I bought a couple of audio lectures on Sounds True, a company that publishes awesome woo-woo stuff I’m into.
Sounds True no download all
I’m super excited to listen, but what a buzz kill it was to find out I could not just hit, “Download all”, leave my computer, come back, and, tada! Nope. I had to sit there, click “Go to Files”, download, wait, and repeat.
Sounds Cumbersome? It is. Not an enlightening experience, guys.
I’m setting up my timezone for a webcast in Webex:
Webex time zones
The time zones are listed in order in time difference from Greenwich Mean Time, like GMT -1, GMT +1, etc. Except, I don’t necessarily know right off the top of my head what that is for my city or time zone. I try to find Seattle, but the cities aren’t in alphabetical order. I try to look up my own GMT, but that’s not what this list is organized by. The only option, really, is to scroll up and down. Awesome.
I’m heading to LA at the end of this month (July) to Buddhist Geeks 11, and I’m going all out baller style booking rooms at the Motel 6 nearby. I love their full description.
In case you didn’t catch it, clicking on the “Full Description” link reveals the same text. The.same.text. Yes, awesome, so helpful. Thank you Motel 6.
Despite some effort to resist, I fell for a Living Social deal for 7 days of gluten-free vegan meals, delivered to my doorstep! (It was out of morbid curiosity, alright? Oh… ok, who am I kidding. I do dig the gluten-free vegan stuff. Hold your hippie jokes until the end.)
I went on the website to redeem. Holy mother of all instructions. I had to memorize all of this or open a new window and refer back to this for instruction on each step of the way. Like Mr. Anderson would say, “Whoa”.
Got it?
Options are awesome. Jake Gyllanhaal or Sam Worthington? Gaspard Ulliel or Takeshi Kaneshiro? E! All of the above, please. (After all, there are seven days in a week.)
Except, sometimes too many options lead to a lot of confusion. To wit: Shuttle Express wants me to choose just one pickup location. But alas, which one? I don’t know, committing to one doesn’t restrict me from all the other choices. It’s like a Congressman’s dream!
Pick up location options, lots of em.
Now if I put in my zip code here… can I still choose another one? Should I be able to?
Once a week I have to use Internet Explorer for something that pays my bill, so it’s pretty important, but I don’t look forward to it. Every single time, I get this lovely Welcome Screen. There are two options: 1) “Next”, to explore new features in Internet Explorer 8, and 2) “Ask me later”. I choose “Ask me later” because that’s the lesser of two evil. God knows how long “Next” would take, and I just want to get in and get out and be done. Unfortunately, “Ask me later” would inevitably come up again the next week.
Why isn’t there a “Never Ask Me Again” option? Sometimes, that can be the most polite option.
Where's the "Go Away and Never Come Back" option?
I’m checking in for my mom. She’s flying to Vietnam through Vancouver BC and Hong Kong. The ticket was bought through Continental.
Step 1: I click on “Check in here” link from confirmation email.
Step 2: Denied! It tells me the flight is operated by another carrier, so go bother them. Alright. But I see the “Flight Check In” button is active, so I don’t know if I should trust the text, and also out of curiosity, I click on it.
Step 3: Ah ha! It says my flight is operated by United! So it knows something about my itinerary. Indeed the second leg is operated by United, can I check in to that? Who knows? But maybe there is hope that I can check in after all? I’ll keep clicking!
Step 4: The flight is scheduled at 1:25pm. As soon as I land on the page, I get a red message scorning me that check-ins only start 24 hours before the flight. That’s okay! It’s the night before, I should be well within that time block. Right? Right? I also see the option beneath to put in my e-ticket number, so I’ll go for it with zeal, though I’m dates and confused (oh come on that was kinda funny).
Step 5: When I click the button to check in, the same page keeps refreshing and tells me I need to come back and check in when it’s within 24 hours. It *is* within 24 hours on my planet. How about yours, United?
Step 6: Dead-end at United/Continental. I try checking in to Air Canada, since that’s the company that operates the first leg of the trip. I put in the info they require. I don’t read the text on the right hand side, but as we will find out, I should have to save me some heart burn.
Step 7: I keep putting in Seattle, or SEA, that’s the code for the airport here. To no avail. The page does not budge. The red message keeps taunting me telling me to enter my departure city. I did! I’m feeling like Wolverine, when he’s mad.
