Thought That Came Unbidden

2.1 and 2.2: Usability is customer service (aka: Why geek speak should never make it to error messages and why a single path to problem resolution should never be the option)

Usability failures can come in many flavors when the interface mechanism involves a computer. Most of these failures are directly attributable to a defect in the process: someone without the experience and flexibility to understand that people don’t all think the same way is allowed to control what is essentially a customer service process. Or, to put it another way, some manager let the programmers decide what the best method was and let them write the error messages.

I have to travel at the end of May and I will need a rental car. Avis is my preferred outlet largely because their at least 15 year-old policy of waiving the second driver fee for two people who live at the same address regardless of their relationship is a low-key way of supporting lesbian and gay couples. Primarily it’s the “as folk” crowd that gets the benefit from this rule but it harms no one else in the process. So, when I need a car I typically go to Avis.com to rent one.

My insurance company has a special deal where you can become a “preferred member” without any fee but the catch is you have to be logged in to your Avis.com account to do this. Now, I rent a car three, maybe four times a year which means my knowledge of my Avis.com account particulars dims rapidly.

I’ve got a “wizard number” which I dig out and use to try to log in. Then I realize…I have no idea what my password is. I try a couple of things using my standard password format. No love. So, I follow the “Forgot your password?” link and this is where the trouble starts.

Unlike 99% of other businesses out there, Avis has rejected the process of sending a randomly generated password to the user’s registered e-mail address so that when someone can’t remember the answer to her secret question she can still have access to her account without burning time during a work day. This is a key indicator that programmers controlled laying out this customer service path. They did what was easiest for them on the front side of the process with no regard to what would be easiest for the customer or better for the company in the long run.

So, piss poor usability makes for bad customer service. And yes, I will be asking them about now that I finally have time to call them during business hours (two weeks after I already made my car reservation over the phone).

1.1: Customer service is usability

I think about usability a lot. Some of that is because it’s my job and some because I’m fascinated that products and tools get released onto the market after what must be hundreds of thousands of dollars expended in use-case testing only to be just not quite right.

Take the self-swipe credit card terminal at the grocery store (we’re not even talking about the self-check stand). Upwards of 90% of people using these machines in the U.S. (and possibly the world) are right handed. From a usability perspective it makes sense, then, to put the slot you swipe your card through on the right. But then where does the special pen you often have to use to sign go? Some designers have put it across the top…neatly blocking the swipe slot. Most designers just give up and put it on the left (because yes, it’s so convenient for a right handed person to reach across the screen, drag the cord that connects the special stylus to the terminal across the screen and then hold it out of the way while scrawling a signature). The best designed of these machines put the swipe slot across the top and the moderately small stylus on the right, in a hole that seats it like a traditional fountain pen.

The great thing about usability as a concept, and about the practice of user interface design that promotes it, is that it can be applied to almost anything, even interactions and systems that have nothing to do with technology. Which brings me to my first usability failure.

Sunday I met my friend S. for brunch at a popular diner downtown. I got there about 20 minutes early and the restaurant teemed with diners though no one waited yet for a table. After looking around and realizing that no, my friend wasn’t there, I let the hostess know that there would be two of us but dining partner wasn’t here yet. No problem, she says. It’ll probably be about 10-15 minutes for a table.

During this 10-15 minutes which was actually more like 20 (yes, my friend constantly runs late) a complete party of two arrives, and another, and then a party of three, and then a party of six. When a table for two opens up, my friend is still no where to be seen so the hostess moves to seat the complete party of two that arrived 10 minutes after I did.

Being who I am I say, excuse me, but I was here first.
Oh, she says, but your party isn’t complete and theirs is.
Yeah, but if you seat one it’s the same as seating two.
Well, their party is complete and that is how we do things here.

This is where the usability failure comes in: initially she set my expectation that in 10-15 minutes when a table opened up I’d be seated then later she came back and added an additional rule that contradicted the expectation she’d set with her first statement.

Later, after watching three other parties of two get seated in front of me, when my friend showed up and she finally seated us I explained to her that it wasn’t having to wait until my party was complete that was the problem. The problem was that she’d initially told me I’d be seated when a table opened up, set an expectation that would happen, and then changed the rules. Her reaction: you can talk to my manager if you want.

