Keep instructions close to where they’ll be needed

Our washing machine has a handy design feature. The legend for all of the letters used on the dials of the washing machine is printed on a waterproof slip of paper that is found in a special slot built into the powder drawer of the machine. You never have to search for the book (which is always buried under a pile of stuff in the 3rd drawer down!). The instructions are kept close to where they’ll be needed.

Cycling jacket affordance

My cycling jacket has sleeves that are detachable via zippers. The designer has cleverly made it so that it’s impossible to switch the left and right sleeves when putting them back onto the jacket. The way they’ve done this is to have the head part of the zipper on the body on the right hand side, and on the sleeve on the left-hand-side. You can never put the sleeves on the wrong side.

Going up: the rise* in elevator intelligence

When did elevators get so smart? Once they just went up and down, and now they alter their direction based on demand.

Today I was visiting the developers at another building and didn’t really think too strange when I first pressed the floor number. At the time it hadn’t occurred to me that I was choosing the floor as the first step of the process, on the outside of the lift rather than inside the lift.

Keypad on the outside of the lift, downstairs

It was only when I got inside and couldn’t find the usual floor buttons that I realised something was different. My more intelligent companion then noticed that the display above the door close/open symbols was displaying our chosen floor number.

Display inside the lift tells you which floor has been selected

What I didn’t realise was that the elevator was employing ‘intuitive technology’ to cut down on the amount of time spent waiting for the lift as well as the amount of unnecessary trips. I entered my desired destination and the computer sent the best fit lift to answer my call. Meanwhile, other lifts in the system were taking their most efficient journeys rather than the usual inefficient up/down pattern of older lifts. The lifts combine the most similar journey destinations to ensure energy and time is saved. And a lot of energy is saved, one article I have found says that up to 40 percent of elevator energy consumption is saved by using smart technology.

The buttons inside the lift

Another service the smart elevator is providing is better accessibility. You’ll notice the disabled button on the first image, at the bottom of the keypad. When a disabled passenger presses this button the computer sends the closest lift to the passenger and also ensures that the doors stay open for longer. Smart.

A brief google search also turned up an article by Jana Koehler on SpringerLink from 2001 entitled “From Theory to Practice: AI Planning for High Performance Elevator Control”. The abstract states:

Offering an individually tailored service to passengers while maintaining a high transportation capacity of an elevator group is an upcoming challenge in the elevator business, which cannot be met by software methods traditionally used in this industry. AI planning offers a novel solution to these control problems: (1) by synthesizing the optimal control for any situation occurring in a building based on fast search algorithms, (2) by implementing a domain model, which allows to easily add new features to the control software. By embedding the planner into a multi-agent system, real-time interleaved planning and execution is implemented and results in a highperforming, self-adaptive, and modular control software.

Not sure if this was where it all began (I don’t have an Athens login anymore, boo), but it’s an interesting concept none-the-less.

* Sorry, I can’t resist a pun, no matter how bad.

Contextually appropriate error messages

Am trying to find a nice little cottage in Scotland for summer. After finding one in Loch Ness on the Travel Scotland website, I was amused to receive the following gems of error message advice.

Using real-time data to create a cycling map of London

I cycle to work everyday through the streets of London. It can be pretty crazy out there, but it’s good exercise and a lot better than taking public transport. As a way to motivate myself I have been tracking my route, average speed and time with an app called Run Keeper. I suspect that many other London cyclists are doing similar things and wonder if there’s something we could do with all of the collected data that would benefit all cyclists?

I may have an answer care of Assaf Biderman, the Associate Director of MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory. In a recent PopTech presentation he presented various projects where MIT have utilised data sets gathered from mobile phones and other digital sensors as a way to build up an understanding of the built environment and our use of it. One project called the Copenhagen wheel looked at using bicycles to collect data about air quality, routes,  etc. and Biderman proposed one use of it could be to send the data to local authorities. On a side note there’ll be a presentation on the use of bicycles in urban environments at MIT on April 28 with Biderman and David Byrne (amongst others). Link here

