Business Evolutionist

Borders Books online

I typically buy my books from Amazon... way too many of them, but I digress.

During a discussion the other day, the subject of Python (the programming language) came up and since I don't know Python I thought I'd see what I could find to learn more about it. I searched online and found a few good sources, however, I tend to learn best from books. I went to Amazon and found a couple of books... realizing I didn't want to wait for a book to arrive in the mail (and paying for overnight shipping erases any potential savings from Amazon) I decided to check to see what was in stock at my local Borders.

First, kudos to Borders for having store inventory on their web site... I can tell it which stores are close to me and it will show if a book is in stock at my stores. I love that feature.

The downside is that the rest of the site leaves a little to be desired.

I went to the site and typed in Python in the search area.

What I got back was less than helpful.

A generic list of books with Python in the title. Okay, so the list is easy to get through, but it doesn't help me sort the list in any way.

The physical store has books arranged by category, why can't they carry this through to the website?

They have shelf information on the site - can't they use that to correlate the other books in the same category?

Also, since they have store information on the page, can't they just offer me the ability to just see the books that are on the shelf in the store at this time?

The final item would be leveraging the Return to Prior Work pattern. As I'm browsing books (or any other item), let me get back to previously viewed items quickly and easily (Amazon does this).

None of this would be hard to do. They have all the data they need.

I heard an interesting tidbit the other day when I was talking to someone about Web Analytics. They said that Circuit City, which also offers "Reserve for In-Store Pickup" via their web site, measures what additional sales that occur from people who purchase online and pick it up in the store... they can tell how many CD's people buy, for example, when purchasing an MP3 player through the site.

I'm sure that Borders can does some type analysis to determine the payback on this.

What do you think??

Keeping Attention

Part of my post the other day, What should WSJ.com do?, included a little snippet about advertisements potentially distracting from the readability of the Wall St. Journal online.

I understand that companies need to make money, but it never ceases to amaze me how prominently some major sites feature advertisements within their pages. We use to have the "banner ad", which we all learned to ignore, so it makes sense that ads drifted down into the content - attempting to grab our attention as we're trying to focus on the content of the page.

The worst offense, however, is that some sites are still sing popup ads - those pesky small new browser windows that open up in front of the page you're trying to look at - even though almost any Usability expert you speak to would tell you how bad they are.

Modern browsers now have popup blockers, which automatically stop the popup ads from appearing. When the browser blocks a popup, the browser reveals a small banner at the top of the content of the page, offering you some options (in case you want to view the popup). The browsers use a subtle animation to reveal the popup blocker, ensuring that you see that some action was taken on your behalf and to undo the action if you so choose.

The subtle animation that browsers use is an example of great design - IMHO - the details (controls) reveal themselves only when appropriate, and, even though the animation is distracting, it accomplishes the goal in that few people will miss it.

My question is, why do sites still use popup ads?

Here are two major sites, CNN and The Weather Channel, respectively, with the popup blocker control revealed:

There are two crappy things about this:

1.) The popup blocker being revealed is distracting

2.) I have to take an action to get rid of it (well, I don't have to get rid of it, but having it in the page pushes content down, requiring more scrolling).

Knowing that most people have popup blockers, and that the both popups and blockers are distracting, why do sites still use popups??

The truly desirable electric car

I first read about the car a year ago, in Wired. A fast, battery-powered, sports car, that looked like a sports car. (check out a video from Sundance Channel - click view more, then Drive 4)

Let's face it, most of us buy cars (and almost everything else) for truly emotional reasons. There probably isn't a guy alive who wouldn't love to drive one of these - including yours truly.

As cool as this, the idea behind it is incredibly simple: cool car body + rechargeable batteries = a year long waiting list that you have to pay at least $30,000 to get on.

More proof that there are very few new ideas, just curious people who add 1 + 1 and come up with more than 2... (you've got your chocolate in peanut butter... )

My questions are:

With all the trouble the Big 3 US automakers are having, why didn't they come up with something like this? GM did, but then abandoned it.... sadly. It didn't look like the Tesla, but still...

With gas over $3 a gallon, why isn't the government doing more to subsidize development of things like this?

Do Not Reply

One of my biggest email pet peeves is when companies send email from a "DoNotReply@SomeStupidCompany.com" email address.

Sometimes they even repeat the warning near the top of the message: Please do not to reply to this email address.

