Google Reader Suggestion
I put a bit of feedback on the Google reader group’s feedback and suggestions section which I thought it might be worth sharing. It illustrates a nice little point on usability
This is something that I constantly need to do which is made a bit more difficult than it needs to be.
The search box defaults to all items. Followed by read, starred, shared, friends’ shared etc.
However one of the most common searches I do is to search an individual blog that i’m currently “in”. Why isn’t this right at the top of the drop down list (yes you would need to use some clever bit of AJAXey whizz to make it so) instead of making me search down through what, in my case, is a fairly long list of blogs.
The lesson I’m sure you smart readers are aware, is that you make the most frequent actions easy to do. It’s a simple but incredibly powerful idea. The hard part in designing new apps is knowing what those most frequent actions are going to be (which feeds into the performance measurement and optimisation sermon).
Book Review: Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
I wrote this review for the introduction of the most recent London User Experience Book Club (#uxbcldn is the hashtag of choice) on the 22nd April, and thought I’d share it here for anyone who might be interested.
I should preface this with a couple of admissions: First, I hadn’t heard of this book before we discussed it at the previous meeting. I hadn’t heard of Scott McCloud either. I hadn’t seen any of his work. Actually I discovered preparing for this that I had seen his work before. If you remember when google launched their web browser Chrome, the launch was accompanied by a comic which explained it’s creation. That comic was done by Scott McCloud. Second, I’m not a comic book fan. I don’t dislike them, and I have no prejudices against comic book readers. Indeed I sit very much in the comic book reading demographic as a nerdy, techy, game playing male. But comics were never a part of my childhood, they were not something that I grew up with, and I don’t believe I’ve ever bought a comic book or read a graphic novel.
With those confessions off my chest, I can continue. While I never read comic books I’ve always been a lover of cartoons or comic strips (the four panel strips you see in a newspaper beside the crossword). It is perhaps interesting that the distinction that I draw between cartoons or short comic strips on one side and comic books or graphic novels on the other is broken by ScottMcClouds definition (which he goes to rather extensive lengths to explain and validate). In fact one of my hands has been severed down the middle. I’m not very happy about this for a few reasons. The main one is that it doesn’t feel right, or to put it in a slightly more intellectual way: it doesn’t fit with my mental model of comics. The other reason is that a lot of my favourite cartoons or comics (he groups the two as “comic art” though I thought “cartoomics” would be much better) regularly alternate between a single panel and multiple panel format. Gary Larsson’s The Far Side or webcomics such as Ctrl + Alt + Del, Penny Arcade or xkcd.
While on the topic of webcomics I had a look at his TED talk as part of my extensive research for this evening (I’d highly recommend it to anyone in this room), and I concluded that Scott’s is probably a bit disappointed with the state of webcomics today. That with all the potential that digital interactive media brings with it that the majority of comics are still basically reproductions of the format of cartoons for print, and bring with them all the restrictions that that brings. They see the web simply as a new distribution channel rather than a new medium for their art. It’s funny to hear in the book how the flat colour of the comics was dictated by the cost and print technology of the time and yet while webcomics have no such limitations (with the exception of time to add the extra detail) still confine themselves to that style of flat bold colour.
I found the experience of reading this book very different to reading Bill Buxton’s book. Particularly on the tube or in other public spaces I often felt the desire to assert for myself “That actually this is a rather intellectual deconstruction of the comic book art form and the philosophies behind it. I’m not just reading a comic book.” And I must admit that it’s a bit odd that I felt this given the large point behind the book I was reading was justifying comics books as a valid art form. And yet there is still a bit of a stigma around comic books. Though whether that is because of the comics books themselves or the people who you think of as reading comics books (the aforementioned nerdy,techy , game playing slightly obsessive males) it’s hard to say. Indeed it’s likely a vicious circle (or should I say a virtuous circle now I’ve been converted).
And yet I do think comics have matured greatly in the last few years (it’s worth remembering that this book was published in 1994). Since then, rarely a Summer has passed without a couple of the blockbuster titles in our cinema featuring a comic such as X-Men, Spiderman, or Batman. In recent years we’ve moved passed the action blockbusters into the deeper darker underbelly of the world of comics. And the production values of those films is moving towards the vision and style of the comics. 300, The Watchmen or Sin City are prime examples which are thought provoking and do not need to justify themselves the way that comics may have done so before the writing of this book.
Using the artform to explain itself is incredibly clever (unfortunately I had neither the time nor the ability to write my review in a comic format). It also demonstrates how this is an insider’s view, the view of someone who has not just been and observer of the medium but also acontributor . It also means that the illustration of his examples is incredibly clear and can often do in a couple of panels what might take a book a couple of pages to describe.
