The EchoUser Experience

I got this notice from JetBlue today telling me about new TSA regulations concerning “vetting” of passenger information. Now, I tend to read carefully and try to comprehend things before coming to a conclusion, yet I couldn’t help but feel put off by the message. In the end it seems pretty innocuous (they just want to make sure your JetBlue info on file matches your official government-issued ID info in order to allow online check in), but I still think they failed with their delivery of the message. Stay tuned for my take on the whole thing.

Fatal error message in a terminal window

While I understand that command line interface programmers don’t feel like they need to adhere to the same rules as UI designers, I think it would be best if they reconsidered.

Under no circumstances is it necessary for an error message to tell me something was “fatal”. It evokes feelings of panic and makes me feel as though I’ve done something irreversible. In the example above I simply called “git pull” (grab the latest code from the repository) on the wrong folder.  Because that folder wasn’t tracked by git, it doesn’t do anything… it just exits.

Consider using another response, such as “Not a git repository, nothing has been pulled. Are you in the right directory?”. I don’t need to hear about what process was killed or how it died, I just want to know what happened and what I should do about it.

Thanks

Sometimes I come across positively delightful tidbits as I trawl the web, and this one, the “coming soon” page for Hosteeo, totally got me.

Nice look and feel? Check.

Mystery? Check.

Sense of being privy to something secret? Check.

Provides me with a way of finding out that secret? Check again.

All in all, a pretty effective way of getting my email address - but more importantly, my attention. Thanks to Chris Spooner for finding this gem.

Since the launch of the MotoCliq yesterday, my Facebook and Twitter have been flooded with hurrahs and comments about this cool new device. Seven years in Motorola gave me enough friends there and some of them were heavily involved in making this Motorola dream a reality. Great work guys!

The iPhone kick-started it all and now Motorola has joined the social networking bandwagon (many others have but very few deliver the experience worth mentioning) with it’s first Android phone. They have gone a step ahead (as should be expected) and created a great experience around integration of the various social networking sites in a very cool looking ‘Homepage Dashboard’. Sanjay Jha in his talk at Mobilize 09 said that ‘one-to-one’ communication is a thing of the past. Now, it’s all about ‘one-to-many’ and the MotoCliq is true to this tenet.

This is all good but what happens if ‘Facebook’ or ‘Twitter’ are not ‘THE’ social networking sites anymore. The probability of that happening is low at least till the launch of Motocliq but same time next year and the story might be very different.

If changes in the human behavior at the high tier segment has forced companies to respond with the now social networking solutions, can they not extrapolate this behavior to the many many more low/mid tier user groups, provide customized social networking solutions, encourage this networking behavior and drive ARPU.

How do mobile phone companies respond to 2 basic questions?

• How do we keep pace with the ever-changing landscape of social networking sites
• How do we scale it so that such services are made available to the rest of the 80-90% low to mid tier cell phone users worldwide

Living in India the second question intrigues me more. For sometime now I have been thinking about a flexible mobile social networking platform that can be customized for different and specific user groups at the low and mid tier user categories.

Consider these user groups:

• Auto rickshaw/Taxi drivers across a city like Mumbai
• Truck drivers across India
• The millions of maids employed in every middle-class family of India
• The millions of farmers across various states in India

Now a few facts about the above user groups:

• They all have cell phones
• They do not possess an internet connection
• The cell phone is their main channel of communication and entertainment
• Their awareness levels of things around is very minimal and hence are an exploited lot
• They come from very specific user groups and normally communicate within their own group/community

With the above facts, a dashboard like networking application can improve the quality and extent of communication and also make them more aware, entertained and connected. It could eventually provide them with a better life.

I hope the mobile industry is already working on such solutions but I suspect the focus is very heavily bent on making the iPhone competitor. There is an opportunity waiting to be tapped. Any takers!

UI protoyping: OK Computer?

Des over at Contrast.ie recently showed us part of their process for preparing web prototypes for a client.  They ended up using Konigi’s hand drawn wireframe stencil set for Omnigraffle, which lends prototype diagrams a more human, back-of-the-napkin feel.

Speaking of which, at the last BayChi event I attended, guest lecturer Dan Roam mentioned that hand drawn really is more human: specifically, that we tend to be attracted to artifacts that look like they come from people.  So as technology has advanced to the point where we use programs instead of pen and paper to prototype web pages and UI layouts, it’s ironic that we’ve now moved the needle back the other way in search of our humanity and something more tactile.

I know that fabulous crew over at The Grove sometimes uses tablets to record hand drawn notes and sketches during meetings, which essentially kills two birds with one stone: no more paper prototypes (yay for the environment!), coupled with a hand-drawn electronic artifact that can be easily modified.  Thoughts, anyone?