I was blown away by the short clip below. These eco-environments were created by ecositema urbano architects. They are made from commercially available products. They are portable and assembled using only screws. These “trees” are also revenue generating; excess energy from solar panels is sold back utility companies for a healthy profit. Who says money doesn’t grow on trees?
Archive for the ‘design’ Category
Urban Air Trees
Monday, July 6th, 2009
Messaging: Wordpress iPhone App
Saturday, May 16th, 2009
I installed the Wordpress iPhone app in order to obtain a little more flexibility on how I publish content … and also because the experience designer inside me foams at the mouth at the prospect of performing a task in a new way. The app is great. It empowers users to publish to blogs hosted by Wordpress or on their own servers.
In attempting to connect to this blog, I encountered an error. One of my pet peeves is poor error messaging. If an application is going to stop me from accomplishing a task, i’d like a little guidance as to how I may help myself to overcome the nuisance without having to resort to some knowledge base or Google, the great knowledge base of the internets. I’m looking at you and your cryptic, code bearing, 0×1278365 messages - Microsoft.
To my most pleasant surprise, the message provided by the Wordpress App allowed me to fix the problem with relative ease. Here it is:
The message clearly states the problem and how to fix it. However, things can usually be improved or done differently. So, how might one improve on this message?
Part of the challenge here is that this message was presented on my iPhone, meaning I can’t easily copy and paste the URL to get to the desired location. The lazy person in me rather not attempt to type the URL … missed a letter, doh! A more useful message might be one directing me to the correct location within the application, namely Settings > Writing.
Messaging is critical to more usable applications. It’s not uncommon for users to encounter errors. Use those opportunities to efficiently communicate with users and walk them through a potentially stressful experience. It will only make the experience stronger and everyone can quickly get back to accomplishing their tasks - usually something other than dealing with errors.
Experience review: WSJ online survey
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
I was reading an article at the online version of Wall Street Journal. A survey window descended asking if I would take a couple of minutes to answer some questions. Unless I am really pressed for time, I usually take a few moments to provide feedback to companies that request feedback via the web. The problem was that it was a survey about banks, not a survey about WSJ. It was a standard “how do I feel about brand X” type questionnaire. I quickly abandoned the survey, as I was willing to provide the WSJ feedback, not some marketer gathering feedback on another company.
Experience Review: US Postal Service Self Serve Kiosks (Automated Postal Centers - APC)
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
Kudos to the US Postal Service on their Automated Postal Centers (APC). These self service kiosks have been installed at some office locations. My experiences with the ever growing amount of self service kiosks have often been less than ideal, but this was shinning example of an efficient and simple process. The USPS has done a great job. The interface was simple and clear. The steps were clearly communicated and lacking any of the trappings of complexity that one might associate with a process requiring a similar breadth of options (to insure or not to insure, postage, weight, etc.). The machine has a scale built into it, so you can ship virtually any size package. It accepts either debit or credit cards as payment and will easily guide you through the process of printing stamps for several packages.
Experience Review: The New NYTimes Video Section
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
The new video section of the NYTimes online is yet another example of exemplary design by the news organization. The updated design leverages a gray background to more clearly focus the user’s attention to the video.
This new design works much better than the previous one which employed a white background. While the white background is fine for reading text, the gray does a much better with the video. The Times has long used the gray background for picture galleries, but it’s nice to finally see them extend this to the video page.
The reason this approach works so well is because of how computer screens work. “Paper white” is a pigment, meaning it absorbs light. Monitors actually emit light making the color white much brighter than that of paper. You wouldn’t want to read in a dark room, but watching movies works well.
By removing all that white from it’s page, the NYTimes has made the experience of watching their videos all the more enjoyable
Another nice touch is how the text in the area in which you hover changes to a brighter color to facilitate making a choice.
Kudos once again to the excellent design team at the NYTimes.
Experience Review: Jet Blue Survey
Monday, October 13th, 2008
After a recent flight, Jet Blue sent me a survey. There were several problems with the survey. For one, it was poorly written. It asked me a series of questions and asked me to provide responses on the old sliding scale, from “less than expected” to “better than expected.”
Given that I am a relatively active traveler who flies Jet Blue extensively, most of my answers are naturally of the middle of the road, “as expected,” variety. I have come to expect a quality experience from them, as compared to say Spirit Air.