However, there is alawys some email address somewhere in the body of the message where you can direct questions or comments.

Not only is this a pain for customers, it also hurts the company sending the message. When you click on the other email address, you open a new message and you lose all the contextually relevant information from the original message!!!

Why not just send the email from the address you include in the body of the message? It makes my life easier - since I don't have to copy my order/account number in my reply (which has the possibility of being wrong - I could copy everything but the first or last digit, I could type it wrong, etc). It also hurts the company that sends it, because they don't have the full chain of communication - potentially missing some pertinent information.

Perhaps this is just me griping (I don't see it as often as I used to), but I got one of these messages yesterday and it would have been nice to just hit reply and asked my question without have to retype any details (the iPhone - yeah, I got one - doesn't have copy and paste, so typing was the only option).

The normal way I deal with this is just to copy the email from the body of the message, hit forward, and paste the email address in to the TO line.

Again, this is just a waste of time. Also, on a mobile device this is harder to do. It took me several steps on my iPhone yerterday - click the email link (it was embedded in the source, they didn't have the address spelled out or I could have just typed it) which opened a new email to that address. Saved that as a contact. Closed the new email message. Went back to the original message. Hit forward. Entered the new contact and hit send (all that for an email address I might never use again).

Don't even get me started about the kind of message it sends when a company tells me Not to Reply... ;-)

I'm half-tempted to get myself a DoNotReply email address and start using that when companies send out emails with a donotreply@...

Thoughts??

iPhone

I got one... sort of. I bought one for my wife. And trust me when I tell you it is even cooler than the appears in the commercials. I was going to wait for the next generation version to come out, but I might just go ahead and get one.

There was no line at the AT&T store at 7AM yesterday morning when I stopped at Starbucks for coffee (they're right next to each other) on my way to work, so I decided I would check back at lunch. There was no line at lunch time either, so I ran home to drop off my computer and went back. In that 30 minutes, a line of 6 people had formed.

So, at 12:30, I began my wait... and stupid me, I didn't bring a chair. DOH! The people (mostly male, middle age folks) in line with me were really nice, which certainly helped the time to pass more quickly... until about the last 1/2 hour, that seemed to take forever! :-)

When the time came, they let in the first 6 people in line, one for each of the employees in the store. I was number 7 in line, so I had to wait a little longer... but only about 5 minutes, til the first person came out.

I got my wife the 8 gig model, a couple of accessories and I was on my way home.

I took out her laptop, downloaded and installed the new iTunes, and then got forced to update MAC OS... which sucked.... I just wanted to get that phone set up to play!

After 30 minutes of software downloads and installs, I had the iPhone in the cradle and I was setting it up... the process was smooth, and we were done in just minutes.

Copied over her music and contacts and finally got to start playing around!!!

As I mentioned, the iPhone is incredibly cool... totally living up to the hype. Here are some notes:

- The iPod functionality is awesome, cover flow is great, however, the standard list is phenomenal as well. A little flick of the finger and you're scrolling through gobs of music (I put about 4 gigs on there)

- Scrolling through a list, at first, seemed backwards. I wanted to run my finger down the screen to get to the bottom of the list - just like you "scroll" down using a scroll bar, but it is the more natural gesture of flicking up to move the unwanted stuff out of your way.

- Setting up Wi-Fi took litterally 2 seconds: I opened the mail application and was prompted for our WPA key, entered it, and boom. Connected.

- I set up the local weather in about 1/2 second... simply by entering our zip code. There was almost no latency in getting the updated 5-day forecast for our city. It took me only a second or two to figure out how to delete the default cities weather forecast. Simply touching a red circle next to the city name revealed a delete button... very smooth.

- Navigating the maps was incredibly cool. Starting with two fingers together on the screen, just slide them away from each other in whatever direction you want the map magnified. I was able to drill into our city in a matter of a couple of gestures.

- There are no "close" icons or buttons, you just return to the main screen with the main navigation button on the device.

- I changed a couple of the default settings, which were quick and easy to do.

- The keyboard, which might take some getting used to, is very cool. The visual feedback when you press a letter or number is great - although, when you are entering a password and can't see the text you've entered, the visual indicators of the letters you've typed should stay visible for a little longer.

- One of the coolest things is a little ".com" keyboard button. You type in a URL in the browser and click one button to complete the address... that is wicked cool.