His discussion of seeing the world through masks which are our faces, and how simplification can increase empathy between the reader and the character is extremely powerful, and links nicely between our previous discussion of simplification through sketching. I enjoyed the explanations of cultural differences between different schools of comics both culturally (such as the Japanese method of storytelling through comics) and historically. His insights about how space and time are moulded together in a comic book and words and pictures interact were also enlightening. I found it hard to totally grasp all his stages of creating a work in any medium since they are quite abstracted to all them to be sufficiently general but they were a useful way to break down the creative process. And some of the taxonomies he uses (he LOVES taxonomies) gave a useful basis for thinking about the differences between comics.
So he does give an excellent deconstruction of the comic book art form, the components and the ideas which underlie it, and he certainly justifies is as a legitimate art form. But I must admit I was left quite unfulfilled at the end of the book. There had been all this wonderful foreplay as Scott lured me in with his insightsbeautifully explained through words and images and now he just rolls over and goes to sleep while I’m left to have a cold shower and write a review of our evening’s passionate affair. Well my complaint is that after his wonderful deconstruction he doesn’t really build anything with the pieces. It’s never formulated into a new idea or theory or direction for comics. The TED talk goes some way towards this and I believe his other books Reinventing Comics and Making Comics might be able to fill this desire.
I’ve tried to think about what I’ve learned from the book that might have changed how I do what I do (since this is the UX book club). While it seems to be a great fit to extend to the forms we work with: Don’t we also deal with the juxtaposition of words and images in our presentations and interactive media? Don’t we also tell stories? Don’t we also deal with questions about time and space and motion? We do but I don’t feel that the book has better informed me in a way that applies to what I do. The best reason that I can think of for this is that comics are a one way communication. They talk to their reader but they don’t listen. The interaction and interactivity in the things we design and build is what defines us and our medium. But I’m sure some of you disagree and I’d love to be told how wrong I am on this.
The Problem with Blackout IRE
is that it’s starting to affect the usability of twitter.
Here we have three different friends; @cufa, @eamonleonard, @eirepreneur all using the same avatar. The instict when scanning twitter feeds is to assume that tweets from the same avatar are from the same person. Of course that’s not true when we’re supporting causes by using the same avatar, with some exceptions (@uberalex and @davidcoallier)…
The trends of supporting causes witha modified image are far more successful in my opinion. Santa Hats were the yuletide flavour, and now red noses are popping up. BBC employees @wossy and @stephenfry are leading the way…
User Twesting
Those clever folks at ASOS are at it again. It’s little wonder that everyone in the online fashion retail space is looking to them for innovation.
I noticed this message pop into my twitter stream…
A little investigation found the original question…
And some of the replies…
It’s not a formal card sorting by any means, but if you want some quick & dirty user feedback it’s a great idea.
Michael O’Leary Soundbites
Image from Crispin Rodwell
Love him or hate him, you have to admit if there’s one thing Michael O’Leary (Chief Exec of Ryanair) knows how to do, that’s deliver a sound bite. I’ve got some classics which I’m posting since Ryanair are in the news for supposedly abusing a blogger today. These quotes used to be on his wikipedia page but they seem to have been edited out, so I dug them out of the history and placed them here for prosperity’s sake.
- “For years flying has been the preserve of rich fuckers. Now everyone can afford to fly.”
- “Screw the travel agents. Take the fuckers out and shoot them. What have they done for passengers over the years?”
- On refunds “we don’t fall over ourselves if they say my granny fell ill. What part of no-refund do you not understand? You are not getting a refund so *** off”
- On Lufthansa: “Weber (Chairman Lufthansa Supervisory Board) says Germans don’t like low fares. How the *** does he know? The Germans will crawl ***-naked over broken glass to get them”
- On rivalry with British Airways: “There’s too much ‘we really admire our competitors’. All bollocks. Everyone wants to kick the *** out of everyone else. We want to beat the crap out of BA. They mean to kick the crap out of us.”
- On the Polish market: “Who wants to go to Gdansk? There ain’t a lot there after you’ve seen the shipyard wall.”
- Being happy: “They don’t call us the fighting Irish for nothing. We have always been the travel innovators of Europe. We’ve built the roads and laid the railways. Now its the airlines!”
- On environmentalists ““I’m always actually very pleasant, but don’t believe in trotting out all that PC claptrap just not to upset a couple of f***ing environmental lunatics. They are just loons.”
- His ultimate goal: “Free tickets. In a decade or so, airlines will pay travellers to distribute people around Europe. The airline industry is like Tesco, Ikea, or network television where viewers watch for nothing and advertisers pay for access to them. Web companies earn money when they deliver click traffic to other sites.”
- On the slightly wider Airbus A320 fuselage: “I’ve heard a lot of horseshit about a wider fuselage. I’ve yet in 15 years in this industry to meet one passenger who booked his ticket based on that. The seats have been wide enough and the aisles have been wide enough for passengers”
My Play.com Customer Experience
I just wanted to share with the interwebs a letter I just wrote to play.com about my experience of purchasing from them and dealing with their customer support. Normal blogging service shall resume shortly.