Finally, I decided to put in USA, and ah ha! A list of cities pop up for me to pick. It turns out there are only selected cities I can check in from and Seattle is not one of them. If so, when I put in the correct airport code that’s not on the list, why not tell me so? Why make me second guess the SeaTac Airport code? Why make me second guess if I spelled S-E-A correctly? Why make me stumble upon the answer?
It feels like years have passed since I tried to do what I thought was a simple task of checking in. The Wolverine claws are itching to come out!
So I’m voting for Seattle’s hottest geek (which, by the way, apparently are all men). Before I can do that, I have to tell Seattle Weekly to please not text or email me. But it ain’t so easy. As you can see in the screen shot, clicking on “No Thanks” doesn’t uncheck any options. It’s a redundant button. If I uncheck everything, by definition, it’s No Thanks. If I check No Thanks, all the other options should uncheck themselves. Grr.
No thanks. No, really. No thanks.
I am–for most professional intents and purposes–a User Experience Designer. That’s the job title on my business card and LinkedIn profile. That’s how I’m introduced. I go to UX conferences, I read UX books, go to UX Happy Hours, and generally have a good time with UX people. Some days it feels as if I eat, sleep, dream, and soak in UX bath salts.
Yet, I’ve always had trouble with the term “User Experience”, and especially the implication that one can design a specific experience for someone else. It inevitably conjures up images of Winston Smith’s primal urges and the dystopian question whether androids dream of electric sheep.
Take a deep breath, sit back. Grab your favorite drink, and let me take you through a roundabout way of explaining why I feel this way. The TL;DR version will be at the end.
In my night job, I teach yoga. Last night, in my Intro to Yoga class I introduced a concept called svadhyaya, translated from Sanskrit as self-study, self-inquiry, or self-reflection. (For fellow etymology nerds out there, sva = self, dhyaya is from the verb dhyai, “to contemplate, to call to mind”.)
“So, self-study, like, spiritually?”, a student asked.
“Possibly”, I replied, “What about noticing where your feet and knees and shoulders are? And how you’re breathing right now?” Being aware of where you are in space and what you’re doing is also a fine way to self-reflect. This habit, with practice, and over time, can show up elsewhere outside the yoga mat. You’ll start to notice when you’re slumping at our desk, or that your breath shortens when someone cuts us off in traffic.
If being aware of where your toes are turns out to be useful in other parts of your life, great. ”But, I don’t pretend to know how you should reflect spiritually. That is your personal experience.” I told her.
I see a lot of yoga teachers talking about feelings and emotions with their students, and I’m not that brave. It’s not my business to tell someone how to “feel”. If I suggest that you ought to feel divine bliss in a yoga pose, and you’re actually in pain and feeling shitty, both of us are imposing someone else’s reality on ourselves, and how fun is that?
In other words, my user experience is not your user experience.
The only thing I can do when I teach yoga is to make sure the surface is even, the floor is clean, and you feel safe, so that you can confidently work on getting strong and flexible or whatever it is that you need from yoga.
Similarly, in design, it’s my business to do everything I can to create, provide and fine-tune all the factors necessary for a functional and beautiful product. It’s my job to make sure that my design is useful and understandable and all these things.
But, as Kim Goodwin, author of Designing for the Digital Age said:
Since each person brings her own attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions to any situation, no designer can determine exactly what experience someone has.” – pg 5, Designing for the Digital Age.
We don’t have to look to far to see evidence of this. For some people, the iPhone and iOS devices provide a superior user experience. For others, it’s Android. For yet some others, it’s Windows Phone. I love my Mac to a disturbing degree, but I’m sure there are those who will enrage at the sight of the glowing fruit that I love to fondle.
For a non techy example (and for you foodies): while I love a juicy Portabella sandwich, a boyfriend I once had won’t touch a fork that’s been in the same zipcode as a mushroom.
I think of myself as an Interaction Designer, but I don’t mind (so much, anymore) when I get called a User Experience Designer. I get that we need a word to rally around and to communicate, and there’s no reason to be pedantic about the semantics. I’ve come to fully accept it. But, I’m also aware that the user experience is likely never going to be 100% my own doing.
TL;DR: We can’t really design an “experience”, since everyone’s experience is based on their attitudes, behaviors, perceptions, and choice of fruit. The best we can do is to set up the environment in which a person’s experience can be optimized.
“It is interesting reading your reactions. Your five predecessors were, by design, based on a similar predication: a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of the One.
While the others experienced this in a general way, your experience is far more specific. Vis-à-vis: love.”
When confusing one for the other risks you the chance of being walked in on a private moment: 