Thursday, June 30, 2005
Policy and consultation
"Please involve us in your policy decisions before you announce them."
That was a quote from today's BBC Radio 4 Today programme, from a British Medical Association (BMA) spokesperson, but it could be the mantra of all sector organisations referring to government initiatives.
5:38 PM|
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Flies and bees
Today's Pass Notes, concerning KPMG and a fly, reminds me of another international consultancy and the story of a bee.
Ten minutes prior to a day's worth of usability work, an individual went bonkers, hysterical, when faced with a dopey (almost dead) bee in the room. It was left to yours truly to kill the bee, try to calm the individual concerned, rescue the half-destroyed test materials and laptops - which had headed in various directions around the room - pacify enquirers from surrounding rooms - who believed someone was being murdered, probably with a knife - and start receiving the arriving evaluation participants as if nothing had happened.
Insects: an amazing source of crazy stories, bless 'em.
5:22 PM|
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ID cards and accessibility
Good to see some coverage of usability and accessibility issues in both the interim report (pp48-50) and the latest report (pp174-6) from LSE on identity cards, published as The Identity Project. The reports also highlight potential conflict of the scheme as devised with the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act.
The Identity Project: an assessment of the UK Identity Cards Bill and its implications
(I think the final report incorporates everything in the interim report.)
9:10 AM|
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Sunday, June 26, 2005
Phyllis Pearsall, the A-Z woman
Phyllis Pearsall - who singlehandedly researched and created the first accurate streetmap of London, published in 1936 - was shortlisted for a blue plaque last year, but didn't get it.
This year, she's up for nomination again. Do vote for Phyllis. Voting is open to anyone, Southwark resident or not.
[I do find it shocking that there is as yet no blue plaque to William Blake, who had his Vision of Angels here on Peckham Rye.]
7:24 PM|
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Good design is not about making things unusable
Someone has just sent me a two-page programme, for an event concerning simple design, written in the most unreadable - and worse, drop shadow - typeface imaginable. I don't know what the typeface is called, but imagine putting drop shadow on 'Waker', and reading that for a page and a half, and you'll get the idea.
I won't embarrass the organisation concerned by revealing the document origin, but suffice it to say that there will be representatives of accessibility organisations at the event. We look like we've got our work cut out.
3:09 PM|
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Enlightened self-interest and accessibility
Here's a thoughful piece from Bill Thompson on the BBC website, mainly focused on accessibility and universal design, though also touching on cross-disciplinary working in product innovation.
Thanks Chris!
12:04 PM|
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Friday, June 24, 2005
The iPod experience
I've now got some 5,000+ tunes and MP3s (programmes, music podcasts etc.) on this latest model iPod, which are taking up some 31GB, or half the available space.
I've found the iPod interface generally good. The wheel is brilliant, and the genre playlists thing probably works well if you can be bothered to manage this on iTunes - most of my stuff seems to be 'unclassifiable'. The On-the-go playlists seem to behave a little erratically, and the unit has now slowed down considerably when locating menu options and tracks.
I suppose my main complaint would be that allowing the iPod to go into deep sleep - not switching it on for more than 24 hours - seems to generate some fairly stange iPod behaviour, such as uncalled-for reboots, and odd things happening between the iPod and iTunes (nastly messages of the sort 'your OS is corrupt'). Apple deny all knowledge and responsibility, though the problem is widely talked about on iPod discussion lists and boards. I suspect that Apple 'user testing' may have been limited to Apple fanatics who never let a day go by without using it.
The 'Do not disconnect' message (with accompanying large red prohibition symbol) that appears anytime you connect the iPod via USB to a PC (even just to recharge) seems alarmingly unwilling to go away, particularly when the problem mentioned in the previous paragraph is manifesting itself. iPod lore suggests that this rather aggressive message should be ignored. So much for interaction design.
2:48 PM|
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The J**** N****** guy
Following on from my post earlier this week which referred to lazy journalism on usability, here's Jack Scofield covering Mr Evil for Guardian Online.
I call him Mr Evil, because J**** N****** uses the word 'evil' quite liberally.
In fact, he uses it in the interview with Jack Scofield.
In fact, I think the reason why Guardian Online likes J**** N****** so much (as do some other media) is that Mr N****** plays fast and free with such words as 'evil' and 'stupid'. It makes good copy. I suppose. And the words even feature in the article title, so the sub-editors clearly love it, too.
I regard J***** N******'s quoted opinions as unhelpful, both to the profession and to the world at large. Usability and user-centred design is not about some who are 'evil' or 'stupid' and others who are not. The vast majority of people who see the problems that poor usability and accessibility cause are stunned by what they see and eager to do something about it. It's an education issue, not the confrontation or warfare that Mr N****** suggests.
Frankly, Mr N****** is doing the profession a disservice...and perhaps even bringing it into disrepute.
If Mr N****** feels like fighting wars of good and evil, he should take himself off to Iraq. On the other hand, I'm not sure that I'd want to visit Mr N****** on the good people of Iraq.
P.S. Chris McEvoy just let me know that he's also posted on the Jacob-Jack affair.
1:30 PM|
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Thursday, June 23, 2005
Anyone for a flutter?
It's taken me quite a while to have a proper look at Blogshares, a fantasy blog share market.
Crikey, here's my page, revealing what seems to be a curiously high P/E ratio, a slightly startling share price and a public 'purchaser' from as long ago as 2003.