Biderman doesn’t offer much more than an idea that the data could be sent to local authorities, but what I imagine could happen is that we could collect lots of different cyclist routes, combine them into the one heat map, and then create a powerful presentation to councils about where we need better cycling facilities. Imagine if we could see where the main commuter routes are: we could then argue with hard data that HGVs should be banned on these roads at those particular times. And I mean a proper ban, not like the current London Lorry Control Scheme which only restricts lorries using London roads between 9pm and 7am on weekdays and 1pm Saturday to 7am Monday (unless of course you’re a cement truck delivering to the Shard building this weekend: 700 return trips over two days). This ban means that lorries drivers have reduced times to deliver their goods and can tend to be a bit (ahem) rushed in the mornings, just as the majority of vulnerable cyclists are out on the roads. Have a read of the iBike London Blog for more info on this.

I notice that lorry drivers, car drivers, and motorbike riders are being catered for with rich data maps from the Public Information Exchange to help them plan their routes. Isn’t it about time that cyclists got together and started something similar? Anyone else up for it?

Poor banking service

Yesterday, when doing some much needed filing, I realised I only like one of the services my current bank provides for me: the pre-punched holes in my bank statements. Other than that, Lloyds TSB have been appalling bad with their service.

This is not an uncommon story with high street banks such as Lloyds. A 2008 study into UK consumer satisfaction with banks found that credit unions and co-operatives scored better with consumers than did the large retail banks (JD Power, 2008). Perhaps this is because personal customer service seems to be a key selling point of the smaller organisations. What Lloyds, and all of the other high street banks need to realise is that good customer service is the key to their business, especially if we are to believe that more people will tell of a bad experience than they will of a good one (Howcroft, 1991)*.

Anita Chakrabarty from the University of Nottingham has written a paper outlining factors which influence customer satisfaction with banking services. You can read it here. In the paper, Chakrabarty lists five salient points for banking service design gathered from other papers:

1. Service quality is one of the effective means in building a competitive position in the service industry. (Lewis, 1993)
2. Investments in service quality, customer satisfaction and customer relationships leads to profitability and market share (Rust and Zahorik, 1993)
3. High quality service and customer satisfaction often results in more repeat purchases and market share improvements (Buzzel and Gale, 1997)
4. Customer satisfaction leads to customer loyalty and this leads to profitability ( Hallowell, 1996)
5. The costs of customer acquisition are much higher than the costs of retention (Reichheld and Sasser, 1990).

One interesting service I have just come across is the Bank of You from the Union Bank and Trust Company in the US. The experience from the outset is very human-centered. You begin your registration by giving the bank your name:

The widget then takes the customer through the process of finding the right account structure for them by way of some very simply worded questions:

After about 5 or 6 screens, the customer is presented with a summary sheet which contains product suggestions, brand and ATM locations, and the opportunity to speak with an online banker about your account. At this stage, all the personal data that’s been asked of you is your name and the addresses of a few key locations in your life (home, office, local shops) to ascertain where the best local branches are for you.

The design of the site is simple and follows some basic UX and information design principles. For example, the customer always knows where they are in the process by way of breadcrumbing and the subtle use of ‘hinting’, where the previous and next screens are shown at the edges of the screen. The restricted colour palette allows for the customer’s eye to be directed to important instructional text with ease: the dark blue and the red stand out.

Whether this simple and elegant design for the online service translates to their face-to-face customer experience I cannot say, but compared to the online sites of high street banks such as Lloyds, you can really see that the Bank of You considers the customer experience to be of primary importance. They do not overload the customer with sales notices. They give the customer the information that is required as it is needed, and nothing more. The simplify the process without making the customer feel inadequate. A job well done.

* Howcroft, J.B. (1991) Customer Satisfaction in Retail Banking. In The Service Industries Journal, Volume 11, Issue 1. pp 11-17.

Good language is part of the experience

There are plenty of great examples on the web of how companies use certain styles of language to brand their customer’s experience. This is one I came across recently in on Pattern Tap: an irreverent take on the usually boring ID process that doesn’t, I think, take away from the seriousness of the sign in process. Perhaps it would not be appropriate say for a company with an older audience for whom carding might be a long-forgotten experience, but for a younger audience, I think this language is spot on.

