August 2008 Archives

Ohna's film Son won best UK short film at Edinburgh last month and now the picture is being featured on the YouTube Screening Room and hey I'm impressed :-)

Click on the pic above or on the Paypal button below to make a donation to the Ohna's film fund and download a handy iPod/iTouch mpeg file (make sure you click on "Return to Sister Films" to get your download link).

Nice one Ohna :-)

So my accountant tells me I need to make sure and complete my VAT registration. Don't worry he says, you're an internet consultant so you'll have no trouble...

So here I go, whoops, something's awry with the vat section of the website, it appears to have lost its stylesheet (no doubt an indirect result of using the .Net framework).

So I call the helpline and am assured that even though the whole site (apart from the VAT bit) is working and it's just that I need to use internet explorer. But, I say, I haven't got IE, how can I pay my tax? At which point I was told to go away and stop being an annoying taxpayer...

I think it may be time to revert to paper processes on this one!

• Developer's Guide - Google Chart API - Google Code
  Gordon Bennet this is just fantastic!
  (tags: charts, maps, apis, graphics)

Wow, I thought I'd be playing with RC5 for a while before getting the final release but no, the real thing is here. Go grab yourself a copy

With the long list of recent launch disappointments (with iPhone 3G by far the smelliest) I gotta say, Six Apart have not only delivered a hugely improved product (faster, more features) but a whole new license structure.

The new licenses are very much value co-creation engines. In a nutshell, let the mass of small businesses and bloggers use all the variations and toys for free, let them build on them, change them, and if they manage to scrape some revenue out of their enterprise, then ask them to buy services (primarily the excellent support) and pay for a commercial license.

I am very, very impressed and will be upgrading all my installations immediately. Great work 6A:-)

OK, I think O2 wins this donkey's current "Edge du Jour" tag.

Take a look at this wizard-style information display from the O2 self-care website. I landed here as I had just invested a chunk of my free time trying to review my invoice online having received my monthly your invoice is ready html email. Of course I failed, and I then failed to refresh my password, and sent a few paragraphs of vitriol to the support email only to be told that O2 can only be contacted using their customer contact wizard (perversly named "email us").

So before you even get started, what does this display suggest?

1. O2 only gives customer service to customers who know their details. This could be a problem for new customers who may not yet have received all the cryptic bits of misorganised pseudo-information that O2 sends out in a bid to help new customers settle in. This might also be a problem for existing customers who are on holiday or away from their base (imagine being in an internet café in Belize City trying to get help with your phone).
2. Assuming a customer has their details to hand, O2 will only engage in dialogue with users who can pass security. Now, this is a support email for crissake, what the hell kind of security do you mean? I just want to email you to complain or ask for help and you will only hear me out if I can give you secret password (which I've either forgotten or never had to begin with). This is just ridiculous
3. O2 will only listen to queries for internet users who get through steps one and two above

This is bad on a number of levels but the most obvious one is that the experience design takes no account of context-of-use.

If you are designing a support interface you can be pretty sure that most of the users who engage with it will have negative context-of-use issues. A big part of the interface's success will be taking into account why the user might feel upset or confused. Think of issues like:

• my phone is broken
• there's a problem with my bill
• I don't understand something and need help
• I'm in unfamiliar surroundings
• I don't have access to my own computer (with its cookies and bookmarks)

I think it's obvious from the entire interface that the O2 team took no account of these issues.

This is bad on further level. Dialog and transparency are now key elements of most sensible corporations' comms strategies. There is no point having your CSR team and your marketing folk writing about how open you are to dialog when your website clearly isn't.

Finally, the contact form has an input box which I think demonstrates the marketing team's deep understanding of the customer:

Now I'm pretty sure most iPhone customers can't tell the difference between an N95, an iPhone and a K800i. I know i certainly struggle with that one every day;-)

Yes, the A List Apart guys are running an improved version of the survey they did in 2007. It's good to feel one's industry is maturing, it somehow helps when trying to make plans for the future:-)

So why not take the survey yourself?

Clementine has been learning to write these past few years and I was buying stamps at a stationners in Farnham when I came across this pen. I first heard it mentioned by Richard Binder and since then have thought it would make a great addition for Clem. She's visiting her Nan right now but I'll present it when she gets back (with "Clemmie" on the cap, not "Thomas" of course).

It's slightly tricky, Jed--my dad--is a talented calligrapher and I can manage some fluid strokes myself when I need to. The temptation is to try and get Clem writing like I was taught in school (in France we were taught 'joined-up' writing from the get-go using the the redoutable "Stypen" best known for leaving puddles of ink everywhere) but that's exactly what my dad tried to do and it got me in a bit of muddle on the handwriting front...

So I'm going to bite my lip for now and help her with her non-cursive letterforms:-)