Now, maybe I should have talked to the manager because, theoretically, if you get enough experience in the restaurant trade to be the MOD during Sunday brunch you understand that managing expectations is the key to keeping customers happy. Instead I let her know that it wasn’t a big deal but that the next time it happened she should let the person in the incomplete party know that it was policy only to seat complete parties and set the expectation correctly. Given that she just blinked and said “OK” I doubt her behavior will change which is too bad because it’s not as if I was playing irate, entitled customer, either. The whole thing was extremely calm.

Next installment:

Usability failures 2.1 and 2.2: Usability is customer service (aka: Why geek speak should never make it to error messages and why a single path to problem resolution should never be the option)

Why don’t we buy ourselves balloons the same way we buy cut flowers?

They serve the same purpose: pleasant, colorful decoration (most commercial cut flowers aren’t that aromatic until you get your nose right in them). They last roughly the same fleeting amount of time.

So why would it be unusual to buy yourself a dozen balloons to let float in your house yet no one would blink at flowers in a vase of water?

Yes, I take a vacation every year in February. Usually a week, sometimes a bit longer, but always to some place warm. This year the destination was San Juan, PR. The first installment of the travel log: photos from around Old San Juan.

The city was founded more than 400 years ago when the Spanish held Puerto Rico as a strategic outpost in the “new world” and the architecture, layout, and construction reflect not only that age but also a lot of the Spanish building principles. From the balconies to the thin, tall shutter-doors to the buildings built around a central courtyard, San Juan feels in many respects like a Spanish city.

Click on the images for a larger version!

No, really, click on the images.

Are you sure you don’t want to see bigger versions of these? They’re pretty.

Seriously, I did a lot of work resizing these. Click on the images!

If you’ve made it this far without looking at bigger photos…well, OK. But you’re really missing out.

More photo galleries to come!

The UN, an organization not known for it’s hipness or connection with popular culture, hosted a panel on human rights featuring the stars and creators of Battlestar Galactica (excellent coverage from io9, Entertainment Weekly and a good overview from Wired which links to the full video recording of the panel). That an organization concerned with real world human rights issues and abuses and how to overcome hundreds, if not thousands, of years of cultural conditioning, racism, and religious division would take this piece of fiction seriously is a surprise only to those who have never watched it.

You see, BSG will stand for a long time not only as a serious cultural achievement but it will eventually be recognized for the ground breaking way in which it reflected the time in which it was conceived and produced. What makes this show transcend the simple space opera that it could have been is the fact that it blatantly and skillfully mixes the social and political concerns of the day – religious conflict, the moral uncertainty of extreme interrogation techniques in a time of war, the good of the whole vs. the rights of the individual – with pure fictional drama.

The mythical ever-present “they” say that all good things must come to an end. True or not, Battlestar Galactica^2.0 signs off for good tomorrow with its final two hours and I suspect that the master stroke of the show is that it will continue to reflect the reality of life by refusing to wrap all of that fictional drama up into nice neat packages.

Katee Sackhoff has already been reported as saying “I didn’t feel like Starbuck had closure.” That kind of leads me to believe that the “is Starbuck a cylon or not” mystery won’t completely be settled.

Too, based on the dramatic trajectory of the plot, it is unlikely that we’ll get closure on the whole Helo/Athena friction. While they may or may not rebond over their child, I doubt we’ll get to see them in an entirely happy marriage by the end of the series.

What of Daniel, the artist child of the final five, the one we’ve never actually seen because of older “brother” Cavil’s misdeeds? Will we learn of his place in the nature of the conflict between human and cylon? Or is he, as I suspect, part of the mystery that will be left clouded?

What happened on Earth? Who started the war there? How long do cylon “batteries” last? Do cylons even have batteries? How did the final five survive thousands of years? What’s their flesh made of that it doesn’t decay or age yet it appears indistinguishable to human flesh? If you had the chance to create a completely beautiful race of beings why would you choose to make someone who looks like Dean Stockwell? And where the hell are they getting toothbrushes and toilet paper if Starbuck is awarding as a prize the last tube of Tauron toothpaste in the galaxy?

All of this is just the fiction, and by no means my complete list of questions. Because the real world issues the show addresses are so complicated and so deadly in most of the world I doubt that the creators and writers of this show will have the hubris to attempt to wrap those up neatly and leave them for a stunned audience with a little bow stuck on top.

No, we’ll have to figure out that answers to a lot of these questions ourselves, assuming, of course, we can remember the lessons presented to us in this safe, fictional space.

On a slightly related note: SciFi has announced that the BSG finale will run 2hrs and 11mins so program your recording devices accordingly.