- I have my iTunes set to manually sync with my iPod, a feature I couldn't seem to find or accomplish with the iPhone. I'm going to have to investigate this one a little more. There was an option to only sync checked items or only sync certain playlists, so that might be the way to do it.

There are so many little things that make the iPhone praiseworthy... the whole time I was playing last night, a line just kept running through my head: touching is believing.

It is evident that they spent time truly understanding the main tasks people need to complete with a mobile device. The buttons for the main tasks are big and obvious... my wife kept remarking that they built it for someone who hates technology, like her.

Error Prevention in Design

I've been working on something that I call the Error Prevention exercise, a simple little checklist to use to reduce the number of possible errors on a web page. I found something that is a great example of this - the pop-up menu on a misspelled word inFirefox 2.0.

The top two items are seemingly very related and located close to each other, however, the result of clicking on them produces drastically different results:

The first item corrects the spelling of the misspelled word.

The second item adds the misspelled word to your dictionary.

One fixes an error. The other could fix the error permanently, or it could prevent you from ever fixing the error again.

The fact that these two choices are so close to each other increases the likelihood that I might select the wrong choice - with possibly very negative consequences (I know because I've now added two misspelled words to my dictionary - whoops!).

Of course I blamed myself the first time I did it, but the second time I realized that this was just poor design.

Now, before I get berated with tons of hate mail, keep in mind that I really LOVE Firefox. I never use IE anymore.

The question really comes down to this: what are the consequences of someone clicking the wrong choice? If the consequences are high, make sure that the error is hard to make.

Perhaps they could have added something in between the two choices, maybe "Ignore"?

What do you think?

Select your shower temperature - Royal Sonesta Hotel

I just grabbed a quick shower after checking in at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Boston...

The shower controls looked a little different...

Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the control allows you to specify the shower temperature!

How cool is that?

Interaction Design... and...

Just got done reading Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices.

The book, as stated in most of the comments on Amazon, is a "wonderful introduction to the field of Interaction Design". The book is great and if you're interested in learning more about how to create a great product OR service (that's right, you can design services as well - think process design, redesign, reengineering, etc.) I highly suggest checking this book out. It covers the basics VERY well and does so in a very easily digestible manner.

This is just the lastest in a long list of design/design related books I've read (mostly in the last year or so)...

• The Design of Everyday Things (read twice, summary on my blog)


• Emotional Design (great follow up to Design of Everyday Things, written at a higher level)


• Watches Tell More Than Time (wow, this book floored me)


• Don't Make Me Think


• Universal Principles of Design (great book, a must own... I've used stuff from this book in training classes)


• Making and Breaking The Grid (covers layout, obviously)


• Thinking with Type


• Ambient Findability (it will change the way you think about 'search')


• Prioritizing Web Usability


• Usability Engineering (the original book I understand, a tad dated but worth it, has a section about the business aspect of usability)


• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (another one of the must owns)


• Persuasive Technology (very interesting)


• Shaping Things (very interesting book - a glimpse into the future perhaps)


• The Evolution of Useful Things (great book, short snippet in an earlier post)


• Information Architecture


• The Elements of User Experience


• Bulletproof Web Design (a must own CSS/web design book)


• Web Standard Solutions (a must own CSS/web design book - I'm going to his CSS class in Boston)


• Defensive Design for the web (just great, I dug this book and passed around the Contingency Design test to my team, we're adding to it! Sort of reminded me of The Big Red Fez which I've also read and passed around to everyone on my team)


• Communicating Design


• Design of Things to Come


• Rapid Contextual Design


• Usability Engineering Lifecycle


• JavaScript/DHTML Cookbook (a cookbook indeed, I've used several of the recipes... )


• AJAX in Action


• The Art of Innovation


• The Ten Faces of Innovation


• And one or two others... that are at least somewhat related.
  

I've ordered the soon to be published: Designing Interactions - all 816 pages of it! It looks like it will be fantastic!

I'll be posting a list of my favorite design blogs in the next couple of days...

What are your favorite design books? What one book would you suggest I read?

One Simple Step...

I'm not sure if anyone ever uses it, but I want to hear the story of how this came in to existence. I sure hope that it was through observation; some engineer watching people try to load stuff on the roof of an SUV... hanging off the back corner of the bumper trying to tie something down.