Hi,
A month ago I placed an order with play.com for an xbox, games and peripherals which totalled just under £268. It wasn’t a small purchase so I’d done quite a bit of research on where I’d get the best value between the various bundles and after quite a bit of consideration I decided play.com offered the best value.
The order went through and I was really happy with my purchases, gradually they started arriving in the post although the console which had been in stock when I placed the order had changed to out of stock. After about 2 weeks of this I called up the support line and explained what had happened and was told that the stock cycles can be up to 28 days so I should hang on. After a month of waiting with still no change to my awaiting status I called up again (at this point all the other items had arrived but were rather useless without the console). I explained the situation and was told that the item was not awaiting stock but was out of stock and was in fact a Christmas bundle so would not be back in. I explained how I was pretty pissed off with this since I’d called up previously, and the fact that my order was taken in the first place and I’d not been told that it was out of stock at any point in the previous month. In fact I might never have found out if I hadn’t taken the initiative and called first. I asked if there was anything that could be done and the operator said he’d speak to his manager. I was then told that the manager would try and put together a bundle, though he couldn’t get into the system at the moment to do so and could I call back tomorrow to do so.
I called back this evening (the previous call was yesterday) and asked to speak to Lucas as I’d been instructed. the operator was aware that play were going to try to put together a bundle for me. She spoke to the manager for a while and returned to tell me that the bundles have been restructured and they could not put one together for me because the price has gone up also. At this point I was too tired and annoyed to argue, and while she went to great lengths to explain why the error had occurred and how orders taken are only temporary, this didn’t really help the fact that play.com had wasted my time (making a number of phonecalls and waiting a month for nothing) and my money (the restructured bundles mean I’d have to spend a lot more to get less).
I’m not the sort of person to write complaint letters but this has been such an exceptionally bad experience of customer service I really wanted to let you know about it. After my previous phonecall I was optimistic that play were wiling to make up for their error and so to call back and then be told flatly that there was nothing they could do and basically that it was not their fault was especially annoying. Anyway needless to say I don’t intend to shop with play again if I can avoid it.
Regards,
Colm
P.S. Not providing an email address so customers are forced to call the support line (and usually hold for 5 minutes before speaking to an operator) is also really annoying.
BUG 11 Videos
This is something I’ve wanted to have and since I couldn’t find it out there I thought I’d do it myself. It’s a collection of the videos shown at the BUG film night at the BFI Southbank, hosted by Adam Buxton. These are the videos I could find from BUG 11 on the 22nd January, with guest director Kim Gehrig. If I’ve omitted any - I think there may be some from the laptop sections - let me know. Enjoy!
Bubblicious from Rex The Dog on Vimeo.
Handfed - Above the Sea from Dan on Vimeo.
Amnesty International You Are Powerful - Funny home videos are a click away
Awards
I just realised I’ve been nominated for an Irish Blog Award which is very flattering. I’m in the Best Newcomer category which also has some great people. I’ve no expectation of winning but it’s always lovely to discover that people are listening, and perhaps even enjoying occasionally. Best of luck to all the nominees.
iTable - better only on the Surface
Apparently one of the more popular booths at the CES expo was for PQ Labs where they were showing off their product the iTable. It was featured on Cruchgear as a surface killer.
I’m not convinced since I think they’re aiming at different markets. The iTable is a low cost, small (though for the version that fits over a HD TV I imagine there is a box running XP sitting somewhere behind it), multitouch device. It’s a big iPhone.
The surface isn’t. It’s a multi-touch table yes, but the touch is picked up by multiple near-infrared cameras and the screen is projected onto the surface. The fact that these cameras are used allows the cameras to pick up when your hand is an inch above the surface rather than only when you touch it. This means that when you touch the surface can know roughly where your hand is and know where you are positioned around the table (and then orient objects to face you). It also means the surface can pick up different coloured objects and recognise domino tags placed on its surface.
The surface price structure is certainly more expensive though it comes down rapidly if you are buying in bulk so favours large enterprises.
Finally the surface is a table. The iTable is not. The iTable is not designed for 360 degree interaction, there is a very clear up-down-left-right. You also can’t put things on it so it doesn’t interact with objects in it’s environment (it could potentially recognise a shape but little more). I’ve also seen people pour liquid over a surface machine, I’m not sure I’d like to tip a hot cup of coffee over the iTable.
While this may end up come across as an indictment of the iTable it shouln’t be seen that way. It should be seen as an indictment of the linkbaiting crunchgear headline “Look out, Microsoft Surface - the iTable might just trump you in every way“. The iTable is probably the best option for homes, small businesses or kiosks (if you’re only choosing between those two options) but it is a far less interesting piece of technology than the Microsoft product.