I am working on a job at the moment that requires a user to sign in before redeeming loyalty benefits. The problem is that the  company’s standard sign in is dry, and completely lacking in any of the character that the company is known for.  I am hoping to get a chance to talk to those responsible and urge them to vamp up their sign in process a little.

Irving Penn portraits exhibition

We have just returned from the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition of Irving Penn’s portraits. Truly extraordinary and exquisite photographs that I am so glad to have seen up close.

I had become more familiar with his work through Alex Craig, a friend and photographer who was inspired by Penn when we were shooting for the 2007 Company B Season book. Alex wanted to pay homage to Penn’s use of the contained space, as seen in the full-length portraits of people such as Truman Capote in the 1940s. The portraits below are of Catherine McClements for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and Richard Roxburgh for Toy Symphony.

One of Irving Penn’s portraits I really liked was that of Saul Steinberg (below), such a perfect way to shoot such an irreverent cartoonist. Another person who loves this portrait is illustrator Wayne Pate who has drawn his own version of the portrait in lieu of being able to afford the some $20-30,000 required to buy a print of the actual photograph.

IRVING PENN: Saul Steinberg in nose mask, New York, September 30, 1966.

I love Steinberg’s work, especially ones such as this:

SAUL STEINBERG: Untitled, 1957. Ink on paper. Originally published in The New Yorker, June 1, 1957. Via The Saul Steinberg Foundation.

Beautiful words, terrible reality

One reading a piece by Arundahti Roy in the Guardian today I was left with the same bittersweet feeling I always get when reading her work. Such beautiful words for such terrible realities. I was pleased to see that the Guardian had posted a video of Arundahti Roy reading from her essay, as hearing her speak is so powerful. Unfortunately this time the quality of the video is poor, and the usual resonant power of her voice has been lost. If you ever get the chance to hear her speak live, I highly recommend it.

I note that the Guardian has referred to Roy as a author and activist. I recall her questioning the validity of this statement: “It seems to suggest that it isn’t the business of writers to look deeply into the society they live in. It reduces what a writer is as well as an activist, suggesting they’re somewhat unidimensional,” [from here]

The Guardian essay is about the tribal Indian people who are fighting against the better armed Indian government for the rights to their homeland. This is an excerpt:

“Why must they die? What for? To turn all of this into a mine? I remember my visit to the opencast iron-ore mines in Keonjhar, Orissa. There was forest there once. And children like these. Now the land is like a raw, red wound. Red dust fills your nostrils and lungs. The water is red, the air is red, the people are red, their lungs and hair are red. All day and all night trucks rumble through their villages, bumper to bumper, thousands and thousands of trucks, taking ore to Paradip port from where it will go to China. There it will turn into cars and smoke and sudden cities that spring up overnight. Into a “growth rate” that leaves economists breathless. Into weapons to make war.”

Lessons from the science museum

I have just finished listening to a podcast from Fora.tv about science museums and how they have developed from top-down, one-way conversations to places that incorporate interactivity as a way to make the experience more interesting to visitors. It was an interesting talk to consider in terms of a project I am working on right now which is to design an online tool to support the environmental programmes in schools. the tool has to be both educational and ‘fun’, something that science museums have been trying to achieve for a long time.

Some of the key points:

Remo Besio, the former director of the Technorama science centre in Switzerland was saying that they do not have a target market in mind when they design their exhibits. Instead they design their exhibits to appeal to a 4-year-old as well as a physics professor. He then went on to say that a purely online experience of science will never work as it is important that people experience the real, physical phenomena to truly learn about scientific concepts. I wonder if this will change some day? Obviously he is pretty keen to keep the visitor numbers up at his museum!

Some other random points:

• A good experience is one that is open to interpretation and can be built upon.
• A good experience is something that is a little bit mentally challenging but easy to use.
• Let the user discover things for themselves. Don’t show them everything at once.
• Make it fun, but fun in this sense means “mind explosions” not frivolous enjoyment.
• Allow the user to take more than one path. Don’t restrict their movement.
• Free choice learning is something they try to achieve: that is, where visitors to the exhibition discover and then teach each other about the exhibits