And there's Mike Little's Journalized at the top of the list of incoming links. I met Mike in Manchester over beers. Lovely guy, knows more than any human could be expected to know about the blogging platform Wordpress, which is why his site's so amazingly popular.
5:52 PM|
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Re-thinging market research
And speaking of Simon Roberts, I very much enjoyed a paper entitled Re-thinging Market Research (PDF, 436 KB), written by Simon Blyth and Simon Roberts, and presented at the Market Research Society conference this year.
I understand the document caused a few fuses to blow among members of the market research profession, but there probably isn't a good paper that doesn't turn a few souls incandescent with fury.
5:11 PM|
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Surveying the office environment
Friend, colleague and anthropologist Simon Roberts has recently appeared in an article in the FT Saturday magazine, entitled Office Culture. The article covers Simon's recent work at PwC (UK) on the 'admin burden' faced by staff.
12:16 PM|
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Why most things fail
"The design of the tax credits system is the root of the problem," says the Parliamentary Ombudsman's report into the UK tax credit system's 'teething problems' (published yesterday).
"The system appears unable to provide an immediate, responsive and appropriate service, particularly when things go wrong...It demonstrates the importance of making consideration of all potential customers a central element from the start...The intelligibility of information to customers, good communication, and effective mechanisms to deal with things that go wrong should not be afterthoughts but central and built into the system design..."
Well said. But don't you have a tremendous sense of deja vu?
11:17 AM|
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Wednesday, June 22, 2005
UK university websites
This week's Education supplement of The Guardian featured a double-page spread on the usability of university websites. And it quoted several UK firms, rather than the usual J**** N****** 'journalist who can't be bothered to research anything' quotes. Well done, Donald MacLeod (who is not a specialist in this area).
There was something not quite right, though (well, a few things). For example, the main problem with UK university websites is not that they are designed by IT departments (stated in the article), but that they are 'distributed': every department or school does their own thing, as in all things university, so the problem is one of herding cats. There are also some serious issues around the data...
2:36 PM|
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Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Co-design in The Observer
First we had a - balanced, I thought - report in The Observer from Deyan Sudjic (Guardian/Observer architecture correspondent; Design Council contributor, for example, to their Touching the State project) on the rumpus over Hilary Cottam winning the recently awarded Design Museum Designer of the Year prize. [Questions in the press: Who exactly designed these things displayed at the Design Museum? What was Hilary's role? And architects and institutions stepping forward to criticise the award process and criteria.]
Then a week later we had Charles Leadbeater (works with the Design Council/Hilary Cottam, amongst others) providing a full-page piece in The Observer entitled 'Design Your Own Revolution', mentioning Hilary Cottam by name, as well as highlighting the phenomenon of co-design.
Much as I applaud both Leadbeater and the Observer for having published this full-page piece, I can't help thinking that this is all a little too cosy (but perhaps this world is too small to be otherwise). And what a pity the subject has to enter the press as part of such a defensive strategy; that such matters only appear to merit national debate when controversy erupts.
[P.S. Full disclosure: I also contributed to Touching the State, and have had breakfast courtesy of the Design Council sitting next to Deyan Sudjic. Hilary Cottam led the project. But I have yet to work with Charles Leadbeater.]
4:25 PM|
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Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Unthinking monoliths
Regular readers often describe my posts here as rants. And they are right.
So today's rant is....when are online stationery suppliers going to get their act together and provide some information about their products that is meaningful?
Like, for notebooks, how many pages does the thing have? What does the page look like? Having larger and larger screenshots of the 'exterior packaging' of stationery products really does not help the buyer. Culprits: Viking, Ryman and others. Yes, I can buy products I'm familiar with (seen them in the shop, ordered previously), but otherwise...
And rant no. 2 for today is the Post Office website: what's with all those 'Click Here and More Info' links, lined up down the page like so many tin soldiers? Have they not heard of accessibility? What does 'Click Here' or 'More Info' do in Jaws?
These are all organisations that have a serious online investment (unlike my good self). So they really ought to be doing better on meaningful contant and meaningful link text.
I'll save my Dabs rant for another day.
5:54 PM|
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Friday, June 10, 2005
Related products?
I was browsing Amazon for some kind of case for my recently acquired Cannon Ixus 700 digital camera (nothing except heavy duty waterproof, it seems) when I glanced to the left of the screen and saw some rather strange 'related products'. Cannon Oakley gas gooker? Cannon Fodder (DVD)? Really? And what about Cannonball Adderley?
5:14 PM|
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Usability on prime time Radio 4
A big cheese at Sainsbury's discusses on BBC Radio 4's You and Yours today how it has to get the usability and accessibility of its website right...
12:50 PM|
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UK government: Quality Framework
A little birdie has revealed that the government may now be ready to take another look at its Quality Framework for UK Government Website Design (issued a couple of years back). In other words, it's somewhere on the list of things to do.
I'll keep you posted.
12:32 PM|
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London ballot design
London Elects (run by the London Assembly) is running a ballot design workshop on 27 June. This follows problems with the 2000 and 2004 paper ballot designs (for electronic scanning).
Let me know if you're interested in getting involved, or have any issues with those designs (particularly the one for the mayoral race).
12:28 PM|
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Full metal iron
According to Argos, 17% of men now do their own ironing. And we are about to see an explosion in two-iron households and his'n'hers irons.
You can guess which irons will be provided with 'turbo force cyclonic power'.
12:24 PM|
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