The final straw in the proverbial hat was the overall length of the survey. While I am often willing to provide my feedback to a vendor (understanding how important it is to my own business), there is only so much time I will dedicate to this task. The survey was extremely long. It dynamically updated the questions based on my responses, and the page continued to grow in what felt like an exponential manner. This was the survey that felt like it just kept growing and growing and growing.
While I clicked on the link in the email with the best of intentions of providing feedback to what I feel is a superior airline company, the experience was so horrendous that the survey began to be more of an intrusion than was worth my time. In addition to all this, there was not even an offer for some basic, menial coupon, with some insane restrictions, that I would never use to help lube the process.
Lessons to consider: Be conscious of who you target for surveys. Ask relevant questions that demonstrate some basic consideration of the usage patterns of the sample population. Be brief and respectful of that participants time. Provide some incentive to reward the participants for their time and feedback.
Oh yeah, crazy amount of javascript code in surveys to enable the dynamic display of questions … provably a bad idea. The company fueling the survey, Market Metrix.
Experience Review: Cuil: Missed Opportunity
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
Like many people yesterday, I was excited to check out the well funded, new search engine from the former Googlers. Cuil was supposed to be the challenger to Google’s search throne. Their launch yesterday was more about a company missing an opportunity. They received a fair amount of press, which not only got me to visit their site but also a fair amount of my less technically inclined friends.
While they claim to have a largest index, the results are anything but good. Cuil … it’s not the size of your index, but the quality of the results. Cuil fails miserably exactly where it was most likely to engage new users. They seem to have failed to ask themselves a most basic question,
What are user’s likely to search for when using a new search engine?
People search for themselves or for something they know. The whole idea of Google-ing yourself is obviously not a new one. Whether to satisfy a curiosity or for privacy purposes, few have not broken down and indulged in this bit of quasi-ego-maniacal activity. It’s an exciting activity that is often revealing and usually in an unexpected way. Cuil totally misses the boat.
Searches performed for the names of a couple of people I know provided absolutely no results. These same names in Google and Yahoo provide a hearty amount of results, as these are people who regularly blog. In addition, a search for my company’s name provided results that we were anything but focused. Google and Yahoo provide much more focused, quality results.
If Cuil is to really make a challenge, they sure got off to a really bad start. They totally missed on a wonderful opportunity to make a great impression on the most significant amount of traffic they were likely to receive for free. In addition, they garnered a whole bunch of bad reviews, which will make their goal of overtaking Google all the more difficult.
Bill Gates, “What an absolute mess.”
Saturday, June 28th, 2008
“An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant” is an interesting post at seattlepi.com. It contains an email sent by Gates in January of 2003 after attempting to locate and install Movie Maker. It’s interesting read; Gates go on about the quality, more specifically the lack thereof, of the user experience. Given my recent disappointment with trying to install the WorldWide Telescope, I find it interesting even Bill Gates himself has problems using the products his company produces.
New Rule: Never deliver something I can’t use.
Adobe Dreamweaver CS3: Save All
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
I really enjoy the “Save All” function in Visual Studio (2005). With a simple Ctrl+Shift+S, you save all open documents. The same functionality exists in Adobe Dreamweaver, but you must use the file menu to access it. I am a keyboard shortcut freak. I like quick execution of certain functions. Luckily, there is a way to create custom keyboard shortcuts in Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 (Mac version).
- Go to Dreamweaver > Keyboard Shortcuts …
- In the Commands Window, go to File > Save All
- Click into the Press key section
- Use your keyboard combination
Dreamweaver has a real nice validation system that will inform you if you are overriding any other command.
- The default sets can not be adjusted, so you will be prompted to create a new one. Select [OK]
- Enter the name of the new set
- Select [OK]
Voila!
Experience Review: Adobe Customer Service: The Final Saga
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
So at long last, the saga is complete! Adobe finally made the download available on Wednesday morning. This was definitely one of the worst examples of a software company delivering it’s solution to the marketplace. My experience ( Adobe Customer Service Part 1 and Part 2) has been less than stellar.
After all these days without any downloads available and then having to endure a 2.41 GB download, I still had to endure a mini series of …
Why not make the download available earlier? I had to download the updates. Couldn’t all of the updates been done this way? This way the company could maintain one of its major distribution channels. It’s like a bad auto mechanic; they can leave the car sitting around for a week and wait for you to arrive to then begin doing the work.
Someone told me that vendors would be the end of me. I hope we are never that type of vendor to our customers.
