Pat’s Point of View

I saw this poem during a recent contextual study:

Two worn little shoes
With a hole in the toe
And why have I saved them?
Well, all mothers will know

There’s nothing so sweet
As a baby’s worn shoe
And the patter of little steps
Following you

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This morning I found a fatal flaw in the design of my mobile phone, it doesn’t like being submerged in a glass of water. Being the bumbling idiot I am in the morning I went to pick up the phone but dropped it into my glass of water.

Functionality was…how do I say?…hampered. It did float, however, which was good to know. The screen kinda went blank instantly, and the camera flash went off upon contact with the water. And the water tasted kinda funny afterwards. Not quite sure why I decided to drink it.

So I was off to Crazy John’s where I learnt my phone was indeed "shagged" and that the warranty will not cover "fluid ingress". Fortunately I hadn’t paid for phone insurance because that doesn’t cover water damage either. Hmmm, it’s not like water is a rare thing on this planet is it?

So anyway I’m now the proud owner of a new Nokia 6233, which has a 2 megapixel camera so I’m back where I was with my N90. More impromptu photos!

See what people are blogging about: mobile phone, nokia 6111, nokia 6233, phone in water

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As user experience practitioners, do our own views and opinions (as users) change as we participate in more and more user research? Do we end up with a mish-mash of all the things we see and hear from other people?

I know I have changed my views on many things over the last few years. My opinions and behaviours are very different now, compared to when I might have considered myself a techie (whenever that was!). I’ve even picked up some ‘habits’ from user research participants. I feel I’ve become more like the average joe using the web (with a hint of anti-system, anti-establishment). This is a good thing.
This probably applies equally well to other professions too. My wife has recently established an event management business, and the part she loves most is designing weddings. I wonder how her own personal views/tastes with regard to weddings might change the more she works with her clients. Will their variety of ideas and experiences rub off on Jenn such that her concept of a perfect wedding changes?
Obvisouly anything that allows designers (with a little d) to better empathise with their audience is a good thing, but can it go too far? Will we lose objectivity or worse, our personal identity?

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Ahh memories. The definitive shit list was one of the first things I ever published to the web (on my very first website, at the Programmer’s Society of UTS). Still makes me laugh. My favourite is the Spinal Tap.

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The tribes which George Lackoff described as having a category of words for fire, women and dangerous things (in his book by the same name) were surely mistaken.

Women are the dangerous things!

Case in point, my wife, who in a temporary state of hormone-driven perplexity, thought she had the ability to bend the space-time continuum. Whilst I did not report this terrifying incident to the police, had I done so, their report would have read as follows (refer to diagram):

1. 5:15pm Suspect and victim driving along quite happily, along usual route taken to the city (indicated on map by green line). This route is used several times a week.
2. 5:16pm Suspect suddenly demands that the victim proceed straight ahead because it’s quicker!. The red line on the map indicates the route taken. Victim attempts to explain this route is longer but his actions are met with stedfast denial and not a little vicious hostility.
3. 5:19pm Victim pleads with suspect as to why they’re going this way. Suspect goes apeshit (it’s a psychological term). Tirade continues for several minutes.
4. 5:23pm Suspect realises this is the wrong way. The long, wrong way.
5. 5:28pm Victim and suspect re-join usual route. Suspect apologises, citing emotional instability.

Gotta watch out for those volatile emotions.

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OK I think I know what they do, but how do we expect your average user to decipher this?

Millions of people use Wikipedia every day, so you think the creators would have received a complaint (and taken action) regarding the “two search buttons”. Under the label of Search you would expect that any form button next to the text field would initiate the search. The Search button does this, but what about Go? Lots of forms (including many for site search) use a Go button as the submit button and since it’s on the left and bold, I think it’s quite logical to expect that’s the button that makes the search work.

I find it strange that such a popular, at-the-forefront-of-the-new-web site has such an unusable interface.

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So, when did all taxis become Falcons? I swear there used to a mix of Commodores and Falcons, but last night I realised every single taxi in Sydney is now a Ford Falcon. You see the odd private hire car (’HC plate’) which is a Statesman, but that’s all.

