts about one and miserable online experiences, I thought I'd pass readers a link to the new Kate Moss ad for Virgin mobile. One of the highest rating areas of this blog is the picture of Kate in a QPR shirt (mucky readers) and so I expect this to be a bit of a festive hit. Entirely safe for viewing at work by the way. The bearded entrepreneur and his team have done it again.

Download the Kate Moss Virgin Mobile ad in full. (Quicktime required)

Tim Clarke, MD of one, resigns

I wanted to open this blog entry with the line “today I got an early Christmas present” but, as I hope you’ll soon discover that isn’t really the feeling I want to capture. I’m actually disappointed. A bit like opening said present and discovering that it’s not quite what you wanted it to be, an Action Man without working limbs for example.

Regular readers of my blog (aside: may have been disappointed recently by the lack of entries) will know of my frustration with one railway. Only last night I threw away all the letters I had stored up following compensation claims for punctuality problems in the last 18 months. I had intended to log these and produce some kind of graph for you all, the true figures of performance shame but instead one did it themselves.

They released figures this week that were awful. Dropping from 88% punctuality (2004) to 81% (2005). The thing is, this represents all journeys on the London-Norwich route, taken over the commuting peak period I bet it’s so much worse. The figures from the rail regulator show that the train companies are still nowhere close to punctuality figures from seven years ago when the average age of rolling stock on the lines was, on average, 10 years older.

In April 2004 Tim Clarke, existing MD of Anglia was unveiled as the new MD of one. He bought with him all the problems of the old network but presented a vision of the new and, to be fair, things did improve a little. Statistically, more trains were provided, more punctuality and reliability. But in the last quarter we have experienced some horrendous episodes and despite peculiar recognition at customer service awards he has stepped down. These awards are the result of innovation in customer service – i.e. their Delay Repay scheme: acknowledging that they get things wrong, not necessarily doing this with compassion, competence or the intention to improve it. This system is flawed, both for the customer and the company:

1. The company have to pay out vouchers and this must inevitably cost them money. If it doesn’t it costs Network rail money who then can’t invest it in improving the service.
2. The customer gets a voucher which, if they are a non-London commuter, is useless unless you store them all up to offset the season ticket each year. By which £50 (last year’s income from claimed compensation) off a £2300 season is just over 2% … this infers that 98% of the service I paid for was acceptable. Simply untrue.

You’ll see from previous letters, most notably this one, that one don’t actually have any innovative ideas about customer service. They’ve developed one as a way to say “we’re doing something” but it’s the whole package that’s in need of innovation. In a way it’s disappointing that an MD has to resign as it’s not useful to have to start again, at least Tim knows the line, knows the organisation and knows what needs to be done it’s just so sad that the whole team don’t seem to have the answers. I’m guessing we’ll see a grand announcement shortly after Christmas as to who’s to take over and loads of talk of new trains, better service etc. etc. But much of this will already have been set-up by Tim Clarke and the momentum will already be there. What will really happen is we’ll have a honeymoon period of good intentions and a desire to improve followed by further stagnation. Until train operators start employing visionary charismatic leaders (like Branson) and use the energy and innovation seen outside the sector, more heads will roll and the trains, increasingly, will not.

Footnote: one recently sponsored an Anglia business award, the award for customer service in fact. I'm not sure whether this demonstrates intent or irony.

Lotus Exige Written Off After Valet Boys Take It For A Spin

Newspapers report today the story of Dan Gould
who took his Exige in to be valeted before sale (cost: £80) only to be told later by the foreman that it had had a bit of an accident.

Sadly this absolutely fantastic piece of engineering was written off by the numpty that was driving it. I suppose Mr. Gould can't be too distraught, the valet company's insurance (Master Valet, Exeter) should cover it - and he was selling it anyway.

Taking a look at the photo it shows just how catastrophic collisions can be for the body work on these composite-clad cars however, the driver's door opens fine and the cockpit is intact. Note also how little damage there is on the Peugeot's near side - a result of the impact absorption properties of the glass-fibre composite body.

:: How the Exige looks when intact
:: The BBC News site for Devon is featuring this story.

Christmas Shopping Online Isn't More Enjoyable Than The High Street, Yet

As it’s Christmas and we’re all spending a large amount of time shopping online you’d hope it would be more pain free than standing prone in Marks and Spencer on a cold Saturday afternoon. (Aside: Why is it that you always dress up for a cold day pounding the High Street but actually spend 90% of your time inside super-heated stores feeling queasy?)

The trouble is, the online experience still, too often, collapses into a farce as soon as you click the ‘checkout’ link/button. Ignoring the usability crimes that permeate the browsing and selecting process, it is the interminable form-filling that I hate. I must have registered now on so many sites. Really I only want to register on sites that I use a lot. Imagine the hassle of having to register to enter a shop on the High Street? “Sorry sir, you’re a new visitor, please take the time to fill out this form and provide us with your email address and password before you come through the door. “

Alongside the sheer time and effort that is involved in doing this, it’s desperately insecure. The human mind being what it is we’re more than likely to use the same email address and password combination all over the web as it’s simply too much hassle to generate new ones each time. Various people have offered solutions to this problem: e.g. have one Excel file that’s password protected and contains a list of all your log-ins which is still more hassle than not having to register … which is my preferred solution.

Why can it not be possible to visit a shop online and buy one item and leave without leaving them all your details. I don’t truly value a personalised portal experience on every site. Granted, on Amazon it’s started to be a powerful tool … but that’s because I’ve invested hours tweaking my recommendations and rating my purchases. It’s unrealistic to expect me to do that on every site.

One thing I can’t make my mind up over is the multi-part form. Do I want to fill out a form that’s all on one page (so I can see all the fields) or do I want to do a step-by-step form where I perceive that I’m going through small chunks of the form (and possibly only being shown the most relevant fields). I’m not sure. It depends on whether there’s enough of a progress indicator on the step form. It might say I’m step three of five for example but it might be that step four is a huge time-consuming chore. That’s why I prefer time-related progress indicators: “you’re two minutes away from checking out” If this is timed on the lowest common denominator then you’re going to exceed expectations – invariably A Good Thing™.

Worst of all however is when a form tells me I’ve done something wrong and then fails to either show me where this error is or identify how I might correct it. PostCodes are a classic example: “PostCode not recognised”? It could be that the PostCode is three steps back in the form requiring me to skip back through the process (hoping that the session has cached all my input) and, even then, I still think I’ve input it correctly. The answer is that the back-end can’t actually recognise the spacing so XX1 1YY should be input as XX11YY. If you want the PostCode in a certain format then say so, otherwise introduce scripting to account for the multiple variations in the way that users input it – the same is true of phone numbers, dates of birth and credit card numbers.

I wonder how much all this would have bugged me were it not for the fact that I’ve been reading these usability books?

I’ll keep a log of my best online e-tailing experiences and post them after Christmas.

In other usability news

Meanwhile Google are being incredibly proactive (and maybe a bit Big Brother) in opening a Google Space usability lab at Heathrow where they can assess a large volume of user experiences. Jesper Rønn-Jensen and Thomas Watson Steen alerted me to this through their Standards & Usability blog

Technorati : usability