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Tuesdays and Thursdays Jenn does yoga in Balmain, for which I dutifully provide her with chauffeur services. Whilst waiting in the car (it’s just not worth driving home and the back again) I’ve been trying my hand at war driving and was pleased to find that most people still do not secure their Wifi networks :)

There are several places on Darling St in Balmain that have open network points, including the Fire station, town hall and a number of private residences. I did consider—for a few milliseconds—that this might be an illegal activity…I should look into that. Nevertheless I sit here now writing this post from the luxury of a car parked on a street. It’s a little immature since my PC laptop has an iBurst card (’wideFi’ as I call it), although my iBook can’t use that so it’s actually quite necessary to borrow connections when using the Mac about town.

Last time, I was truly mobile-man; I emailed, blogged, surfed and edited video ‘on the go’. OK it’s geeky, but at least you can’t say I should get out more!

See what people are blogging about: wardriving, wifi, Balmain

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I have shunned my iPod for too long (work, work, work!) so I thought it’s time to inspect my music library. The upgrade to iTunes 7 went well, compared to some of the stories I’ve heard, and I like it’s new features. In particular I spent an obsessed few hours adding album art to all my songs, it was quite a challenge for some of the things I’ve collected over the years!

Top 10 most played songs

1. No Other Way - Jack Johnson
2. The Dark End of the Street - The Commitments
3. Rescue Me - Fontella Bass
4. Better Together - Jack Johnson
5. I Love You More Than I Ever Had - Ray Charles
6. Banana Pancakes - Jack Johnson
7. (Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You’ve Been Gone - Aretha Franklin
8. Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours - Stevie Wonder
9. Never Know - Jack Johnson

Top 10 most played artists

1. Jack Johnson
2. Aretha Franklin
3. Diana Ross & The Supremes
4. The Commitments
5. U2
6. Elvis Presley
7. Craig David
8. Guns N’ Roses
9. Destiny’s Child
10. Michael Jackson

Top 5 most recently acquired albums

1. Back to Basics - Christina Aguilera
2. Chinese Democracy - Guns N’ Roses
3. Collision Course - Jay-Z/Linkin Park
4. Greatest Hits - Linda Ronstadt
5. Harley and Rose - The Black Sorrows

These stats really make me question how iTunes handles having two users sharing the same library, as this is clearly skewed towards Jenn’s listening habits (I mean, come on, Jack Johnson?!).

This is also a flaw with iPhoto etc in that they haven’t made it easy at all to share the one library across the multiple users of one machine, which you’re going to have happen in a home PC environment. As a matter of fact even getting it to chare the library involved too much mucking around (CHMOD and CHOWN have no place in a home PC!).

ps: I’m using Doug’s Scripts to extract stats now, rather than the overly complex way I use to. Even better would be SQLtunes which will export play stats into a mySQL database so you can analyse them properly (thank heavens for the GROUP BY clause!). Too bad the old mySQL database I have running is not accessible from my Mac :(

See what people are blogging about: iTunes, play stats, SQLtunes

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Isn’t it a bit strange that ANZ responds to accusations that it uses call centres in India by saying it’s not a call centre it’s a “technology centre employing 1,400 Indian workers, with the majority in software development jobs”? Ahh hello, how is that better?

I think I’d prefer the call centre jobs were offshore, rather than the technology jobs. From the point of view of an ANZ customer (which I am) this doesn’t fill me with confidence that technology and security are being handled well, and from the point of view of an Australian worker I’m not happy that these jobs are being taken away from our workforce.

Sure, it could be because Australian workers are overpaid and lazy (surely not in the IT industry?!) and that corporations such as banks can make huge profits from sending development offshore, but that’s not the point :)

And of course it is annoying when you get overseas call centre operators, but if I had to choose I’d rather they didn’t get the technical jobs.

What next, we outsource ASIO to Madagascar?

See what people are blogging about: offshoring, call center

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